The Pavlof Volcano in Alaska on May 18, 2013. The oblique perspective from the ISS reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is often obscured by the top-down view of most remote sensing satellites. Credit: NASA
The Pavlof Volcano began erupting on May 13, 2013, shooting lava into the air and spewing an ash cloud 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) high. This image from the International Space Station was taken on May 18, and provides a unique oblique (sideways) glance at the action. When the photograph was taken, the space station was about 475 miles south-southeast of the volcano (49.1° North latitude, 157.4° West longitude). The volcanic plume extended southeastward over the North Pacific Ocean.
NASA says the oblique perspective reveals the three dimensional structure of the ash plume, which is usually not visible from the top-down views of most remote sensing satellites.
If the volcano keeps erupting and spewing ash at those heights, it could interfere with airline traffic. Pavlov is one of the most frequently erupting volcanoes in the Aleutian arc. It last erupted in August of 2007; it previously had not been active since 1996.
There’s more information — and an impressive set of ground-based images — on the Pavlov Volcano at the Alaska Volcano Observatory website, and here’s a helicopter video of the eruption:
We at Universe Today have been wondering, where did Chris Hadfield find the time to do all the greatvideos he put together during his five months on the International Space Station, all while his Expedition set records for the amount of scientific research performed? Now there’s even more. Hadfield teamed up with Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame, who now are part of the Tested crew, too, to produce three different videos about living in space; specifically about eating and what to do with any free time astronauts might have.
“Working with Adam and Jamie was fun!” Hadfield said via Twitter. “Mutual mustache appreciation.”
In the video above, Jamie and Adam learn about Chris Hadfield’s clever “space darts” invention, and propose a new game for Hadfield to test while he’s on orbit. Spoiler: duct tape is involved.
Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), left, Russian Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), center, and NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn sit in chairs outside the Soyuz Capsule just minutes after they landed in a remote area outside the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. Hadfield, Romanenko and Marshburn are returning from five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 34 and 35 crews. Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)
Already missing him being in space? I’ve seen several tweets about people going through Hadfield withdrawal. But to tide you over until he starts tweeting again (just give him a little time to get his Earth-legs again) here’s a mashup/supercut of Chris Hadfield’s video and image highlights from his five-month stay on the International Space Station.
Astronaut Tom Marshburn looks toward Earth during a spacewalk on May 11, 2013 to fix a leaking coolant system. Credit: NASA.
The image above could go down as an iconic shot of space exploration. Taken during the ’emergency’ spacewalk last Saturday to fix the leaking ammonia coolant in the pump and flow control system for the International Space Station’s power-supplying solar arrays, visible is astronaut Tom Marshburn taking a look at planet Earth. He shared the picture today on Twitter, saying, “Leaving is bittersweet. It’s been an unbelievable ride. Can’t wait to see what’s next!”
Marshburn is scheduled to return back to Earth later today along with ISS commander Chris Hadfield and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko.
Below are more great shots from Saturday’s EVA that were just released by NASA today. See here for earlier images of the spacewalk from Chris Hadfield via Twitter.
Astronaut Chris Cassidy during the May 11, 2013 spacewalk at the ISS. Credit: NASA
Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy (left) and Tom Marshburn on a spacewalk on May 11 to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant. Credit: NASA.Astronaut Chris Cassidy takes a self-portrait during the May 11, 2013 EVA at the ISS. Credit: NASA.Chris Cassidy with Earth as a backdrop during the EVA on May 11, 2013. Credit: NASA.Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy (left) and Tom Marshburn completed a the 5-hour, 30-minute spacewalk on May 11 to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant. Credit: NASA
Just a sample of Chris Hadfield's creativity in sharing his space experience. 'Weightless water. This picture is fun no matter what direction you spin it,' he said via Twitter.
During the past five months, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been providing a steady flow of strikingly beautiful images, as well as concisely sharing his experiences via social media sites like Twitter. Hadfield has become an internet sensation, and with his eloquence, wit, and ebullience he can certainly turn a phrase, as well as educate and elucidate.
During his Expedition, Hadfield has performed experiments with schoolchildren, chatted with people via amateur radio, and serenaded us with songs, including singing along with nearly 1 million students via webcast. He’s also exchanged tweets with Star Trek captains, first officers and engineers, as well as several averages Joe who asked a question. Hadfield has set a new standard of incredible.
Here are a few of our favorite quotes and Tweets from Hadfield during his mission. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.
Over the weekend, the ISS crew needed to do an emergency EVA, which could have been a tense situation. Instead, Hadfield tweeted about how fun this was going to be:
What a fun day! This type of event is what the years of training were for. A happy, busy crew, working hard, loving life in space.
As the air was let out of the Quest airlock to allow Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy to step outside to do their EVA, Hadfield radioed to Mission Control that the depressurization was underway by saying, “We’re now doing our best to pressurize the rest of the Universe.”
On May 4, widely considered Star Wars Day around the world, Hadfield posted this fun picture, demonstrating some ‘Jedi skills’ on the ISS (and yes, we know its not an exactly correct quote from Yoda):
Being in space is such a great experience, Hadfield said, that he didn’t want to miss a minute, even to sleep:
“This is a marvelous, marvelous human experience,” Hadfield said in his first news conference after assuming command of the ISS in March. “The only thing that gets me mad is I have to sleep. My resolution has been to make the absolute most of it — to spend as little time sleeping as I can.”
During that same news conference, he expressed his excitement at taking command: “Thank you very much for giving me the keys to the family car… we’re going to put some miles on it, but we’ll bring it back in good shape.”
Hadfield talked to students several times from space – and performed some great show and tell, including the infamous ‘wringing out a washcloth in space’ video. He also coined some gems during these talks, such as:
“The cool things about space is when you put your pants on here, you can put them on two legs at a time.”
But he also gave some great advice. During a Q&A on Reddit, one student asked if Hadfield had any advice for an aspiring astronaut. Hadfeild replied:
“Decide in your heart what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow and the day after that.” “Look at who you want to be, and start sculpting yourself into that person. You may not get exactly where you thought you’d be, but you will be doing things that suit you in a profession you believe in. “Don’t let life randomly kick you into the adult you don’t want to become.”
Gavin Aung Than, who pens Zen Pencils website, created a wonderful comic strip, “An astronaut’s advice” based on Hadfield’s response. See it here.
Hadfield quipped on the challenges and special clothing needed for their Soyuz landing – taking place tonight: “On landing we wear the Centaur G-suit, squeezes our calves, thighs and gut so that our blood stays in our heads. Space Spanx 🙂 “
Good to know that after 5 months, my Sokhol pressure suit still fits. It’s what we wear in the Soyuz. High fashion. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…
It is sort of like being inside your mother’s womb where your body is floating, your knees come up your arms go out, your head comes down. You are completely relaxed, it’s a wonderful way to sleep.
His description of how he felt during the Soyuz launch back in December:
“It is spectacular. From about five minutes in, when we knew for sure that we were going to have the weather to go, the smile on my face just got bigger and bigger, and I was just beaming through the whole launch. I mean, it is just an amazing ride.”
Then later during a press conference:
“Going to space and going from acceleration to weightlessness is like you’re being beaten and pummeled by a big gorilla on your chest and suddenly he throws you off a cliff.”
Then there were all the images of Earth from space, providing such a unique perspective of our humanity. For example, just this morning:
You can see how high we are when you see how close this jet trail is to the ground. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…
Here Hadfield summed up his thoughts on getting ready to head for home:
The amount of images Hadfield has taken during his mission is incredible and impressive. Here you can see an interactive graphic of all the images taken or tweeted by Chris Hadfield during his Expedition.
With over 833,000 followers on Twitter, will Hadfield keep up his social media presence once he returns back to Earth?
His son Evan, who has been Hadfield’s social media manager since Hadfield was chosen for this mission, assured that his father will keep the conversation going.
“A lot of people think that when he comes back he’ll stop, but I don’t really understand why because it’s not an end to something,” Evan said in an interview with the CBC. “It’s going to be so much greater when he comes home and people can interact with him face to face now that they know what he’s achieved and what it’s possible to achieve.”
Chris Hadfield in the Cupola of the ISS. Credit: NASA
He’s leaving space on Monday, but not before giving the world a memorable parting gift. ISS Commander Chris Hadfield has captured the attention and imagination of so many during his five-plus months in space via social media and with the many videos he’s recorded while on the International Space Station. This is his final video from the station, and according to his son Evan Hadfield — who has helped orchestrate the Commander’s barrage of tweets and images — it is also, coincidentally, the first real music video ever recorded in space.
“With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station,” Hadfield tweeted. “A last glimpse of the World.”
As someone posted in the comments on this video, Hadfield is the new standard of incredible.
Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn take a minute with visors open to have their picture taken by Chris Hadfield, inside the ISS. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.
The spacewalk outside the International Space Station was captured on film by the tweeting, Facebooking, social media maven and space station commander Chris Hadfield. “Amazing day,” he said. “EVA went off without a hitch. Great crew, phenomenal ground support and a supportive audience. Who could ask for anything more?”
How ’bout a picturesque view? We’ve got that too! See a collection of great images from the EVA, which — for the moment — appears to have been a success in fixing the leaking ammonia coolant system.
Cassidy and Marshburn work outside the ISS in the ‘approaching orbital sunset, the harshest of light, a blackness like endless velvet,’ said Hadfield. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn turn on their helmet lights ‘doing their best to light the universe on the dark side of the Earth,’ said Chris Hadfield. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield‘Climbing out of the airlock, quite the commute to work!’ said Chris Hadfield via Twitter.Chris Cassidy, Navy SEAL and lead spacewalker Saturday. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.Dr. Tom Marshburn, well-dressed for a day’s work outdoors. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.
The International Space Station (ISS) has grown tremendously in size and complexity and evolved significantly over 15 years of continuous human occupation from Nov. 2, 2000 to Nov. 2, 2015. Credit: NASA
Astronauts on the International Space Station doing an unplanned “emergency” spacewalk to fix an ammonia coolant leak outside the station. On Thursday, the ISS crew spotted small white flakes floating away from an area of the Station’s P6 truss structure, and noticed pressure drops in the control panel of the pump and flow control system for the power-supplying solar arrays. The ammonia coolant is vital to keeping the power control systems working and needs to be fixed. At this point the crew is not in any danger, but the leak does need to be fixed soon.
You can watch live in the window above. As of this writing, NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy are just getting ready to head out the airlock, and plans call for them to spend more than six hours outside the station to find and hopefully repair the ammonia coolant leak.
Read our previous article here to find out more information about the leak.
This is the 168th spacewalk for maintenance and construction of the ISS.
A slide showing the P6 Truss, the location of the coolant leak on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA.
Astronauts on the International Space Station are preparing for a potential emergency spacewalk to fix an ammonia coolant leak outside the station. On Thursday, the ISS crew spotted small white flakes floating away from an area of the Station’s P6 truss structure, and noticed pressure drops in the control panel of the pump and flow control system for the power-supplying solar arrays.
UPDATE: At a press briefing on Friday afternoon, NASA officials announced that the ISS crew will perform a spacewalk starting early Saturday to address the ammonia leak.
“Suddenly very busy!” tweeted astronaut Tom Marshburn, who along with Chris Cassidy is preparing for the contingency EVA. “Ammonia leak on the outside of station means that Cassidy and I will be doing a spacewalk tomorrow to try and repair it.”
Mission Control teams worked overnight to understand and sort through the problem and find potential fixes or work-arounds for the electricity systems. The Mission Management team met this morning to identify any issues or latent hazards of the spacewalk, and they are seeking input from all the international partners. The crew is expecting a final go or no go by later today on whether the spacewalk will take place. There will be an update on NASA TV at 20:00 UTC, 4 pm EDT.
“The whole team is ticking like clockwork, readying for tomorrow. I am so proud to be Commander of this crew. Such great, capable, fun people,” said ISS Commander Chris Hadfield via Twitter. Yesterday, he called the leak “serious” but that the situation was stable.
NASA has said that while the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS for the electricity-supplying systems, the crew is not in any danger. The ammonia cools the 2B power channel, one of eight power channels that control the all the various power-using systems at the ISS. All the systems that use power from the 2B channel, the problem area, are being transferred throughout the day to another channel. The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station.
Cassidy and Marshburn are now preparing for the spacewalk in the Quest airlock, arranging their spacesuits and gathering the specialized tools they will need to do the work outside the station. These two are the perfect people to conduct this spacewalk, as both are veterans of three spacewalks, two of which they performed together on the STS-127 space shuttle mission to the ISS, and they went to this exact same area on the P6 truss to replace batteries. They have also trained for this particular spacewalk already, as this spacewalk task does fall under the “Big 12” of contingency spacewalks of possible serious issues that may occur. All astronauts train for these in case an unexpected event requires a quick response.
While Cassidy and Marshburn prepare in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center are using the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoferretti and NASA’s Terry Virts are walking through and choreographing the procedures to make sure the tasks could be done in a reasonable time as well as looking for potential hazards. They will confer with the ISS astronauts to share their experiences.
This video shows information about the potential spacewalk, as well as footage of the ammonia leak captured by the crew.
While NASA does not know for certain the exact location of the leak, they are focusing on the pump and flow control system, the suspected source. That exact same area and system was the location of a minor leak, first identified in 2007 – thought to have been caused perhaps by a micrometeorite impact — and in November 2012 two astronauts went on a spacewalk to fix the problem. They rewired some coolant lines and installed a spare radiator, and it appeared the problem had been fixed.
That first leak was not visible during the EVA, but this new leak is quite noticeable, as the crew wwas able to see the leak from inside the station.
One of the driving factors for getting the spacewalk underway as quickly as possible is that the location of the leak and the potential fix are not exactly known. The hope is that it is still leaking by the time they get out there on Saturday morning, so that they can easily identify the source of the leak. The first task will be identifying the source, then possibly replacing the current pump and flow control system with one of the spares, located handily out at the P6 truss. If that is not the source of the leak, they will look through the area to try and identify the source. NASA said the leak could potentially be located in the internal plumbing of the system, which would be harder to see immediately.
At the briefing, NASA officials said the spacewalk and ammonia leak won’t affect the scheduled departure of Hadfield, Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, set for Monday May 13 at 7:08 p.m. EDT. Three crew members, Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, will remain on the space station.
Astronauts on the International Space Station spotted small white flakes floating away from an area of the International Space Station’s P6 truss structure today (Thursday, May 9) and determined an ammonia-based coolant was leaking from the solar array system. While the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS, NASA says at this point, the crew is not in any danger.
“It is a serious situation,” ISS Commander Chris Hadfield tweeted today, “but between crew and experts on the ground, it appears to have been stabilized. Tomorrow we find out for certain.”
The ammonia is used to cool electronics associated with solar arrays which provide electricity to station systems. NASA said the crew used handheld cameras and Mission Control used external television cameras to gain additional imagery in an attempt to narrow down the leak’s location.
The crew reports, along with imagery and data received by flight controllers in Mission Control in Houston, confirmed that the rate of the ammonia leaking from this section of the cooling system has increased.
Each solar array has its own independent cooling loop. There was a minor leak in the same area that was first identified in 2007 – thought to have been caused perhaps by a micrometeorite impact — and in November 2012 two astronauts went on a spacewalk to fix the problem. They rewired some coolant lines and installed a spare radiator, and it appeared the problem had been fixed.
NASA does not yet know whether this increased ammonia flow is from the same leak, which at the time of the spacewalk, was not visible. The early analysis by thermal control systems specialists indicates that the leak rate could result in a shutdown of this one cooling loop in about 48 hours.
Plans are being developed to reroute other power channels to maintain full operation of those and other systems normally controlled by the solar array that is cooled by this loop.
Current ISS Capcom in Mission Control Doug Wheelock radioed to the crew that “Tomorrow we’ll plan to get the (robotic) arm in the game to see if we can better pinpoint the location of the leak.”
Three of the crewmembers, Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko are scheduled to depart the station on Monday, May 13. Hadfield asked Wheelock is this leak might impact their undocking, but Wheelock said that they are still “getting their arms fully around the issue,” and would have more information for the crew by tomorrow morning.
