Category Archives: Space Station

Samantha Cristoforetti, the Italian ISS astronaut, watching her spoon float away with soup still in it. Photograph: ESA/Nasa

Spare a thought for those far from home this Christmas not least Italys first woman in space, Samantha Cristoforetti, one of the six astronauts orbiting the Earth at 17,200mph in the International Space Station (ISS).

While Cristoforetti will miss out on her traditional family meal, she will have the consolation of cutting-edge cuisine prepared especially for her in a pristine factory on the edge of Turin.

The pre-packed dishes were produced at a small aerospace engineering firm, Argotec , and have been the subject of almost as much experimentation as the spacecrafts pressurised modules, robotic arms and solar arrays.

The companys association with space food stems from its involvement in astronaut training, and began as a bit of joke, says the managing director, David Avino. His firm was helping to train Luca Parmitano, the Italian astronaut on the first mission to be run by the countrys space agency, ASI.

He wanted to take up some dishes that were typical of Italy, said Avino. It was only after Argotec embarked on their preparation that he realised what he had let himself in for.

Special meals could only justify their place in the payload if they helped to boost morale. To do that, they had to be significantly better than the standard astronauts fare produced by the US and Russian space agencies. But making luxury cuisine for astronauts is no easy matter.

Space travel, like air travel, robs food of its flavour. And dishes sent up to the ISS have to keep for long periods: Parmitano was away for five-and-a-half months while Nasa standards demand an eat by date at least 18 months after launch.

Some dishes can be sterilised by thermostabilisation, using heat under pressure. But the more liquid ones have to be freeze-dried, which takes away yet more flavour.

Stefano Polato, Argotecs 33-year-old chef, who also has a restaurant near Padua , said part of the solution lay in scrupulous selection of the ingredients. Take an apple, for example, he said. You can lower the temperature for sterilisation and avoiding killing off the nutrients if you pick one that has the right acidity level. A pH of 3.5 is ideal. You get fewer bacteria and longer conservation. It tastes good too.

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Space cuisine: the final frontier

Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Terry Virts got into the Christmas spirit by sending holiday greetings from space to the rest of us here on Earth. From their perch aboard the International Space Station some 220 miles (250 kilometers) above Earth's surface, Wilmore and Virts beamed down a Christmas video greeting to the world.

"This is definitely going to be a Christmas that we'll remember, getting a chance to see the beautiful Earth, and I hope that for you also it will be a memorable Christmas this year," Virts said in the video that NASA uploaded to YouTube. Wilmore has been aboard the space station since late September and will return to Earth in March. Virts arrived at the station in late November and will stay until mid-May.

James Eng

First published December 22 2014, 3:42 PM

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Joy to the World! Space Station Crew Sends Christmas Cheer

The 3D printer aboard the International Space Station has wrapped up the first phase of its orbital test run by cranking out a ratchet wrench whose design was beamed up from Earth.

The wrench, along with the 19 other objects built by the orbiting 3D printer thus far, will travel to Earth early next year, where engineers will compare the objects with ground samples produced by the same machine before it launched, NASA officials said.

"We can't wait to get these objects home and put them through structural and mechanical testing," Quincy Bean, of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a statement. "We really won't know how well this process worked in space until we inspect the parts and complete these tests." [10 Ways 3D Printing Could Transform Space Travel]

The 3D printer arrived on the space station in September as part of the 3D Print project, a collaboration between NASA and the California-based startup Made in Space, which designed and built the machine. The printer was installed in the station's Microgravity Science Glovebox on Nov. 17, then printed out its first part a piece for the printer itself called an extruder plate a week later.

All the other parts made by the printer during its first month of operations came from designs installed on the machine before its launch. So sending the wrench's file up from Earth marked another milestone, NASA officials said.

"For the printer's final test in this phase of operations, NASA wanted to validate the process for printing on demand, which will be critical on longer journeys to Mars," 3D Print program manager Niki Werkheiser, also of NASA Marshall,said in the same statement. "In less than a week, the ratchet was designed, approved by safety and other NASA reviewers, and the file was sent to space where the printer made the wrench in four hours."

The wrench measures 4.5 inches long by 1.3 inches wide (11.4 by 3.3 centimeters), and consists of 104 layers of extruded plastic, space agency officials said.

NASA has high hopes for 3D printing, saying in-space manufacturing technology could bring down the cost of spaceflight significantly and make voyaging spacecraft more self-sufficient. (Carrying a printer and some raw "feedstock" material would be easier and cheaper than lugging a huge cache of spare parts, the thinking goes.)

The 3D Print project is one step toward this ambitious goal. And the machine's work aboard the space station isn't done yet; phase two should start early next year.

"For our next phase of operations, we are working with the astronaut office to identify existing tools that we can make with the printer," Werkheiser said. "We can't wait until it is routine to see station astronauts use tools that they built in space."

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Space Station's 3D Printer Makes Wrench From 'Beamed Up' Design

Editor's note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the EFT-1 spacecraft splashed down in the Atlantic, rather than in the Pacific. The Fool regrets the error.

Two days ago, America sent a spaceship soaring to the stars -- and we didn't need a Russian rocket to do it.

At 7:05 a.m. ET,Friday, Dec. 5, United Launch Alliance (working on contract to NASA), began the EFT-1 mission, sending anOrion spacecraft built byLockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) into space atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket built byBoeing (NYSE: BA) . (Together, Lockheed and Boeing make up two halves of the NASA contractor United Launch Alliance, aka ULA.)

NASA promo shot of EFT-1 launch; YouTube still

The EFT-1 mission was scheduled to last just under four and a half hours, and aimed to test the workings of America's first spaceship, capable of manned interplanetary flight. It also marked NASA's first step in a 20-year plan to put American astronauts on Mars sometime after 2030.

I won't keep you in suspense: The test was a success. After an initial one-day postponement from the Thursday target window, the rockets worked flawlessly in Friday's exercise. EFT-1 went up, orbited the Earth, then blasted higher, turned around, reentered Earth's atmosphere, and splashed down in the Pacific right on schedule.

NASA promo shot of EFT-1 splashdown; YouTube still

So ... does this mean that America's reliance upon Russian rockets to put astronauts into orbit (and beyond) is finally at an end?

Not yet, but soon As you may recall, earlier this year a series of unfortunate events in Europe culminated in America imposing economic sanctions on Russia -- and Russia retaliating with a mortal threat to the U.S. space program. Unless America lifted its sanctions, Russia would cut off the supply of RD-180 rocket engines essential to ULA's ability to lift satellites into space. Simultaneously, Russia vowed to deny U.S. astronauts access to its Soyuz spacecraft -- currently the only craft capable of sending U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station.

Responding to these threats, Lockheed Martin promised to team up with an American rocket-tech company to develop a "next-generation liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon first stage" rocket engine capable of replacing the RD-180 on its Atlas V rockets. "Multiple" design contracts were signed in June, with the aim of getting a design approved this year -- and launching a prototype in 2019.

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To Reach the International Space Station, Lockheed Martin Orders a Rocket From Amazon.com

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