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Progress 25 Blasts Off for the Space Station

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A new Progress supply ship (P25) blasted off for the International Space Station on Friday, carrying more than 2.5 tonnes of fuel, air, water and other supplies. The unpiloted ship is expected to link up automatically with the station on Tuesday, docking at the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module.

Once astronauts fully unload its cargo, they’ll fill it back up again with trash and other material from the space station. It’ll then undock and burn up through the Earth’s atmosphere on July 20, making the garbage disappear forever.

The Progress vessels are very similar to the piloted Soyuz spacecraft that the Russians use to launch cosmonauts, and serve as lifeboats for astronauts on board the International Space Station.

Original Source: NASA News Release

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Expedition 14 Returns to Earth

Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin. Image credit: NASA/Bill IngallsThe two crewmembers of Expedition 14 returned to Earth on Saturday, with astro-tourist Charles Simonyi along for the ride. Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin had been aboard the International Space Station since September 20th, while Simonyi arrived on April 7th. Their Soyuz TMA-9 capsule touched down in the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 1231 GMT (8:31 am EDT).
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NASA Astronaut Charged With Attempted Murder

Lisa Marie Nowak. Image credit: NASAAs you’ve probably heard by now, NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak was arrested this week, and charged with attempted kidnapping. Nowak, who flew on board the space shuttle Atlantis just last July, was captured by police when she attempted to confront rival Colleen Shipman over the affections of a third astronaut: Bill Oefelein. Nowak was found with a variety of weapons on her and in her car.
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Sunita Williams Sets Women’s Spacewalking Record

Astronaut Sunita Willaims during the first EVA. Image credit: NASAAstronauts Mike Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams spent another day in space on Sunday, continuing the process of switching over the International Space Station’s power and cooling systems. Spacewalks are pretty important in themselves, but during the journey outside, Williams broke the record for the most time spent spacewalking by a woman.
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Astronauts Fold Up a Solar Panel on the Final Spacewalk

Mission Specialist Bob Curbeam. Image credit: NASAOn their fourth and final trip outside the International Space Station, US astronaut Robert Curbeam and Sweden’s Christer Fuglesang convinced a misbehaving solar panel to fold up nicely. The team suited up and began their spacewalk on Monday at 1910 GMT (2:10 pm EST). Working with the panel was hard, slow work, eventually requiring about five hours of poking panels and shaking the storage box to get the stuck sections to fold up properly. With the solar panel safely folded away, the station’s new panels are free to rotate to face the Sun and generate the maximum amount of electricity.
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Astronauts Working to Fold Arrays

Astronauts working on the solar array. Image credit: NASA TVMission Specialists Robert Curbeam and Christer Fuglesang have gone back outside the International Space Station to try and get its troublesome solar arrays to retract properly. Imagine a big fold out map, that’s supposed to go back on exactly the same folds. It’s not folding back up again, and nothing they tried from inside fixed it. Time to do this hands on.
Curbeam and Fuglesang stepped out around 2pm EST, and they should get back in around 8:25 pm EST, after more than six hours in space.
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