Posted on by Ken Kremer

Spectacular Shuttle Belly Flip As Atlantis Docks to ISS (Video)

Hypervelocity
Atlantis performed a belly flip prior to docking with ISS on 18 November 2009 while station astronauts snapped hundreds of digital images looking for any signs of damage to the heat shield crucial for a safe reentry. Credit: NASA TV


(Editor’s note: Ken Kremer is in Florida covering the STS-129 mission for Universe Today)
The astronaut crews for the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Atlantis united as one team in space on Wednesday when Atlantis successfully docked with the ISS at 11:51PM EST. Preluded by some of the most spectacular footage ever of the shuttle “belly flip” or the Rendezvous Pitch Manuaever (RPM), docking occurred in orbital darkness about 220 miles high above earth and directly between Australia and Tasmania. The shuttle astronauts were welcomed aboard the ISS and the jubilant crews exchanged bear hugs, handshakes and high fives inside the Harmony module.

Thursday morning at 9:24 a.m. EST, STS-129 spacewalkers Mike Foreman and Robert Satcher headed outside for the first spacewalk of the mission.

The shuttle docked at a port on Harmony, located on the US end of the station and parallel to the earth below. Russian Soyuz manned capsules dock at the opposite end of ISS on the Russian side of the station. The ISS currently weighs over 800,000 pounds.

After a series of leak checks, hatches between the two vehicles were at last opened at 1:28 PM EST, at 1 day and 23 hours mission elapsed time for Atlantis marking the start of joint operations. ISS Commander Frank DeWinne from Belgium performed a brief ceremony. With an overall crew of 12 people representing many ISS partners, Harmony was rather crowded. The shuttle astronauts received a safety briefing and tour.

Later in the day, Nicolle Stott’s tenure as an ISS crew member ended and she transitioned over to become an official member of the shuttle crew for her return to earth. She will be seated on a special recumbent seat brought aloft by Atlantis. Stott has spent 3 months aboard the station.
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Commander Charles “Scorch” Hobaugh piloted Atlantis for the final approach to the ISS from behind and below. After guiding the shuttle to a distance of 600 ft he initiated a spectacular back flip, known as the Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver (RPM), about 30 minutes prior to docking. Hobaugh began the now standard 360 degree back flip maneuver while flying in formation with the ISS at Mach 25 above the Amazon.

The purpose is to collect obtain high resolution imagery of the delicate heat shield tiles which protect the orbiter during the searing heat of reentry. The photos are carefully inspected to look for any signs of damage to the over 20,000 tiles before NASA commits the shuttle to landing back on earth.

Why is this photography important? Because any heat shield leak can be catastrophic for the vehicle and crew. That lesson was tragically learned during the reentry of Columbia.

Station astronauts Jeff Williams and Nicole Stott had about 90 seconds to photograph Atlantis’ belly while aiming 800 mm and 400 mm telephoto lenses respectively through portholes on the Russian Zvezda module. They snapped hundreds of digital photographs which were quickly down linked for analysis by teams waiting in Houston. The spectacular show was carried live on NASA TV.

Atlantis cargo bay carrying spare parts for installation on the ISS with earth in the background. Credit: NASA
Atlantis cargo bay carrying spare parts for installation on the ISS with earth in the background. Credit: NASA

With Atlantis cargo bay pointing towards the ISS the RPM began with a dramatic pitch of the nose upwards and a stunningly beautiful view of earth in the background. Continuing on a full circular path, the shuttle spun around until the bright belly nearly filled the TV screen. Individual tiles and even the wheels wells were easily discernible as the spin progressed unabated. Momentarily the shuttle was again oriented perpendicularly as the tail faced the ISS with a fantastic view directly down into the shuttle’s three main engines and OMS pod. Finally the Atlantis shuttle returned to the same cargo bay orientation from which it started.

The RPM back flip is true spaceflight and looks like something straight out of a futuristic science fiction TV show or movie like my favorites, Star Trek and Babylon 5. But this is real and it’s happening today. And there is nothing routine about it. Make no mistake. Spaceflight is a highly risky business. And highly rewarding. Only a thin line separates life and death.

In the darkness of space, Hobaugh then closed in on the ISS at 0.2 ft per second. For the last 100 feet, Atlantis gradually slowed even further precisely aligning with the ISS until a flawless docking at 0.1 feet per second. Thrusters fired post contact to force the two docking ports together.

A spring loaded docking system damps out the relative motions of the ISS and shuttle over several minutes. The docking ring was then withdrawn to allow a hard mate between the two vehicles.

The astronauts wasted no time and their workload began right away today. Less than 90 minutes after hatch opening the first of two on board Express Logistics Carriers, dubbed ELC 1, was plucked out of the cargo bay by the shuttle arm. ELC 1 was then handed off to the station arm (Canadarm 2) which plugged it into an earth facing attach point on the ISS port side backbone truss at 4:27 PM. During the back flip and docking sequence approach, the shuttles robotic arm could be seen extending outwards from the cargo bay and attached to the 14,000 pound ELC 1.

The hugh ELC’s measuring 16 ft x 14 ft are designed to hold large space parts like the control moment gyroscopes (CMG’s) which provide orientation control for the station. The ELC’s are brand new equipment provided by NASA Goddard and flying for the first time on a shuttle. Also attached to ELC 1 are the ammonia and nitrogen tank assemblies and a battery charger discharge unit. There are some open attach sites to accommodate new spares brought up on future flights.

The first of three planned spacewalks, or EVA’s, is slated for Thursday at 9 AM and will last about 6½ hours. The astronauts quickly moved their space suits into the stations Quest airlock module to begin configuring all equipment needed. The two spacewalkers will spend the night “camped out” inside Quest to acclimate their bodies and purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams, preventing decompression sickness once they move out into the vacuum of space.

This mission will insure that the ISS has spare parts to sustain operations for several years to come. Having these spare components already on board will enormously simplify ISS planning. Of course, the unexpected can always happen. And that is the impending difficulty caused by the looming retirement of the shuttle.
Potentially the ISS could operate for another 10 years to 2020. Currently the ISS is only funded through 2015 and that’s another decision for President Obama on his packed plate. The other ISS partners, especially Russia, favor an ISS life extension as it just now finally reaches its full science capability.

Ken Kremer’s website

Read my earlier reports from KSC on the flight of Atlantis and Atlas launch attempt here:

Atlantis Roars to Space for Trek to ISS
Tweeters and Atlantis Ready for Launch
Clock Ticking for Shuttle Atlantis on Critical Resupply Mission
Atlas Launch halted by ORCA; Shuttle Atlantis Next in Line

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Video Preview of Next Shuttle Mission

The next space shuttle mission STS-129, slated to launch next Monday Nov. 16, is a “spare parts and stock-up” mission. And the needed extra parts and supplies delivered to the International Space Station by Atlantis will mean spare years on the station’s life once the space shuttle fleet is retired. The mission is a landmark of sorts — not sure if it is a good landmark or bad — but STS-129 is scheduled to be the last space shuttle crew rotation flight. From here on out, crew rotation will be done by the Soyuz and any future commercial vehicle that may come online. Besides the crew, a payload of spiders and butterfly larvae will be on board Atlantis for an experiment that will be monitored by thousands of K-12 students across US. Find out more about the flight with a video preview of the mission, below.

STS-129 will be commanded by Charlie Hobaugh and piloted by Barry Wilmore. Mission Specialists are Robert Satcher Jr., Mike Foreman, Randy Bresnik and Leland Melvin. Wilmore, Satcher and Bresnik will be making their first trips to space. The mission will return station crew member Nicole Stott to Earth.

The crew will deliver two control moment gyroscopes and other equipment, plus the EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 1 and 2 to the station. The mission will feature three spacewalks.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Module for ISS Launches

Soyuz rocket with Poisk. Credit: NASA TV

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A new module for the space station blasted off today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 9:22 a.m. EST. The Poisk (which means “explore” in Russian) is a combination docking module/airlock/future research module. It will meet up with the ISS on Thursday at 10:44 am. Poisk is the first permanent pressurized module to be added since May of 2008, when the Japanese “JEM” research module became part of the ISS, and is the first major Russian addition to the station since the Pirs docking compartment was launched in 2001. The new module will be used as an additional docking port for Russian vehicles, as an airlock for Russian-based spacewalks and as a platform for external science experiments.

The new module is almost identical in size to Pirs, at 2.5 meters (8 feet wide) and about 4 meters (13 feet) long. Its first use will be as a docking port during the relocation of a Soyuz crew vehicle in January.

About 1,800 pounds of cargo is loaded into Poisk’s pressurized compartment for delivery to the space station.

A companion module, the Mini Research Module-1, will be carried to orbit on space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-132 mission, targeted to launch in May 2010. That module will be robotically attached to the station’s Zarya module.

Source: NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Space Junk May Force Crew from ISS

Update #2, 5:30 pm: NASA has now said that after further analysis, the space debris they have been tracking no longer poses any concern or threat to the ISS. Everyone can rest easy tonight! The piece of debris was only 5 cm long, and will not pass within the “pizza box” zone around the station (0.75 x 25 x 25 kilometers) that calls for an alert.

A hard-to-track piece of space junk may come within a half a kilometer of the International Space Station later today, and NASA managers are considering asking the crew to board the docked Soyuz capsules as a precaution. The time of closest approach is at 10:48 p.m. EST, and the object was detected too late for the station to do an evasive maneuver. Depending on the outcome of additional tracking data analysis, the crew may be awakened later and directed to go into the Soyuz vehicles around 10:30 pm or given the option to sleep in Soyuz tonight. NASA says they don’t believe the crew is at risk, but precautions are prudent in dealing with space debris.

The crew was told about the debris, which ground stations have not been able to track consistently, said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring. Trajectory experts are continuing to verify information about the debris. “All this is a precaution, and we do not believe the crew is in any danger at this time or at the time of closest approach, but are making preparations in the unlikely event the approach would be closer than expected,” Herring said.

UPDATE: 2:30pm: As of now, NASA is planning for the crew to close all the hatches on the station and enter the Soyuz. “We have data that indicates we might be heading to a conjunction, however we do not have enough data to have any confidence in the outcomes we’re predicting at this point,” Capcom Ricky Arnold told the crew from mission control. “We’re hoping we’re going to be a lot smarter at 2200 (GMT), but right now we have to plan for an indication that we will have a conjunction.”

NASA will make a final decision on what course of action they will take at about 5 p.m.

Sources: NASA TV, Twitter

Posted on by Fraser Cain

International Space Station Viewing

The ISS. Credit: NASA

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Now that it’s mostly complete, the International Space Station is the brightest human-built object in space. It’s easy to see with your own eyes, the trick is knowing when to step outside and look up to see the station go overhead. If you do get your timing right, you’ll see the station as a bright star moving quickly in the sky. It only take a couple of minutes to pass through the sky above your house. Want to see the station for yourself? Here are some resources for International Space Station viewing.

The best place to go is NASA’s Human Spaceflight tracking page. This shows you the current location of the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, and any space shuttles currently in orbit.

So that shows you where the space station and shuttles are right now, but how will you know when they’re going to be passing over your part of the Earth?

NASA has a page for sighting opportunities. You can either choose your location from a list of common locations around the world, or you download an application that lets you pick your specific spot on Earth. It will then tell you the exact times ISS will be passing overhead.

If you’ve got an iPhone, check out the ISS Visibility App. This tool will calculate the next times you’ll be able to see the ISS pass overhead.

You can also use a great service called Heavens Above. This will also show you the current location of satellites, as give you times when ISS will be passing overhead.

We have written many articles about the International Space Station for Universe Today. Here’s an article about how ISS is now visible in the daytime.

We have recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about the space shuttle. Listen to it here, Episode 127: The US Space Shuttle.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Busy Space Station: 3 Soyuz Now Docked to ISS

One of three Soyuz docked to ISS. Credit: NASA

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The International Space Station is taking on the look and feel of a busy space way station, with three Soyuz now docked and a current crew count of nine. Expedition 21 Flight Engineers Jeff Williams and Maxim Suraev along with spaceflight participant Guy Laliberté arrived at the ISS, docking their Soyuz TMA-16 to the aft end of the Zvezda service module at 4:35 a.m. EDT Friday. Williams and Suraev are relieving Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt who will depart on Oct. 10 along with the Canadian visitor, Laliberté (the one with the clown nose, below). Watch the docking video below, along with another video of the hatch opening and the new crew members entering the station.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

NASA’s Version of Star Trek Replicator Ready for On Orbit Test

The Star Trek replicator. Credit: Computer Weekly

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It’s not quite like requesting “Tea, Earl Grey, hot” and having a steaming drink appear, but almost. The Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center, is an engineer’s version of the science fiction replicator on Star Trek. “You start with a drawing of the part you want to build, you push a button, and out comes the part,” said Karen Taminger, the technology lead for NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program.

Electron beam freeform fabrication process. Image credit: NASA
Electron beam freeform fabrication process. Image credit: NASA

Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication or EBF3150 creates parts for airplanes — not food and drink — and uses an environmentally-friendly construction process to manufacture layered metal objects. This technique could revolutionize the aviation industry and may have applications for the future spacecraft and the medical community as well. It can be used to make small, detailed parts or large structural pieces of airplanes.

EBF3150 works in a vacuum chamber, where an electron beam is focused on a constantly feeding source of metal, which is melted and then applied layer by layer on top of a rotating surface until the part is complete. A detailed 3-dimensional cross-sectional drawing of the part is fed into the device’s computer, providing information of how the the part should be built from the inside out. This guides the electron beam and and the inflow of metal to produce the object, building it up layer by layer.

Commercial applications for EBF3150 are already known and its potential already tested, Taminger said, noting it’s possible that, within a few years, some aircraft will be flying with parts made by this process.

The metals used must be compatible with the electron beam so that it can be heated by the stream of energy and briefly turned into liquid form. Aluminum is an ideal material to be used, but other metals can be used as well. In fact, the EBF3150 can handle two different sources of the feed stock metal at the same time, either by mixing them together into a unique alloy or embedding one material inside another, such as inserting a strand of fiber optic glass inside an aluminum part, enabling the placement of sensors in areas that were impossible before, Taminger said.

structural metal part fabricated from EBF3. Image credit: NASA
structural metal part fabricated from EBF3. Image credit: NASA

While the EBF3 equipment tested on the ground is fairly large and heavy, a smaller version was created and successfully test flown on a NASA jet that is used to provide researchers with brief periods of weightlessness. The next step is to fly a demonstration of the hardware on the International Space Station, Taminger said.

Future lunar base crews could use EBF3 to manufacture spare parts as needed, rather than rely on a supply of parts launched from Earth. Astronauts might be able to mine feed stock from the lunar soil, or even recycle used landing craft stages by melting them.

But the immediate and greatest potential for the process is in the aviation industry where major structural segments of an airliner, or casings for a jet engine, could be manufactured for about $1,000 per pound less than conventional means, Taminger said.

The device is environmentally friendly because its unique manufacturing technique cuts down on the amount of waste. Normally an aircraft builder might start with a 6,000-pound block of titanium and machine it down to a 300-pound part, leaving 5,700 pounds of material that needs to be recycled and using several thousand gallons of cutting fluid used in the process.

“With EBF3 you can build up the same part using only 350 pounds of titanium and machine away just 50 pounds to get the part into its final configuration,” Taminger said. “And the EBF3 process uses much less electricity to create the same part.”

While initial parts for the aviation industry will be simple shapes, replacing parts already designed, future parts designed from scratch with the EBF3150 process in mind could lead to improvements in jet engine efficiency, fuel burn rate and component lifetime.

“There’s a lot of power in being able to build up your part layer by layer because you can get internal cavities and complexities that are not possible with machining from a solid block of material,” Taminger said.

For more information, watch Karen Taminger’s presentation on the EBF3150.

Source: NASA

Posted on by Fraser Cain

ISS Tracking

International Space Station. Credit: NASA

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The International Space Station, or ISS, is the largest object every built by humans in space. And because it’s so large, it’s also very bright; easily visible with the unaided eye. The ISS also follows an orbital track that takes over different parts of the Earth. That means if you know the right time, you can go out and watch the station pass right over. But you need to know the right time, and that requires some kind of ISS tracking tool. Let’s take a look at some ISS tracking tools you can use to tell you when you should head outside and look up.

The best place to track ISS is from NASA’s human space flight ISS tracking page. This site will tell you the current location of the International Space Station, and space shuttles currently in flight, and the Hubble Space Telescope. The problem is that this tells you where the space station is right now, and not when it’s going to be passing through your skies… at night.

A better tool for that is the ISS sightings page. You download an applet that lets you put in your place on Earth and it gives you some upcoming dates and times that the station will be passing overhead. There’s also a quick drop down box, where you can select your location from many places in the world.

Another great tool is Heavens Above. It allows you to track the current position of thousands of satellites, including ISS and the space shuttles, when they’re in orbit.

So use one of these tools for ISS tracking, and then head outside and see if you can see the station with your own eyes.

We have written many articles about the International Space Station. Here’s an article about how you can actually see ISS in the daytime; it’s just that bright. And here’s an image of ISS and the shuttle transiting the Sun.

We have recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast that talks about the Space Station’s orbit.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

After Loss of Lunar Orbiter, India Looks to Mars Mission

India Moon Mission
Artist concept of Chandrayaan-1 orbiting the moon. Credit: ISRO

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After giving up on re-establishing contact with the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair announced the space agency hopes to launch its first mission to Mars sometime between 2013 and 2015. Nair said the termination of Chandrayaan-1, although sad, is not a setback and India will move ahead with its plans for the Chandrayaan-2 mission to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface to prospect for chemicals, and in four to six years launch a robotic mission to Mars.


“We have given a call for proposal to different scientific communities,” Nair told reporters. “Depending on the type of experiments they propose, we will be able to plan the mission. The mission is at conceptual stage and will be taken up after Chandrayaan-2.”

On the decision to quickly pull the plug on Chandrayaan-1, Nair said, “There was no possibility of retrieving it. (But) it was a great success. We could collect a large volume of data, including more than 70,000 images of the moon. In that sense, 95 percent of the objective was completed.”

Contact with Chandrayaan-1 may have been lost because its antenna rotated out of direct contact with Earth, ISRO officials said. Earlier this year, the spacecraft lost both its primary and back-up star sensors, which use the positions of stars to orient the spacecraft.

The loss of Chandrayaan-1 comes less than a week after the spacecraft’s orbit was adjusted to team up with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for a Bi-static radar experiment. During the maneuver, Chandrayaan-1 fired its radar beam into Erlanger Crater on the moon’s north pole. Both spacecraft listened for echoes that might indicate the presence of water ice – a precious resource for future lunar explorers. The results of that experiment have not yet been released.

Chandrayaan-1 craft was designed to orbit the moon for two years, but lasted 315 days. It will take about 1,000 days until it crashes to the lunar surface and is being tracked by the U.S. and Russia, ISRO said.

The Chandrayaan I had 11 payloads, including a terrain-mapping camera designed to create a three-dimensional atlas of the moon. It is also carrying mapping instruments for the European Space Agency, radiation-measuring equipment for the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and two devices for NASA, including the radar instrument to assess mineral composition and look for ice deposits. India launched its first rocket in 1963 and first satellite in 1975. The country’s satellite program is one of the largest communication systems in the world.

Sources: New Scientist, Xinhuanet

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

First Tweets from the ISS

Screenshot of Tim Kopra's Twitter page.

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Listen my children and you shall hear
Tweets coming from up above our Earthly sphere.

The newest International Space Station astronaut has started Tweeting from space. Tim Kopra is the first ISS crew member to use the social media tool Twitter to discuss living and working in orbit. Kopra (@Astro_Tim) recently joined the Expedition 20 crew after arriving July 17 aboard space shuttle Endeavour. But the coolest thing is that his first Tweets’ origin was “from Mobile Web.” Yep, from the ISS, that’s really mobile.

But of course, there isn’t really “the web” up on the space station. But Kopra will sent down his Tweets messages to mission control in Houston, and they will post them on Twitter.
NASA says Kopra will provide followers with a unique perspective as an Expedition 20 flight engineer and member of the Army. He is an Army aviator and West Point graduate. He periodically will answer questions submitted on the Army’s Web site. To submit questions and view Kopra’s answers, visit the US Army’s website

This is Kopra’s first spaceflight. He completed his first spacewalk July 18 during the STS-127 mission. Kopra is in orbit with station Commander Gennady Padalka and Roman Romanenko — both Russian cosmonauts — and NASA astronaut Mike Barratt, European Space Agency astronaut Frank DeWinne and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Bob Thirsk.

As of this writing, Astro_Tim has close to 5,000 followers.

You can also follow Universe Today and Nancy on Twitter.

Source: NASA