Category Archives: Space Station

Space Station 13 (No Commentary): Wizards, Smizards
Turn on your speaker. Asshats.

By: JarrettAK47

Read the original here:
Space Station 13 (No Commentary): Wizards, Smizards - Video

Expedition 42 commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore, wearing a green shirt, and Terry Virts chatted with reporters Thursday from the space station's Quest airlock module. NASA managers Friday cleared them for a third spacewalk Sunday to complete initial preparations for dockings by commercial crew capsules. NASA TV

International Space Station managers Friday cleared astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Terry Virts to proceed with a third spacewalk Sunday, as originally planned, after concluding a small amount of water in Virts' space helmet after an EVA Wednesday was an understood condition and not a threat to crew safety.

The six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk is scheduled to begin around 7:10 a.m. EST Sunday when the astronauts switch their spacesuits to battery power and exit the station's airlock. The spacewalkers plan to install four antennas, laser reflectors and cabling to permit communications with approaching and departing commercial crew capsules being built by Boeing and SpaceX.

"We're going to lay down over 400 feet of cable," Virts told a reporter Thursday. "These cables are going to attach to some antennas that are going to be used for the future American vehicles that are going to be docking, bringing crew to the space station starting in a few years.

"So we need to put these antennas and the cables there for them, and also some reflectors so their on-board navigation systems that use lasers (to) know where the station is and what orientation it's in and will be able to dock properly. There's a lot of moving from one end to the other on the station and a lot of equipment and hardware that we're going to be bringing out there."

During spacewalks last Saturday and Wednesday, Wilmore and Virts laid out some 340 feet of power and data lines needed by two new docking mechanisms what will be installed later this year and made preparations to relocate a storage module and a docking port extension. Virts also lubricated the grapple mechanisms on the end of the station's robot arm.

During airlock repressurization Wednesday, Virts noticed a small blob of water floating in his helmet and reported that a water absorption pad at the back of his helmet was damp, indicating seepage through the helmet's air duct.

During a spacewalk in July 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano endured a potentially catastrophic water leak that forced him to make a quick retreat to the safety of the airlock. That leak was blamed on a clogged filter inside the suit's water cooling system.

But in Virts' case, the water intrusion occurred after the spacesuit had been reconnected to a station umbilical and after airlock repressurization had begun. As it turns out that same spacesuit experienced similar incidents after seven previous spacewalks, the result of condensation in the suit's cooling system after airlock repressurization.

"When you connect to the umbilical, you have a lot of cold air that's going past the cooling system of the suit and this air will often condense," Alex Kanelakos, a NASA spacewalk officer, said Friday. "And as we repress, we have high-density gas that's flowing past this condensed water that can often move the water over the crew member's helmet."

View original post here:
Space station astronauts cleared for third spacewalk

Astronauts on the International Space Station will make a spacewalk Sunday despite the appearance of water inside an astronaut's helmet after a spacewalk earlier this week, NASA reported Friday on its website.

NASA said the suit worn by NASA astronaut Terry Virts has a history of "sublimator water carryover." Water in the sublimator cooling component can condense when the suit is repressurized after a spacewalk, causing a small amount of water to push into the helmet, NASA said.

NASA said International Space Station managers had "a high degree of confidence" in the suit.

On the upcoming spacewalk, Virts and Barry Wilmore will install antennas to provide data to visiting vehicles and deploy 400 feet of cable along the edge of the station.

Virts said he first noticed traces of fluid and dampness in his helmet Wednesday while he was waiting for the crew lock cabin to repressurize in the International Space Station.

He and Wilmore had been outside the space station for nearly seven hours working on the station's robotic arm and performing some maintenance.

Virts immediately alerted fellow astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti about the water and she alerted Mission Control in Houston.

Cristoforetti helped Virts out of his helmet and examined it. She confirmed the presence of moisture, mostly in the helmet absorption pad, or HAP, describing it as "wet and cold."

At the request of Mission Control, Anton Shkaplerov used a syringe to draw as much water as he could from the top of the helmet. Water had collected in the white plastic at the top and around both ear cups. Shkaplerov estimated there was 15 milliliters of water in the helmet.

That's a far cry from the amount of water that accumulated in Luca Parmitano's suit during a spacewalk in July 2013. Between 1 and 1.5 liters of water backed up in the suit and helmet, prompting fears Parmitano could drown in his own helmet. The spacewalk was cut short and NASA implemented some changes to its suits, including the addition of absorbent padding in helmets.

See the original post:
Astronauts to go ahead with spacewalk Sunday

MarcelDeVan - Space Station [ Promotion Jingle 2015 ]
++++++ NEWS 27.02.2015 +++++ Single: Space Station Composed, Arranged, Effects by MarcelDeVan Vocoder Sound by MarcelDeVan Programing, Rhythm computers, Synthesizers, Percussion by ...

By: MarcelDeVan Official

Excerpt from:
MarcelDeVan - Space Station [ Promotion Jingle 2015 ] - Video

NASAUnder President Vladimir Putin the space program has seen a measurable increase in funding.

After months ofuncertainty surrounding thelong-term fate ofthe International Space Station, Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos has announced its desire toremain inthe 15-nation program until 2024, anagency statement said late Tuesday night.

According tothe statement bythe agency's Scientific andTechnical Council (STC), asenior internal planning body, Russia will then move onto amoon mission around 2030.

"Today we determined that themain aim [for theprogram] is touse theISS todevelop our lunar program inlow Earth orbit, [before moving onto] deep space," Yury Koptev, head ofthe STC anda former Roscosmos chief, was quoted as saying inthe statement.

Roscosmos said that they envision Russian-manned spaceflight following two lines ofdevelopment over thenext decade.

Inthe near term, Russia will continue touse ISS as abase formodernizing andexpanding its domestic space assets.

Meanwhile, it will develop new technology tosupport theconstruction ofa new national space station around 2024 or 2025, which will be built onthe basis ofRussia's segment ofthe current ISS.

Russia's portion ofthe ISS, originally designed tobe theSoviet Union's Mir-2 space station, is technically capable ofserving as anindependent station, towhich new space station modules could be added.

According toRoscosmos, thenew national space station will ensure Russia's independent access tospace, provide abase forthe testing ofnew spacecraft, andeventually serve as away station forRussian cosmonauts ontheir way tothe moon around 2030.

Koptev was quoted inthe statement as saying that there is ageneral consensus within thespace agency andsurrounding industry that this path ofdevelopment is theproper course forRussia's space program.

Continued here:
Russia to Stick With ISS Till 2024 as It Preps for Moon Mission

Early Teaser Trailer for Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander
Our Kickstarter launchs March 10th, 2015! Sign up here: http://h6game.net Reclaim and rebuild a derelict space station. Hire a motley crew. Try not to get destroyed by a huge alien armada....

By: MassiveDamageInc

Originally posted here:
Early Teaser Trailer for Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander - Video

Affordable, real, healthy life in space, is it an Utopia? Dome!
How to make space livable? First of all space is a very hostile environment: vacuum, radiation, extreme temperatures, extreme temperatures variations, objects of extreme velocity etc Apart...

By: inventions4humanity

Read the rest here:
Affordable, real, healthy life in space, is it an Utopia? Dome! - Video

Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Terry Virts floated back outside the International Space Station Wednesday for the second of three spacewalks to help ready the lab complex for dockings by commercial crew capsules being built by Boeing and SpaceX.

Floating in the Quest airlock module, Wilmore and Virts switched their spacesuits to battery power at 6:51 a.m. EST (GMT-5) to officially kick off a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk, the second of three outings planned by the Expedition 42 crew.

For identification, station commander Wilmore, call sign EV-1, is wearing a suit with red stripes and will be using helmet camera No. 18. Virts, EV-2, is wearing an unmarked suit and will use helmetcam 20. The mission control communicator, or CAPCOM, for the spacewalk is veteran astronaut Joe Acaba.

During a six-hour 41 minute EVA Saturday, the astronauts laid out eight bundles of cables near the front of the space station that will supply power and data to new docking port mechanisms that will be launched and installed later this year.

During Wednesday's outing, they first removed a protective cover from a docking port extension on the front end of the space station that was once used by visiting space shuttles. The cover turned out to be fairly stiff, but the astronauts managed to stuff it in a stowage bag as planned.

"Hey Joe, please don't ask us how we did it," Virts joked with Acaba.

"I tell you what, I wish I had a video of it," Wilmore said.

"That was the 'stuff your sleeping bag in the bag in the morning' technique," Virts quipped.

The spacewalkers then stowed no-longer-needed shuttle power cables that were disconnected Saturday before installing two final sets of power and data cables needed by the docking mechanisms.

During a brief lull in the work, Wilmore took a moment to marvel at the view as the station passed 257 miles above the northeast coast of South America.

Read more from the original source:
Second spacewalk advances space station upgrades

Miami (AFP) - An American astronaut found water pooling inside his helmet after he finished a six-plus hour spacewalk on Wednesday, raising new concerns about the safety of NASA's spacesuits.

Terry Virts was not harmed during the incident, which the US space agency described as "minor" compared to the near-drowning of an Italian astronaut when a similar problem occurred in 2013.

But mission managers will be poring over the data at a meeting on Friday to decide whether another spacewalk can go ahead as planned on Sunday, a NASA spokesman said.

Even before this series of three spacewalks began on Saturday, NASA voiced concern about a recurring problem with the American spacesuits in a part of the temperature control system known as the fan pump separator.

Virts did not notice any water during the spacewalk, as he toiled for hours to lubricate the latching mechanisms on a robotic arm and helped his colleague Barry Wilmore get the space station's exterior ready for the arrival of commercial spaceships carrying astronauts in the coming years.

Their spacewalk lasted six hours and 43 minutes.

It was only after Virts was done, and had re-entered the Quest airlock, that he began to feel dampness on the back of his head and saw water pooling near the front of his headpiece.

The water inside Virts' helmet was "kind of pooling on the front side of his helmet above the eye level," European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti told mission control in Houston.

The water was "about three inches in diameter," she said, noting that the amount of water had increased in the moments since he first noticed it.

NASA television showed live images of Virts smiling inside his helmet and blowing on the water to make it ripple, before eventually removing the headpiece with Cristoforetti's help.

See the article here:
Astronaut 'mechanics' grease gear at space station

Roscosmos finalizes a plan for its activities up to 2030 which 'provides for the use of the ISS until 2024,' the space agency says

This March 7, 2011 NASA handout image shows a close-up view of the International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an STS-133 crew member on space shuttle Discovery. NASA/AFP

MOSCOW, Russia Russia will continue using the International Space Station (ISS) in partnership with NASA until 2024, its space agency said, after Moscow had threatened to pull out and stop financing it by 2020.

Roscosmos has finalized a plan for its activities up to 2030 which "provides for the use of the ISS until 2024," the space agency said in a statement late Tuesday, February 24.

It also announced plans to begin manned missions to the moon by 2030 but said its objectives would be adjusted according to financing.

"We are taking into account possible changes in financing and the program will get updated," Yury Koptev, the head of the agency's scientific and technical committee, said.

NASA had already said the aging ISS will remain operational until 2024, but Russia's participation had been in question.

Russia had said it wanted to wind up its role in 2020 and in December delayed a final decision, while deputy defense minster Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the space industry, threatened to "use those resources on other promising space projects."

Russia's decision to postpone its departure from the ISS to 2024 is dictated by the current economic crisis, sparked by low oil prices and Western sanctions over Ukraine, said independent space analyst Vadim Lukashevich.

"All these hopes and dreams have been cancelled by the crisis. There's no money for a new station," Lukashevich told Agence France-Presse.

See the original post:
Russia to use International Space Station until 2024