Astronauts take cover as debris drifts toward International Space Station
Astronauts in ISS take cover as Chinese space junk flies past.
Astronauts in ISS take cover as Chinese space junk flies past.
Astronauts in ISS take cover as Chinese space junk flies past.
Three astronauts were launched to ISS today in a Soyuz capsule the Russians have named Gagarin, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his flight on April 12.
The Daily Beast reports today that the last flight of the shuttle Endeavour has been delayed due to a schedule conflict with a Russian Progress freighter.
Note that this has not yet been confirmed by NASA.
Update from spaceref: NASA has rescheduled Endeavour’s launch for April 29.
Japan’s unmanned freighter undocked from ISS today.
Good news: Japan has reopened its space station control room following the earthquake.
The spaceport at Wallops Island, Maryland has unveiled its rocket assembly building to be used by Orbital Sciences in launching cargo to ISS.
The Russians have set the new date, April 5, for next manned Soyuz launch to ISS.
Three astronauts return safely to Earth in Soyuz capsule.
Problems going up and going down: Not only are there issues with the Soyuz capsule that is scheduled to return to Earth on Wednesday, a problem in the communications system of the next Soyuz capsule has caused the Russians to delay its launch by at least one week.
The 8.9 earthquake has shut down the Japanese space station mission control center, forcing NASA to take over monitoring Japanese ISS modules.
Putting ISS to use. Key quote:
Under consideration is using the entire station and its six-person crew as an analog for a deep-space human exploration vehicle en route to Mars. An internal team is studying the feasibility and value of such an exercise in the summer of 2012. “We might start with a small window, like a 30-day window, with actual time delays with what we’d expect with a Martian communications system,” Gerstenmaier says. “We may freeze our consumables on station, in the sense of saying that we’ve started our voyage to Mars, and see how well we do in our predictions.”
Discovery has undocked from ISS, for the last time.
The Leonardo cargo module was permanently installed on ISS yesterday.
The Soyuz fly-around of the space station to photograph it with the shuttle docked has been canceled.
The crash of the computer that runs the station’s robot arm stranded a spacewalking astronaut in space for about 20 minutes yesterday.
Take a gander at this spectacular image of the shuttle approaching ISS, taken by an amateur astronomer from the ground!
The beginning of the end: The shuttle Discovery docked successfully with the space station, its 13th and final visit to ISS.
More station news: The shuttle Discovery has lifted off on its last mission.
Europe’s Kepler cargo vehicle has docked with ISS.
The automatic docking of the European Kepler freighter to the space station is now set for 10:47 pm (Eastern) tonight.
The robot arm on ISS shifted the Japanese freighter docked there to a different port today to clear a path for the shuttle.
Meanwhile, up on ISS two Russians have successfully completed a five hour spacewalk, getting all their work done early.
Europe’s second ISS freighter, dubbed Johannes Kepler, launched successfully today.
The delay yesterday of the launch of the European cargo ship to ISS might also delay the next Shuttle launch.
The launch of Europe’s freighter to ISS was scrubbed today. They will try again tomorrow.
An extraordinary photo opportunity: Use the Soyuz to photograph ISS next month when the shuttle and the Japanese and European cargo ships are all docked to ISS.
Robots in action! The robot arm Dextre did its first work on ISS this week, unloading two payloads from the Japanese unmanned freighter that docked with the station last week.
Another freighter, this time from Russia, docks with ISS.
Another Japanese space success today: Its second robot cargo vehicle has successfully docked at ISS.