Two astronauts begin year-long mission on ISS
The launch of a Soyuz capsule today with three astronauts successfully began the year-long mission of two of those astronauts on ISS.
They will dock with ISS this evening.
Tag: ISS
How scientists are using the Kelly twins during Scott Kelly’s year-long mission to ISS to learn how weightlessness effects the human body
Link here. Scott Kelly launches today to the station to begin the flight.
The article’s headline and initial focus on how the Kellys’ privacy rights might interfere with the research seems inappropriate. It is as if the author and Nature wanted to spin the story to force the Kellys to reveal private medical data they would prefer to keep private.
The real story the article tells is that an incredible wealth of knowledge about microgravity will be gained by this flight, because the Kellys are both participating. And depending on what is learned when their entire genomes are sequenced, we might also be able to study that fully as well.
Russians to offer tourists six-month tour on ISS
The competition heats up: The Russians are considering offering tourists the ability to buy a full six month tour on ISS when they resume tourist flights in 2018.
They don’t yet have any customers for such a flight, but in order to make some money, or “lowering the budgetary load” as they put it, they are considering offering it.
Sierra Nevada makes deal with Houston airport authority for Dream Chaser landings
Sierra Nevada has made an agreement with Houston’s airport authority to use Ellington Airport there to land its Dream Chaser spacecraft.
This announcement is part of the public relations push going on right now as NASA prepares to award its next round of cargo freighter contracts to two private companies. Sierra Nevada has bid to use an unmanned version of Dream Chaser to launch that cargo.
Russian tourism flights to resume in 2018
The competition heats up: Faced with the loss of income from NASA in 2017, when private commercial ferries take over the job of bringing Americans to ISS, Russian officials today revealed that they plan to resume launching tourists to the station in 2018.
The problem the Russians will have then is that they will have competition from the American companies, who will likely be able to compete in price with them, and will be easier to work with.
How NASA will use Bigelow’s privately built ISS module
Not much it seems. The key paragraph is this:
Once installed, BEAM will be largely sealed off from the rest of ISS, with astronauts entering it every four to six months to retrieve data from sensors inside it. Crusan suggested NASA will consider making greater use of the module over time as the agency becomes more comfortable with its performance. That would require additional work inside the module, he said, since it has no active life support system beyond some fans.
This story illustrates NASA’s sometimes incredibly over-cautious approach to new technology. I grant that space is difficult and that it is always wise to be careful and to test thoroughly any new technology, but NASA sometimes carries this too far. For example, it took NASA more than two decades of testing before it finally approved the use of ion engines on a planetary mission (Dawn). Similarly, inflatable modules were abandoned by NASA initially, and wouldn’t even exist if a private company, Bigelow, hadn’t grabbed the technology and flown it successfully.
Launch date for one-year mission to ISS set
The launch of three astronauts, two of which will spend a year in space, has now been scheduled for March 27.
It is because these two astronauts will not be returning to Earth in six months there was room for the Russians to sell a seat to space tourist Sarah Brightman.
Sierra Nevada introduces its cargo version of Dream Chaser
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has unveiled a revised cargo version of Dream Chaser, competing for NASA next round of freighter contracts to ISS.
They have made a number of changes, but the most significant is the new folding wings, allowing the spacecraft to fit inside the fairings of most rocket systems. This also eliminates one of the concerns I have read about the previous design on whether its wings could have withstood exposure to the maximum atmospheric stresses experienced during launch.
Lockheed Martin enters the competition to supply cargo for ISS
The competition heats up: Lockheed Martin has joined Sierra Nevada, Orbital ATK, Boeing, and SpaceX in bidding for NASA’s next contract to ferry cargo to ISS.
Lockheed’s proposal is different in that it proposes a two spacecraft operation. The cargo would be hauled up in a very simple storage bin, where a long-term orbital tug would grab it and take it to ISS. The idea is that they would only have to build and launch the complicated thrusters, robot arms, computers, and avionics of their cargo freighter once, thereby saving money.
Two companies will be chosen. Since the first competition back in the mid-2000s, when NASA picked SpaceX and Kistler for the first cargo round, the quality of the bids has improved remarkably. Back then, NASA had to choose from a bunch of new companies, none of which had ever done this before. The big companies (Boeing, Lockheed Martin) then poo-pooed the competition, saying that it couldn’t be done as cheap as the new companies claimed. After Kistler went under and was replaced by Orbital, they and SpaceX proved the big companies were wrong.
Now the competition includes all the big players, except that those big players are no longer offering expensive systems but cut-rate efficient designs that are as cost effective as SpaceX and Orbital’s first designs.
Privately built module for ISS unveiled today
The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace today unveiled the inflatable habitable module it is building for ISS that will launch in September.
The total cost for this module was $17 million, compared to the billion that NASA routinely spent to build its own modules.
Crew returns safely from ISS
A Soyuz capsule returned three astronauts safely to Earth today, including the first Russian female astronaut since 1997.
A new song for space
At a press conference Sarah Brightman yesterday revealed that she is working with Andrew Lloyd Webber to create a new song to sing when she visits the International Space Station later this year.
She also said that she will sing it from the station near the end of her visit. While the reason she gave for this schedule was because she needed time to adjust to weightlessness, I also see this as good marketing, allowing time for a pr build-up to get the largest audience possible.
Two astronauts gear up for one year in space
The final preparations are under way for sending two astronauts, one American and one Russian, to ISS for a full year.
Their launch is scheduled for March 27 in a Soyuz capsule.
One other cool aspect of this long mission: The American astronaut, Scott Kelly, has a twin brother, Mark Kelly, who is also an astronaut, though retired. Mark will be duplicating some of Scott’s in-space activities during the mission. Doctors will also compare how Scott’s body changes in weightlessness over time, in comparison to his brother here on Earth.
NASA schedules commercial manned demo missions to ISS
The competition heats up: NASA has now added to its ISS schedule the planned launch dates for the first demo missions of SpaceX’s and Boeing’s privately built manned capsules.
For Boeing, its CST-100 will first launch on an uncrewed test flight to the Station via the “Boe-OFT” mission in Apr, 2017 – on a 30 days mission, ending with a parachute assisted return. Should all go to place, the second mission will involve a crew – yet to be selected – on a mission designated “Boe-CFT”, launching in July, 2017, on a 14 day mission to the ISS.
The [planning] dates show SpaceX to be the most advanced in the Commercial Crew path, with their projected test flight dates currently set to win the honor of being the first Commercial Crew vehicle to arrive at the orbital outpost. That first Dragon 2 mission, designated “SpX-DM1″, has a December, 2016 launch date, ahead of a 30 day mission – most of which will be docked to the ISS – ending with a parachute assisted landing in the Pacific ocean. This would be followed by “SpX-DM2″, a crewed flight, launching in April of 2017, on a 14 day mission. This would mark the first time astronauts have launched from American soil on a US built spacecraft since Atlantis’ STS-135 mission in 2011.
American manned space exploration should begin to get very exciting in the next two years, with multiple companies now capable of putting humans in space.
Third ISS spacewalk to reconfigure station completed successfully
Two astronauts today successfully completed the third spacewalk in a year-long effort to reconfigure ISS to accommodate two U.S. manned capsules at the same time.
Second spacewalk in ISS reconfiguration completed
On Wednesday astronauts successfully completed the second spacewalk in NASA’s long term reconfiguration of ISS to accomodate two privately-built commercial manned spacecraft.
The reconfiguration will continue on Sunday with the third EVA for this crew.
The spacewalk had one minor issue that could be a cause for concern for future American spacewalks: The suit of one of the astronauts had a small water leak within it. While this problem was minor and not a threat to the astronaut, it is reminiscent of the more serious spacesuit leak that occurred in 2013 that almost drowned an Italian astronaut. Finding the cause of that leak took almost a year to track down, and though solved even now raises concerns. To have another water leak inside a suit, even a minor one, suggests that the design of the American suit has a design flaw that they are having difficulty correcting.
Russians confirm plan to leave ISS in 2024
The competition heats up: Russian space managers have confirmed that they have endorsed a plan to leave ISS in 2024, when they will assemble their own space station using new modules as well as a significant number of the modules attached to ISS.
On February 24, 2015, the Scientific and Technical Council, NTS, at Roskosmos, the main planning body at the agency led by a newly appointed chairman and the former head of the agency Yuri Koptev, formally endorsed the Russian participation in the ISS program until 2024. It would be followed by the separation of Russia’s newest modules from the ISS to form the new national space station. As previously reported on this site, the initial configuration of the station would include the Multi-purpose Module, MLM, the Node Module, UM, and the Science and Power Module, NEM. Notably, the original Russian ISS component — the Zvezda Service Module, SM — was not included in the plan, thus ensuring that its propulsion capabilities would be available for deorbiting of the outpost at the end of its operational life.
Whether ISS will be functional with just the Russian Zvezda module is not clear. NASA engineers now have about a decade to figure this out and to fix it.
In general the break up of the partnership running ISS will be good for space exploration. The competition between nations will spur development and innovation. It will also free each nation from the shackles of the partnership. The Russians in particular have wanted to utilize ISS for more daring and longer expeditions to research interplanetary travel, and were stymied by NASA’s bureaucracy. Once they start doing this sort of thing on their own station NASA will feel obliged to follow.
Obviously, competition between nations carries risk. As long as there is some agreed to framework for claiming territory on other planets (something that the U.N. treaty does not allow), the nations will be able to compete peacefully. Without that framework, however, will leave room for disagreement and conflict.
It is thus essential that the space-faring nations sit down and work out this framework, and do it as soon as possible before each nation has vested interests in space that are already in conflict with each other. Above all, this new framework has got to abandon the U.N. space treaty with its rules that forbid the claiming and controlling of territory by nations in space. Those rules were never realistic, and literally guarantee that nations will eventually end up at war with each other as they fight to determine who owns what in space.
Russia to build own space station after 2024?
The competition heats up: Roscosmos revealed today that Russia intends to assemble its own space station beginning in 2024, and that they will use existing modules from ISS to do it.
If this happens, the U.S. will have a problem with ISS, which as presently designed needs the Russian modules. Then again, none of this is confirmed yet, and 2024 is a long time from now.
Spacewalk to begin the reconfiguration of ISS successful
Saturday’s first spacewalk in a yearlong project to reconfigure ISS so that it can accomodate two commercial cargo capsules and two commercial ferries, all at the same time, completed all tasks with no problems.
The article also provides a very clear explanation of the entire planned reconfiguration of ISS, including the reasons why these changes are necessary.
An ISS built from matchsticks!
The competition heats up? As part of an exhibition in Houston a man has built a scale model version of the International Space Station, made entirely of matchsticks.