Category Archives: Space Station

(Top left to bottom right) Expedition 48: Jeff Williams, NASA, Alexey Ovchinin, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Oleg Skripochka, Roscosmos. Expedition 48/49: Kate Rubins, NASA, Anatoly Ivanishin, Roscosmos, and Takuya Onishi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Expedition 49/50: Shane Kimbrough, NASA, Andrey Borisenko, Roscosmos, and Sergey Ryzhikov, Roscosmos. Expedition 50: Peggy Whitson, NASA, Oleg Novitskiy, Roscosmos, and Thomas Pesquet, European Space Agency.Image Credit: NASA/ESA/JAXA

NASA and its International Space Station partners have announced the crew members, including NASA astronauts Kate Rubins, Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson, for three upcoming missions to the space station.

Rubins will be the first of the three with her mission beginning in May 2016, when she will join the stations Expedition 48 crew already in orbit. Selected to become an astronaut in 2009, this will be her first trip into space. Rubins was born in Farmington, Connecticut, and grew up in Napa, California. She holds a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford.

Kimbrough, born in Killeen, Texas, and raised in Atlanta, is a retired U.S. Army colonel. He previously flew aboard space shuttle Endeavour during its STS-126 mission in 2008. Kimbrough has spent almost 16 days in space and accumulated 12 hours and 52 minutes on spacewalks.

Whitson, an Iowa native born in Mt. Ayr and raised in Beaconsfield, holds a doctorate in biochemistry from Rice University. She completed two six-month tours of duty aboard the space station, the second as its first female commander. She has spent 377 days in space between the two missions. Whitson also has performed six spacewalks, totaling 39 hours and 46 minutes.

The crew comprising Expedition 48 will be:

- Jeff Williams, NASA

- Alexey Ovchinin, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos)

- Oleg Skripochka, Roscosmos

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NASA, Space Station Partners Announce Future Mission Crew Members

Young students who watched in devastation as their science projects exploded along with an unmanned Antares rocket bound for the International Space Station in October have gotten a second chance. Astronauts finally conducted their experiments in space over the past few weeks, and the results are slated to head back to Earth for students to study on Tuesday.

"I just can't believe [astronauts] are actually touching something we designed," Regina Alsabagh, an eighth-grader at Wilkinson Middle School in Michigan, told NBC News. "It shows our hard work is not lost, even though we were so sad before."

It's long-overdue payoff for Alsabagh's team and the other 17 student groups whose experiments were selected from among nearly 1,500 proposals to the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) -- which arranges for astronauts to conduct experiments in space while students replicate them in the classroom.

The projects were originally meant to make it to space in a cargo ship attached to an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket that launched October 28. But student teams across the nation watched, horrified, as the unmanned craft exploded a few moments after it took off near the coast of Virginia.

But the next day, the teams found out SSEP had quickly arranged for the student groups to get a second chance. The catch: They had only two weeks to re-do their projects (at no cost to their districts). Those re-worked experiments finally made it to space on a SpaceX rocket that launched successfully on January 10.

Astronauts at the International Space Station finally began working on the students' projects in late January, and they're due back on Earth on Feb. 10.

It's been a long and at times heartbreaking journey for Regina Alsabagh and her teammates Farah Sabah, Maryam Kafra and Israa Alfadhli, all of whom came to Michigan after fleeing Iraq with their families.

NBC News first spoke to the teens the day after the Antares explosion, and they were devastated. The girls had spent four months collaborating in both Arabic and English to design an experiment that tests whether iodine tablets can purify water in space.

The girls -- aided by district superintendent Randy Speck and enrichment teacher Angel Abdulahad (who translated the girls' answers in an interview with NBC News last week) -- raced to re-do the project in time for the Space X launch.

"I watched the rocket fly up in the air, and my future flew with it. I wished I could have been flying right along with it," Alsabagh told NBC News.

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Student Experiments Get Second Chance in Space

If youre anything like me, you get a lot of your news online through various news and social media sources (especially Discovery News!). This is great, as it puts the mostup-to-date information in front of you instantly. But sometimes its nice to sit down and open up a real live book toexplorea topic much more intimately than you normally could online.

PHOTOS: An Awe-Inspiring Space Station Odyssey

As a member of the Orbital Perspective Release Crew,I recently had the opportunity to do precisely that with a free copy of Ron Garans book The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles.

Adecorated fighter pilot, astronaut, and entrepreneur, Ron has logged 178 days in space and over 71 million miles in orbit. He is the founder of the nonprofit social enterprise incubator Manna Energy Foundation and is also the founder of Fragile Oasis,which usesthe orbital perspective to inspire positive social and environmental action. During his time living and working in space over the course of two missions shuttle mission STS-124 and Expedition 27/28 aboard the ISS as well as participating in various humanitarian programs on Earth, Ron has developed a sense of acute awareness of the interconnectiveness of humanity, of how we really are all in this together. Unfortunately, regardless of how beautiful our planet looks from orbit theres no denying that actual living conditions in many places around the world are belied by that beauty.

ANALYSIS: Ron Garan: I Hope the Heat Shield and Parachutes Work

Having seen our world firsthand from both viewpoints, Ron has becomeaware of the paradox but doesnt believe that it has to be just the way things are he believes we have the ability to change things on a global scale but only if we work together only if we canachieve an orbital perspective.

This is not your typical space book. The Orbital Perspectivewont make you gasp in wonder at how the continents look from low-Earthorbitor dazzle you with glossy photographs of stars, aurorae, the Milky Way or massive spacecraft roaring into the sky. Thats not what its about. Yes, Ron has seen and been a part of all that, and yes, he does provide fascinating insight into the space program particularlythe collaboration between the U.S. and Russia to develop and construct the ISS. But The Orbital Perspective is much more about the effort itself than it is about Station or the Shuttle or what Earth looks like as it turns tirelessly below.

Collaboration in the literalsense of the word, laboringtogether is what Ron focuses on above all else because it is only through true collaborationthat amazing and world-changing things can be achieved.

PHOTO: Garan photographs a meteor from orbit

The Orbital Perspective is a book for anyone who works with people (which is almost everyone who is employed) and especially those who find themselves in roles that require bringing people together to solve a problem, whether within their own organization or halfway around the world. Working in space and working on Earth are surprisingly similar (besides that pesky gravity bit) if just in that both require individuals with specialized skill sets cooperatingtogether to achieve a common goal. Ron has been one of those individuals many times, and its a privilege to gain some of his personal insight.

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See the Big Picture With 'The Orbital Perspective': Review

International Space Station Time Lapse Earth
International Space Station Time Lapse Earth.

By: Jeff Johnson

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International Space Station Time Lapse Earth - Video

NASA Footage: Northern Lights Meet Sunrise Over Earth
NASA released footage from the International Space Station on Thursday showing the northern lights meeting the sunrise over Earth. Subscribe to the WSJ channel here: http://bit.ly/14Q81Xy...

By: Wall Street Journal

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NASA Footage: Northern Lights Meet Sunrise Over Earth - Video

Manned Mission to the Planet MERCURY ("Half Base") KSP RSS Episode 6
Three kerbals come in for a fast landing on closest planet to the Sun with Apollo hardware. The lander/base will be resupplied with the help of the already under construction yet-to-be-named...

By: SRB Gaming

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Manned Mission to the Planet MERCURY ("Half Base") KSP RSS Episode 6 - Video

Breaking News - Astronaut Barry Wilmore delivers a special message to USS Theodore Roosevelt
Breaking News - Astronaut Barry Wilmore delivers a special message to USS Theodore Roosevelt EARTH #39;s ORBIT (Jan. 26, 2015) NASA Astronaut and Navy Captain Barry Wilmore delivers a special...

By: U.S Navy News

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Breaking News - Astronaut Barry Wilmore delivers a special message to USS Theodore Roosevelt - Video

Lets play Alien: Isolation. EP#1my first video ever
Part of the Alien series, the game is set in 2137, 15 years after the events of Alien and 42 years prior to Aliens. The game follows Amanda Ripley, who is investigating the disappearance of...

By: G-man

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Lets play Alien: Isolation. EP#1my first video ever - Video

Hows this for a unique workspace? This is where ISS astronauts get things done.

NASAs description:

This image of the interior view from the International Space Stations Cupola module was taken on Jan. 4, 2015. The large bay windows allows the Expedition 42 crew to see outside. The Cupola houses one of the space stations two robotic work stations used by astronauts to manipulate the large robotic arm seen through the right window. The robotic arm, or Canadarm2, was used throughout the construction of the station and is still used to grapple visiting cargo vehicles and assist astronauts during spacewalks. The Cupola is attached to the nadir side of the space station and also gives a full panoramic view of the Earth.

Large windows, lots of buttons and joysticks, and, of course, that awesome view. We cant all aspire to have a workspace like this, but its fun to look anyway.

International Space Station Expedition 42 Image Gallery [NASA via io9]

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The International Space Station Workspace

Russian space food on sale in Moscow. Photo: Nasa/Collectspace.com

Move over astronaut ice cream, Russian space food tubes have arrived.

As of Friday February 6, the All-Russian Exhibition Center in Moscow now sells authentic cosmonaut food to the public, the state-run Sputnik news service reported.

The centre, a sprawling trade show also known by the Russian acronym VDNKh, is marketing the cosmic cuisine in toothpaste-like tubes.

"Visitors [to VDNKh] will have a chance to try a full-course cosmonaut menu, including four kinds of soups, various meat dishes and a variety of desserts," the Sputnik report said.

"According to organisers, there will be 11 variations of tubes, each tasting like a different kind of food."

The selection, according to the Russian website Menu.ru, include marinated lamb and pork with vegetables, cottage cheese dessert with sea buckthorn fruit, and apricot, apple and blackcurrant puree.

The tubes, which are offered through a vending machine, cost 300 rubles, or about (US)$4.50, each.

They are produced by the same factory and using the same methods as the food that is prepared for the Russian cosmonauts onboard the International Space Station.

"Producers do not use any genetically-modified products and assure that the food in the tubes is made from natural ingredients only," the news service noted.

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Russian space food on sale in Moscow