Astronaut Cady Coleman and cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev inside the living area of the Soyuz TMA-20. Credit: Roscosmos.
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Cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev recently arrived at the International Space Station, along with astronauts Cady Colemand from the US and Paolo Nespoli from the European Space Agency. Kondratyev has a blog, which he has been updating regularly and he has included several pictures. Most interestingly, he has quite a few images taken inside the Soyuz after launch as the crew was on their way to meet up with the ISS. Very few interior images of the Soyuz during flight have been made available before. Below are some that Kondratyev shared.
Dmitry Kondratyev inside the Soyzu either before or during launch. Credit: Roscosmos
Still feeling the effects of gravity, Kondratyev looks buried among all the supplies stuffed into the Soyuz.
The weightlessness from being orbit seems to provide more room inside the Soyuz. Credit: Roscosmos. Coleman and a checklist feel the effects of weightlessness. Credit: Roscosmos.After reaching orbit and checking all systems, the crew took off their launch suits and dressed in more comfortable flight suits. Credit: Roscosmos.Coleman and Nespoli stretch out in the Soyuz living area and grab a bite to eat. Credit: RoscosmosThe view of Earth from the Soyuz TMA-20. Credit: Roscosmos. Kondratyev and Coleman inside the Soyuz living area. Credit: Roscosmos
Kondratyev wrote in his blog: “For two days we had two hours of relaxation for sleep. Sleeping crew members are able to choose any convenient location and arbitrary orientation in space. At other times, we learned to eat in weightlessness, Earth watched and talked with TsUPom, check the efficiency of vehicle systems.”
Sleeping arrangements on the Soyuz. Credit: Roscosmos.
See more images and read about life on the ISS at Kondratyev’s blog.
Lunar transit of the International Space Station on Dec. 20,2010. Credit: Theirry Legault. Used by permission.
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From our vantage point on Earth, it takes just a half second for the International Space Station to fly across the face of the Moon, so catching a transit is tricky. But award-winning French astrophotographer Theirry Legault captured an amazingly sharp and detailed transit image that makes the ISS look like it is sitting on the Moon’s surface! Legault took this image from Avranches (Normandy, France) a few hours before the eclipse, on December 20th at 21:34 UT. He used a Meade 10″ ACF on Takahashi EM400, with a Canon 5D mark II. The transit duration was just 0.55 seconds, as the ISS is traveling at 7.5km/s or 28,0000 km/h (17,500 mph). See below for a close-up crop of the image which shows the amount of detail visible of the space station.
Close-up of the ISS transiting the Moon. Credit: Theirry Legault. Used by permission.
A window to the world on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
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A fish-eye camera view from the Cupola of the International Space Station shows a gorgeous view of Earth from space. Visible are parts of the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, as well as the southern portion of the Florida peninsula, including the elongated metropolitan Miami area, Lake Okeechobee and the Florida Keys. This was taken by one of the Expedition 25 crew members on the ISS, from about 350 km (220 miles) above Earth. A 16mm f/2.8D lens gives this image a circular, fish-eye effect. Click on the image for access to higher-resolution versions,
Dextre, a large robotic manipulator to help with outside maintenence of the ISS was added in October of 2007. Credit: NASA
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Ten years ago, the first Expedition crew arrived at the International Space Station. Here’s a look back in time at how the station has changed and grown, and some of the people who were there to make it happen.
The configuration of the ISS when the first expedition crew arrived on Nov. 2, 2000. Credit: NASA
Expedition Two crewmembers Yury Usachev (left), mission commander, Jim Voss, flight engineer, and Susan Helms, flight engineer, share a dessert in the Zvezda Service Module. Credit: NASAThis image was taken on April 21, 2001 during Expedition 2; the first large solar arrays were added during the STS-100 space shuttle mission. Credit: NASAThe Expedition Five crewmembers in the Destiny laboratory on the ISS. From the left are cosmonaut Valery Korzun, mission commander; astronaut Peggy A. Whitson, who became the ISS’s first science officer, and cosmonaut Sergei Treschev. Credit: NASAThe Microgravity Science Glovebox was added to the Destiny lab on the ISS during Expedition 5. Credit: NASAThe Expedition Six crew pose for a crew photo in the Zarya module on the ISS; Don Pettit (front), science officer; cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin (left back), flight engineer; and astronaut Ken Bowersox, mission commander. Credit: NASADuring Expedition 6, the space shuttle Columbia accident occurred, and the shuttle program was on hold. ISS astronauts Don Pettit (left) and Ken Bowersox had to do a variety of maintenance tasks outside the ISS that normally visiting shuttle crews would have taken care. Credit: NASA.It was rather lonely times for awhile on the ISS -- with no space shuttles flying, only two crewmembers were able to be on board the ISS. Here are Expedition 7's Yuri Malenchenko and Ed Lu. Credit: NASAThe Russian Soyuz vehicle serves as transportation and rescue vehicle for the ISS. Credit: NASANew Crew member? No, this is the European Matroshka-R Phantom experiment, which operated during Expedition 12 in the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station. Matroshka, the name for the traditional Russian set of nestling dolls, is an antroph-amorphous model of a human torso designed for radiation studies. Credit: NASAStuff happens it space. During a spacewalk, Expedition 16 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin noticed damage to a multi-layer insulation (MLI) protective blanket on the Zarya module. The damage, he noted, was apparently from a micrometeoroid impact. The date the damage occurred is unknown but has had no impact to vehicle operations. Credit: NASA Shuttles returned to flight in July of 2005, and this is how the ISS looked when space shuttle Discovery visited, the first shuttle visit in over 2 years. Credit: NASAThe ISS as it looked in June of 2007, during the STS-117 mission. Credit: NASAThe backbone of the ISS is the huge truss, brought up to the ISS in smaller segments, which are still huge by themselves. Dave Williams, STS-118 mission specialist from Canada works outside the ISS, helping to attach the Starboard 5 (S5) segment, and works on the forward heat-rejecting radiator from the station's Port 6 (P6) truss. Credit: NASAA look inside the Harmony node that was brought to the ISS in on the STS-120 mission in 2007. Credit: NASSunita Williams, Expedition 15 flight engineer, works on a science experiment in April of 2007. Credit: NASABackdropped by the thin line of Earth's atmosphere and the blackness of space, a portion of the International Space Station is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 20 crew member aboard the station. in May 2009. Credit: NASAA torn solar array panel in the ISS, which was installed during the STS-120 mission. See below for the repair job. Credit: NASAThe repaired solar array, fixed by STS-120 astronauts. Credit: NASAEuropean Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Hans Schlegel, STS-122 mission specialist, works on the new Columbus laboratory that was installed in February 2008. Credit: NASAAstronauts work on adding the Japanese logistics module-pressurized section in March of 2008 during the STS-123 mission. Credit: NASADextre, a large robotic manipulator to help with outside maintenence of the ISS was added in October of 2007. Credit: NASAA motley-looking crew of the Expedition 17 and 18 crewmembers in the Harmony node in Oct. 2008. Credit: NASAHere's how the ISS looked durng the STS-128 mission in September of 2009. Credit: NASADuring the STS-130 mission in Feb. 2010, the Cupola and Tranquility Node were added. The Cupola provides unprecidented views of Earth and space from the ISS. Credit: NASAHow the ISS looked during the STS-130 mission in February 2010. Credit: NASAThe Russian Mini Research Module was added in May of 2010 on STS-132. Credit: NASANASA astronauts Shannon Walker (left), Expedition 24/25 flight engineer; Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Expedition 23/24 flight engineer; and Doug Wheelock, Expedition 24 flight engineer and Expedition 25 commander, pose for photo in the Poisk Mini-Research Module 2 (MRM2) of the International Space Station. How the ISS looks today (as of this writing), and as it looked following the STS-132 mission in May of 2010. Credit: NASA
Ten years ago today US astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko arrived at the fledgling International Space Station, after launching in a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on October 31, 2000. This began a decade of continuous human habituation on board the station. The station’s first commander reflects on his mission and the past 10 years.
The AMS-02 will be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station's S3 Truss element. Image Credit: NASA
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The Principal Investigator (P.I.) for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS-02) experiment, Professor Samuel Ting, says that the experiment is already accruing data as it awaits its February 2011 launch date. Scheduled to fly aboard the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134, AMS-02 will search through cosmic rays for exotic particles, antimatter and dark matter. The experiment will be mounted to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and will require no spacewalks to attach. Continue reading “ISS Particle Detector Ready to Unveil Wonders of the Universe”
The ISS, from the shuttle mission in May 2010. Credit: NASA
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Last month the International Space Station partner agencies met to discuss the continuation of space station operations into the next decade and its use as a research laboratory. They also did a little forward thinking, and talked about some unique possibilities for the station’s future, including the potential for using the space station as a launching point to fly a manned mission around the Moon. I don’t know what our readers think, but my reactions is: this is just about the coolest idea I’ve heard in a long while! I’m having visions of a Star Trek-like space-dock, only on a smaller scale! In an article by the BBC’s Jonathan Amos, the partners said they want the ISS to become more than just a high-flying platform for doing experiments in microgravity, but also hope to see it become a testbed for the next-generation technologies and techniques needed to go beyond low-Earth orbit to explore destinations such as asteroids and Mars.
“We need the courage of starting a new era,” Europe’s director of human spaceflight, Simonetta Di Pippo, told the BBC News. For sending a mission to the Moon from the ISS, De Pippo said, “The idea is to ascend to the space station the various elements of the mission, and then try to assemble the spacecraft at the ISS, and go from the orbit of the space station to the Moon.”
One “next-generation” activity that is already planned is conducting a flight test of the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine on the ISS, which is the new plasma–based space propulsion technology, that could get astronauts to destinations like Mars much quicker than conventional rockets. NASA has sign a commercial Space Act with the Ad Astra company (which is lead by former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz).
But starting a Moon mission from the ISS is really a far-reaching, kind of “out-there” concept. It would be reminiscent of Apollo 8, and be the first of a new philosophy of using the station as a spaceport, or base-camp from where travelers start their journey. The propulsion system would be built at the station then launched from orbit, just like space travelers have dreamed for decades.
Of course, this is just an idea, and probably an expensive proposition, but isn’t it wonderful that the leaders of the space agencies are even thinking about it, much less talking about it?
Of course, doing zero-g experiments would always be the main focus of the ISS, but just think….
With this type of mission, the future of spaceflight actually be as Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield describes in the video below. “This is the great stepping off point of to the rest of the universe,” says Hadfield, who will be commanding an upcoming expedition on the ISS. “This is an important moment in the history of human exploration and human capability,… and the space station is a visible sign of the future to come.”
A previous Soyuz spacecraft leaving the ISS. Credit: NASA
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Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut were forced to call off their scheduled departure from the International Space Station because of a failure of the undocking system. Hooks on the space station’s Poisk module docking interface failed to release for the scheduled departure at 9:35 p.m. EDT Thursday, sending astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson and Russia’s Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko back inside the ISS from the Soyuz, where they were strapped in, ready to return to Earth. NASA and the Russian Space Agency are hoping to try again, with the hatch closing at 6:45 pm EDT on Friday; undocking at 10:02 pm and landing in Kazakhstan at 1:22 am.
“The preliminary analysis, according to the technical commission, showed that a false signal appeared in the onboard computer system about the lack of a hermetic junction after closing the hatch on the station,” said Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov.
This type of undocking problem has never happened before and comes three months after a Russian Progress resupply vehicle had problems docking to the ISS when a transmitter for the manual rendezvous system accidently activated, overriding the usually reliable automated system.
In trouble shooting the problem, Expedition 25 flight engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin on board the station removed a cover from the docking mechanism and found a small gear floating away. But the station crew couldn’t confirm the object came from the docking system or had anything to do with the failure.
This time lapse footage was taken by astronaut Don Pettit — of Saturday Morning Science and the Zero-G coffee cup fame — during his time on the International Space Station. It shows Earth from day to night and back to day again. Pettit was on the ISS from November 23, 2002 to May 3, 2003, so he was in space when the Columbia accident happened. Pettit is one of the most interesting and quirkier astronauts and I hope he gets to return to the ISS. is scheduled to return to the ISS in 2011 (thanks to Ben H. for clarifying — see comments). This video provides some great views of Earth, especially at night, that can’t be captured with a regular video shot. Stunning.
