Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Just In From SpaceX: Dragon and Falcon 9 Assembly Now Complete

Dragon spaceship and Falcon 9 rocket just completed assembly at Cape Canaveral on Feb. 27, 2012. Credit: SpaceX, via @SpaceX

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Today SpaceX today released an image of the fully assembled Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket inside their facility at Cape Canaveral. This means the first test launch of a commercially built spacecraft to the International Space Station is just a bit closer. The exact date of the launch has not yet been announced after NASA and SpaceX agreed in early this year that the Feb. 7 date they were aiming for was not feasible. The demonstration flight – called COTS 2/3 – will be the premiere test flight in NASA’s new strategy to resupply the ISS with privately developed rockets and cargo carriers under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) initiative.

In a press conference earlier this month, NASA’s Mike Suffredini said SpaceX’s launch would be no earlier than March 20. “There are no big problems being worked but a lot of little things to wrap up,” he said. “I wouldn’t hold my breath, as it is a challenging date, but I would guess we’ll fly within a couple of weeks of that date. We’ll hold that date as we work towards the launch.”

Suffredini added that SpaceX is working on minor hardware modifications, plus they will need to do a wet dress rehearsal and hot fire test beforehand, so all that makes March 20 a challenging date. There’s a good window of opportunity between March 20 and the next Soyuz launch to bring the next crew to the ISS, which has been delayed due to problems with the Soyuz capsule. No firm date has been set for the Soyuz launch, but it will likely be late April or early May.

We’ll keep you posted when the tentative launch dates are announced.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, click on the image below to see a very cool panorama of the inside of the Dragon capsule.

Click to see an interactive panorama for a look inside Dragon in its cargo configuration, as it will be on its first mission to the International Space Station:

Source: @SpaceX

Posted on by Jason Major

The Best ISS Video Ever? You Decide.


Is this the best video footage ever of photos taken from the International Space Station? ISS astronaut and Expedition 29 commander Mike Fossum seems to think so.

If anyone would know what a good ISS video is, he would! So watch, and decide for yourself.

Video uploaded by YouTube user bitmeizer. Made from sequences of still photographs taken by Expedition 29 crew members, the time-lapse videos have been digitally smoothed out and a soundtrack added, along with some transition effects.

Original video segments courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. See more at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

Posted on by Jason Major

A Slice of Daybreak

An orbital dawn view from the ISS on Feb. 4, 2012

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Here’s a gorgeous view from the International Space Station, taken by the Expedition 30 crew on Feb. 4, 2012 as the station passed into orbital dawn. The greens and reds of the aurora borealis shimmer above Earth’s limb beyond the Station’s solar panels as city lights shine beneath a layer of clouds.

As the ISS travels around the planet at 17,500 mph (28,163 km/h) it moves in and out of daylight, in effect experiencing dawn 16 times every day.

From that vantage point, 240 miles (386 km) above the Earth, the lights of the aurora — both northern and southern — appear below, rather than above.

See this and more images from the Space Station’s nightly flights here.

Also, here’s a time-lapse video made from photos taken by the Expedition 30 crew a few days earlier. Enjoy!

(Video courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.)

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

First Humanoid to Human Handshake in Space

Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata plays around wiith humanoid robot Robonaut 2 during Expedition 39 in March 2014. Credit: NASA

It may have been a giant leap for robot-kind yesterday as NASA’s Robonaut shook hands in space with Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank on the International Space Station. “For the record, it was a firm handshake,” Burbank said. “Very nice. Nice job on the programming and all the engineering. Quite an impressive robot.”

Not only did the robot complete the historic first humanoid to human handshake in space, but Robonaut also sent its greetings to everyone on Earth by using sign language to say, “Hello World.”

Robonaut is designed to perform routine maintenance tasks aboard the space station to free up the astronauts for more important research tasks. You can see more capabilities of Robonaut in a video below where engineers put one of the Robonauts through its paces on a task board that mimics controls aboard the ISS.
Continue reading “First Humanoid to Human Handshake in Space”

Posted on by Jason Major

Special Delivery, Low-Earth Orbit Style!

A Progress resupply vehicle seen on approach to the ISS on Jan. 27, 2012. (NASA)

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When you’re cruising along in low-Earth orbit, running out of supplies is not an option. Fortunately there are Progress vehicles: Russian spacecraft that carry much-needed supplies and equipment to the astronauts aboard the Space Station.

The photo above, taken by Expedition 30 crew members, shows the unmanned Progress 46 vehicle approaching the ISS on January 27, 2012.

Progress 46 carried 2,050 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 2,778 pounds of parts and experiment hardware, for a total of 2.9 tons of food, fuel and equipment for the Expedition 30 crew.

The Progress is similar in appearance and design to Soyuz spacecraft, which serve as human transportation to and from the Space Station, but differs in that the second of the spacecraft’s three sections (as prior to launch) is a refueling module, and the third uppermost section is a cargo module.

In addition to bringing supplies to the ISS, Progress vehicles also serve as – for lack of a better term – “garbage trucks”, undocking from the Station loaded with trash and re-entering the atmosphere, during which time much of the refuse inside gets incinerated.

Progress 46 successfully docked to the Space Station at 7:09 p.m. (EST) on Jan. 27, 2012.

Image: NASA

Posted on by Jason Major

ISS Night Flight in “Real Time”

We’ve featured wonderful time-lapse videos taken from the Space Station many times and each one is amazing to watch, but here’s something a little different: by taking photos at the rate of one per second and assembling them into a time-lapse, we can get a sense of what it’s like to orbit the planet at 240 miles up, 17,500 mph… in real time. Absolutely amazing!

Continue reading “ISS Night Flight in “Real Time””

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Russia Confirms Delay for Next Soyuz Launches to ISS

Expedition 27 Soyuz rollout. Credit (NASA/Carla Cioffi

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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.

Source: RIA Novosti

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Test Failure Points to Potential Delay for Next Soyuz Launch

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.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Progress Re-Supply Ship Launches to Space Station

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”