Category Archives: Space Station

It will also permit NASA to increase the size of the American crew on the station, and double the amount of scientific research that the team can perform, according NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz.

NASA awarded Boeing a $4.2 billion contract in September to develop a transportation capable of carrying human passengers, according to Kelly Kaplan, a spokesperson for Boeing. Other reports indicate Space X received $2.6 billion for manned space missions at the same time.

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Both companies, along with others, have other space contracts with NASA.

The commercial crew program is expected to improve the quality of the research being done on the station, by getting research samples from space to scientists on the ground faster; under the terms of the contract, crew have to be returned within an hour of landing and critical cargo have to be retrieved within two hours.

"The longer you have something from microgravity sitting in gravity," said NASA's Shierholz, "the more degradation there is, and the tougher it is to study it as it would be in space."

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Boeing preps for 'space taxis'

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- Two U.S. astronauts took the first of three spacewalks outside the International Space Station today to create parking spots for so-called space taxis that will ferry crew to and from the station.

Station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore, 52, and flight engineer Terry Virts, 47, started the spacewalk shortly before 8 a.m. ET for the 6 1/2 hour venture. This is the first of three spacewalks in the next eight days to install wiring for two docking mechanisms for crewed commercial capsules built by Boeing and Space X. It is the first major overhaul of the station since it was completed in 2011.

"We're doing a lot of reconfiguration this year," Kenneth Todd, NASA's International Space Station operations integration manager, said earlier this week. "We are really trying to take the station into this next phase in support of the commercial industries and providers."

The astronauts worked on Saturday to install electrical wiring, new antennas and cables at the station's Harmony module in preparation for the Boeing-built International Docking Adapters. The IDAs will allow the Boeing and Space X spacecraft to dock at the top and front of Harmony beginning in 2017. NASA is hoping to end its dependance on Russia for rides to the ISS since the space shuttle was retired in 2011.

Wilmore and Virts are expected to continue the work on Wednesday and March 1.

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U.S. astronauts make renovations to ISS for space taxis

Astronaut Terry Virts posted a picture of the solution to Twitter Shows him with a laptop strapped to his face

By Mark Prigg For Dailymail.com

Published: 19:02 EST, 20 February 2015 | Updated: 19:05 EST, 20 February 2015

Nasa has revealed that astronauts aboard the International Space Station use virtual reality to train for spacewalks.

However, while Facebook's Oculus and Samsung are developing small, hi-tech solutions, Nasa has used the advantage of zero gravity to fashion a more low tech solution.

Instead of a dedicated headset, astronaut Terry Virts posted a picture of the solution - a laptop strapped to his face.

Nasa's system uses a standard laptop strapped to an astronaut's face.

A prototype of Facebook's Oculus VR headset

His tweet revealed the system is being used to train astronauts in using a jet pack they use to get back to the station in the event of an incident that left them stranded.

Essentially a 'life jacket' for spacewalks, SAFER is a self-contained maneuvering unit that is worn like a backpack.

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Virtual reality in space: Nasa astronaut tweets pic of ISS system that uses zero gravity to float a LAPTOP in front of ...

terraria ios 1.2 space station build!
hope you injoyed! this took a while to make.

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Nunhex at The Space Station - Part 3
Nunhex at The Space Station in Orlando, FL. 2/26/15. Part 3 of 3.

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Space Engineers Shipyard: The Graviton Station
This Week #39;s Suggestion comes from Axyl who requested a space station with his Graviton core. I decided to turn his design on its head a little bit. Original Graviton https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

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MarcelDeVan - Boot Mix* V [ The Synth Dance* 2015 ]
Playlist: "In The Mix" MarcelDeVan - Around Of Life [ Special Edit ] http://marceldevan.bandcamp.com/album/special-edition-2014 MarcelDeVan - Technology ...

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NASAs new space station mission is not a big step toward Mars, but mostly a holding pattern

In late March astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will take off in a Soyuz rocket from the steppes of Kazakhstan, heading to the International Space Station (ISS) for a yearlong stay. NASA bills their mission as a crucial stepping-stone toward sending humans on a multiyear trip to Mars. That interplanetary voyage, part of our human drive for new frontiers, is the greatest dream of the space age. Yet rather than making that dream a reality, this mission seems to be a distracting detour. During their orbital sojourn Kelly and Kornienko will undergo rigorous medical testing designed to show researchers what long-term spaceflight does to human beings, particularly how prolonged weightlessness and radiation exposure cause harm. The results, NASA says, could lead to medical breakthroughs that make interplanetary hauls safer. Couldbut it likely wont make them safe enough. More likely, Kellys and Kornienkos tests will just confirm in greater detail what we already know from several previous long-duration missions: Our current space habitats are not adequate for voyages to other worlds. The lack of money to build these habitats, more than any lack of medical knowledge, is what keeps humans from Mars and other off-world destinations. For instance, we already know that living without gravity is a problem. Long periods of weightlessness atrophy muscles, weaken bones and worsen vision. Vigorous exercise can minimize some of these effects, so astronauts on the ISS spend hours each day working out. Even so, no matter how much they sweat in space, when Kelly and Kornienko return to Earth they will almost certainly be weaker than when they left. Investigators have known how to solve this problem since 1903, when Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky described a spinning space habitat that would generate a force pulling away from the structures center and toward the outer edges, thereby mimicking gravity. This effect varies with the structures spin rate, creating any gravitational strength the structure can withstand, whether the comfortable one g of Earth or the languorous 0.38 g of Mars. (No one yet knows the optimum g-levels for healthy, affordable long-duration spaceflight, and Kellys and Kornienkos mission wont tell us.) Why doesnt NASA avail itself of this solution? Because it costs a lot, and the agency has already spent more than $75 billion on the weightless ISS. A rotating habitat would be more costly and complex than a weightless one (although it need not be a prohibitively pricey behemoth like the doughnut-shaped space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Two modules connected by a long spoke, set spinning by modest bursts from thruster rockets, could create artificial gravity at a more reasonable price, although this solution would still be more expensive than simply performing more medical tests in weightlessness. What NASA should be testing is how to build such a craft, and how to live and work within it without becoming disoriented and dizzy. As a starting point, a scaled-down centrifuge could be installed on the ISS to test how lab animals respond to varying levels of artificial gravity. The station was originally designed to include such a facility, the Centrifuge Accommodation Module. NASA, however, scuttled the project by removing it from ISS assembly flights during the shuttle era, in part due to budgetary concerns. Radiation, the other health threat in space, is a more pernicious danger. Showers of solar protons and galactic cosmic rays can rip through cells, wreaking biological havoc. The current remedy is to clad living quarters in layers of dense material, which adds weight and increases the amount of fuel needed to get off the ground. It doesnt have to be this way. Advanced space propulsion systems paired with cheaper rocket launches could allow properly shielded craft to make faster interplanetary trips, decreasing a crews overall radiation exposure. Such protection will be possible only if NASA rekindles and follows through on developing advanced solar- and nuclear-electric propulsion, efforts which have been started and canceled several times over the past half century. It would be unfair to blame NASA alone for this shortsightedness. Integrating artificial gravity and better propulsion into its human spaceflight program would require many billions of dollars, and that money is not forthcoming from Congress. So NASA has struck a pragmatic course, tinkering with well-worn technologies instead of spending the financial and political capital to develop new ones. This path of least resistance is not going to take us to Marsor on long-duration trips to the moon, asteroids or other deep-space destinations. NASA leadership should take a page from the playbook of Elon Musk and SpaceX and be bolder, pushing technologies for future exploration rather than relying on those from the past. If the American people do not feel that it is worth the money to take these next steps, the nation should face facts and abandon this dream of sending space travelers to worlds beyond our own.

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A Waste of Space [Commentary]

IMAGE:NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, Expedition 37 flight engineer, performs ultrasound eye imaging in the Columbus laboratory of the International Space Station. European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, flight engineer, assists... view more

Credit: NASA

A change in your vision is great when referring to sparking a creative idea or a new approach to a challenge. When it refers to potential problems with sight, however, the cause and possible solutions need to be identified.

The human body is approximately 60 percent fluids. During spaceflight, these fluids shift to the upper body and move across blood vessel and cell membranes differently than they normally do on Earth.

One of the goals of the Fluid Shifts investigation, launching to the International Space Station this spring, is to test the relationship between those fluid shifts and a pattern NASA calls visual impairment and intracranial pressure syndrome, or VIIP. It involves changes in vision and the structure of the eyes and indirect signs of increased pressure in the brain, and investigators say more than half of American astronauts have experienced it during long spaceflights.

Improved understanding of how blood pressure in the brain affects eye shape and vision also could benefit people on Earth who have conditions that increase swelling and pressure in the brain or who are put on extended bed rest.

"Our first aim is to assess the shift in fluids, to see where fluids go and how the shift varies in different individuals," says Michael B. Stenger, Ph.D., Wyle Science Technology and Engineering Group, one of the principal investigators. "Our second goal is to correlate fluid movement with changes in vision, the structure of the eye, and other elements of VIIP syndrome."

A third aim is to evaluate application of negative pressure to the lower body to prevent or reverse fluid shifts and determine whether this prevents vision changes. Researchers are collaborating with Roscosmos (the Russian Federal Space Agency) on that part of the study because the Russians have a lower body negative pressure device, the Chibis suit, aboard the station. Recently published ground-based data show that applying negative pressure over the lower body helps shift fluids away from the head during simulated spaceflight, adds co-investigator Brandon Macias, Ph.D., of the University of California San Diego.

For a variety of reasons, the Chibis suit cannot be moved from the Russian Service Module of the space station. Therefore, to conduct these unique experiments, crew members will transport medical research equipment from the U.S. side of the station to the Russian module. Moving things around in space is a lot more complicated than it is on the ground, says co-investigator Douglas Ebert, Ph.D., of Wyle Laboratories. In this case, it will take more than four hours of crew time to move and set up the equipment, one or two hours for the experiment itself, and another four or so hours to move everything back.

That effort will pay off though, in terms of new and important data that may lead to the answers of how and why VIIP happens and how to prevent or treat it during spaceflight.

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Pressure is on to find the cause for vision changes in space

Published February 21, 2015

Feb. 21, 2015: In this image from television astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore begins the spacewalk to wire the International Space Station in preparation for the arrival in July of the international docking port for the Boeing and Space-X commercial crew vehicles.(AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Spacewalking astronauts routed more than 300 feet of cable outside the International Space Station on Saturday, tricky and tiring advance work for the arrival of new American-made crew capsules.

It was the first of three spacewalks planned for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts over the coming week.

Altogether, Wilmore and Virts have 764 feet of cable to run outside the space station. They got off to a strong start Saturday, rigging eight power and data lines, or about 340 feet.

"Broadening my resume," Virts observed.

NASA considers this the most complicated cable-routing job in the 16-year history of the space station. Equally difficult will be running cable on the inside of the complex.

The extensive rewiring is needed to prepare for NASA's next phase 260 miles up: the 2017 arrival of the first commercial spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the orbiting lab.

NASA is paying Boeing and SpaceX to build the capsules and fly them from Cape Canaveral, which hasn't seen a manned launch since the shuttles retired in 2011. Instead, Russia is doing all the taxi work -- for a steep price.

The first of two docking ports for the Boeing and SpaceX vessels -- still under development -- is due to arrive in June. Even more spacewalks will be needed to set everything up.

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Astronauts complete 1st of 3 spacewalks