Category Archives: Space Station

ISS Exp 42 Farewells and Hatch Closure
On March 11, a day after handing over command of the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore of NASA, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian ...

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ISS Exp 42 Farewells and Hatch Closure - Video

The Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft is seen as it descends toward Earth, carrying NASA's Barry Wilmore and Russian flight engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova. Bill Ingalls/NASA hide caption

The Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft is seen as it descends toward Earth, carrying NASA's Barry Wilmore and Russian flight engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova.

After spending nearly six months on the International Space Station, an astronaut and two cosmonauts have landed safely back on Earth. While in orbit, they traveled almost 71 million miles, NASA says.

Cmdr. Barry Wilmore of NASA and flight engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) touched down in Kazakhstan on Thursday morning, local time.

They began their trip home by undocking a Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft from the space station and undergoing a 4-minute, 41-second deorbit burn, NASA says. A parachute later eased the Soyuz craft down to the recovery area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

In the 167 days they were aboard the space station, the crew of Expedition 42 researched "the effects of microgravity on cells, Earth observation, physical science and biological and molecular science," NASA says.

The space agency adds that the space station now has an Electromagnetic Levitator, which will let scientists "observe fundamental physical processes as liquid metals cool," possibly leading to the production of "lighter, higher-performing" alloys.

The space station now has a three-person crew. A new trio will launch to join them in late March.

In other NASA news, the agency on Wednesday successfully tested what it calls the "largest, most powerful rocket booster ever built," producing some 3.6 million pounds of thrust during a two-minute burn at a test site in Utah. Temperatures inside the booster reached more than 5,600 degrees, NASA says.

The agency says the booster rocket is being developed "to help propel NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft to deep space destinations, including an asteroid and Mars."

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Space Station Astronauts Make Safe Landing In Kazakhstan

Three space station fliers -- the outgoing NASA commander and two Russian cosmonauts -- undocked and returned to Earth Wednesday, ending a 167-day stay in space with a nail-biting communications blackout that left the crew out of contact with Russian flight controllers during much of the trip home.

The cause of the communications dropout was not immediately known, but during a brief exchange with recovery crews during the final stages of the descent, spacecraft commander Alexander Samokutyaev reported all three crew members were in good shape. The craft then proceeded to an on-target touchdown on the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan.

Landing was expected around 10:08 p.m., but low clouds and icy fog blocked a clear view of the touchdown and it took another nine minutes or so before Russian recovery crews confirmed the descent module was on the ground and in a vertical orientation. An exact landing time was not immediately known.

As always with Soyuz landings, Russian recovery forces and a team of U.S. and Russian flight surgeons were standing by near the landing zone to help the returning station fliers -- Samokutyaev, flight engineer Elena Serova and Barry "Butch" Wilmore -- out of the cramped descent module for initial medical checks and satellite calls home to friends and family.

Carried to recliners near the descent module and quickly bundled in blankets, all three crew members appeared healthy and in good spirits, smiling and chatting with recovery crews before they were hustled away to a nearby medical tent for more extensive checks.

Before leaving the space station, Wilmore said he looked forward to re-entry aboard the Soyuz.

"It's not many jobs that you have the opportunity to return from work in a 17,000-mile-an-hour fireball," Wilmore, a fighter pilot with a shuttle mission to his credit, joked a few days ago. "This is one of those opportunities! To be honest, I'm not a thrill seeker by any means, but a unique experience like that, I do look forward to it, literally coming back in a fireball."

At touchdown, Samokutyaev had logged a combined 331 days in space during two space flights. Wilmore's total, including one shuttle flight, stood at 178 days while Serova, completing her first mission, had logged 167 days aloft.

All three planned to fly by helicopter to Karaganda before splitting up for separate trips home. Wilmore will board a NASA jet and fly back to Houston while Samokutyaev and Serova will head for home in Star City, near Moscow, for debriefing.

Left behind aboard the space station were Expedition 43 commander Terry Virts, cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. During a change-of-command ceremony Tuesday, Wilmore thanked his crewmates for a successful stay in space.

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Drama as space station crew returns to Earth

SenThree International Space Station (ISS) crew members have safely returned home aboard a Soyuz after almost six months in space performing scientific research and technology demonstrations.

On Mar. 10, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore of NASA handed over command of the ISS to NASA astronaut Terry Virts.

The crew closed the hatch between the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft and the space station at 1934 UTC (03:34 EDT). Expedition 43 officially began aboard the station under Virts command at 1144 UTC (6:44 p.m. EDT) Wednesday, when Wilmore and flight engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) undocked their Soyuz spacecraft from the space station.

The three astronauts landed 147 km from the town of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 0307 UTC (10:07 p.m. EDT 8:07 a.m. March 12 Kazakh time). Their return completes 167 days in space since launching from Kazakhstan on Sept. 26. Their mission covered over 114 million km (71 million miles).

Expedition 42 included research projects focusing on the effects of microgravity on cells, Earth observation, physical science and biological and molecular science. There were also three U.S. spacewalks that took place to prepare the station for future commercial spacecraft.

During their time in space the trio were part of a study to assess the impact of physical body shape and size changes on suit-sizing. This study will involve collecting body measurements using digital still and video imagery and a tape measure to measure length, height, depth, and circumference data for all body segments (i.e., chest, waist, hip, arms, legs, etc.) from astronauts for pre-, post-, and in-flight conditions.

Wilmore has now logged 178 days in space on two flights, the first of which was on space shuttle mission STS-129 in 2009. Samokutyaev has spent 331 days in space on two flights, the first of which was on Expedition 27/28 in 2011. This was Serovas first flight into space.

Virts and his crewmates Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency), will operate the station for two weeks until the arrival of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka, due to launch from Kazakhstan on Mar. 27.

Padalka will stay in space until September, but Kelly and Kornienko will be the first astronauts undertaking an entire year on the ISS. The pair will stay aboard the station until March 2016, twice as long as a typical mission. Their investigations will study the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.

NASA also has a unique opportunity to conduct studies with identical twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly. These investigations will provide broader insight into the subtle effects and changes that may occur in spaceflight as compared to Earth by studying two individuals who have the same genetics, but are in different environments for one year.

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After six months in space, a trio of astronauts return home

The Soyuz TMA-14M crew (left to right): Barry "Butch" Wilmore, commander Alexander Samokutyaev and flight engineer Elena Serova. The trio plans to undock from the International Space Station Wednesday evening for a fiery return to Earth, landing in Kazakhstan around 10:08 p.m. EDT to close out a 167-day mission. NASA

Three space station fliers -- the outgoing NASA commander and two Russian cosmonauts -- are returning to Earth Wednesday after more than five months in orbit, reducing the lab's crew to three in a brief lull before launch of three fresh crew members at the end of the month, including two who plan to spend nearly a full year aboard the outpost.

Soyuz TMA-14M commander Alexander Samokutyaev, flanked on the left by flight engineer Elena Serova and on the right by shuttle veteran Barry "Butch" Wilmore, plan to detach their ferry craft from the space station's upper Poisk module Wednesday, at 6:44 p.m. EDT (GMT-4), to set the stage for re-entry and landing in Kazakhstan.

After moving a safe distance away from the lab complex, Samokutyaev and Serova plan to monitor a four-minute 41-second deorbit rocket firing, starting at 9:16 p.m., slowing the ship by about 286 mph to drop the far side of its orbit deep into Earth's atmosphere.

If all goes well, the capsule will settle to a jarring parachute and rocket-assisted touchdown near the town of Dzhezkazgan around 10:07:53 p.m. to close out a 167-day five-hour voyage that began with blastoff last Sept. 25 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Forecasters are predicting temperatures in the mid 20s with fresh snow in the wake of a passing frontal system.

"It's not many jobs that you have the opportunity to return from work in a 17,000-mile-an-hour fireball," Wilmore, a fighter pilot with a shuttle mission to his credit, joked from orbit. "This is one of those opportunities! To be honest, I'm not a thrill seeker by any means, but a unique experience like that, I do look forward to it, literally coming back in a fireball."

He said said he was particularly looking forward to landing when "the Soyuz capsule does a lot of rocking and rolling."

"Eventually, the main chutes come out and, of course, you've got the separation of the (heat shield) on the bottom of the capsule and so many different events," he said. "And finally, the soft landing jets fire -- they're not so soft, I'm told -- and then, of course, the touchdown.

"It's going to be wintertime in Kazakhstan, a lot of snow, so maybe we'll hit a nice fluffy snow bank. And as the hatch opens, that fresh air coming in, it'll be chilly, I look forward to that as well."

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Space station trio to return after 167 days in orbit

Space Engineers - My Space Station and Other Updates
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Space Station Live: Opening Up the Neurocognitive Toolkit
NASA Public Affairs Officer Dan Huot talks with Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, the principal investigator of the Cognit...

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Space Station Live: Opening Up the Neurocognitive Toolkit - Video

The Future of Space Travel - Science Engineering Documentary
The Future of Space Travel - Science amp; Engineering Documentary Top documentary films HD The Future of Space Travel and Prospects of Discovering Alien Life 720p HD Discovery amp ...

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The Future of Space Travel - Science & Engineering Documentary - Video

Monthly ISS Research Video Update for March 2015
See the highlights of recent research conducted on the International Space Station during February.

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Monthly ISS Research Video Update for March 2015 - Video

LIVE: Sarah Brightman holds Q A before going into space
Sarah Brightman will hold a press conference on Tuesday, March 10, to talk about her forthcoming trip to the International Space Station, which is scheduled for launch on September 1, 2015....

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LIVE: Sarah Brightman holds Q&A before going into space - Video