Category Archives: Space Station

Tiangong is a space station that the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMSA) is building in low Earth orbit. In May 2021, China launched Tianhe, the first of the orbiting space station's three modules, and the country aims to finish building the station by the end of 2022. CMSA hopes to keep Tiangong inhabited continuously by three astronauts for at least a decade. The space station will host many experiments from both China and other countries.

Related: China's space station will be open to science from all UN nations

Tiangong, which means "Heavenly Palace," will consist of Tianhe, the main habitat for astronauts, and two modules dedicated to hosting experiments, Mengtian and Wentian, both of which are due to launch in 2022. Shenzhou spacecraft, launching from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert, will send crews of three astronauts to the space station, while Tianzhou cargo spacecraft will launch from Wenchang on the Chinese island of Hainan to deliver supplies and fuel to the station.

Tiangong will be much smaller than the International Space Station (ISS), with only three modules compared with 16 modules on the ISS. Tiangong will also be lighter than the ISS, which weighs about 400 tons (450 metric tons) following the recent addition of Russia's Nauka module.

The 54-foot-long (16.6 meter) Tianhe module launched with a docking hub that allows it to receive Shenzhou and Tianzhou spacecraft, as well as welcome the two later experiment modules. A large robotic arm will help position the Mengtian and Wentian modules and assist astronauts during spacewalks.

Tianhe is much larger than the Tiangong 1 and 2 test space labs China launched in the last decade and nearly three times heavier, at 24 tons (22 metric tons). The new Tiangong, visiting spacecraft and cargo spacecraft will expand the usable space for the astronauts; so much that they'll feel as though "they will be living in a villa," compared with how little space was available on previous Chinese space labs, Bai Linhou, deputy chief designer of the space station, told CCTV.

Tianhe features regenerative life support, including a way to recycle urine, to allow astronauts to stay in orbit for long periods. It is the main habitat for the astronauts and also houses the propulsion systems to keep the space station in orbit.

China has said it will take 11 launches to finish Tiangong: three module launches, four crewed missions and four Tianzhou spacecraft to supply cargo and fuel. The first three launches Tianhe, Tianzhou 2 and Shenzhou 12 have gone smoothly.

Once completed, Tiangong will be joined by a huge, Hubble-like space telescope, which will share the space station's orbit and be able to dock for repairs, maintenance and possibly upgrades. Named Xuntian, which translates to "survey the heavens," the telescope will have a 6.6-foot (2 m) diameter mirror like Hubble but will have a field of view 300 times greater. Xuntian will aim to survey 40% of the sky over 10 years using its huge, 2.5-billion-pixel camera.

The space station could potentially be expanded to six modules, if everything goes according to plan. "We can further expand our current three-module space station combination into a four-module, cross-shaped combination in the future," Bai told CCTV. The second Tianhe core module could then allow two more modules to join the orbital outpost.

China embarked on a long journey to reach the point of building its space station. The project was first approved in 1992, after which the country set about developing the Shenzhou crew spacecraft and the Long March 2F rocket to send astronauts into space. Yang Liwei became China's first astronaut in space in October 2003 and made China the third country in the world to independently send humans into orbit.

China expressed interest in joining the International Space Station partners, but the possibility was ended by a 2011 decree passed by U.S. lawmakers effectively banning NASA from coordinating directly with China or any Chinese-owned company. This means direct collaboration between NASA and Chinese space stations is strictly prohibited, making the prospect of sending U.S. astronauts to Tiangong (or Chinese astronauts to the ISS) impossible.

To be able to build and operate a crewed space station, China first needed to test out crucial space station systems, including life support and technologies for rendezvous and docking of spacecraft in orbit while traveling 17,448 mph (28,080 km/h). To accomplish this, China launched the 9-ton (8.2 metric tons) Tiangong-1 space lab in 2011, and subsequently sent the uncrewed Shenzhou 8 and the crewed Shenzhou 9 and 10 to join Tiangong-1 in orbit.

The upgraded but similarly sized Tiangong-2 launched in 2016 and hosted the two-astronaut crew of Shenzhou 11 for just over a month, setting a new national record for human spaceflight mission duration.

As the China Manned Space Agency checked off these initial milestones, the agency was also focused on developing new, larger Long March heavy-lift rockets to make a space station possible. The Long March 5B was designed specifically to launch the huge space station modules into low Earth orbit. The same rocket was the source of one of the largest uncontrolled reentries in recent decades following the launch of Tianhe in late April 2021.

In 2014 China completed its new, coastal spaceport at Wenchang, specifically to launch these larger-diameter rockets, which need to be delivered by sea.

The first crewed missions Shenzhou 12, 13 and 14 will be for space station construction. A series of operational phase missions lasting six months each will begin in 2023. Crews will carry out experiments in areas such as astronomy, space medicine and life sciences, biotechnology, microgravity combustion and fluid physics and space technologies. Tiangong will also temporarily host six astronauts during crew changeovers, Space.com previously reported.

Related: China selects 18 new astronauts in preparation for space station launch

Tiangong is also likely to host international astronauts in the future. European Space Agency astronauts Samantha Cristoforetti and Matthias Maurer trained with their Chinese counterparts in 2017 in a small step toward a possible future visit to the Chinese space station, the European Space Agency reported. Astronauts from other countries, particularly those involved in China's Belt and Road initiative, may travel to Tiangong as well; Russia is also considering sending its cosmonauts.

China is looking to develop alternatives for keeping Tiangong supplied, SpaceNews reported. In January 2021, the China Manned Space Agency put out a call for proposals for low-cost, reliable cargo missions to Tiangong. The call was open to commercial companies, echoing NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contracts that provided opportunities to SpaceX.

It will be possible to spot Tiangong from Earth, just as it sometimes is with the ISS. Tiangong will orbit at an altitude of between 211 and 280 miles (340 to 450 kilometers) above Earth and between 43 degrees north and south, and the space station should be a fixture in the sky for at least a decade.

Continued here:
China's Tiangong space station | Space

The COWVR and TEMPEST instruments are in the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft for the December 2021 commercial resupply mission for NASA to the International Space Station. Credit: SpaceX

Launched Tuesday to the space station, the COWVR and TEMPEST two instruments could lead the way to big improvements in gathering key information for weather forecasting.

The Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) is no bigger than a minifridge. The Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) is even smaller about the size of a cereal box. Yet these two compact science instruments are designed to do a big job: to make the same high-quality atmospheric observations as weather satellites many times their size and at a fraction of the cost.

Built by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the two radiometers are part of the U.S. Air Forces Space Test Program-Houston 8 (STP-H8) and are headed to the International Space Station Tuesday as part of SpaceXs 24th commercial resupply mission for the agency. Theyre considered technology demonstrations, and if they perform as planned, weather forecasting could be in for a technological boost.

The COWVR instrument, which is headed to the International Space Station in December 2021, during a thermal test in 2015. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Here are five things to know about COWVR and TEMPEST:

Together, COWVR and TEMPEST will provide many of the data points that scientists use to produce weather and climate forecasts: Theyll measure not only the speed and direction of winds blowing over the ocean surface, but also precipitation, atmospheric moisture, how that moisture is distributed vertically, and other conditions at the ocean surface and in the atmosphere.

From 2003 to 2020, these types of measurements were acquired by the 990-pound (450-kilogram) Windsat instrument aboard the U.S. Department of Defenses Coriolis satellite. Windsat lasted well beyond its anticipated lifespan. If COWVR and TEMPEST prove theyre up to the task, they (and small instruments like them) will be able to take the place of larger, aging satellites without compromising on data quality.

COWVR and TEMPEST will be attached to the space station, which circles our planet in low-Earth orbit from west to east about 16 times per day. Because of the stations unique orbit, the two instruments will spend most of their time over the mid-latitudes and tropics areas prone to storms and revisit them more frequently than sensors in other orbits. The additional data will help scientists better understand storm formation and better track developing storm systems.

COWVR and TEMPEST will also be able to send the data back to Earth faster than some other instruments currently in use, enabling scientists and forecasters to monitor the rapid intensification many storms undergo in near real time. Most satellites communicate with just a few ground stations around the world, and that takes time, said Shannon Brown, principal investigator for COWVR based at JPL. The data could be a couple of hours old before its even on the ground, and then it still needs to be processed.

COWVR and TEMPEST will instead send their data back to Earth via NASAs tracking and data relay satellite (TDRS) constellation. TDRS essentially provides a direct data stream. So, once the sensors pass over a big hurricane or cyclone, youre going to get that data instantly, Brown said. Itll be up-to-the-minute observations, which is something not usually available with the traditional approach and something that could save lives.

The frequency with which COWVR and TEMPEST will take measurements over areas within their orbit will allow them to collect more comprehensive data than other instruments data that is expected to reduce uncertainties in weather and climate models.

The current satellite sensors that measure wind speed and direction at the ocean surface are in Sun-synchronous orbits, meaning that they provide measurements at a given location only in the morning and in the evening, leaving gaps in between, said JPLs Tony Lee, co-lead of the missions science working group. The space stations orbit will allow COWVR and TEMPEST to take measurements across different times of day, reducing those gaps.

Weather and climate models use this type of data to make predictions. The more data that is available, the more accurate the models and the predictions based on them will be.

The amount of heat and moisture released by the ocean influences atmospheric conditions; likewise, atmospheric conditions, such as wind, influence ocean currents and heat distribution. The more scientists learn about these interactions, the better theyll understand how they affect weather in the short term and climate in the long term.

Getting suitable data to study these interactions can be tricky, though.

The traditional way to study these interactions is by combining measurements from different satellites that have different sampling times of the ocean and the atmosphere, Lee said. This mismatch makes it more difficult for scientists to understand these interactions because we may be looking at wind in one part of the day and looking at rain and atmospheric water vapor at a different time of day.

If successful, COWVR and TEMPEST could change that. COWVRs main purpose is to measure the speed and direction of wind at the ocean surface, and TEMPESTs is to provide the atmospheric water vapor measurements. Since theyre flying together and taking measurements over the same areas, theyll be able to acquire this complementary data at the same time.

Simultaneous measurements of the different variables alleviate the difficulty associated with sampling time differences that come from mixing measurements from different satellites at different times, Lee said. It will also enable them to account for interactions that happen at shorter time scales wind gusts stirring up the ocean and causing it to lose heat to the atmosphere, for example.

If COWVR and TEMPEST perform well, theyll prove that comprehensive data vital to weather forecasting and a better understanding of climate can be obtained in a much smaller package with a much smaller price tag than previously thought.

Because the instruments are smaller and cheaper, organizations could launch three or four small satellites for the same cost as one of the larger variations. A constellation of these small satellites would be able to take measurements of a given area such as over a developing storm far more frequently than a corresponding single satellite could, resulting in even further refinement of weather models and forecasts.

See the original post here:
Pair of Small but Mighty Weather Instruments en Route to Space Station 5 Things To Know - SciTechDaily

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. A SpaceX Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station early Wednesday (Dec. 22), carrying with it a holiday haul of science gear and Christmas treats for the astronauts living on the orbital outpost.

The autonomous Dragon resupply ship docked itself at the orbital outpost at 3:41 a.m. EST (0841 GMT), ahead of its planned 4:30 a.m. docking time. It parked itself at the space-facing port on the station's Harmony module, with NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn monitoring the docking from inside the station.

The Dragon capsule blasted off on its cargo mission for NASA, called CRS-24, early Tuesday (Dec. 21) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It delivered 6,500 pounds (2,949 kilograms) of research experiments and supplies for the crew. With Christmas just days away, NASA did pack a special dinner for the seven astronauts on the space station.

"I won't get in front of Santa Claus and tell you what's going to be sent up, but we are going to have some gifts for the crew," said Joel Montalbano, NASA's space station program manager, before the Dragon launched. "We're also going to fly some special foods for Christmas dinner. So you can imagine turkey, green beans, we have some fish and some seafood that's smoked. We also have everybody's favorite, fruitcake."

The research gear tucked inside will support a variety of experiments in the life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and many other fields.

NASA's upcoming Artemis moon missions will send crews back to the moon for the first time in decades, but it will also serve as a stepping stone to Mars. To that end, NASA is trying to figure out how it will feed, clothe, and protect its astronauts on extremely long-duration missions.

One investigation flying on CRS-24 will help them do just that. Together with Proctor and Gamble, the makers of Tide detergent, NASA is looking at how to wash clothes in space. This initial step will test how well the actual detergent holds up to the stresses of microgravity.

The agency estimates that it will need approximately 500 pounds of clothing per astronaut for a three-year trip to Mars. That amount can be decreased by providing the crews with the capability of washing clothes in orbit. (Currently, astronauts wear their clothes many times before tossing them out and grabbing a new set.)

"Once you start having extended trips out in space, laundry is a must-have," Mark Sivik, senior director and research fellow at Proctor and Gamble told Space.com. "We looked at what it would take for a crew of four to do laundry and we minimized that."

"What we've developed here is fully degradable and designed to work within the space station's closed-loop system," he added.

The Tide experiment will help put NASA on a path that leads to laundry in space. For this first iteration, researchers will be looking at how the specially designed detergent performs in space. Tide is also sending up a follow-on experiment next year that will look at how effective the detergent is at fighting stains while in space.

The detergent used will be a scaled-back version of the detergent we use at home, that is designed specifically for performance apparel. Since the astronauts work out multiple times per day, and wear more performance-active clothing, this is what the detergent will target.

It will run for about six months, coming back to Earth sometime during the summer. The research will not only provide future space travelers with a means of freshening their clothes but could prove effective for people in areas that don't have immense water supplies. That's because the detergent is designed to be used with less water while also performing as you would expect.

Protein crystal growth experiments are commonly sent to the space station because microgravity is an excellent platform to grow perfect, uniform crystals.

The crystals can then be used to test a variety of different drugs to treat ailments from arthritis to cancer.

Inspiration for one such treatment came from the body's own immune system. Monoclonal antibodies (MAB) attack a specific target by triggering the bodys immune response.

Given via transfusion, monoclonal antibodies can be made to lock onto specific targets inside a cell (or on its surface) and have fewer side effects compared to other treatments. However, in order to be an effective form of treatment, the MABs need to be administered in large doses intravenously. By sending this experiment into space, the pharmaceutical company Merck Research Labs is hoping it can make higher concentrations of high-quality antibodies.

It's also hoping that other companies will see the simplicity of its experiment and be inspired to do their own space-based research. Paul Reichert of Merck told Space.com that the idea for this experiment came in 2016 after he saw a video of NASA astronaut Kate Rubins using a pipette as part of another investigation.

Reichert realized that experiments didn't have to be incredibly complex to get the same results. The design of this experiment is simplistic, comprised of a few syringes affixed to a board. Reichert said that he hopes to be able to grow many small, perfectly-shaped protein crystals that the company can then use to improve its cancer treatment therapies.

Students from two different universities are sending experiments into space as part of NASA's Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science (SPOCS). The teams partnered with students in grades K-12, which acted as citizen scientists, as a means of doing real-world research.

Engineering students at the University of Idaho developed a payload to look at how microgravity affects bacteria-resistant polymers. Studies conducted on the station have revealed that bacteria are present on surfaces around the space station, and this experiment hopes to determine which coatings (polymers) have the best bacteria-resistant properties.

"The goal of our project is to help further space travel by reducing bacteria growth and disease on the International Space Station," Adriana Bryant, the team leader, told Space.com.

The team worked with a class of third graders from Moscow, Idaho to select two bacteria-resistant polymers that were sent into space. The experiment will run for roughly 30 days and is designed to be fully autonomous once it's plugged into the space station's power.

Teams will analyze the data collected when it comes back to have an idea on which of its polymers are the most resistant to bacteria in space.

Another team from Columbia University will look at antibiotic resistance in microgravity. The team is sending two different types of bacteria into space, which are known to interact here on Earth. The experiment will run for approximately 14 days and once its data is received back on Earth, the Columbia team are hoping to determine how each bacteria behaves individually when treated with certain antibiotics and how they behave together in space and how effective treatments are for it.

The Turbine Superalloy Casting module (SCM) is a commercial manufacturing device that processes heat-resistant alloys in microgravity. Alloys are materials that are made of at least two different chemical elements, one of which is a metal.

The experiment is designed by Redwire Space, which has already sent numerous payloads into orbit, including the first 3D-printer in space by Made In Space, which Redwire acquired in 2020.. By trying to print alloys in space, the company is hoping to look to the future when humanity will need to build things on other worlds as well as improve products here on Earth.

The team is expecting to see more uniform structures in the space-based prints versus the ones done terrestrially, which could help produce improved materials here on Earth, like turbine engines. These types of engines are used not only in the aerospace industry but also as a means of generating power.

The Dragon capsule is on its second trip to the International Space Station (it first flew in June of this year) and will remain docked to the orbital outpost for roughly 30 days. It will return to Earth in January.

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

The rest is here:
SpaceX Dragon cargo ship delivers Christmas presents (and supplies) to space station - Space.com

Kathy Lueders, head of NASAs newly minted Space Operations Mission Directorate, joined us at TC Sessions: Space last week for a chat about the future of the agency and what she is looking forward to and dreading in the next decade of missions.

In the first place, Lueders explained the reasoning behind NASAs decision in September to split the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in two.

Thirty years ago it was really, in the human exploration area, it was Shuttle, and then it was Shuttle and station Now weve added Commercial Crew, [Lunar] Gateway, you know, HLS [Human Landing System], I mean, were mushrooming! she explained.

This was putting too much pressure on the existing structure and it was amicably decided to split off, essentially, the development and planning side from operations. Lueders said she was pleased to be put in charge of the latter.

The best thing is I got to have, you know, the missions! I got to have the execution, she said. Ive spent probably about 15 years doing development. But my favorite part was when we started flying. So guess what Im firmly in the flying division. So Im very, very happy to be there. I get to do all the launches and operations and I love it.

While the big launches and landings tend to hog all the glory, Artemis and its related lunar missions are more diverse and wide-ranging than that. I asked what pieces of the puzzle may not be getting enough attention.

Its the infrastructure pieces that people dont talk about, she replied. You know, were gonna need power on the moon. Were going to need to be able to move cargo around on the moon. Were going to need to be able to have communication and additional relays on the moon. We tend to not think of roads and power lines as sexy things. But this is infrastructure that, if you ever run a business, you need those kinds of things to be able to operate. Try to run a business without power try to run a business without comms.

But not all of her duties will be pleasant. She was among those who saw the ISS go up, and she will be there when it comes down or at least, in the near term, is decommissioned.

Oh gosh I mean, when I moved to JSC [Johnson Space Center], it was to go work on an International Space Station. And so I actually was one of the lucky people that came onto the space station program at [mission] 2A. Been on the job two weeks and I got to be at the launch, and there were people there that invested 10 years of their life and were there crying. And so I will be crying when we have to deorbit the Space Station, she said. But it was also very painful for us to, you know, retire the Shuttle. Part of the things weve got to recognize is whens the right time, right?

And its the right time, because we really need to go off and we need to focus on living and working around the moon and wherever other crazy place that NASA people dream up to be able to go to.

TC+ members can watch the full panel at the top of this post.

Read more:
Kathy Lueders on Artemis, restructuring NASA and the lifecycle of the ISS - TechCrunch

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. 2021 was one of the busiest years for the Space Coast in years and it only looks to get busier in 2022.

With that in mind, heres a list of nine of the biggest Space Coast stories of 2021.

2021 was a busy year for SpaceX.

This year was so busy its launches seemed to be lighting up the Brevard Coast non-stop.

Here are some statistics from the company website:

Carried eight astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA

Transported 28,000 pounds of cargo and scientific research to and from the ISS.

Completed the worlds first all-civilian astronaut mission to orbit.

Deployed more than 800 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit, which are helping to connect over 150,000 customers around the world with high-speed, low-latency internet.

As impressive as SpaceXs record of launches is, nothing compares to the excitement of a manned launch to space.

In November, SpaceX Crew-3was the third operational flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the fourth overall crewed orbital flight of the Commercial Crew Program.

While there were some delays, the launch brought many first-time spectators from around the globe to the Space Coast.

WATCH: Crew-3 successfully blasts off from Kennedy Space Center following delays

The Lucy spacecraft blasted off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket early Oct 16.

The Atlas V took off at 5:34 a.m. from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The mission will study the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter and is expected to last 12 years.

READ: Lucy in the sky! Lucy blasts off on a 12 year mission across the universe

Sierra Nevada Corporation in May signed an agreement for Space Floridas launch and landing facility at Kennedy Space Center.

The Dream Chaser will fly resupply missions to the International Space Station beginning 2022.

Next year, Dream Chaser is scheduled to begin cargo missions to the ISS. The company also has plans for its own flexible modular commercial space station.

READ: Dream Chaser to call Kennedy Space Center home

NASAs Kennedy Space Center named its first woman as the new director.

Janet Petro took over as acting director in May after former Director Bob Cabana was promoted to NASAs associate administrator.

NASA names new director for Kennedy Space Center

READ: NASA names new director for Kennedy Space Center

I really feel privileged to be sitting here today and what I call the second generation of workers and the second major leap were making during this Artemis generation, said new Kennedy Space Center Director Janet Petro.

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins wasselected as part of an upcoming mission to the International Space Station, and that will make her the first Black woman to be part of the space station crew.

Read: Jessica Watkins to be first Black woman on International Space Station Crew

Watkins is scheduled to fly to the space station in April 2022.

She will join NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, on the SpaceX Crew-4 mission.

The Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral previewed plans in December for a new attraction focusing on the latest innovations in space exploration.

Already under construction and scheduled to open in March, Gateway: The Deep Space Launch Complex will offer an immersive experience featuring a collection of modern-day spacecraft, a 4D motion theater, and unique launch viewing opportunities.

To learn more, click here.

Have you ever dreamed of going to space? Well, for $125,000, you can make that dream a reality.

Florida space flight company Space Perspective is taking reservations on its Spaceship Neptune for flights in early 2024.

READ: Dreaming of space? Company begins selling $125K tickets for balloon trips to the edge of space

The six-hour trip will include a two-hour ascent above 100,000 feet, two hours for passengers to enjoy 360-degree views from the spaceship before making a two-hour descent to the ocean, where it will splash down

The company is working toward three Florida launch sites in Jacksonville, the Kennedy Space Center and the Space Coast Air and Spaceport in Titusville.

Space Perspective The Spaceship Neptune consists of a balloon that measures the length of a football stadium. Attached to it is a pressured capsule that will carry up to eight passengers. (Space Perspective)

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in September that Terran Orbital would move its operations to the Space Coast.

The governor said the company would invest $300 million and bring about 2,000 new jobs to the Space Coast.

Terran Orbital plans to launch satellites for the government and commercial customers and is even working on its own satellite constellation.

READ: Terran Orbital to invest $300 million in Floridas Space Coast, Gov. DeSantis says

More information on Terran Orbital can be found here.

Click here to download the free WFTV news and weather apps, click here to download the WFTV Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.

Original post:
We have liftoff!: Top 9 Space coast stories of 2021 - WFTV Orlando

Members of USU's Get Away Special team in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Monday, preparing to watch the of a satellite they built. The small satellite, called GASPACS, uses a custom-built inflatable aerodynamic boom to passively stabilize its orbit. (Get Away Special team, Utah State University)

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

LOGAN While most people were soundly asleep at 3 a.m. on Tuesday, a group of undergraduate students from Utah State University were wide awake seeing their dreams come to fruition as they watched NASA launch a satellite that they engineered into orbit aboard SpaceX's CRS-24 mission.

A project eight years in the making, the Get Away Special Passive Attitude Control Satellite (GASPACS), a CubeSat built by USU's Get Away Special team, launched Tuesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, with a destination of the International Space Station. Built entirely by undergraduate students at USU, satellite is a technology demonstration that uses a custom-built inflatable aerodynamic boom to passively stabilize its orbit.

The CubeSat is "about as small as you can build a satellite, (it's) about the size of a loaf of bread," said Ben Willard, team member and public relations contact on the project.

Willard said the mission of the CubeSat is to use an inflatable boom to stabilize the satellite along one direction, "almost like feathers on a dart would you throw the dart; the feathers stabilize the dart so it flies in a straight line."

"The primary mission of GASPACS is to deploy this boom and then photograph it and then send this photograph back down to a custom-built ground station that we have built on the roof of one of our buildings on campus," Willard said. The station is located on the roof of one of the physics buildings at USU.

The launch is especially significant, as the satellite is one of the world's first CubeSats to ever be built by a team of exclusively undergraduate students. And they did it while balancing full course loads and jobs.

"Satellites are extremely technologically advanced. Honestly, a lot of people didn't believe that we would be able to do it," Willard added. "It's kind of like a volunteer part-time job almost, so that definitely adds to the complexity and the timetable of it."

The project has gone through many sets of hands, as some students graduated and others came into the process.

"As students graduate and move on, it's a new set of undergraduates coming up behind them, having to learn everything that definitely takes a toll on it being even more difficult because you're not able to sit down with one group," Willard said.

To manage this difficulty, the team conducted lots of research, leaned on trial by error and reached out to experts in the industry to get advice, Willard said.

Did he and his team stay up in the early hours of Tuesday to watch the live stream of the launch?

"Absolutely," he said, emphasizing that watching the launch after the years of hard work means a lot to the team.

"One of the things we really try and do is help more students and more people have this love for space being able to say we actually have something that's in space, that's something that very few people can say," Willard said, noting that he's seen a lot more freshman join the team over the past year.

As for the future of the Get Away Special team, it's looking to keep pushing the envelope when it comes to undergraduate achievement.

"We're currently working on plans for our second satellite, we're working on proposals to send to NASA to get that accepted into the program. Now that we have built one and now that we've proven it is possible, the sky's the limit. We're just planning on continuing to build more."

The Get Away Special team welcomes all USU students to participate in leading technological developments in space, and interested students can learn more about how they can be a part of the team by signing up here.

Read more:
'Sky's the limit' for USU undergrad team that sent satellite into space - KSL.com

A microgravity experiment developed by a group of Texarkana ISD sixth graders is heading to the International Space Station in 2022, following a rigorous selection process through the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP).

This fall, all fifth-grade students at Martha and Josh Morriss Mathematics & Engineering Elementary School, and all sixth, seventh and eighth-grade Texas Middle School students enrolled in Science Honors spent six weeks learning about microgravity experimental design and developed more than 140 proposals that competed for inclusion in the SSEP Mission 16 to the International Space Station. The top three projects from TISD were then submitted to the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) for consideration by the SSEP Mission 16 Step 2 Review Board, and on Thursday, the program announced the final selections.

The Effects of Space Travel and Microgravity on Hybrid Brine Shrimp Eggs, an experiment created by TISD sixth graders Tiffany Bowen, Jaeden Rios and Rivers Glass, is now bound for the International Space Station in the Spring/Summer of 2022.

We are extremely proud of all our student researchers in TISD, as they have shown a tremendous amount of commitment and dedication during the last few weeks, said Todd Marshall, Director TISD CTE and STEM Education. We are thrilled to have these sixth graders representing our district at the national and global level.

Texarkana ISD is one of 23 participating communities in three countries (USA, Canada, and Ukraine) that are participating in this years SSEP program. The program gives students the ability to design and propose real microgravity experiments that are proposed to be conducted aboard the International Space Station.

Following this weeks announcement, and in accordance with SSEP guidelines, the group of TISD students will continue to refine and optimize their experiments design so that it can be cleared for the mission.

About the SSEP:The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program [or SSEP] is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S. and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with Nanoracks LLC, which is working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.

Read more:
Texarkana ISD student research project selected for microgravity experiment at the International Space Station | Texarkana Today - TXK Today

TheInternational Space Station completes multiple orbits around Earth every day, and now you can track the space lab as it passes overhead.

At an average altitude of 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, the space station is the third brightest object in the sky. Although this high-flying satellite can be seen from the ground, it passes by quickly, so it helps to know where to look.

To assist in this skywatching endeavor, NASA has launcheda new interactive map at its Spot the Station site.This tool allows users to enter their location and find the best places in a 50-mile radius to view the station as it passes over them, according to a statement from NASA. [Use Our Satellite & Space Station Tracker from N2YO]

"The International Space Station's trajectory passes over more than 90 percent of Earth's population. The service notifies users of passes that are high enough in the sky to be easily visible over trees, buildings and other objects on the horizon," NASA officials said in the statement. "NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston calculates the sighting information several times a week for more than 6,700 locations worldwide." In addition to the new interactive Spot the Station map,NASA has an embeddable Spot the Station widget(which you can see here) that allows users to find out when the station will pass overhead their location. The widget was released earlier this year, NASA officials said.

The first component of the space station was flown into space in 1998. Since then, the orbiting lab has been pieced together to create the complex structure that is now approximately the size of a U.S. football field. The launch of Spot the Station falls on the 16-year anniversary of humans living and working continuously aboard the station.

The Spot the Station tool also allows users to sign up to receive an email or text message notifying them the station will soon be visible in their selected area.

NASA officials said the space station is most visible in the sky at dawn and dusk. It will likely appear as a bright light moving quickly across the sky, as the space station flies at approximately 18,000 mph (28, 968 km/h).

Editor's Note:This article has been corrected to clarify that the International Space Station appears as a bright light moving across the sky, not a streak; images that feature streaks are usually long exposures that show the station moving over time.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Visit link:
How to Spot the International Space Station Location with ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are finalizing an agreement to launch the first cosmonaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, agency officials confirmed on Monday (Dec. 20).

Joel Montalbano, NASA's International Space Station (ISS) program manager, told reporters during a prelaunch briefing for the upcoming Dragon cargo resupply mission CRS-24 that the plan was to launch a cosmonaut on the SpaceX Crew-5 mission, launching in the fall of 2022.

"The plan is to fly a cosmonaut on the Crew-5 mission next fall and then launch a NASA astronaut on an upcoming Soyuz mission," Montalbano said. "The agency is currently finalizing those plans through government agreements."

Related: SpaceX's Crew Dragon 'safe enough' to fly Russian cosmonauts, Roscosmos chief says

Russian officials first made the announcement on Dec. 8; however, the two agencies have been trying to come to an agreement since the beginning of the Commercial Crew Program. According to Roscosmos, the cosmonaut selected is Anna Kikina, the only active female astronaut in Russia's cosmonaut corps.

The mission will be her first spaceflight, and according to Montalbano, a cosmonaut has already started training at the SpaceX facilities. (Montalbano did not confirm that it was in fact Kikina who would fly on the mission.)

As a member on the Crew-5 mission, Kikina would join NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, who were originally assigned to Boeing's first crewed mission. Mann and Cassada were recently reassigned to SpaceX and will join Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to round out a crew of four.

In exchange for her seat on the Dragon, Dmitry Rogozin, director-general of Roscosmos, has said that the Russian space agency pledged a seat of a Russian Soyuz capsule to an American astronaut in return.

This exchange of seats was NASA's hope once its commercial crew program ramped up. To date, SpaceX has launched four crewed missions to low Earth orbit for NASA, three of which were long-duration missions. (The other was a crewed test flight which proved that Crew Dragon could safely deliver astronauts to and from the space station.)

SpaceX was one of two companies selected by NASA to transport astronauts to low Earth orbit and back; Boeing is the other. The duo was selected in 2014, with SpaceX being the sole company to launch astronauts thus far.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft first flew on an uncrewed mission two years ago but was unable to reach the ISS due to multiple software anomalies. Working together with NASA, the company spent 18 months going through the spacecraft's software and various systems to ensure that any issues were resolved and it was ready to fly.

However, while sitting on the launch pad leading up to its second uncrewed test flight, scheduled for Aug. 30, several valves within the spacecraft's propulsion system corroded and were stuck shut. Boeing tried to troubleshoot but was forced to ship the spacecraft back to the factory.

They have since determined that moisture interactions with the spacecraft's fuel caused the valves to stick shut. Engineers are working to resolve the issues and get the spacecraft ready to fly for its next launch attempt, which is scheduled for no earlier than May 2022.

Editor's note: This article was updated to clarify that SpaceX's Crew Dragon has flown four crewed missions to the space station for NASA. SpaceX also flew the private Inspiration4 mission on a Crew Dragon, but that flight did not dock with the space station.

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Read more from the original source:
Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina will fly on SpaceX's Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station - Space.com

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The six-part documentary series "Among The Stars" gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at NASA as it prepares missions on the ground and executes them aboard the International Space Station. One of the astronauts featured on the series is Chris Cassidy. Our producer Sam Briger spoke to the now-retired astronaut about his time in NASA and on the space station. Here's Sam.

SAM BRIGER, BYLINE: The Disney+ documentary "Among The Stars" follows Chris Cassidy on the Earth as he preps for a mission to fix an experimental module on the International Space Station that just might tell us about the beginnings of the universe. But due to a rocket malfunction, he doesn't get to actually make that trip and has to watch his friends aboard the station carry on without him. Cassidy eventually makes it back to the space station as its U.S. commander. He's been to space three times, his first aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2009 as it delivered a Japanese experiment module to the station. Before joining NASA, Cassidy was a Navy SEAL and was awarded the Bronze Star. Let's hear a scene from "Among The Stars." The first voice we'll hear is Chris Cassidy.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "AMONG THE STARS")

CHRIS CASSIDY: You know, there's a few things that we do as astronauts that really make you feel like an astronaut, and spacewalking is one of those things. I really just enjoy those days. I enjoy everything about the spacewalk.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Shane (ph). Good morning to everyone in Houston. Great to be with you.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Good morning, Chris and Luca. We are ready for you to head out over to the Z1 sites, and we'll get you set up and ready to go.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Copy that, Shane.

CASSIDY: It can be a little frightening the first hour or so when you're out there and every now and then, even when you're experienced. You stop and take a look. It's a beautiful sight. When you see the Earth out on a spacewalk, it's usually between your toes, and you're seeing the Earth go by at 5 miles a second. And you know how far it is between cities and coasts, and you're seeing that distance happen within minutes. It really blows your mind. You have to actually tell yourself, hey, you're here to do a job and focus on it.

BRIGER: That's Chris Cassidy from the Disney+ documentary "Among The Stars." Chris Cassidy, welcome to FRESH AIR.

CASSIDY: Oh, thank you. Glad to be with you, Sam.

BRIGER: So the series starts out with you on a spacewalk with your fellow astronaut, Luca Parmitano. And this is - I think you're doing maintenance work on the space station. But during the spacewalk, there's a real problem. Parmitano's helmet starts filling up with water. Can you describe what was happening there?

CASSIDY: Yeah, you know, that was really interesting. In fact, that was the second spacewalk of two in a week. And so six days earlier, we had completed a spacewalk which had gone largely normal until the very end when we took our - we got inside and took our helmets off, and we noticed some amount of water on Luca's head. When talking with the engineers and us, we assumed it was one source of water, which is our drink bag, that had leaked in a way that got around his - the crown of his head. Fast-forward a week later - 45 minutes into the spacewalk, that same water he felt on his head, and this time it was - he could tell it was growing. The water was cold, which meant that - the only source of cold water is coming from the technical backpack - you know, the technical systems on the backpack. And that led us to the immediate conclusion that this is not normal, and we need to head in.

BRIGER: How dangerous was that situation? Like, could he have possibly drowned in his suit?

CASSIDY: So you definitely don't want water inside your helmet on a spacewalk. The outside - you know, everybody that's listening probably realizes it's a vacuum. There's no pressure outside. So the suit is your only source of pressure, which is therefore your only source of life. In order to get your helmet off, you must get back into an environment where you have pressure around you, and that exists only in the airlock, so as the water was accumulating on his head and covering - in short amount of time, covering his eyes, saturating his ears and is in his nose, all around his mouth, it became more and more apparent that we needed to really, in an expedited way, get his helmet off and get - make sure that he could have a pathway to air. And that was the process. This led us back to the airlock.

And then repressurizing the airlock is not a quick thing. I mean, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to get it to a place where you can safely take the helmet off. And during that time, he and I were monitoring - I was doing it visually, he was doing it by could he get air? - but monitoring his ability to breathe and trying to race against the clock to when we would have enough pressure to take the helmet off and assure that he could breathe.

BRIGER: Right, because obviously you're in space. There's no gravity, so the water can just sort of move about and just go into his ears, his nose and just stop him from breathing, right?

CASSIDY: Exactly. And ironically, the water - the surface tension of the water really drives its behavior, and it'll stick to whatever it's stuck to, even if you - when it gets on your head, even if you shake your head, like, vigorously, back and forth, it really doesn't want to fling off. So once the water droplets stuck to his head, they were there and started to accumulate and spread around his head like a layer of frosting on a cake.

BRIGER: So the show "Among The Stars," you know, is a lot about this mission to repair this very expensive piece of equipment that's attached to the outside of the space station, and it's called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS. First of all, can you just tell us what it is?

CASSIDY: It's a device that's about physically the size of a minivan, and the guts of it analyze deep space particles to determine the origins of life. You'll have to watch the show to get the Reader's Digest version on how that exactly happens, but that's my level of understanding, is it's very important to the - you know, the larger physics community and therefore to understanding the universe we live in.

BRIGER: And so what was wrong with the AMS that - what had to be repaired on it?

CASSIDY: Now this part is up my alley. The system itself is very sensitive to temperature, and space is a harsh-temperature environment - really cold in the shade and really hot in the sun. So you need a robust temperature regulation system, and that requires coolant to be circulating around it at a precise temperature, and then in order to pump that circulating fluid, you need pumps. And because those pumps are so critical to the life - to the health and wellness of the experiment, they had four redundant pumps. And you only need one for it to work, but because of a manufacturing flaw, all of the pumps had or were about to fail. I think two of the four had completely failed, and we were limping it along in that last year - 2019 into early 2020 - to keep the pumps running at a complete failure that the machine would not work.

BRIGER: So basically, you have to, like, bring this new piece of equipment and attach it to the AMS so it's providing the appropriate amount of coolant to the spectrometer. And when I was just thinking about it - like, if you had to do this on Earth, I bet this would maybe take, you know, like, 30 minutes or an hour to do - right? - like, to just attach this new thing to this other piece of equipment. Just give us a sense of how long it took in terms of, like, planning this operation out and actually, like, the amount of time in space doing spacewalks to fix this piece of machinery, took four spacewalks of about seven hours long, so you're somewhere in the 28-hour range for total time to do the repair in flight.

The preparation on the ground was over the course of about two years, and that was largely to make sure that we had the right mechanism to connect the new pipes to the old pipes. And these little - I say pipes. It's really a tube about the size - a little skinnier than a No. 2 pencil. Yeah, about half the diameter of a No. 2 pencil. And there were - there's four pumps. Each pump needs an in and an out. So there's eight lines that you have to cut. And how do you meet two metal tubes together, pointy end to pointy end? That's what - it took a long time to really make sure we had this designed properly, and that mechanism was called a swage fitting. Those exist in application and industry on the ground but a little bit different in zero gravity and making sure that you can operate them with big, heavy gloves on. And how do you do this fine-tuned surgery in basically a ski parka and ski mittens? That's the hard part.

BRIGER: So yeah. So just talk about how hard it is to actually do things in space. Like, to use a wrench or to, you know, cut something, like, how much dexterity do you have?

CASSIDY: Well, the answer to that question is whether or not you're inside the space station or outside. Most of the six months I was in space, you're doing all of that inside the space station and you don't have the gravity. So the tools and the little nuts and bolts are all floating around, but you still have your normal hands and your dexterity and you have your mouth you can hold something. And we use duct tape in creative ways to help you. So there's a little bit of challenges working inside the space station, but it's complicated 10x or more even when you go outside and you're wearing a space suit and trying to manipulate those same small things with big gloves on. And you can't put something in your mouth and you don't have the use of duct tape. So it's a little bit trickier. And therefore we design the tools to help astronauts in that environment.

BRIGER: So when I was watching the film, I saw that there was all this - there's just all this stuff on the outside of your spacesuit. Like, there's all these metal tools attached to the chest piece and then you have - it looks like you have maybe a mirror on one of your sleeves and a notebook on the other. Like, what are all those things doing on your suit?

CASSIDY: Well, they're all there for a purpose. The, quote, "notebook" is really the emergency checklist. So if you have a problem with your spacesuit and you get a different alarm, you can flip to the correct page, and it'll tell you what your corrective actions are all the way down to go back inside as fast as you can.

BRIGER: (Laughter) Yeah, you don't want to get that one, right?

CASSIDY: You don't want to get that one, which is the one - which was the message basically for the water in the helmet. Like, get out of here, you got no hope. The mirrors are for your switches because a lot of the switches are on your belly, the belly of the suit. And you can't look down and see them. So they're - the switches are labeled in backwards writing and you hold your mirror in front of you and then you can read those switches. The rest of the stuff is - means to hold things like a tool belt that a carpenter would have. We use the similar thing. It's just mounted on your chest and all of your tools are fixed there.

BRIGER: So when you're out there, it looks like you're really holding on to - there's, like, handrails all over this - all over the outside of the space station. And you're, like, moving around, you know, moving your hands along these rails. Are you also always tethered to the station in some way?

CASSIDY: You're always tethered to a station. That's then - your hands are your first defense from floating away. But as a secondary and tertiary method, we have a long kind of, like, metal braided cable like a shark fishing line that retracts and reels out in the same way a dog leash does. And then once you get to where you're going, you take a small little two foot - two- to three-foot-long fixed rope and connect yourself so that you can let go and you know you're always going to be within arm's length. The yellow handrails that you see all over the space station are put just for that purpose to travel on with your hands and then to hook to once you're ready to be in one spot.

BRIGER: So you're always doing these walks in teams, right? But what would be the protocol if somehow someone, you know, God forbid, was untethered and started floating away from the station?

CASSIDY: Yeah. First and foremost, we train to great lengths to not have that happen, but there's a couple things besides the tethers that I just described. We do have a very small amount of compressed nitrogen gas that you can pull out a controller and manipulate those gas little spurts to stop your floating away and then transfer that velocity back towards the space station. Normally, though, the primary means would be that dog leash would slowly reel you back if you did slip away with your hands. We trained for all those scenarios because you basically have the rest of your life to figure it out if you fail to connect.

BRIGER: Which is probably not very long.

CASSIDY: Not very long, yeah.

BRIGER: Well, let's take a short break here, and we'll be back. If you're just joining us, I'm speaking with retired astronaut Chris Cassidy, who's featured in the Disney+ documentary series "Among The Stars." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE ACORN'S "LOW GRAVITY")

BRIGER: If you're just joining us, our guest is retired astronaut Chris Cassidy, who's featured in the Disney documentary series "Among The Stars." As it turns out, you were preparing to do these repairs to this module, the AMS, but because of a malfunction of a Soyuz rocket, you weren't going to be up in space at the station in time, and other astronauts that were already scheduled to go to space would have to take over. So first of all, during this, like, period of the space program, NASA was buying tickets to the space station on Russian Soyuz rockets. Can you explain that?

CASSIDY: Yeah. The space shuttle retired in 2011, and until the SpaceX Dragon started flying people in 2020, that put us in this nine-year period where the only way to get to the space station was on the Russian Soyuz rocket, and therefore other countries - U.S., Canada, Japan, European countries - we would buy seats from the Russians. And that included the training leading up to the flight and the flight itself and the return back to Earth. So two of my missions were this way.

BRIGER: So Chris, NASA's now partnered with the company SpaceX, who is transporting astronauts to the space station. How has that changed the program in your mind?

CASSIDY: Well, you know, for one, it takes us out of the dependency on the Russians to get our people to and from the space station. Now we have an additional means to get there and launching folks from Florida, from U.S. soil, and that's all good stuff. Ultimately, I think that with the success of SpaceX and, hopefully, Boeing soon, these commercial companies can take care of all the low-Earth orbit type of missions and allow NASA's to focus on going to Mars, return to the moon and those more expensive missions that are harder for a commercial company to make money in.

BRIGER: Are - do you have any concerns about a commercial company taking over the lead here?

CASSIDY: No, no. I think it's a great partnership and makes American people excited. And therefore, I think it's all healthy for space exploration.

BRIGER: So we see one of these - we actually see the first SpaceX rocket launching to carry two American astronauts to the space station, and you were on the space station to greet them. And I have to say, checking out the SpaceX rocket compared to the Soyuz or just what it looks like on the space station, it's so sleek. And like, the astronauts' spacesuits look all futuristic compared to NASA's spacesuits. Did you notice that?

CASSIDY: Oh, yeah. You know, if you ever seen a Tesla, a brand-new Tesla, that's the same feeling that you have inside the SpaceX Dragon crew capsule. It's a big glass screen with all touch button controls, very - a few switches that are, you know, mandatory for emergency things. But for the most part, you described it perfectly - just a very sleek, clean machine.

BRIGER: So your first trip to space was on the space shuttle in 2009, I think. And this - you know, this was after the Columbia disaster of 2003 and also after it was announced in 2004 that the shuttle was going to be retired. And I read that your launch was actually delayed, like, five times. Some of those were because of weather, but two times it was delayed because of hydrogen leaks, which I think is potentially a dangerous situation. So I'm just wondering in these final years of the shuttle, did you ever worry that getting onto the shuttle was sort of more of a risky venture than it should be?

CASSIDY: Well, you - every time you climb into a rocket and light it on fire, it's a risk. But we learned - as the shuttle program matured, we learned with each mishap and near-miss mishap what those risks are and how to deal with them and how to protect against them. And the more you know, the more you have to analyze. So I think that in the beginning part of the shuttle, we we're flying a lot of it on - I wouldn't say luck, but with a little bit of a a blind spot to what some of the risky points were or just how risky some of those places were. An example is the foam - the thermal protection foam that came off on the Columbia accident. We didn't know about that for many, many launches. Subsequent to that, there was a great deal of focus on, do we have all the foam intact, yes or no? And if it's all intact, then you can feel reasonably safe. So there was definite learning curve as the shuttle program progressed.

BRIGER: So at that point, when you're being launched from the Earth, you're strapped to this rocket, do you have to just accept a certain powerlessness of your situation? Like, something really bad could go wrong, but there's not really a lot that you can do at that point. Do you just have to give yourself up to the moment?

CASSIDY: Well, you could look at it that way, but we do have a lot of checklists, and we train to be working malfunctions and problems right until the - you know, all the way as far as you can. And so that's why we spend countless hours in the simulators doing exactly that. The instructor team will fail certain components in this - in the computer simulator, and we respond. And then they fail another thing, and we respond. And they fail another thing and another thing until some of the cases are, by design, really not survivable. But it teaches you the mindset to triage just like you - as an ER doctor would in the emergency room and deal with the biggest problems first and then kind of get yourself well one case at a time.

BRIGER: We're speaking with retired astronaut Chris Cassidy, who's featured in the Disney+ series "Among The Stars." We'll be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SUN RA'S "I DREAM TOO MUCH")

BRIGER: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Sam Briger sitting in for Terry Gross. My guest is recently retired astronaut Chris Cassidy, who's featured in the six-part documentary series "Among The" Stars that's on Disney+. It's about NASA and its missions on the International Space Station. Cassidy was the 500th person in space, which he's visited five times. The last was a six-month stay on the space station as its commander.

So let's talk a little bit more about living on the International Space Station. First of all, like, how big is it? How many different areas are there?

CASSIDY: Well, I like to describe it in terms of school buses connected together. Imagine eight or so school buses connected in different directions.

BRIGER: And what are your sleeping quarters like? It sounds like you usually have your own place, although maybe right now someone's sharing because there's six sleeping quarters and there's seven people. But, like, you're usually sleeping by - alone. And, like, are you attached to the wall or something? Like, how do you sleep in space?

CASSIDY: Yeah. Each sleeping quarters is about the size of a refrigerator, and that's your private space. So you put your sleeping bag on the wall, you tie it to the wall. And you zip yourself into the bag when you sleep at night. And then you've got some bags of clothing and pictures on the wall of your family and a computer to do email and to make telephone calls or to watch movies. But for the most part, you just go in there to sleep or to change your clothes if you need privacy. But the rest of the time you're out and about, zipping around, working on experiments or fixing broken things or preparing for a spacewalk or whatever the case may be.

BRIGER: But is it hard to sleep on the space station?

CASSIDY: It's a little hard to sleep you because you're - the first week or so you're just getting used to not having a pillow. And you're not feeling the pressure on your whole body as you lie down on a mattress, as you would here. And so that new sensation and kind of telling yourself that it's time to relax, it takes a little bit of getting used to.

BRIGER: What are some of the difficult things that we take for granted here on Earth that just are harder in space?

CASSIDY: Well, it's easy to move heavy things. You know, like a thing a size of a refrigerator, you can move it around all by yourself and turn corners and manipulate it and all that. Something that is small and light, like a bag of washers or nuts and bolts, those are incredibly hard to deal with because they just float in a million different directions and quickly get us - get out of your view or get out of control. So it's very easy to lose small things. It doesn't - things don't fall to your feet like they do or you're accustomed to on the ground. They get sucked up in the air conditioning vents. And ultimately, you'll find things three or four days later in the air conditioner return filters if you do lose something.

BRIGER: And how long is a day in space on the space station?

CASSIDY: Well, we keep it kind of the same. Let's back up from sleep. We always protect for eight hours of sleep for crewmembers, and the rest of the day is kind of broken up into workday from roughly 7:30 in the morning to about 7:00, 7:30 in the evening. That 12 hours includes a break for lunch and about two hours for exercise, including cleaning up from exercise. And then the rest is your work day. And then the other time outside of that from 7:30 in the evening till bedtime is what I call the - what we call it now - prep for sleep, which is equivalent to you're done with work here on Earth. You're driving home. You stop at the grocery store, you get milk and eggs. And then you go home and you fix dinner. And then you watch the news and read a newspaper and go to bed. Kind of all that same stuff.

BRIGER: And how many sunsets do you see in the span of one space day?

CASSIDY: In one 24-hour period, you see 16 sunrises and sunsets.

BRIGER: Wow (laughter).

CASSIDY: We're not necessarily by the window every single one of those, so it's more like you float by and you look out and go, oh, it's daytime out here or, oh, it's nighttime out. It really doesn't affect your circadian rhythm or anything like that.

BRIGER: I have to ask you about peeing and pooping and waste management. I'm sure that's probably the most common questions you're asked, but...

CASSIDY: Yes. It's so common, in fact, that I made a video about it on YouTube. You can search Chris Cassidy space toilet, and it's very informative because I go through the whole soup to nuts, so to speak. But...

BRIGER: Spare us from from searching on YouTube if you could give us a quick summary here.

CASSIDY: No. 1 is pretty easy. You take - there's a tube, and you pull it off the wall. For both operations, you turn on a switch. It activates a fan. So there's a little bit of air flow. Your urine goes in this tube and actually goes into the water processing system. And that urine ultimately turns back into drinking water. We have filters and things that take out the nasty stuff, and we change out those filters periodically. That's actually a critical component for future space exploration. Reclaiming that urine into water saves tremendously on the amount of up-mass that we need to do. Sending water for a six-month mission, for example, would be crazy. But I digress.

Let me finish the thoughts on No. 2. No. 2, you go - the space toilet is pretty small. It's the circle that you - where the hole where you got to put your deposit is about 6 inches in diameter. It goes into a little plastic bag, including the paper to clean yourself, and then that plastic bag then falls into this bucket that's about the size of five-gallon, you know, five-gallon bucket. And then it lasts maybe a week, and then you change out to a new bucket.

BRIGER: So then is the waste eventually carried back to the planet?

CASSIDY: It's - we put it in a cargo ship and that will ultimately take away all of our trash. And these cargo ships burn up in the atmosphere. So that's where the poop goes.

BRIGER: So we don't have to look up...

CASSIDY: We don't have to look up and worry. Yeah. It burns up.

BRIGER: You know, a lot of your time up there, you're doing these experiments. Can you describe one of the experiments that you did?

CASSIDY: Well, there's so many. But there's a category of biological ones where we, the astronauts, are the subject, varying things - food, diet, exercise. And we give samples of all our fluids. And other things that are living animals - insects, lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, that kind of thing. Those are kind of cool ones to see because particularly things that are growing, you can follow it along. And the crew, everyone on the crew likes to check, you know, how's the radish doing today? There's other ones I participated in - with fire safety. You know, we had a control box where we burned different things to see how the combustion of fire-retardant materials varied in space versus home.

BRIGER: That sounds like a pretty dangerous experiment.

CASSIDY: Well, it can be, but it - trust me. NASA doesn't do anything dangerous. So there's probably a belt and suspenders for every level of protection on that experiment. And one of the cool ones - I thought it was cool - was watching how water droplets behaved and experiment with a water sprayer. There's other things that have much more significant impact to life on Earth, like tissue growth. You know, growing a tissue on a petri dish on Earth, it's very two-dimensional and flat. In space, it can grow in three dimensions, which is a game changer. Let's see. DNA sequencing was a part of - there's lots and lots and lots, and the list goes on.

BRIGER: You say that a lot of things can kill you in space. What are some of the biggest concerns that you have while you're on the space station?

CASSIDY: You know, everybody sees the launch day and the reentry day as two high-profile days, and they are in terms of risk. But there's lots of debris up there in the space - in space, as evidenced by most recently I think a week or two ago. There was some Russian debris that was scattered around from a satellite that they shot.

BRIGER: Yeah, they were testing an anti-satellite weapon, I guess.

CASSIDY: Anti-ballistic - yeah, anti-satellite weapon. And that poses a great risk to the crew and to the vehicle. The space station is in good shape, but it's been up there for 20 years. And some of the metal has been exposed to extreme heat ranges and torques based on the rotation of the spacecraft for all these years. And I think that some of the metal could fatigue at some point.

BRIGER: So, Chris, just how dangerous is space debris or space junk? Like, is there so much of it that you have to be consciously looking out for it? Like, when you're in a space capsule, like, do you have to avoid it? What's the deal there?

CASSIDY: Well, it's a big sky. Like, you don't - you look out the window, you don't see space junk flying all around. And we talk in missed distances of kilometers is too close for comfort. So it's not like they're zinging by 10 meters away from you, and you think, oh, that was close. No, these are - we don't ever see them, and they're tracked by tracking stations on the ground. But that said, it is the biggest risk of a space mission is getting hit by a particle. And I've been out on spacewalks, and pretty much every spacewalk I've been on, you can see divots in the metal, the outside skin of the space station, where particles have hit. And they haven't had enough energy to poke a hole, but you can definitely tell it's getting hit.

BRIGER: If you're just joining us, I'm speaking with retired astronaut Chris Cassidy, who's featured in the Disney+ documentary series "Among The Stars." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF OSCAR PETERSON'S "GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN")

BRIGER: If you're just joining us, our guest is retired astronaut Chris Cassidy, who's featured in the Disney documentary series "Among The Stars." So let's talk about the actual return from space. It sounds like it takes six hours. What are the dangers of reentry? In the documentary, you talk about how you can bounce off the atmosphere and just head off into space.

CASSIDY: Yeah. You know, you're - the atmosphere is a skinny little layer around the Earth, and you have to penetrate it to get back home. And it's way beyond my level of math, but there's a certain angle where you have to hit it just right. Like, if you're skipping a rock on a lake, if you do it too shallow, it skips and skips and skips, which is your goal when you're skipping rocks. But when you're returning to Earth, you don't want to just skip and skip and skip. You want to actually go into the atmosphere, which is akin to the lake. If you throw a rock straight down at the lake, it goes crashing down and doesn't skip at all, and it goes too hard, impacts into the rocks below. So we're trying to find that exact balance between just a nice angle and not too steep where it's too much on the people in the spacecraft. So that's the gist of it.

BRIGER: Tell us about the deorbit burn. How long does that take?

CASSIDY: The deorbit burn is about four minutes long, 4 1/2 minutes long. And it's a very, very, very tight calculation, and we're timing it down to the second. And if it - we have these - the procedures - emergency procedures has it - if you under burn or over burn, which is the same thing as are you going to skip or go in. If you under burn, you could skip. If you over burn, you could slow yourself down too much and dig in too hard and have too high Gs on coming back. So that deorbit burn is really critical to get to slow down to the exact speed you need to.

BRIGER: And it looks like your capsule is just in flames at that point.

CASSIDY: It's totally in flames. In the Soyuz, there's two windows on either - a window on either side. And all of a sudden, the whole capsule inside turns like this fire orange color. It's really freaky.

BRIGER: Well, I bet (laughter). So once you successfully land, you've been in space for six months not dealing with gravity. Can you actually walk? Like, it looks like when you came out of the capsule, like, people were carrying you.

CASSIDY: Yeah, right when we land - and again, I'm talking all Soyuz. It's slightly different for SpaceX and how they land in the water, and then they get put onto a ship. So the process is just a little different. But for the Soyuz, we land on land in the steps of Kazakhstan. The helicopters find you right away, particularly if the weather is clear, which it was in both my landings. You could possibly open the hatch yourself and get yourself out, but it's a lot of work. It's very - everything feels extremely heavy, including your head and your body.

So we just sit there and wait about five, 10 minutes for somebody to open the hatch and assist us and pull us out. And then just like you described, they carry us to some chairs. We sit in the chairs and get some early medical attention. And over the course of about that next 45 minutes to an hour, you're slowly getting used to it to the point of, after that long, you can take your suit off and not get too sick. And then in a gingerly way, walk to the helicopter with some assistance. Over the course of the next 24 hours, we make it back to Houston. And by then, I was able to walk off the airplane and be with my family.

BRIGER: But then you have a two-week quarantine period - right? - and rehabilitation.

CASSIDY: The two-week quarantine period was a new thing for me this time. And I got to be honest, Sam, that was the worst part of the being gone for six months was being 3 miles from my house and my wife and not being able to go home.

BRIGER: Yeah. I bet.

See original here:
Astronaut Chris Cassidy invites you inside the International Space Station - NPR