Category Archives: Space Station

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is pictured with an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft (left) during a May 12, 2017 spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Whitson, the station's commander, and fellow NASA astronaut Jack Fischer will conduct a repair spacewalk on Tuesday, May 23.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA astronauts will take an unplanned spacewalk Tuesday (May 23) to replace a failed data relay box outside of theInternational Space Station, restoring critical redundancy to the orbiting outpost, agency officials said Sunday (May 21).

The failed device, known as a multiplexer/demultiplexer, or MDM, was installed on March 30 during a spacewalk by NASA astronautsPeggy Whitson, now the station's commander, and then-flight engineer Shane Kimbrough, who returned to Earth last month. Whitson will perform Tuesday's spacewalk repair with fellowNASA astronaut Jack Fischer who arrived at the orbiting laboratory in April. [Watch: Whitson and Fischer Play Zero-G Water Ping Pong]

The MDM, one of two located on the outside of the station's S0 segment of the station's backbone-like main truss, controls exterior U.S. systems, including solar arrays, cooling loops, radiators and other equipment.

The upgraded MDM failed on Saturday (May 20), NASA officialssaid in a statement, adding that the crew was never in any danger.

"The cause of the MDM failure is not known," the statement said.

After the failure, the station switched over to the spare MDM, but NASA wants to restore redundancy as quickly as possible.

Station program managers met on Sunday to assess troubleshooting efforts and decided to replace the failed unit with a spare.

Working inside the station, Whitson spent Sunday assembling and testing a new MDM, which will be installed during a two-hour spacewalk Tuesday. The unit measures 10.5- by 14.9- by 16.4 inches (27- by 38- by 42 centimeters) and weighs 51 lbs. (23 kilograms.)

Whitson and Fischerconducted the station's last spacewalk on May 12. The stations current crew also includes two Russian cosmonauts and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.

The MDM failure and replacement is not expected to impact next week's launch of aSpaceX Dragon cargo ship to the station, NASA spokesman Dan Huot said.

Launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with the Dragon freighter currently is targeted for June 1.

Tuesday's spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). NASA's live webcast coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. EDT (1030 GMT).You can watch the webcast live here, courtesy ofNASA TV.

Irene Klotz can be reached on Twitter at @free_space. Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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Space Station Astronauts to Take Surprise Spacewalk Tuesday to Replace Failed Computer Relay - Space.com

Los Angeles: Scientists at NASA have named a new organism discovered by them after former Indian presidentAPJ Abdul Kalam. Till date, the new organism a form of a bacteriahas been found only on the International Space Station (ISS) and hasn't been found on Earth.

Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the foremost lab of NASA for work on inter-planetary travel, discovered the new bacteria on the filters of the International Space Station (ISS) and named it Solibacillus Kalamii to honour the late president, who was a renowned aerospace scientist.

Kalam had his early training at NASA in 1963 before he set up India's first rocket-launching facility in the fishing village of Thumba in Kerala.

File image of the International Space Station. AFP/NASA

"The name of the bacterium is Solibacillus Kalamii, the species name is after Dr Abdul Kalam, and genus name is Solibacillus, which is a spore forming bacteria," said Dr Kasthuri Venkateswaran, senior research scientist, Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group at JPL.

The filter on which the new bug was found remained on board the ISS for 40 months. Called a high-efficiency particulate arrestance filter or HEPA filter, this part is the routine housekeeping and cleaning system on board the International Space Station.

This filter was later analysed at JPL and only this year did Venkateswaran publish his discovery in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

According to Venkateswaran, even as it orbits the Earth from 400 kilometres above, the ISS is home to many types of bacteria and fungi which co-inhabit the station with the astronauts who live and work on the station.

Venkateswaran said even though Solibacillus Kalamii has never been found on Earth till date, it is really not an extra-terrestrial life form or ET. "I am reasonably sure it has hitch hiked to the space station on board some cargo and then survived the hostile conditions of space," explained Venkateswaran.

Naming the new microbe after Kalam was natural to Venkateswaran and his team. "Being a fellow Tamilian, I am aware of the huge contributions by Kalam," he said.

New bacteria are usually named after famous scientists. Venkateswaran is part of a team which is asking that eternal question "are we alone in the universe". Towards that, his responsibilities include monitoring the bug levels on the ISS and he also has to ensure that all spacecraft that fly to other planets are free of terrestrial bugs.

One of his big jobs was to ensure that NASA's Mars Curiosity rover the massive car-sized almost 1,000 kg buggy was totally sterile when it left Earth. By international law, this extreme hygiene is required else other planets could get contaminated by bugs hidden on human satellites.

Today, the ISS is the size of a football field and its construction started with a launch in 1998 and as of now it is the largest human-made object orbiting the earth. Weighing about 419 tonnes, it can house a maximum of six astronauts and has costs roughly $150 billion.

Till date, 227 astronauts have flown to the space station. This makes the space station actually a very dirty place and maintaining hygiene is critical so that humans can live on it with ease.

On the space station all the air and water is recycled, being a completely closed environment there is a rapid build-up of moulds and bacteria on the station. These not only have to be cleaned but monitored to ensure that they do not corrode the walls of the space station and do not turn hazardous to the astronauts.

Venkateswaran's main job is to monitor the environment of the space station so that harmful bugs do not proliferate. He heads the 'Microbial Observatory' on the ISS projects to measure microorganisms associated with compartments owned by the US.

According to NASA, he also directs several research and development tasks for the JPL Mars Program Office, which enables the cleaning, sterilisation, and validation of spacecraft components.

He directs several NASA competitive awards on the microbial monitoring of spacecraft and associated environments for the Exploration System Mission Directorate, closed habitats like ISS or its earth analogues for the Human Exploration and Operation Mission Directorate.

But is the new bug of some use. "These spore formers tend to withstand high radiation and also produce some useful compounds protein wise which will be helpful for biotechnology applications," Venkateswaran said.

His team has not characterised the bacteria fully but he hints that the new bug could be a key source for chemicals that can help protect against radiation damage.

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NASA scientists honour Abdul Kalam, new organism discovered on International Space Station named after him - Firstpost

10 Dec 2016, 5:48 p.m.

We have lift-off!

Japan's H-IIB rocket lifts off at the Tanegashima Space Centre southern Japan at 12.26am Saturday, Sydney time. Photo: Kyodo News/AP

Lift off! (from left) Mason Mangovski and Adam Vincer (West Wallsend High); Solange Cunin, Cuberider CEO; Nicholas Perera and John Sakoutis, Trinity Grammar School; Liam Bailey and Andrew Malysiak, Oakhill College. Photo: Peter Braig

West Wallsend High science teacher Peggy Mangovski (second right) with students (from left) Sophie Sullivan, Jamie Sullivan, Cameron Chapman. Photo: Peter Braig

Looking to the stars. On level 41 of Barangaroo Tower 2 on Friday: Mason Mangovski and Adam Vincer (West Wallsend High); Nicholas Perera and John Sakoutis, Trinity Grammar School; Liam Bailey and Andrew Malysiak, Oakhill College. Photo: Peter Braig

Cuberider CEO Solange Cunin. Photo: Anna Kucera/Fairfax Media

We have lift-off! Early on Saturday morning a small integrated sensor made Australian space history. It became the country's first payload sent to the International Space Station.

A successful launch from Japan's Tanegashimaspace centre at 12.26amlifted the SAGANsensor hardwareon board the H-IIB unmanned rocket. The SAGAN, which contains 12 sensors to run experiments, takes up just one kilogram in a 5.9 tonne cargo of supplies and scientific equipment to the crew on the Space Station.

The sensor unit will spend a month on board, running the experiments of more than 1000 students from 60 high schools, including West Wallsend High School in the Hunter Valley.

Science teacher Peggy Mangovskisaid it was an opportunity for 30 of her students "to participate in a real-life space mission".

The idea is the brainchild of Solange Cunin and her company, Cuberider, that is assisting schools develop project-based learning for science education.

At a pre-launch event on level 41 of Barangaroo Tower 2 on Friday, one thrilled West Wallsend boy and the teacher's son, Mason Mangovski, told those assembled: "This is the most exciting thing in my life so far."

CuberiderCEO Ms Cunin at 23 has big plans for the company. "Cuberider's goal is to give every Australian high school student at least one space mission a year," she said.

Cuberider provides teaching support for students to design and codeexperiments that are then tested in space with the help of NASA astronauts on the ISS.

The project guidelines are aligned with the national curriculum for year 10 and 11. Cuberider hopes this hands-on STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) program will assist students at a critical moment in their school journey to help reverse the decline in STEM results.

Doing experiments in space isn't cheap. Every hour of space-time costs $1000 - and then there is the cost of hitching a ride on board.

Ms Mangovski, who says her students call her Ms Mango, told Fairfax Media that West Wallsend High was one of 12 schools supported by Regional Development Australia. Her students are using the SAGAN sensor board's UV and infrared sensors to develop a colour palette from space in the design of a school mural.

Data from the SAGAN sensor board will be beamed down from the Space Station every two days, allowing the students to analyse their experiments as they collect information.

At Friday's Barangaroo event, MCed by Jordan Nguyen, with a live cross to Cuberider co-founder Sebastian Chaoui, students from Trinity Grammarsaid they were using sensors to test how solar flares affect the acceleration of the Space Station.

The breadth of experiments is astounding. Ms Cunin said the audacity of the science was credit to the teachers.

Students at De La Salle College in Caringbah have developed code to hack the SAGAN onboard camera to detect radiation outside the visible light spectrum. They will use data from this to track radiation on board the Space Station and see if it poses a threat to the astronauts on board.

Oakhill College students in Castle Hill will use the SAGAN'saccelerometer and altimeter to test the actual height and speed of the space station.

One Oakhill student at Friday's event, Andrew Malysiak, said: "The online figures provided by NASA are just approximations." Ms Cunin was delighted."That's right," she said. "Tell NASA how it's done!"

The Japanese cargo will take at least three days to reach the Space Station. The logistics are impressive. It's like docking a large sedan car with a freight train flying 400 kilometres above Earth where both objects are travelling at 28,000 kilometres an hour, literally faster than a speeding bullet.

The arrival of Cuberider's payload on the Space Station will be the culmination of a dream for Ms Cunin and Mr Chaoui.

Ms Cunin is a UNSW aerospace engineering student. She said: "It's very rewarding to be able to share our love of space with the curious minds of tomorrow's STEM innovators and creators."

The story Cuberider sends Australia's first payload to the International Space Station first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Cuberider sends Australia's first payload to the International Space Station - Ballarat Courier

Forbes

NASA's Idea For A Space Station In Lunar Orbit Takes Humanity Nowhere Forbes With the end of the space shuttle program and the planned decommissioning of the International Space Station on the horizon, NASA is strongly debating what its next steps for human spaceflight will be. The Obama-era plans of asteroid redirection and ... Will Space Provide Trump with an Escape Hatch?Paste Magazine What it's like to help select a new crop of astronautsThe Globe and Mail all 6 news articles »

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NASA's Idea For A Space Station In Lunar Orbit Takes Humanity Nowhere - Forbes

posted at 4:31 pm on May 17, 2017 by Jazz Shaw

At a recent conference, NASA unveiled their Next Big Thing in space exploration priorities. Shockingly, it was very different from some of the proposals weve seen floated recently. Theyre talking about a smaller version of a space station kept in orbit around the moon. This idea was actually previewed earlier in the year and Space.com had the high level details.

The agency plans to build an astronaut-tended deep space gateway in orbit around the moon during the first few missions of the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and Orion crew capsule, which are scheduled to fly together for the first time in late 2018, NASA officials said.

I envision different partners, both international and commercial, contributing to the gateway and using it in a variety of ways with a system that can move to different orbits to enable a variety of missions, William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C, said in a statement.

This is being pitched as a gateway which could be the staging point to either go down to the surface of the moon or head out toward other destinations in the solar system. That just immediately struck me as a lot of redundancy wrapped up in a package which is considerably further from the nearest safe base of operations. (The International Space Station.) But what do I know? Perhaps we should ask an actual rocket scientist. National Review did, and Robert Zubrin calls this NASAs worst idea ever.

We do not need a lunar-orbiting station to go to the Moon. We do not need such a station to go to Mars. We do not need it to go to near-Earth asteroids. We do not need it to go anywhere. Nor can we accomplish anything in such a station that we cannot do in the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, except to expose human subjects to irradiation a form of medical research for which a number of Nazi doctors were hanged at Nuremberg.

If the goal is to build a Moon base, it should be built on the surface of the Moon. That is where the science is, that is where the shielding material is, and that is where the resources to make propellant and other useful things are to be found.

Zubrin makes a number of excellent points. Initially we should decide how much focus we are putting on manned missions rather than robotic probes and whether the risk to human life is worth it. Personally Ive pretty much always been in favor of manned missions providing were still cranking out heroes willing to accept the risk. (And if the public can stomach the inevitable crew loss if you pursue the program long enough.) There are still some things which may come up which a probe wont be prepared to handle and tasks which only human hands can do.

But if were going to keep sending people into space, make sure that were taking the risk for a reason. Zubrin has his finger on the pulse of that one. If you need to get to the moon, a space station orbiting it will still require craft to make the descent and take off again. If you want to leave for Mars you can do that from the ISS. All of the resources we might need to tap are on the surface of the moon, not orbiting it. This seems like a colossal waste of money, and that brings us to the observation Zubrin makes which really hits home in terms of how NASA has gone astray. (Emphasis added)

During the Apollo program, the NASAs mission-driven human spaceflight program spent money in order to do great things. Now, lacking a mission, it just does things in order to spend a great deal of money.

Why is NASA proposing a lunar-orbiting space station? The answer to that is simple. Its to give its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule programs something to do. The utility of such activity is not a concern. As a result, nothing useful will be accomplished.

If were going to invest the funds and take the risks, lets do something bold. Were building these massive new rockets and crew capsules anyway lets just go to Mars. Its going to be incredibly dangerous and the potential for catastrophic failure is very real, but those same things were true of the original moon landings. In his book, Failure is Not an Option, Gene Kranz admits that the astronauts were given, at best, a fifty-fifty chance of making it back home alive. The public wasnt told that, but the crews knew what they were getting into. And they fought each other for the right to go first. And in doing so, they made history.

Lets make history again.

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Dear NASA: A space station orbiting the moon is pointless - Hot Air

A mysterious object appeared to have hovered past the International Space Station, according to new video footage from UFO researchers.

SecureTeam 10, who in recent days has posted videos about a supposed alien tank and a cigar shaped disc over Paris, claims that a disc-shaped object whizzed past the ISS "at a very high rate of speed."

NASA, who did not respond specifically to the latest video, has often said that the objects are "distortions in a lens" and do not signify the presence of extraterrestrial life.

'ALIEN TANK' FOUND ON THE MOON, UFO HUNTERS SAY

Tyler Glockner, the voice heard on the video from SecureTeam 10, said that the object in the video moved "as if it knew the camera was watching."

Below is the video in its entirety:

UFO sightings have become more frequent in recent years. A book entitled"U.F.O. Sightings Desk Reference"said that U.S.-based sightings rose to 11,868 in 2015, up from 3,479 in 2001.

A synopsis of the book on Amazon states that it presents "data and analysis for 100,000+ sightings of unidentified flying objects reported by individuals during the first 15 years of the 21st century."

SecureTeam 10 has nearly 900,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel, despite openly running conspiracy-theory based videos.

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Reports claim UFO whizzes past International Space Station | Fox ... - Fox News

Kansas City Star

Astronauts on International Space Station ace milestone 200th spacewalk Kansas City Star An equipment water leak shortened Friday's spacewalk by two U.S. astronauts at the International Space Station, but they still managed to replace a faulty electronics box. Despite the initial trouble, it was a milestone moment as Peggy Whitson and Jack ... Utah Students to Speak to NASA Astronauts on International Space ...PR Newswire (press release) all 3 news articles »

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Astronauts on International Space Station ace milestone 200th spacewalk - Kansas City Star

At the recent Space Foundation conference held in Colorado Springs, NASA revealed its new plan for human space exploration, superseding the absurd Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) championed by the Obama administration. Amazingly, the space agency has managed to come up with an even dumber idea.

In the early months of the Trump administration, some lunar advocates spread the rumor that the new president would seek a return to the Moon within his first four years, thereby dramatically making America great again in space. That is not the plan.

Nor is the plan to send humans to Mars within eight years, something that I think we could achieve. Nor is it to send human missions to explore near-Earth asteroids, as then President Obama suggested in 2010, nor is it even to send humans to a piece of an asteroid brought back from deep space to lunar orbit for study, as called for in the ARM.

No, instead NASA is proposing to build a space station in lunar orbit. This proposal is notable for requiring a large budget to create an object with no utility whatsoever.

We do not need a lunar-orbiting station to go to the Moon. We do not need such a station to go to Mars. We do not need it to go to near-Earth asteroids. We do not need it to go anywhere. Nor can we accomplish anything in such a station that we cannot do in the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, except to expose human subjects to irradiation a form of medical research for which a number of Nazi doctors were hanged at Nuremberg.

If the goal is to build a Moon base, it should be built on the surface of the Moon. That is where the science is, that is where the shielding material is, and that is where the resources to make propellant and other useful things are to be found. The best place to build it would be at one of the poles, because there are spots at both of the Moons poles where sunlight is accessible all the time, as well as permanently shadowed craters where water ice has accumulated. Such ice could be electrolyzed to make hydrogen-oxygen rocket propellant, to fuel both Earth-return vehicles as well as ballistic hoppers that would provide the bases crew with exploratory access to most of the rest of the Moon. Other places on the Moon might also work as the bases location, because while there is no water in nonpolar latitudes, there is iron oxide. This can be reduced to produce iron and oxygen, with the latter composing 75 percent or more of the most advantageous propellant combinations.

In contrast, there is nothing at all in lunar orbit: nothing to use, nothing to explore, nothing to do. It is true that one could teleoperate rovers on the lunar surface from orbit, but the argument that it is worth the expense of such a station in order to eliminate the two-second time delay involved in directly controlling them from Earth is patently absurd. We are on the verge of having self-driving cars on Earth, for crying out loud, that can handle conditions in New York City and Los Angeles. Theres a lot less traffic on the Moon.

Explaining his winning strategy for war with Austria, Napoleon Bonaparte once said, If you want to take Vienna, take Vienna. Well, if you want to go to the Moon, you should go to the Moon. You dont go 99 percent of the way there and then hang out in orbit where you can do nothing.

So, the question is: If we could put a man on the Moon, why cant we put a man on the Moon?

Heres the answer: During the Apollo program, the NASAs mission-driven human spaceflight program spent money in order to do great things. Now, lacking a mission, it just does things in order to spend a great deal of money.

Why is NASA proposing a lunar-orbiting space station? The answer to that is simple. Its to give its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule programs something to do. The utility of such activity is not a concern. As a result, nothing useful will be accomplished.

The problem is lack of leadership. From a technical point of view, we are much closer today to sending humans to Mars than we were to sending men to the Moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Moreover, we clearly have the technology required to send humans back to the Moon, because we had it half a century ago. So a program of returning to the Moon in four years and reaching Mars in eight is clearly technically feasible. It is also financially feasible. NASAs budget in the 1960s was a larger share of the federal total, but that was because the rest of the budget was much smaller than it is now. In inflation-adjusted terms, the average NASA budget over the 19611973 period was about $21 billion in todays money, only about 10 percent more than the $19 billion the agency will receive in FY 2018. So the funds are there. What is lacking is intelligent direction.

NASA didnt get to the Moon by fishing around for things it could do with stuff created by a random set of constituency-supported programs. It got there by a strong presidential directive to accomplish a mission of importance within a specified period of time. From the mission came the plan. From the plan, came the vehicle designs. From the vehicle designs came the technology-development programs. Thats how it worked, not the reverse. We didnt go to the Moon in order to have something to do with our Lunar Excursion Modules. We developed the LEM in order to go to the Moon.

The American human-spaceflight program is in very bad shape right now. It is operating without a coherent and rational goal, and unless we embrace such a goal and set forth an intelligent plan to achieve it, the drift and waste will only continue until the taxpayers, losing patience, put it out of its misery.

If the current administration wants to make America great again in space, it is going to have to step up to the plate and offer real leadership.

In the beginning was the Word.

Robert Zubrin is the president of Pioneer Energy and the Mars Society and the author of The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must. The paperback version of his book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudoscientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism was recently published by Encounter Books.

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NASA's Worst Plan Yet - National Review

Station. Credit: YouTube/secureteam10

Back in the 50s, aliens used to fly around in flying saucers, and do unspeakable things to victims in lonely places with their probes.

But it seems that saucer-shaped spacecraft may have come back in vogue as an actual, genuine 50s spacship flew past.

Tireless UFO spotter Tyler Glockner from YouTube channel Secure Team said, It can only be described as some sort of flying disc-like shaped UFO, that was spotted hovering in the distance behind the international space station before darting away at a very high rate of speed.

This is one of the most commonly seen and spoken about craft by hundreds and thousands of people over Earth, in space and above the moon.

This thing moves as if it knew the camera was watching it and it was in the frame before it picks up speed before finally shrinking due to the law of perspective before blasting backwards.

Other observers were more sceptical.

Such sightings happen with surprising regularity and NASA has repeatedly said theyre just distortions in the lens, not alien craft parking at the ISS.

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual says, The constant sightings of UFOs near the ISS are mainly due to reflections and space junk, and it is down to wishful thinking that images sent back from the space station are of alien craft.

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Has an actual flying saucer UFO just flown past the Space Station? - Metro

WASHINGTON Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk the moon, said the International Space Station should be retired because it has become too expensive to operate.

NASA currently pays Russia about $70 million per seat for rides to the ISS through 2019.

We must retire the ISS as soon as possible. We simply cannot afford $3.5 billion a year of that cost. We can accomplish the objectives in LEO [Low Earth Orbit] at far less cost with far greater contributions to the future with cycling pathways to occupy Mars using commercial modules, Aldrin said at the Humans to Mars conference last Tuesday in D.C.

Aldrin said the goal is for these modules to operate independently of the ISS.

They should not be in the high inclination orbit of the ISS. I believe these modules should fly at a 30-degree inclination. This will make them much more accessible to cooperation with the Chinese, he said.

Aldrin wants cyclers to eventually replace the ISS in a gradual way.

The foundation of human transportation is the cycler very rugged, so it'll last 30 years or so, no external moving parts, Aldrin said. The cycler is an evolutional spacecraft concept which begins as a commercial low earth orbit cycler, which replaces the ISS in a gradual way. And it evolves to house crew and tourists up and down, and eventually tourists cycling around the moon and back, and eventually going to the moon and staying on the moon for a period of time. This is a bit more mature.

Aldrin estimates that an early version of a commercial low orbit cycler could be tested before President Trumps first term is over in 2020.

I believe we can dispatch a robot two days before a crew leaves and they arrive two days before the robot in 2020. They will be on their way back before the election in 2020. Its not going to be done with the current systems that we have, but if we really want to do something like that it can be done, he said. We need to use the Moon to test our systems and operations for Mars, but we need to be clear that anything we use on the Moon must be testing Mars operations and systems.

Aldrin explained how the cyclers would eventually travel between Earth and Mars.

The key concept of this is we only have to accelerate several small vehicles that we call the cab lander to rendezvous with the Earth-Mars cycler and this will be very light, it only has to supply the crew for a short while before it gets to the Earth-Mars cycler and it requires only an arrow capture heat shield for Mars because its going to rendezvous with the lander that has the heat shield from orbit on down, he said. That arrow capture will also get it back to earth where it arrow captures at Earth somebody comes up and brings them home.

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Buzz Aldrin: U.S. Can No Longer Afford $3.5B a Year International Space Station - PJ Media