We’re sure going to miss Don Pettit’s and Andre Kuipers’ reports and images from the International Space Station. Pettit, Kuipers and Russian Commander Oleg Kononenko undocked from the International Space Station and returned safely to Earth on July 1, wrapping up their six-and-a-half-month mission in orbit.
They landed in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 08:14 a.m. UT (2:14 p.m. local time) after undocking from the space station’s Rassvet module at 04:47 UT. This video shows a great view of the Soyuz slowly drifting down (it’s interesting to see the parachute undulate, looking almost like a jellyfish!) and then visible are the breaking thrusters firing just a second before the hard landing.
The trio originally arrived at the station back on Dec. 23, 2011, and during this mission spent a total of 193 days in space, 191 of which were aboard the station.
During their expedition, the crew supported more than 200 scientific investigations involving more than 400 researchers around the world. The studies ranged from integrated investigations of the human cardiovascular and immune systems to fluid, flame and robotic research. They also were part of the team that successfully berthed the first commercial spacecraft to visit the ISS, the SpaceX Dragon capsule.
Before leaving the station, Kononenko handed over command of Expedition 32 to the Russian Federal Space Agency’s Gennady Padalka, who remains aboard the station with NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin. NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will join them July 17. Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide are scheduled to launch July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
During Expedition 31, Pettit used household objects aboard the station to perform a variety of unusual physics experiments for the video series “Science Off the Sphere,” like his recent video showing water balloons in space. Through these demonstrations, Pettit showed more than a million Internet viewers how space affects scientific principles.
On June 25, Pettit reached a milestone: spending one cumulative year in space, combining his time in orbit on Expedition 6, Expedition 30/31 and the STS-126 space shuttle Endeavour flight to the station in November 2008. Pettit now has 370 days in space, placing him fourth among U.S. space fliers for the longest time in space.
Kuipers conducted over 50 scientific experiments for ESA, and shared, almost daily, images and reports of his stay in space. The next ESA astronaut to board the Space Station is Luca Parmitano of Italy, who will fly on Soyuz TMA-09M in 2013 as member of Expedition 36/37.
An artist's rendering of the Tiangong-1 module, China's space station, which was launched to space in September, 2011. To the right is a Shenzhou spacecraft, preparing to dock with the module. Image Credit: CNSA
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The Chinese government has announced they will launch three taikonauts sometime in mid-June 2012, on the first manned mission to dock with their orbiting experimental module, and confirmed again that the crew might include China’s first female space traveler. A rocket carrying the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft was moved to a launch pad in China’s desert northwest over the weekend, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported.
The three-member crew will dock with and live inside the Tiangong 1 (or Heavenly Palace-1) orbital module launched last year. No word on how long the mission will be. We reported in March that the crew possibly could include a woman, and Niu Hongguang, deputy commander-in-chief of the country’s manned space program, said the final selection would depend on conditions nearer the time of launch.
This type of late announcement of the crew is not unprecedented – in the past, China’s space program has named the crew for the next mission just a few days before launch.
From previous reports, China picked two women and five men from thousands of candidates to become the second batch of seven astronaut trainees in 2010. Both of the women were former fighter jet pilots.
“The manned space program would not be complete without women’s participation,” Jiao Weixin, an earth and space scientist with Peking University, was quoted as saying.
China launched their first human mission in 2003. They have launched two other human missions, one of which included a space walk in 2008.
Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s human space program, said that the mission will be “a significant step in China’s space history”, because it’s the first time for a Chinese spacecraft to send astronauts into a space lab, instead of just carrying them to circle the Earth as in the previous three manned missions, the Chinese Daily reported.
During the flight, one crew member will remain aboard the Shenzhou 9 “as a precautionary measure in case of emergency” while the others enter Tiangong 1, Xinhua said.
We’ll keep you updated on any announcements of the crew or when the launch will take place.
The Chinese government last year announced a 5-year plan for space exploration that includes collecting samples from the Moon by 2016.
JP Aerospace's MiniCube program can send your stuff to the "edge of space"
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Ok, at 100,000 feet it’s not really “space” but for $320 USD JP Aerospace is offering a very affordable way to get your research experiment, brand statement, artwork or anything you can imagine (and that fits into a 50mm cube, weight limits apply) into the upper atmosphere. Pretty cool!
Touting its program as “stomping down the cost of space”, Rancho Cordova, California-based JP Aerospace (America’s OTHER Space Program) is offering its MiniCube platform to anyone who wants to get… well, something… carried up to 100,000 feet.
The plastic MiniCubes are each 1mm-thick, 48mm wide and 50mm high. Their bases have a standard tripod mount, and the MiniCubes can be cut, drilled, printed and/or modified within parameters before being mailed back to JPA for flight. Once the MiniCubes are flown, they are returned to their customers along with a data sheet and a CD of images from the mission. All for $320!
Again, it may not technically be “space”, but the view’s not bad.
Where MiniCubes go: a photo from a JPA balloon platform (JP Aerospace)
At the time of this writing there are 20 spaces available for the next JPA high-altitude balloon flight on September 22.
Find out more about JPA, MiniCubes, size specifications and how to purchase a space on the next flight here.
Sir Elton John sent a special message to the ‘rocket men’ on board the International Space Station by singing his classic song “Rocket Man.” The video was recorded on April 17, 40 years to the day after his single Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time) was released around the world.
Coumbia Crew - On February 1, 2003, after a 16-day scientific mission, space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and the first Israeli astronaut in space, Ilan Ramon. Credit: NASA
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Across the social networks today, many people were sharing their memories of the Columbia space shuttle accident, which happened 9 years ago, on February 1, 2003. Most all of us have a “where I was and what I was doing” story, but one of the most poignant posts today came from Michael Interbartolo, who works for NASA, and in 2003 was on the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Flight Control team for the space shuttle. While he wasn’t in Mission Control when Columbia was lost, he still feels the pain of the accident each year when the anniversary date approaches.
“Every year I struggle with survivor’s guilt,” he wrote on Google+, “and wonder what if I had a time machine?”
In sharing an email he wrote just a few days after the accident, Interbartolo said, “I really feel like we lost 8 members of the family. Columbia was like the family dog who had gotten old, but she was still loyal and true and you knew you could count on her…It hurts to lose friends like this. I didn’t know any of them personally other than a meeting here and there or maybe in a sim together, but right now it feels like a big part of me is gone.”
Michael Interbartolo in Mission Control. Image courtesy of Michael Interbartolo
Interbartolo continued, expressing his love of his job: “To work here at mission control is a wonder each and every day and really is the stuff dreams are made of. For some this is just a job, others share my enthusiasm and love for the program, but everyone is dedicated 110% each day to bring each astronaut safely home every mission and when they don’t then we all feel the pain and anguish like right now.”
With February 1st here again, Interbartolo says he repeatedly goes through what he and others in Mission Control possibly could have done differently. “What if I could go back in time to try and save Columbia and her crew? Now with 9 years of experience since the accident, the Shuttle put out to pasture and no access to space on our own, changing that point in time almost seems more important.”
Interbartolo came up with four different scenarios of what possibly could happen if he had a time machine:
Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the sky near Tyler, Texas.
Scenario One – Day of Deorbit:
From the time the Entry team came on console to GO For deorbit burn, it is typically about 6 hours. So it would be the “12 Angry Men” scenario, bit by bit trying to convince the team to wave off the burn… Sure it would make for a tension filled movie, but reality is waving off the burn and convincing them to open the payload bay doors, activate the robotic arm and look solves nothing, probably. The crew would know they were dead; they could put the orbiter into a powerdown, but time would be short with limited consumables to come up with a repair that would work. In Hollywood movies sure, in real life? Too risky to use the Time Machine here, we need to go further back to ensure success.
A shower of foam debris after the impact on Columbia?s left wing. The event was not observed in real time. Credit: NASA
Scenario Two – Flight Day Two:
Images start coming in showing the foam strike, but as history has shown the management team was not listening and there were plenty of missed opportunities. So how could I convince them any better. It would take a few days, then get the DOD to use their assets to image the damage and if I hadn’t gotten the powerdown of the orbiter we still only have limited time plus how to repair? a Spacewalk is possible but we didn’t have wing leading edge or tile repairs kits until after the Columbia Accident so now we would have to come up with it on the fly probably stuffing maybe water bags, a space suit or something into the hole, cold soaking the wing and hope the turbulent boundary layer and plasma are kept at bay. time is short and this is still pretty risky and certainly a lot more engineering effort than fitting a square LiOH into a round hole (Apollo 13 issue). Need to go further back.
Columbia on the launchpad before the STS-107 mission. Credit: NASA
Scenario Three – PreLaunch No GO:
Where to jump in, foam had been an issue since STS-1 and was not seen as a concern. Heck even after Columbia we still had foam issues and had to redesign the Ice Frost Ramps and other bracket interfaces. Convincing the team to wave off prelaunch would require debris transport analysis to show foam could strike at high speed on the wings plus impact testing to show how much damage it would be. So now we grounded the fleet, worked on the foam, augmented ascent imagery assets/analysis, but we would still need a boom sensor, inspection techniques and repair options. A fundamental shift in how we do business and think about foam, something that only really happened because of Columbia, this would require overcoming the “Failure of Imagination” mindset. Hmm maybe we need to go back further.
Columbia landing at Edwards Air Force Base on the first shuttle mission, STS-1. Credit: NASA
Scenario Four – Designing the STS:
All the way back to the 70’s, reusable winged system side mounted on a big tank of foam that needed a 1500 nm cross range for once around polar DOD flights from Vandenburg. So it comes down to Only Nixon can save Columbia by scrapping the design and coming up with something else. If we can mitigate the foam loss or get away from fragile Reinforced Carbon Carbon wings in the danger zone then maybe Columbia could be saved (and maybe we can fix the O-ring and save Challenger as well). So now we trade 7 lives for 30 years of shuttle operations, launching telescopes/spacecraft, and building the space station. Could we come up with another heavy lift design that can go from rocket to space truck to orbiting space station to flying brick? This is the Kobayashi Maru for Time Traveler and the Space Shuttle Program, do I risk all the discoveries, knowledge, science and a space station by fundamentally changing the design to save Columbia? Maybe February 1st really is a Fixed Point in Time and Space.
In the end, Interbartolo said, there is no time machine; the Columbia and her crew are still lost, the Shuttle completes her mission of building the space station and now we have the gap of not being able to launch our own astronauts.
“There will be future loss of life in the pursuit of space because it is a harsh and unforgiving environment with objects travelling in excess of 17,500 mph and there will always be Unknown, Unknowns,” Interbartolo wrote. “But as Gus (Grissom)said, “The conquest of space is worth the risk,’ and through the tragedies of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia we are reminded that we must be vigilant and always attentive to the dangers of spaceflight; never accepting success as a substitute for rigor in everything we do. We must always be aware that suddenly and unexpectedly we may find ourselves in a role where our performance has ultimate consequences. And finally we must recognize that the greatest error is not to have tried and failed, but that in the trying we do not give it our best effort.”
Universe Today thanks Michael Interbartolo for allowing us to share his memories and his grief.
The next two launches of crews to the International Space Station will each be postponed by about 45 days, due to an air leak found during testing of the descent module of the Soyuz spacecraft. An official from the Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, said they will need to build a reserve capsule, and they will confer with NASA ISS program managers on Thursday to clarify the exact launch dates.
The current mission on the ISS will also likely be extended, with the crew’s departure also about 30-45 days later than the previously scheduled date of March 16. Alexei Krasnov from Roscosmos said the delays should not be a problem because the crew currently on the ISS had initially been assigned an “unusually short expedition” of 120 days.
“I think their return and the launch of the next crew (Expedition 31/32) will be pushed back by a month or a month-and-a-half,” he said, quoted by the Russian RIA Novosti news agency, adding that the mission that was scheduled for liftoff on June 1 (Expedition 32/33) will also likely be delayed.
As we reported last week, the Soyuz TMA–04M experienced problems during a test in an altitude test chamber at the Energia Space Rocket Corporation, with a leak in the descent, or re-entry module.
The three ISS crewmembers scheduled to launch for Expedition 31 are Russians Gennady Padakla and Sergei Rivin and NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, who will be replacing Expedition 30 crewmates Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoli Ivanishin and Dan Burbank, who arrived at the station in November, 2011, and were initially scheduled to return to Earth on March 16. However, since their own launch was delayed, their Soyuz craft does have some margin before exceeding its on-orbit certified life.
The Expedition 32 crew, scheduled to launch on the Soyuz TMA-05M are Suni Williams from NASA, Yuri Malenchenko from Russia, and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan.
Russia now holds the sole ticket for getting cosmonauts and astronauts to the ISS. The Soyuz capsules, along with the Progress re-supply ships had been notorious for their reliability, but since the retirement of the Space Shuttles last summer, the Soyuz program has been hit by several problems the past several months, including the failure and crash of a Progress ship.
The Progress 46 cargo ship successfully docked to the International Space Station’s Pirs Docking Compartment late on January 27 to deliver almost three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the six crew members living and working on the orbital laboratory. The Russian cargo launched on January 26 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
A charred Soyuz descent module after landing 400 km off-course on April 19th 2008. Credit: NASA
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Russia may have to delay the launch of the next crew to the International Space Station, as the descent module of the Soyuz spacecraft experienced an air leak during testing. The next crew of three for the space station had been scheduled to launch on March 30, 2012. Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass quoted Russian space agency (Roscosmos) official Alexei Krasnov, saying the Soyuz TMA–04M experienced problems during a test in an altitude test chamber at the Energia Space Rocket Corporation. Krasnov said no final decisions have been made yet on whether a delay will be necessary, but other sources indicated it could be delayed for several weeks.
Krasnov downplayed the seriousness of the failure, indicating the problems are related to a service element, rather than the descent capsule itself.
But earlier reports sounded more dire. “This descent vehicle can no longer be used in a manned flight,” said an unnamed source in an article in RIA Novosti. “Therefore the launch of the Soyuz TMA-04M will have to be rescheduled until the second half of April or the first half of May.”
The three ISS crewmembers scheduled to launch for Expedition 31 are Russians Gennady Padakla and Sergei Rivin and NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba, who will be replacing Expedition 30 crewmates Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoli Ivanishin and Dan Burbank, who arrived at the station in November, 2011.
The three Expedition 30 crew were initially scheduled to return to Earth on March 16, but since their own launch was delayed, their Soyuz craft does have some margin before exceeding its on-orbit certified life, and depending on the outcome of the inspection of the TMA–04M, they would be able to stay a few weeks longer.
The potential delay follows a series of technical mishaps for Roscomos during the past few months. In August of 2011 a Progress re-supply ship crashed back to Earth after the second stage of the rocket failed to ignite. In November, the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars moon Phobos also experienced rocket failure and it ultimately disintegrated during re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. In December, a Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a communications satellite failed shortly after launch from the Plesetsk spaceport.
With a ‘textbook’ launch, the Progress 46 resupply ship is now on its way to the International Space Station. The Progress launched Wednesday at 11:06 UTC (6:06 p.m. EST, 5:06 a.m. Baikonur time Thursday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Inside the vehicle are 2.9 tons of food, fuel and equipment. It will arrive at the ISS and hook up via automated docking with the Pirs docking compartment on 00:08 UTC on Saturday (Friday at 7:08 p.m. EST) Continue reading “New Progress Re-Supply Ship Launches to Space Station”
Cosmonaut Sergei Prokopiev participating in winter survival training in Russia. Credit: Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (CPC)
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When cosmonauts and astronauts now return from a long-duration space mission on board the International Space Station, they are always coming home on a Soyuz capsule, landing in northern Kazakhstan. The Kazakh Steppe is known for its bitter winters (I just checked the local weather in Ayagoz, Kazakhstan and there is currently a blizzard going on with heavy snow, high winds and a current temperature of -26 C [-15 F] )
When a Soyuz lands, it usually takes at least an hour for the rescue team to arrive. But a blizzard or other unforeseen problems could leave the crew stranded for longer periods of time. So, cosmonauts and astronauts undergo special survival training, just in case. Here are some images from the latest crew to undergo the training, featuring cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyeva, ESA astronauts Thomas Pesquet and Samantha Cristoforetti. Remember that complicating any return from long-duration space flight is the weakness the space travelers will experience after six months in weightlessness.
ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopiev and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti during winter survival training. Credit: GCTC
In addition to the technical knowledge related to the landing capsule, the cosmonauts/astronauts need to practice practical skills like constructing a shelter and building a fire. They have a special emergency kit in the Soyuz which includes weapons, lights, water (6 liters for three people), dried food, first aid kit, tools and equipment that may be useful in extreme conditions, and clothing such as a heat suit, woolen cap, headset, gloves, socks and fur socks.
The Cosmonaut Training Center website says that “to successfully complete the test (training), crews have to show courage, self-discipline, perseverance, and patience.”
Credit: Cosmonaut Training CenterCredit: Cosmonaut Training CenterCredit: Cosmonaut Training CenterCredit: Cosmonaut Training CenterCredit: Cosmonaut Training CenterCredit: Cosmonaut Training CenterCredit: Cosmonaut Training Center
