International Space Station (Updates)

6,181 · September 9, 2015

NASA Television to Broadcast Friday Return of Space Station Crew

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Three crew members aboard the International Space Station are scheduled to leave the orbiting laboratory and return to Earth Friday, Sept. 11. NASA Television will provide complete coverage of their departure and landing.

Expedition 44 commander Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and visiting crew members Andres Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) and Aidyn Aimbetov of the Kazakh Space Agency will undock their Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft from the space station at 5:29 p.m. EDT and land in Kazakhstanat 8:51 p.m. (6:51 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12, Kazakhstan time).

Activities and NASA TV coverage times, all Eastern, are as follows:

1:45 p.m. -- Farewell and hatch closure coverage (hatch closure scheduled for 2 p.m.)

5 p.m. -- Undocking coverage (undocking scheduled for 5:29 p.m.)

7:30 p.m. -- Deorbit burn and landing coverage (deorbit burn scheduled for 7:59 p.m., with landing at 8:51 p.m.)

10 p.m. -- Video file of hatch closure, undocking and landing activities

The three crew members' return will wrap up 168 days in space for Padalka since launching from Kazakhstan in March. Mogensen and Aimbetov spent 10 days in space, arriving at the station Sept. 4 with Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos. The trio delivered a new Soyuz spacecraft that will return NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienkoof Roscosmos at the end of their one-year mission next March, along with Volkov.

With landing, Padalka will have logged a record 879 days in space on five flights, more than two months longer than cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, the previous record holder.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 45 will formally begin aboard the station under Kelly's command, along with crew mates Kornienko, NASA's Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonauts Volkov and Oleg Kononenko and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Expedition 45 will continue research and operational support of the station as it passes through the 15th anniversary of a permanent human presence on the laboratory that will be marked on Nov. 2.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/prnewswire-space-news.html?rkey=20150909DC97372&filter=1639

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BridgeSat Agreement with Draper Laboratory to Develop Ground Control Stations for Optical Connectivity Data Transmission System

Press Release From: BridgeSat
Posted: Wednesday, September 9, 2015

BridgeSat, Inc. today announced an agreement with Draper Laboratory to support the development of the ground stations that are an integral part of BridgeSat’s optical connectivity system. This optical connectivity system will improve the transfer of data from satellites and high-altitude unmanned vehicles (UAVs), by removing the barriers that currently exist with radio frequency spectrum for carrying large volumes of data from space to the ground.

“Laser communications will open the door to a variety of new sources of data that the U.S. government and businesses will use to make critical decisions”

Draper’s research team, led by Draper’s Director of Space Services Séamus Tuohy, has developed technology that will be used by BridgeSat for ground station operations, task automation, and efficient data delivery. This agreement will facilitate the development of BridgeSat’s laser communications receivers and data processing centers that provide rapid, optimal and secure data transmissions.

“Our collaboration with Draper positions us to offer a unique ground-processing architecture to handle the dramatically increasing amount of data being transmitted from low earth orbit,” said John Serafini, co-General Manager of BridgeSat, who is also a Vice President at its parent company, Allied Minds (LSE: ALM).

“Laser communications will open the door to a variety of new sources of data that the U.S. government and businesses will use to make critical decisions,” said Draper’s Tuohy. “Draper’s experience in automating functions on spacecraft like the International Space Station, as well as our precision-pointing and tracking expertise, will help take this technology from the realm of experimentation into daily operational use.”

Draper Laboratory is a not-for-profit research and development organization working to advance technology in the areas of space exploration, energy, healthcare and security. The company has proven precision pointing expertise, and has developed products for NASA including the Timeliner™ software used to reduce astronaut workload at the International Space Station.

http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=46792

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5-Million-Degree Plasma 'Tornado' Rages on the Sun (Video)

A giant, swirling plume of superheated plasma churned above the surface of the sun for 40 hours last week while a NASA spacecraft looked on.

NASA's sun-studying Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured dramatic time-lapse video of the solar tornado, which raged from Sept. 1 through Sept. 3.

The mass of plasma "was stretched and pulled back and forth by powerful magnetic forces but [was] not ripped apart in this sequence," SDO team members wrote in a description of the video. "The temperature of the ionized iron particles observed in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of light was about 2.8 million degrees C (or 5 million degrees F)."

This isn't the first solar twister SDO has observed. Last year, for example, the spacecraft recorded video of an enormous tornado spinning off the sun. And in 2011, SDO watched as another tornado — this one about five times the size of Earth — gyrated at speeds of up to 186,000 mph (300,000 km/h).

For comparison, tornado wind speeds here on Earth top out at around 300 mph (480 km/h).

http://www.space.com/30498-solar-tornado-nasa-sdo-video.html

video is 1:14 min

Later.....

6,181 · September 11, 2015

While reading articles about spacecraft welding, it occurred to me that it might be an idea to do a blurb about welding in space. Space is one of the toughest environments to work in. We have no gravity to help control material flow, severe temperature swings and heat dissipation problems, as well as dangers to the craft and astronaut welder.

First welding in space.....

Georgi Shonin and Valeri Kubasov, Russian cosmonauts who crewed the Soviet Soyuz 6 mission to space in 1969, were the first to experiment with welding in space, using a versatile tool known as the Vulkan. Shonin and Kubasov were also the first to experience just how dangerous space repairs can be. The pair tested three welding processes to see how they would function in a depressurized environment: electron beam welding, low-pressure compressed arc welding and arc welding with a consumable electrode.

During the test, Kubasov almost burned through the hull of the Soyuz 6’s living compartment, a mistake that would have hurled the pair into space without spacesuits to face the final 30 seconds of their lives. Fortunately, the hull remained intact, but with a warning about the harshness and complexity of welding in space. The weld quality of the titanium, aluminum alloy and stainless steel samples was comparable to that found on Earth.

Soyuz 6 patch

The Vulkan Welding Unit was divided into two sections—one containing the command and power systems and the other holding the three welding devices.

In 1984, Svetlana Savitskaya and Vladimir Dzhanibekov of the Soviet Union used a hand-held electron beam gun to conduct welding, cutting, soldering and spraying experiments outside of the Salyut 7 space station.

http://awo.aws.org/2015/07/welding-in-space/

Soviet cosmonaut Valery Kubasov is seen floating in space during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project first joint American-Soviet mission. Kubsaov died on Feb. 19, 2014.
Credit: NASA

Valery Kubasov, a Soviet-era cosmonaut whose three space missions included the first joint flight between the United States and Russia, died Wednesday (Feb. 19, 2014). He was 79.

"Very sad to report that Valery Kubasov has passed away in Moscow," the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), a professional organization whose astronaut and cosmonaut members included Kubasov, wrote in a brief statement. "A true pioneer of spaceflight and international cooperation in space."

http://www.space.com/24751-cosmonaut-valery-kubasov-obituary.html

It was Valery Kubasov, on Soyuz 6, in 1969, who tested the Vulkan welder and became known as "The first space construction worker"

Today, on the ISS, we have the Russian Multiplaz 3500

File photo Roscosmos

From 3 years ago...

That greater safety is provided by a multipurpose hand-held welder called the Muiltiplaz-3500 which the Russians designed especially for the space race.

In an emergency it can be used with confidence even in the confined conditions of the Soyuz spaceship which carried the trio to the ISS. And now it is proving invaluable throughout New Zealand and Australia – thanks to the initiative of a Russian team, operating a supply and service centre in Auckland.

http://www.engineeringnews.co.nz/content/hand-held-welder-benefits-from-russian-space-program/

Later.......

8,882 · September 11, 2015

If you don't want it to happen in space, you simply create covalent bonds on the outer layer of the metal before you send it into space. That way, the metal won't be able to contact weld like it would without any protective covalent bonds. This is often done by treating the metal with a chemical that creates tough covalent bonds that won't wear away with normal use.

And yes, any metallic element can contact weld with any other metallic element. This property is what allows alloys to exist. Copper and tin are heated up (burning away most of the covalent bonds), mixed together (to provide a lot of surface area for them to bond together), and form metallic bonds in order to create bronze.

On earth, metals are almost always covered by a very thin film of oxide. This means that actual metal-to-metal contact is rare.

In space there is no atmosphere to provide oxygen, which would renew the oxide coating. When the oxide wears off, and you press the metals together, there is true metal-to-metal contact. Since the metal surfaces are not microscopically smooth, the pressure is all taken out on a small number of microscopic high spots, and the metals simply unite at these points.

You can try a similar effect in your own kitchen. Take a couple of ice cubes, let them warm up a bit, then press them together. They will weld into a single lump. Water already has all the oxygen in its molecule that it can accept, so it cannot oxidise further.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/292kqb/eli5cold_welding_in_space/

Edited September 11, 2015 by Arachno 1D

6,181 · September 11, 2015

Quite true, but "cold welding" is more of a nuisance than a benefit. A lot of materials can stick together by various mechansims, the strongest being co-valent/ionic and the weaker being hydrogen/van der waals. But these bonding situations require specific conditions. For a perfect joining, in essence, you have a homogeneous structure unto itself. These conditions are difficult to attain, just thinking of atomic spacing itself and bringing most atoms together in this realm is difficult. For a perfect joining, you can not have covalent bonds with other atoms which do not pertain to your structure. The covalent shell, the outermost, always tries to be at an equilibrium, generally 8 electrons, and will share with other atoms valence electrons , until all feel the effect of 8 valence electrons, although they are actually sharing electrons by proximity co valence bonding.

Any impurity on the surface is a covalent bond with another elemental atom or molecule which creates an inhomogeneous structure, of which, will interfere with the natural bonding and create a discontinuous boundary (think of it as a fissure). In essence, just because something sticks, does not make it a good bond (weld). Space itself, a vacuum, does not mean it is void of elemental atoms, or molecules, in fact one may be surprised at the variety of "goodies" out there in deep space, such as "clouds" of alcohol vapour. In summary, in my opinion, I treat the "cold weld" annoyance as just that, not a way to structurally join materials in construction of an "object". Good scoop though Arachno 1D, keeping us on our toes.......

8,882 · September 11, 2015

So given the hot welding is a preference how does one manage in a high oxygen environment or where there may be pockets of explosive gases or is the unit for external repairs only?

6,181 · September 11, 2015

Great question!....To set the record straight, high temperature welding, one in which "liquifies" the "solid" metals for "joining", is usually not the best approach, but an approach that may be cost effective while maintaining "desirable" qualities.

On our gravity infested planet, high technology welding practices, for critical "joining of metals", are more and more, leaning to "Friction stir welding, FSW". First, we have to acknowledge that there are more material phases than just solid, liquid and gas. Many materials, dependent on pressure and temperature, will have many psuedo phases...partial transitions which can be harnessed for benefits. What FSW really does is heat the metal till it achieves a "plasticity", then stirs this slurry to mix the two solids into one homogeneous structure.The true liquid phase was not achieved, which removes the temperature issues of cooling and helps with retention of "temper" qualities. We are doing the "play dough thing" and have clean fingers at the end of the day

Schematic diagram of the FSW process: (A) Two discrete metal workpieces butted together, along with the tool (with a probe).

(B) The progress of the tool through the joint, also showing the weld zone and the region affected by the tool shoulder.

This process is expensive, for tooling and application, but achieves outstanding results when properly done. Here are some examples...

The bulkhead and nosecone of theOrion spacecraft are joined using friction stir welding.

Longitudinal and circumferential friction stir welds are used for theFalcon 9 rocket booster tank at the SpaceX factory

The high-strength low-distortion body of Hitachi's A-train British Rail Class 395 is friction stir welded from longitudinal aluminium extrusions

Now for space. We do not have this process in portable form, therefore, we will use other modern traditional methods for joining of two metallic materials. Several methods will work, but the method chosen will be determined by lack of gravity and/or a vacuum environment.

With a vacuum, electron beam welding (EBW) works well since there is no atmosphere to disperse the beam. The beam can be tightly focused and uses the kinetic energy of the electrons, as imparted onto the metallic surface, to create the heat that melts the metals, which then flow together to create the bonding. With magnetic lenses, precision depths of penetration can be achieved and power levels can be 10's of millions of watts per square millimeter.

Laser beam welding can be done in an atmosphere, power levels approach that of EBW, x-rays are not generated and the welds are generally better.

Plasma arc welding (PAW), is a modern "take" on a carbon arc torch and shielding gas...kind of like a mig/tig hybrid, where the "arc" is located "up" in the torch head, is focused, and remains isolated from the shielding gas (keeps a neutral pressurized atmosphere that keeps contaminates out) The plasma arc is a temporary state that can achieve 28,000 degrees C. Modern arc welding is a form of primitive plasma welding with the electric arc being created between the torch head and the material (conduction path). Modern plasma torches use the focusing nature to increase precision and hence temperature, as well as adding gases to elevate the duration of the plasma phase...sculpting plasma, if you will.

The Muliplaz unit is an advanced low temperature plasma system with the ability to eliminate toxic fumes and produce only oxygen. The vapour shield around the plasma actually contains all explosion producing products inside the vapour shield. This unit is used on submarines, tanks, explosive environments as well as in space, in a vacuum or atmosphere, with no or little gravity.

Hope that answered the question.....Later.......

38,286 · September 11, 2015

Friction Stir Welding was used on later Shuttle external tanks, and is also used to assemble the Dragon pressure hull. I'd be shocked if SpaceX didn't stick to form and use it to weld up the lithium-aluminum portions of BFR and MCT.

6,181 · September 12, 2015

Friction Stir Welding was used on later Shuttle external tanks, and is also used to assemble the Dragon pressure hull. I'd be shocked if SpaceX didn't stick to form and use it to weld up the lithium-aluminum portions of BFR and MCT.

It is all your fault Doc...for handing me "candy" like transparent aluminium (Aluminium oxynitride), Surmet market name is "Alon"....been having fun with it. It's density is 3.7 gram's per cubic centimeter...not bad, but a bit heavy compared to generic Weldalite 049, which is the same density as 2024 aluminium, at 2.8 gram's per cubic centimeter. I assume that SpaceX will be using the lighter Al-Li composites, which can only be welded by "friction stir", conventional welding is tough enough on weldalite 49 (It is bad enough for normal consumer grade, light gauge aluminium, it's like welding tinfoil...not easy) . I wonder if they have found a way to print Al-Li parts, would cut down on the "friction stir" requirement. Read several papers (2014) on additive manufacturing of aluminium alloys...a lot of alloys available, but they are still working on aerospace grade Al-Li.....They can do some of the hardest metals known, but have a few issues, still, with very ductile alloy goodies............. Would be nice to see someone use the Alon for a porthole or full viewing panel, even a space "moon roof", in a LEO ship...(B29 style).

Later........

6,181 · September 12, 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 9 September 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 9 September 2015. NASA

The nine-member International Space Station crew participated in a wide variety of advanced microgravity science throughout the orbital laboratory. Three of those crew members are also getting ready to return to Earth at the end of the week.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is now the station commander, worked in the Japanese Kibo laboratory to set up gear that will deploy two small satellites outside the lab module next week. Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren spent the afternoon troubleshooting the humanoid Robonaut 2 which could assist future crews with routine or dangerous tasks.

The homebound trio including Gennady Padalka, the world's most experienced orbital crew member, and first time space visitors Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov are getting ready to leave the space station Friday evening. They will undock in the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft Friday at 5:29 p.m. EDT and land in Kazakhstan just three-and-a-half hours later.

Padalka continued ongoing Russian science studying plasma physics while Mogensen, from the European Space Agency, worked in the Columbus lab module on exercise gear. Aimbetov, representing Kazakhstan, participated in various tasks for his space agency, Kazcosmos.

JAXA-Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (SSOD) #4 Install: Kelly installed the J-SSOD#4 on the Slide Table with the Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform (MPEP) attached. The J-SSOD #4 has two satellites that will be deployed next week. The first satellite is designed to observe the Ultraviolet (UV) spectrum during the Orionid meteor shower in October. The second satellite, sponsored by the University of Brasilia and the Brazilian government focuses on meteorological data collection.

Robonaut: Lindgren continued troubleshooting Robonaut's Compact Peripheral Component Interface. He unstowed and removed the softgoods from Robonaut, then accessed the internal workings to measure resistances and the CPCI Power supply. Preliminary results are pointing to an issue with the Power Supply, and not the "brain stem". Future troubleshooting will likely include reseating the Power Supply to exonerate a connection issue. Robonaut is a two-armed humanoid robot torso designed with the versatility and dexterity to manipulate hardware, work in high risk environments, and respond safely to unexpected obstacles. Robonaut is currently mounted inside the International Space Station (ISS); in the future, it will perform tasks both inside and outside the ISS.

Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Operations: Last night, the Robotics Ground Controllers powered up the MSS and translated the Mobile Transporter (MT) from Worksite 7 (WS7) to WS5. They then walked the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) off Mobile Base System (MBS) Power Data Grapple Fixture 4 (PDGF4) onto the Node 2 PDGF. During the walkoff, the Robotics Ground Controllers performed Gear Box Limping (GBL) Commissioning Task 3 for Latching End Effector A (LEE-A). Finally the Robotics Ground Controllers maneuvered the SSRMS to the H-II Transfer Vehicle 5 (HTV5) External Platform (EP) handoff position in preparation for next Tuesday's EP installation into HTV5.

HTV Cargo Transfer Status: Yui completed 1.5 hours yesterday of HTV cargo operations. Cargo specialist estimate the crew will need approximately 20 hours to complete the HTV-5 cargo operations.

Ground Activities
All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

MSS Operations
1553 Network Bus Characterization

Three-Day Look Ahead:
Thursday, 09/10: SPHERES SLOSH, MARES execution, IMAX interior scene, OBT crew health care drill
Friday, 09/11: 42S undock, PCG removal, SLAMMD setup control run, MSPR2 CO2 umbilical mate, Capillary Beverage
Saturday, 09/12: Weekly Cleaning, Crew off duty

QUICK ISS Status - Environmental Control Group:

Component - Status
Elektron - On
Vozdukh - Manual
[СКВ] 1 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV1") - Off
[СКВ] 2 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV2") - On
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab - Operate
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 - Operate
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab - Shutdown
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 - Operate
Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) - Process
Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) - Norm
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab - Off
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 - Full Up

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/nasa-international-space-station-on-orbit-status-9-september-2015.html

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Lego Astronaut Sighted in Orbit

Legos in Space ESA

Andreas Mogensen @Astro_Andreas Loved your creative #iriss stories kids. My @LEGO_Education friends will return to Earth and have a story to tell too

http://spaceref.com/onorbit/lego-astronaut-sighted-in-orbit.html

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3 Space Station Astronauts Safely Return to Earth

A Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen and Kazakhstan’s Aidyn Aimbetov lands in Kazakhstan on Sept. 11, 2015. NASA TV

Three astronauts returned to Earth from the International Space Station Friday evening (Sept. 11), taking the orbiting lab's population back down to its normal level of six crewmembers.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Kazakhstan's Aidyn Aimbetov touched down safely on the Kazakh steppes at 8:51 p.m. EDT on Friday (0051 GMT Saturday), 3.5 hours after departing the space station.

The people still aboard the International Space Station in addition to Kornienko, Kelly and Volkov are NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Japan's Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko.

http://www.space.com/30525-space-station-astronauts-land-soyuz.html

[ISS] Landing of Soyuz TMA-16M in Kazakhstan as Crew Return Home (video is 15:30)

Mission Status Itinerary

0117 GMT (9:17 p.m. EDT)
European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, 38, is now out of the Soyuz spacecraft. Mogensen is ending his first voyage into orbit, and he became the first Dane to go into space.

0112 GMT (9:12 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov has been extracted from the Soyuz spacecraft. The 43-year-old fighter pilot-turned cosmonaut is completing is first space mission, having logged nearly 10 days in orbit.

0108 GMT (9:08 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, the Soyuz commander, is first to exit the Soyuz spacecraft. Padalka, 57, has now logged more than 878 days in space on five spaceflights.
He set the record for most cumulative time in space on this 168-day flight.

0105 GMT (9:05 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Video from the landing site shows the Soyuz spacecraft landed on its side.
The recovery team arrived aboard a convoy of Russian helicopters that landed around the spacecraft to begin assisting the crew out of the capsule.

0051 GMT (8:51 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
TOUCHDOWN! The Soyuz TMA-16M capsule has landed in Kazakhstan after 168 days in space, bringing home veteran cosmonaut Gennady Padalka from his six-month tour on the International Space Station. He's joined by ESA's Andreas Mogensen and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov, who spent nearly 10 days in space.

0045 GMT (8:45 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
"We are coming back to Earth, to our hospitable planet," says Soyuz commander Gennady Padalka.

0044 GMT (8:44 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
At an altitude of about 12 meters, cockpit displays will tell the cosmonauts to prepare for the soft landing engine firing. Just one meter above the surface, and just seconds before touchdown, the six solid propellant engines are fired in a final braking maneuver, enabling the Soyuz to land to complete its mission, settling down at a velocity of about 1.5 meters per second (3.35 mph).

0039 GMT (8:39 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
The recovery team has made audio contact with the Soyuz crew.

0038 GMT (8:38 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Soyuz TMA-16M commander Gennady Padalka confirms deployment of the main parachute. There appear to be no issues with the descent.
At an altitude of five kilometers, the module's heat shield is jettisoned. This is followed by the termination of the aerodynamic spin cycle and the dumping of any residual propellant from the Soyuz. Computers also will arm the module's seat shock absorbers in preparation for landing.

With the jettisoning of the capsule's heat shield, the Soyuz altimeter is exposed to the surface of the Earth. Using a reflector system, signals are bounced to the ground from the Soyuz and reflected back, providing the capsule's computers updated information on altitude and rate of descent.

0038 GMT (8:38 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Once the drogue chute is jettisoned, the main parachute is deployed. It is connected to the Descent Module by two harnesses, covers an area of about 1,000 square meters and slows descent to 7.2 meters/second.
Initially, the Descent Module will hang underneath the main parachute at a 30-degree angle with respect to the horizon for aerodynamic stability, but the bottommost harness will be severed a few minutes before landing, allowing the Descent Module to hang vertically through touchdown.

0037 GMT (8:37 p.m. EDT)
Onboard computers should be starting a commanded sequence for deployment of the capsule's parachutes at an altitude of about 10 kilometers. Two "pilot" parachutes are unfurled first, extracting a 24-square-meter drogue parachute. Within 16 seconds, the craft's fall will slow from 230 meters per second to about 80 m/s.
The parachute deployment creates a gentle spin for the Soyuz as it dangles underneath the drogue chute, assisting in the capsule's stability in the final minutes before touchdown.

0036 GMT (8:36 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
The crew experiences the period of maximum g-forces at this point during entry.

0031 GMT (8:31 p.m. EDT)
Twenty minutes to landing. The Soyuz is making its fiery plunge into the atmosphere after 168 days in orbit.

0029 GMT (8:29 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Entry Interface. The Soyuz is now hitting the upper fringes of the atmosphere at an altitude of 400,000 feet, flying at an angle of 1.35 degrees. The crew will soon begin to feel the first tugs of Earth's gravity.
The entry guidance by the spacecraft's onboard software package is scheduled to start in a few minutes.

0027 GMT (8:27 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Module separation has occurred, Mission Control reports.
The three segments of the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft have jettisoned apart, allowing the crew-carrying Descent Module to safely ferry the three crew members back to Earth. The no-longer-needed Orbital Module and Instrumentation/Propulsion Module are designed to burn up in the atmosphere.

0024 GMT (8:24 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
The Soyuz computers have been loaded with and enabled the commands to perform the pyrotechnic separation of the modules.

0021 GMT (8:21 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
Time to touchdown is now 30 minutes.
In about three minutes at an altitude of 87 miles, just above the first traces of the Earth's atmosphere, computers will command the separation of the three modules that comprise the Soyuz vehicle. With the crew strapped in to the Descent Module, the forward Orbital Module containing the docking mechanism and rendezvous antennas and the rear Instrumentation/Propulsion Module, which houses the engines and avionics, will pyrotechnically separate and burn up in the atmosphere.

The Descent Module's computers will orient the capsule with its ablative heat shield pointing forward to repel the buildup of heat as it plunges into the atmosphere. Entry interface at the upper fringes of the atmosphere, when the capsule is about 400,000 feet above the Earth, happens about three minutes after module separation.

0016 GMT (8:16 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
The Soyuz flight path is crossing Africa now as the spacecraft falls back toward the atmosphere. The crew members are expected to close their helmets at this time.

0010 GMT (8:10 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
The Soyuz is aiming for a landing site at 47.21 degrees north latitude and 69.34 east longitude. Landing occurs at 8:51:20 p.m. EDT (0051:20 GMT), two minutes before sunrise in Kazakhstan, where local time will be 6:51 a.m. at touchdown.
Ground controllers may lose voice communications with the Soyuz crew, but this is an expected phenomenon. Intermittent communications with the Soyuz is expected through the rest of the descent.

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0004 GMT (8:04 p.m. EDT on Fri.)
DEORBIT BURN COMPLETE! Flying over the South Atlantic Ocean, the Soyuz has performed its braking maneuver, committing the craft for entry into the atmosphere. Touchdown is about 47 minutes away.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2015
2359 GMT (7:59 p.m. EDT)
DEORBIT BURN IGNITION! Thrusters on the Russian Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft are firing to brake from orbit. This deorbit burn is expected to last four minutes and 42 seconds to put the capsule on a course for the trip back to Earth, slowing the vehicle by about 286 mph.

2351 GMT (7:51 p.m. EDT)
Now one hour to touchdown.

2330 GMT (7:30 p.m. EDT)
Everything is on track for the landing of the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft at 8:51 p.m. EDT (0051 GMT), with the start of the capsule's deorbit burn expected at 7:59:07 p.m. EDT (2359 GMT).
The deorbit burn is programmed to last four minute and 42 seconds to slow the spacecraft's velocity by 286 mph, enough for the Soyuz to drop in altitude and be captured by Earth's atmosphere for re-entry.

Just before it falls into the atmosphere, the Soyuz spacecraft's three modules will separate at 8:26 p.m. EDT (0026 GMT). The orbital habitation and service modules will burn up during re-entry, while the landing section containing Gennady Padalka, Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov is protected by a heat shield.

Altitude of the Soyuz spacecraft at module separation will be about 86 miles, or just shy of 140 kilometers.

The Soyuz spacecraft will reach the top of the discernable atmosphere at 8:28 p.m. EDT (0028 GMT). The crew members will experience maximum g-forces at 8:36 p.m. EDT (0036 GMT).

The Soyuz will issue the command to open parachutes at 8:37 p.m. EDT (0037 GMT), beginning a nearly 15-minute descent to the steppes of Kazakhstan southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan.

A set of so-called "soft landing rockets" will fire just above the ground to further cushion the impact of landing.

2135 GMT (5:35 p.m. EDT)
A separation firing by the Soyuz's thrusters has been completed to accelerate the spacecraft's departure from the International Space Station. The capsule will be nearly 8 miles away when it performs the deorbit burn today at 7:59 p.m. EDT (2359 GMT). Touchdown is scheduled for 5:51 p.m. EDT (0051 GMT).
The undocking occurred as the spacecraft flew 250 miles over Mongolia.

2129 GMT (5:29 p.m. EDT)

UNDOCKING. The Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft has separated from the space station after 168 days there, setting the stage for today's return to Earth with Soyuz commander Gennady Padalka, Danish flight engineer Andreas Mogensen and Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/09/01/exp44-mission-status-center-2/

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Soyuz Departure Info...

Soyuz TMA-16M was scheduled to land on Sept. 12, 2015, carrying Gennady Padalka, who was launched onboard the same spacecraft, as well as Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov, who arrived 10 days earlier onboard Soyuz TMA-18M. During the return home, Padalka (who spent 168 days) occupied the center seat of the Soyuz commander in the descent module, flanked by Mogensen in the left seat and Aimbetov on the right. Due to a last-minute switch from a six-hour to a two-day rendezvous profile with the station and resulting late arrival of the Soyuz TMA-18M, there were proposals to postpone the Soyuz TMA-16 departure until September 15, however the idea was ultimately dropped, thus shortening Mogensen's and Aimbetov's planned presence onboard the ISS.

Hatches between the ISS and Soyuz TMA-16M were closed at 1:17 p.m. Houston Time (2:17 p.m. EDT, 21:17 Moscow Time) on Sept. 11, 2015.

The undocking of Soyuz TMA-16M from the station's Zvezda Service Module on the Russian segment took place as scheduled on Sept. 12, 2015, at 00:29:00 Moscow Time (5:29 p.m. EDT on September 11), as the ISS was flying over Eastern Mongolia within range of Russian ground control stations. The undocking command was issued 1.5 minutes before the planned separation with spring-loaded mechanism, giving the spacecraft a speed of around 0.1 meters per second. Three minutes after leaving the station, the Soyuz made its first eight-second maneuver with its thrusters to back away from the station to a distance of around 12 kilometers for a deorbiting burn.

The four-minute, 42-second braking maneuver slowing down Soyuz TMA-16M by 128 meters per second, enough to push the spacecraft off its orbit, was initiated 7:59 p.m. EDT as the two spacecraft were flying over the Southern Atlantic, off the coast of Argentina. Minutes after the successful completion of the firing, first search and rescue helicopters began taking off, NASA reported. The ISS changed attitude to enable remaining crew to witness and document the fiery entry of the descent moduleinto the Earth's atmosphere.

The descent module, SA, of Soyuz TMA-16M separated from the habitation module, BO, and the instrument compartment, PAO, at 8:25 p.m. EDT (7:25 Houston Time) on September 11.

Following an aerodynamic breaking the two-tier parachute system was released from the descent module, starting with a 22-square-meter braking chute, which slowed down the capsule's descent speed from 130 meters per second to 80 meters per second. It was followed by the 1,000-square meter main parachute, which braked the descent module to 7.8 meters per second.

The descent module made a very accurate landing at 8:51:36 p.m. EDT (just 16 seconds after predicted time) on September 11, 2015, 146 kilometers from the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. The touchdown was timed two minutes before local sunrise, to give rescue services maximum daylight time for recovery operations.

The weather forecast for the landing area promised winds of around 7 miles per hour from northwest, temperatures around 60F degrees and overcast sky with clouds at around 10,000 feet, with chances of light rain, according to NASA. The sunrise at the landing site will take place at 03:54 Moscow Time and sunset will be at 16:41 Moscow Time.

A total of 12 Mi-8 helicopters and four all-terrain vehicles were expected to participate in search and recovery operations. Two of the helicopters will be deployed half way between the nominal landing point and the ballistic landing area, while two others would be deployed in Baikonur.

After landing, the crew was scheduled to visit the Kazakh capital of Ostana for official greetings by the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev, to celebrate the return of the Kazakh cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov back to Earth.

Soyuz TMA-16M crew:

Primary crew Backup crew

Gennady Padalka, Soyuz commander, Roskosmos Alesei Ovchinin, Soyuz commander,Roskosmos

Mikhail Kornienko, Flight engineer, Roskosmos (up only) Sergei Volkov, flight engineer, Roskosmos

Scott Kelly, Flight engineer, NASA (up only) Jeffrey Williams, Flight engineer, NASA

Andreas Mogensen, Flight engineer, ESA (down only; arrived to ISS onboard Soyuz TMA-18M) N/A

Aidyn Aimbetov, Flight engineer, Kazkosmos (down only; arrived to ISS onboard Soyuz TMA-18M)
N/A

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuz_tma16m.html#landing

Later..........

6,181 · September 12, 2015

NASA Seeks Spending Flexibility To Keep Commercial Crew on Schedule

Star Trek Renegades

Ooooops.........wrong crew..........one more try

NASA's commercial crew program is intended to restore the U.S. crew-launch capability lost when the space shuttle was reitred in 2011. Credit: NASA

WASHINGTON — As NASA continues to advocate for full funding of its commercial crew program in 2016, the agency is seeking flexibility for the program in an upcoming short-term spending bill to avoid the risk of further delays.

In a Sept. 10 interview, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden confirmed that NASA would seek language supporting the commercial crew program in a continuing resolution (CR) Congress must pass this month to fund the federal government after Sept. 30.

“We are hoping that we’re able get permission from the Congress” in a CR to spend at a higher rate than it has in 2015, he said. Such a provision “would allow us to spend at a rate that would project to what we asked for in the 2016 budget. That would enable us to keep going with the companies as scheduled.”

In a CR, agencies continue to spend money at the same levels as the previous fiscal year unless explicitly instructed otherwise in the bill. For commercial crew, that would mean spending at the 2015 level of $805 million for the year, whereas NASA requested $1.243 billion for the program in 2016. NASA says that amount is set by the contracts it has with Boeing and SpaceX.

In a document obtained by SpaceNews, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget included the commercial crew program in a list of variations, or “anomalies,” it is requesting to any short-term CR. The only other reference to NASA in the document is regarding the expiration of unspent funds for space shuttle closeout costs.

In the document, the administration requested that the CR allow NASA to spend funds on commercial crew “at a rate for operations necessary to maintain the planned schedule” for the program. “Without the anomaly, NASA would have insufficient funding for activities carried out by its commercial contractors during the CR period, forcing a work stoppage that would result in substantial delays that would lengthen U.S. dependence on other countries for crewed access to space.”

That request for short-term spending flexibility comes as NASA continues to advocate for the full amount it requested for 2016. An appropriations bill passed by the House in June provides $1 billion for the program, while a Senate version would provide $900 million.

The agency has gone on the offensive in recent weeks, arguing that without the full amount it will have to renegotiate its existing contracts and further delay the program. Bolden called for full funding in an Aug. 5 letter to Congress notifying them of the purchase of Soyuz seats for flights to the International Space Station in 2018, and also wrote an essay in support of the requested funding published by the technology magazine Wired Aug. 28.

In the interview, Bolden said it was too soon to tell if that effort was winning over members. “It’s hard to say whether there are any effects on Capitol Hill because the Congress has been out of session,” he said. Congress reconvened Sept. 8 after a summer recess of more than a month.

One reason some in Congress have offered for the reduced commercial crew funding is the belief that companies are already running behind schedule. Bolden, though, said he was satisfied with their work so far. “I am incredibly happy with the progress both companies have made,” he said.

Other NASA officials have reiterated that any funding short of the request means that the agency will likely have to renegotiate the contracts with Boeing and SpaceX. “We’re going to run out of money at some point in 2016,” said Phil McAlister, director of NASA’s commercial spaceflight development division, in a Sept. 1 interview.

McAlister said that there is not yet a formal plan to deal with any commercial crew funding shortfall. “It will depend on exactly what the budget is and how far we’re short,” he said. “We’re just going to have to see how it plays out.”

A wild card in the budget debate is the potential for a government shutdown similar to 2013, when the lack of a CR forced most NASA operations to shut down for the first two weeks of October. Debates about policy provisions that could be included in a CR have raised the prospects of another shutdown this year.

McAlister said it wasn’t clear how a government shutdown would affect the commercial crew program, although he noted NASA personnel involved in the program would likely be furloughed for the duration of the shutdown.

John Mulholland, Boeing commercial crew program manager, said in a Sept. 3 interview that he expected his company’s work to continue in the event of a shutdown given the milestone-based nature of the contract, as it did during the prior shutdown. “We’re going to continue work,” he said.

Bolden said that, for now, NASA is not doing any planning for a potential shutdown. “We’re counting on the Congress performing the way that both the Speaker of the House and the [Majority] Leader in the Senate have promised the American public, and that is that we will not experience a government shutdown,” he said. “That’s what NASA is counting on.”

http://spacenews.com/nasa-seeks-spending-flexibility-to-keep-commercial-crew-on-schedule/

Later....

6,181 · September 12, 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 10 September 2015

As if the Milky Way in this photo wasn’t enough, Astronaut Kjell Lindgren captured a lightning strike from space so bright that it lights up the space station’s solar panels. Credit: NASA.

The rest of the crew, which will officially become Expedition 45 when Padalka undocks, continued normal science and maintenance tasks. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly worked with a pair of tiny bowling ball-sized satellites outfitted with special gear to study fluid physics. He was later joined by cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko to review procedures and hardware they would use in the event of a medical emergency in space.

Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren worked on plumbing tasks before videotaping crew activities with an IMAX camera. Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui conducted a variety of life science experiments. Finally, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko worked maintenance on Russian hardware before moving on to Russian science.

Node 3 Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Anomaly: Yesterday evening, the Node 3 CDRA pump experienced an anomaly at the beginning of segment 2 during Half Cycle 2. This anomaly had been seen before in February of this year. Ground team's power cycled the Pump/Fan Motor Controller (PFMC) in order to recover from the problem. At this time Node 3 and Lab CDRAs are operating nominally and CO2 levels are within acceptable limits.

Ground Activities
All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.
PVCU Refresh

Three-Day Look Ahead:
Friday, 09/11: 42S Undock, PCG removal, SLAMMD setup control run, MSPR2 CO2 umbilical mate, Capillary Beverage
Saturday, 09/12: Weekly Cleaning, Crew off duty
Sunday, 09/13: Crew Off Duty

QUICK ISS Status - Environmental Control Group:

Component - Status
Elektron - On
Vozdukh - Manual
[СКВ] 1 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV1") - Off
[СКВ] 2 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV2") - On
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab - Operate
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 - Operate
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab - Shutdown
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 - Operate
Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) - Process
Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) - Standby
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab - Off
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 - Full Up

NASA ISS Space to Ground Weekly Report - 11 September 2015

NASA ISS Space to Ground Weekly Report - 11 September 2015. NASA

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/nasa-iss-space-to-ground-weekly-report---11-september-2015.html

Space to Ground: Full House : 9/11/2015 (video is 2:03 min)

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Soyuz Crew Lands in Kazakhstan

Soyuz Crew Lands in Kazakhstan. NASA

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Expedition 44 Commander Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Flight Engineers Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency and Aidyn Aimbetov of the Kazakh Space Agency (Kazcosmos), returned safely to Earth on Sept. 12 with a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan.

Padalka completed 168 days in space since launching in late March, boosting his all-time record total of time in space to 879 days on five flights. Mogensen and Aimbetov spent eight days in space as part of the crew that brought a fresh Soyuz spacecraft to the complex. Following landing the crew was greeted with a traditional ceremony.

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/soyuz-crew-lands-in-kazakhstan.html

Expedition 44/Visiting Soyuz Crew Bids Farewell to Space Station (video is 6:17 min)

Soyuz Undocks from ISS video is 5:16 min

Soyuz Crew Lands in Kazakhstan video is 10:40 min

Later.....

6,181 · September 13, 2015

Video: ISS Family Dinner

When there are nine people aboard the International Space Station, it's a bit of a full house.

It's been a solid, busy week since Andy, Sergei and Aidyn joined the rest of us. It's not every day you get to work with such a unique crew comprised of good people from five different countries: Russia, USA, Denmark, Japan and Kazakhstan.

At the end of the day, the dinner table acts as a unifier, a place of community. Sharing a meal gives us a chance to put aside work and catch up with one another. While nutrition is important to us physically - maintaining our health and mitigating the negative effects of microgravity on our bodies - mealtime also is important to us psychologically.

Dining together can radically shift perspectives, blurring boundaries just as looking down on Earth from our vantage point, especially, when dinner partners are from all different corners of the world. But also mealtime lets us build a sense of camaraderie.

Andy, Aidyn and Gennady - whom I launched to the International Space Station with nearly six months ago - will begin their journey home today. I will miss those guys. They are good friends to break bread with.

Eat simply, and eat together.

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/video-iss-family-dinner.html

video is (1:13 min)

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Supervising two rovers from space

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen is proving to be an expert space driver after commanding two rovers from space this week. As part of ESA's Meteron project, Andreas drove a second, car-sized rover from the International Space Station to repair a mockup lunar base in the Netherlands.

Andreas directly controlled the Eurobot rover in a simulated troubleshooting Moon scenario. A second rover was controlled by ESA's centre in Germany, allowing Andreas to focus on Eurobot and intervene if necessary.

The new user interface for operating rovers from space ran perfectly as they worked in harmony at close quarters without any problems. The experiment went so well that it was completed in one continuous session rather than over the planned three sessions on two days.

"This experiment demonstrated that we have the means to operate lunar robots from a spacecraft orbiting the Moon, a topic ESA is studying at the moment," says Meteron system engineer Jessica Grenouilleau.

Landing humans on a distant object is one thing, but they will also need the fuel and equipment to work and return to Earth when done. Sending robots to scout landing sites and prepare habitats for humans is more efficient and safer, especially if the robots are controlled by astronauts who can react and adapt to situations better than computer minds.

Meteron is developing the communication networks, interfaces and hardware to operate robots from a distance in space. The Space Station is being used as testbed, with astronauts controlling rovers on Earth.

The demonstration showed that robots can perform valuable tasks and two can collaborate efficiently, even if they are controlled from kilometres apart.

The experiment proved the user interface works well and that ESA's 'space internet' can stream five video signals to the Station - orbiting at 28 800 km/h some 400 km high - without significant delays and in good quality.

If the link is lost for a moment, which often happens in space operations, the network adapts without a problem.

The user interface was developed for ESA by a young team from Thales Alenia Space in Italy, working against tight deadlines to be ready in time for Andreas's mission.

This experiment is the third and most complex step so far for Meteron project. On Monday, Andreas directed a rover to insert a peg into a hole.

"With two very successful rover operations on Earth controlled from space on two consecutive days, we are looking forward to continuing Europe's leadership in human-robot cooperation with many more projects," concludes Meteron project coordinator Philippe Schoonejans.

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Supervising_two_rovers_from_space_999.html

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The Saffire Experiment Will Study Real Fires in Microgravity

Playing with fire in space sounds like a really bad idea, but that’s exactly what NASA intends to do with its upcoming Spacecraft Fire Experiment (Saffire) mission.

This combustible research project is slated for launch in 2016, and will be activated at a distance from the International Space Station to avoid, you know, setting our only orbital outpost ablaze. The details of the mission are covered in a new video released on Friday by NASA’s Glenn Research Center.

NASA is partnering with Orbital Sciences for the project—the same company that wasdevastated by a launchpad explosion last year. Unlike SpaceX, Orbital uses expendable rockets and spacecraft, meaning that their flagship Cygnus capsule isn’t built to survive re-entry. Where SpaceX’s Dragon capsules can be theoretically be used multiple times, the Cygnus is a one-time-only spacecraft.

Expendable vehicles aren’t as efficient as reusable ones, but they happen to be perfect for lighting fires in space. Once the Cygnus has delivered its payload of supplies to the ISS, it can be released back into orbit with the Saffire experiment still onboard.

The hardware for the test will include several fabrics that will be ignited inside the capsule, and monitored by cameras and other instruments. The data from the experiment will then be relayed back to Earth, and the Cygnus will be free to immolate itself in the atmosphere, destroying everything it contains in the process.

You might be wondering why NASA wants to spark a bunch of space fires in the first place. The answer is that scientists know next to nothing about how fire works in microgravity—or how to prevent and extinguish it. Astronauts are trained to handle spacecraft fires, but they would still be in serious trouble if a real one broke out on the ISS, because flames behave completely differently in outer space than they do on Earth.

Fire on Earth compared to fire in microgravity. Image: NASA

For one thing, in microgravity, flames take the shape of Nintendo-style fireballs rather than the familiar teardrop structure we are familiar with on Earth. Accordingly, fires can expand in any direction, and can burn at colder temperatures in space than on our planet. These bizarre, unpredictable properties have prevented astronauts from experimenting much with combustion in orbit for safety reasons, and so we simply don’t know a lot about space fire.

"Currently, most flammability data for materials in microgravity is obtained during short-duration, drop-tower tests with small sample sizes," Orbital VP and former astronaut Carl Walz told Reuters.

"There is very little data on large-scale material flammability in low-gravity environments,” he continued. “Gathering this type of data will enable NASA to enhance safe operations of new space vehicles that are being designed for long-duration travel to the Moon, asteroids, and other destinations."

In other words, next year, NASA will delight astrophiliac pyromaniacs around the world by setting fire to materials inside an orbiting capsule, before the capsule itself burns up in the atmosphere. Smokey the Bear is going to need a space age makeover.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-saffire-experiment-will-study-real-fires-in-microgravity

video is 1:39 min

Later..........

6,181 · September 14, 2015

Sunday Grab Bag of Goodies

Small Prototype Earth Return Capsule Flight Tested

Prototype Earth Return Capsule NASA

A prototype capsule that one day will return science experiments to Earth was tested by releasing it from a high-altitude balloon in Tillamook, Oregon. Technology like this capsule could one day return biological samples and other small payloads from space in a relatively short time.

NASA's Flight Opportunities Program funded the flight test for the new type of orbital entry return capsule aboard one of the program's providers, Near Space Corporation's (NSC) high-altitude balloon. The Flight Opportunities Program procures flights on proven commercial suborbital platforms to flight-test space technologies of interest to NASA.

NSC personnel launched the balloon to an altitude of about 20 miles or 101, 400 feet on June 21. The capsule, developed by Terminal Velocity Aerospace (TVA) of Atlanta, Georgia, then was released and descended at a velocity similar to what it would experience during an actual entry from space. The flight of the capsule demonstrated mission-enabling technologies including low-cost communication and electronic systems, along with a stem cell sample return experiment that was aboard the capsule.

"This launch is critical to ensuring that we have fast, safe, reliable and affordable ways to return important science back to Earth," said Paul De Leon, a campaign manager for the program from NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "Small entry capsules like Terminal Velocity's will allow scientific samples from the International Space Station, or more distant destinations like an asteroid, to return to Earth more regularly, which will provide researchers the samples quicker."

More data at...
http://spaceref.com/nasa-hack-space/small-prototype-earth-return-capsule-flight-tested.html

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NASA's Laser-Communication Tech for Spacecraft Zaps Forward

An artist's illustration shows the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) laser beaming data to Earth from its perch on the International Space Station.
Credit: NASA

NASA spacecraft may soon be able to beam their data home to Earth blazingly fast — with lasers!

In space, a slow data connection means more than just annoyingly long video-loading times. It can cause frustration and mistakes on the International Space Station, according to a new NASA study — and it's forcing scientists to wait 16 months to get all the data back from the New Horizons spacecraft's historic July 14 flyby of Pluto.

But a new, high-precision laser communications system will burst through those old radio-wave barriers for a faster back-and-forth, agency officials say.

"If we wanted to do a Google map of the entire surface of Mars, it would take nine years to bring back all the data with the current radio-frequency system" when Mars is at its closest, said Don Cornwell, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technology Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"The laser communication system that we're talking about is 40 times more bandwidth, which means that you could bring back that Google map of the complete Martian surface in nine weeks instead of nine years," Cornwell told Space.com.

Cornwell also envisions using lasers to send HD videos to astronauts on the moon or more distant destinations, giving them instructions about how to fix a broken piece of equipment or treat a sick crewmember.

More data at....
http://www.space.com/30452-nasa-laser-communications-system-spacecraft.html

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Award winning cult malt whisky's pioneering world first space experiment reveals a new taste dimension

NASAWATCH

he results of Ardbeg's pioneering space mission, released this week, in which the Distillery became the first ever to send spirit into orbit, have far-reaching implications for the unorthodox single malt – and perhaps for the entire whisky industry, experts say.

Nearly four years ago, Ardbeg distillate was sent into space as part of an experiment to investigate how micro-gravity (near zero gravity) would affect the behaviour of terpenes, the building blocks of flavour for many foods and wines as well as whisky spirits. This maturation experiment was undertaken as research into terpenes in micro-gravity was limited. Its findings, [revealed this week], are groundbreaking. They pave the way for unprecedented flavour profiles, particularly for Ardbeg, the world's peatiest, smokiest, Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky.

The experiment began in October 2011, when vials containing Ardbeg new-make spirit distillate and shards of Ardbeg casks, were sent to the U.S. National Lab on the International Space Station by the Distillery's partner, U.S. space research company NanoRacks LLC. Some 200 miles above Earth, the vials orbited the planet at 17,227 miles per hour, for almost three years. Following their return to Earth, the samples were analysed alongside control samples that had been kept at the Ardbeg Distillery by Dr Bill Lumsden, Ardbeg's Director of Distilling and Whisky Creation, independent whisky experts and scientists.

In three of the four stages of analysis, major differences were identified between the two sets of samples. Dr Bill said: "The space samples were noticeably different. When I nosed and tasted the space samples, it became clear that much more of Ardbeg's smoky, phenolic character shone through – to reveal a different set of smoky flavours which I have not encountered here on earth before." Dr Bill added: "Ardbeg already has a complex character, but the results of our experiment show that there is potentially even more complexity that we can uncover, to reveal a different side to the whisky."

Further analysis, looking at ratios of different types of wood extractive compounds, found significant differences between the two sets of samples – demonstrating that gravity has a very real effect on the maturation of spirit. Dr Bill commented "Our findings may also one day have significant implications for the whisky industry as a whole. In the future, the altered range of wood extractions could lead scientists to be able to detail the ratios of compounds expected in whiskies of a certain age."

Jeffrey Manber, CEO of NanoRacks who partnered with Ardbeg on this experiment, commented "It's hard to find companies willing to be pioneers... To have a partner like Ardbeg that is willing to make this sort of commitment augurs well for the future of commercial space research into flavourings and what it changes for consumer products in general."

Ardbeg would like to thank NASA and the Space Station Program for allowing this experiment to be undertaken.

More data at.....
http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=46797

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Robotic landing gear could enable helicopters to take off and land anywhere

The robotic landing gear system was developed with funding from DARPA's Mission Adaptive Rotor (MAR) program, and is now undergoing continued development by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Helicopters are incredibly maneuverable in the air, but during landing and takeoff their traditional skid- and wheel-based landing gear requires stable, flat surfaces-surfaces that are often unavailable in helicopter-needy environs such as forward operating areas, ships at sea and natural-disaster zones.

Having the ability to land on and take off from angled, irregular and moving surfaces would greatly expand the effectiveness of helicopters across many military and national security missions.

As part of its effort to provide such a breakthrough capability, DARPA has conducted an experimental demonstration of a novel robotic landing gear system.

The adaptive system replaces standard landing gear with four articulated, jointed legs that are able to fold up next to the helicopter's fuselage while in flight and are equipped with force-sensitive contact sensors in their feet.

During landing, each leg extends and uses its sensors to determine in real time the appropriate angle to assume to ensure that the helicopter stays level and minimize any risk of the rotor touching the landing area.

"The equipment-mounted on an otherwise unmodified, unmanned helicopter-successfully demonstrated the ability to land and take off from terrain that would be impossible to operate from with standard landing gear," said Ashish Bagai, DARPA program manager. Bagai described the previously unreleased results of the flight demonstration at Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum, in St. Louis.

Along with comprehensive dynamic simulation and structural analyses, the demonstration flight-conducted near Atlanta-indicated numerous potential benefits, Bagai said, including:

+ Reduced risk of damage during hard landings, by as much as a factor of five, compared to conventional landing gear

+ Stable landing and take-off on sloping terrain of up to 20 degrees, more than twice current limits, and on craggy, boulder-strewn or otherwise irregular terrain

+ Ship landings in violent sea states

+ Significant increase in capabilities with only a modest increase in landing gear weight

The robotic landing gear system was developed with funding from DARPA's Mission Adaptive Rotor (MAR) program, and is now undergoing continued development by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Robotic_Landing_Gear_Could_Enable_Future_Helicopters_to_Take_Off_and_Land_Almost_Anywhere_999.html

They forgot one application.....Space probe landing....such as the moon. Once landed, an auto correction could be done for a stable comm platform.

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NASA Mulling Life-Hunting Mission to Saturn Moon Enceladus

This image of the geyser-spewing Saturn moon Enceladus was taken on Oct. 5, 2008 by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

A decade from now, NASA probes could be on their way to explore two potentially life-supporting alien worlds.

The agency already plans to launch a spacecraft toward the Jupiter moon Europa in the early to mid-2020s, and it's mulling a mission to the Saturn satellite Enceladus that would lift off by the end of 2021. Many astrobiologists regard Europa and Enceladus, which are both thought to harbor oceans of liquid water beneath their icy shells, as the solar system's two best bets to host alien life.

The possible Encelacus project, known as the Enceladus Life Finder (ELF), is one of two dozen or so concepts submitted earlier this year for consideration by NASA's Discovery Program, which launches highly focused, relatively low-cost missions to various solar system destinations.

NASA is expected to cull the original Discovery applicant pool to a handful of finalists next month, then select the overall winner around September 2016. The people behind ELF — which, as its name suggests, would search for signs of biological activity on Enceladus — believe they've put forward a strong contender.

"We think we have the highest chance of success of getting an indicator of [alien] life for really any mission at this point," ELF concept principal investigator Jonathan Lunine, of Cornell University, told Space.com.

More than 100 geysers blast water ice, organic molecules and other material into space from the south polar region of the Saturn moon Enceladus.
Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

More data at.......
http://www.space.com/30419-alien-life-search-enceladus-mission.html

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The Smithsonian is asking Star Trek fans for help to restore an original Enterprise model

The National Air and Space Museum is opening its hailing frequencies and asking fans for help. They need original pics or footage of their original Enterprise model — which has already gone through eight different restorations ever since it was built in 1964, by the way — so that they can restore it to all its August 1967 glory. Yep, it’s that specific.

Star Trek fans made first contact with the ship in 1972, when a model was featured at Golden West College in Huntington Beach, Calif., during Space Week (a 10-day gathering of space-related activities). Then, in 1974 through 1975, the ship was put on display in the Smithsonian’s Arts & Industries Building in Washington, D.C., while the National Air and Space Museum’s new home base was being built on Independence Avenue.

Museum conservators are now currently hard at work on the ship, and they’re in need of primary source photos and footage to use as reference for the ambitious project, which is to replicate what the Enterprise looked like during and after the cult-classic episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." It was, apparently, the last time the model was altered throughout the rest of the run of Star Trek: The Original Series.

Before you guys send anything, be aware that the Smithsonian is specifically looking for firsthand, original pics or film of the ship during its construction and the show’s filming, or when it was on public display before 1976. No screencaps from the TV series or images found online will be beamed aboard the project. If you’ve got your hands on those precious primary sources, please send a message to StarshipEnterprise@si.edu.

http://www.blastr.com/2015-9-9/smithsonian-asking-star-trek-fans-help-restore-original-enterprise-model

Later........

6,181 · September 15, 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 11 September 2015

File photo: A Soyuz spacecraft is seen as it lands March 12, 2015 carrying three Expedition 42 crew members. Credit NASA.

The Soyuz TMA-16M carrying Expedition 44 crew member Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos and visiting crew members Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) and Aidyn Aimbetov of the Kazakh Space Agency undocked from the station at 5:29 p.m. EDT.

Padalka spent 168 days aboard the International Space Station during Expeditions 43 and 44 and will complete 2,688 orbits of Earth. Mogensen and Aimbetov spent 10 days in space, eight of them aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Padalka is the commander at the controls of the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft. They will perform a separation burn to increase the distance from the station before executing a 4-minute, 42-second deorbit burn at 7:59 p.m. The crew is scheduled to land at 8:51 p.m. southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

The departure marks the end of Expedition 44. The Expedition 45 crew members remaining aboard to continue research and maintenance are Commander Scott Kelly of NASA, NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko, Sergey Volkov, and Oleg Kononenko, and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

HTV Cargo Transfer Status: Lindgren and Kelly completed about 3 hours of HTV-5 Cargo transfer operations today. Cargo specialist estimate the crew will need approximately 12 hours to complete the HTV-5 cargo operations.

Ground Activities
All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.
System commanding in support of Soyuz undocking

Three-Day Look Ahead:
Saturday, 09/12: Weekly Cleaning, Crew Off duty
Sunday, 09/13: Crew Off Duty
Monday, 09/14: HTV Cargo Ops, HTV Robotics OBT, Crew Off Duty

QUICK ISS Status - Environmental Control Group:

Component - Status
Elektron - On
Vozdukh - Manual
[СКВ] 1 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV1") - On
[СКВ] 2 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV2") - Off
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab - Standby
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 - Operate
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab - Shutdown
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 - Operate
Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) - Standby
Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) - Standby
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab - Off
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 - Full Up

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/nasa-international-space-station-on-orbit-status-1-september-2015-1.html

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ESA's Proba-2 Satellite Sees Three Partial Solar Eclipses

ESA's Proba-2 Satellite Sees Three Partial Solar Eclipses. ESA

ESA's Earth-orbiting Proba-2 satellite observed three partial solar eclipses on the morning of 13 September 2015 along with an additional passage of the Moon close to the edge of the Sun.

The image was taken with Proba-2's SWAP imager, which views the solar disc at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to capture the turbulent surface of the Sun and its swirling corona, which can clearly be seen in between eclipses in this movie. The Sun's rotation can also be seen.

http://spaceref.com/sun/esas-proba-2-satellite-sees-three-partial-solar-eclipses.html

video is 0:44 min

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US Military Foresees Robot-Run 'Transportation Hub' in Space

Artist's concept of a robot-run space transportation hub at geosynchronous orbit, about 22,370 miles (36,000 kilometers) from Earth. DARPA

The future of spaceflight involves building, refueling and repairing spacecraft in a depot far from Earth, all without the aid of human hands, officials with the United States military say.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a highly capable robotic arm that could make such a space "transportation hub" possible in the relatively near future, said former NASA astronaut Pam Melroy, deputy director of DARPA's Tactical Technology Office.

"We think that these capabilities — space capabilities — are not just about a single monolithic satellite with a few capabilities, but instead about a vibrant, robust ecosystem that involves transportation, repair, refueling, upgrading, [and] in situ construction," Melroy said Thursday (Sept. 10) at DARPA's "Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum" in St. Louis.

"Look at the great seafaring port cities in the world for inspiration, and imagine a port of call at 36,000 kilometers," she added.

Thirty-six thousand kilometers (22,370 miles) is the distance from Earth at which satellites fly in geosynchronous orbit, or "GEO" for short. Spacecraft at GEO — which include most operational telecommunications satellites — complete one lap in the same amount of time it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis, and therefore appear to "hover" over one spot on the planet all the time.

It makes much more sense to build a transformative transportation hub at GEO than at low-Earth orbit (LEO), which lies at an altitude between 186 miles and 373 miles (300 to 600 km), Melroy said.

For one thing, orbital velocity at GEO is lower, reducing the risk of serious collisions with space junk. GEO is also a much more stable orbit, because satellites located there are not nearly as affected by atmospheric drag. Whereas spacecraft at LEO (such as the International Space Station) will fall back to Earth within 25 years or so unless orbit-boosting maneuvers are performed, objects at GEO will stay put on their own for up to 1 million years, Melroy said.

"We think this sounds like a really interesting place to put infrastructure, because it's such a stable place," she said.

Radiation levels so far from Earth — GEO lies about 10 percent of the way from Earth to the moon — are too high for astronauts to tolerate safely over long durations, so this future facility would be run by robots, Melroy added.

The key to making all of this happen therefore lies in advanced space robotics — "robotic arms very much like the one that was used to build the International Space Station, but with greater levels of automation and safety," Melroy said.

"DARPA is building just such a robotic arm," she added. "We think this is a critical capability to building a transportation hub that allows transporation to and from the Earth's surface, from low-Earth orbit to GEO, and even beyond Earth orbit."

http://www.space.com/30529-darpa-robotic-space-transportation-hub.html

DARPA puts out some pretty good stuff, leading edge, with consumer trickle down goodies...like the net....except for this vague article....sort of like a "commercial" for future space, all without saying anything of substance, almost like they are gauging reaction. This is fine for civilian stations....but once you put "military" in the equation...mmmmm. As long as it's a legitimate repair station for sat's and craft...fine......any form of weaponization, and there will be a storm like no other. The use of the term "military" here is in bad taste, and will rile up a lot of people, including me. I like to think of space as the earth's "neutral zone".....no pissing contests allowed, and I don't think I'm alone in this respect, by any means. (end of mini rant)

38,286 · September 15, 2015

Earth-Moon Lagrange points 1 or 2 (L1 & L2) makes more sense. The radiation environment isn't so different and it takes little energy to go anywhere in the soar system. That's why NASA likes them for an Exploration Gateway, and Bigelow likes them as a staging area for landing assembled lunar bases made of their habs on the Moon.

6,181 · September 15, 2015

Earth-Moon Lagrange points 1 or 2 (L1 & L2) makes more sense. The radiation environment isn't so different and it takes little energy to go anywhere in the soar system. That's why NASA likes them for an Exploration Gateway, and Bigelow likes them as a staging area for landing assembled lunar bases made of their habs on the Moon.

That would be ideal for a staging point, with the least resources required to keep the station in position. Would make a great assembly point for massive scientific explorer vehicles. Just send up the body and attach all the complicated goodies in space and pretest unit before sending it on it's way. Bigelow is about to get real busy in the foreseeable future.

.

4,806 · September 15, 2015

That would be ideal for a staging point, with the least resources required to keep the station in position. Would make a great assembly point for massive scientific explorer vehicles. Just send up the body and attach all the complicated goodies in space and pretest unit before sending it on it's way. Bigelow is about to get real busy in the foreseeable future.

.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

I third this. L1 and L2 are great locations. For those who are unaware, L1 and L2 are known to be "forward of" and "behind" the Moon on its' orbital plane, respectively, where the Earth's gravity and the Moon's cancel out. No real action is needed at that point because those orbits are so stable, other than minor "reboost/correction" burns, like the ISS has to perform sometimes, but unlike the ISS this will be due to the activity at the facility at the L1/L2 point.

They're also great because the escape velocities needed to get the gear on its' way to anywhere else in the Solar System are next to nil. Not sure of the exact Delta-V needed but I know it's not much.

Yeah ... go Bigelow. Do your thing.

6,181 · September 15, 2015

I was not sure where to put this, so I dropped this video here....

WATCH NOW | NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in Conversation with Jeff Foust

In an exclusive one-on-one interview with SpaceNews senior staff writer Jeff Foust, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden discussed some of the key issues facing the space agency, from development of commercial crew systems to planning for human missions to Mars.

During this video interview, recorded Sept. 10 at NASA Headquarters, Bolden discusses:

What a continuing resolution — or government shutdown — would mean to the commercial crew program

The status of efforts to get NASA’s partners to agree to an extension of the International Space Station

What NASA is doing to add details to its long-term strategy for human Mars exploration

The perception that NASA and Congress can’t get along

What he believes his biggest accomplishments are as administrator, what’s left on his to-do list

http://spacenews.com/nasa-administrator-charles-bolden-in-conversation-with-jeff-foust/

Video is 21:07 min. I thought it was an interesting video.....I also think Mr Bolden is the right guy in that job.....clever fellow.......

Later.......

6,181 · September 16, 2015

Halfway Home: One-Year Space Crew Rallies for 6 More Months Off Earth

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is spending a year in space during his Expedition 44 mission to the International Space Station. Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are flying the yearlong space mission to study the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body. NASA

Two space travelers on the International Space Station are entering rarely tread territory as they pass the six-month mark in a yearlong stay in orbit. The mission will help scientists understand how humans might cope with a journey to Mars.

American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have been living on the space station for about six months and won't be going home for another half-year. Theiryearlong space mission is about twice as long as a typical extended stay on the station, so compared to typical astronauts, they're spending twice the time away from friends and family, twice the time in weightlessness, and twice the time exposed tospace radiation — and experiencing twice the dose of physical and mental stress.

"I expected this to not be easy. A year is a long time," Kelly told reporters during an in-flight interview on Sept. 8. Kelly and Kornienko are undergoing a swarm of scientific studies that may shed light on the mental and physical changes the human body undergoes during long spaceflight missions. The long-term goal of the one-year mission is to help develop better ways to prepare and protect astronauts as they take the next big leap beyond Earth — possibly on a journey to the Red Planet.

"I feel pretty good overall," Kelly said Monday (Sept. 14) in an in-flight interview on NASA TV. "I definitely recognize that I've been up here a long time and have just as long ahead of me. But I feel positive about it."

Kelly added that he has consciously paced himself more slowly on this mission than on his last trip into orbit, which put him on the orbiting laboratory for 159 days.

"I intentionally thought about ways for me to get to the end of this with as much energy as I had in the beginning," Kelly said. "I intentionally don't work at the same pace I did last time I was up here, when I felt like I could go at 100 percent speed for the full six months. I can't do that. So I consciously try to throttle myself back at certain times and have a really good balance between work and rest. And that's what I would encourage anyone who attempts to spend this amount of time in this type of environment, is you just have to pace yourself."

If humans were to take a trip to Mars using near-future technology, the journey would likely take more than one year each way. While Kelly and Kornienko are not the first astronauts to surpass six months in space — five Russian cosmonauts have spent more than a year in orbit — relatively little scientific study has been done on those long-term space travelers. With the one-year mission, scientists will get their hands on a massive haul of data revealing the physical effects of long-duration spaceflight. Ultimately, this may help scientists understand how to assist and protect astronauts going to Mars or beyond.

more data at the link....
http://www.space.com/30541-one-year-space-mission-halfway-point.html

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Two US EVA's for October, November

For the first excursion (U.S. EVA-32) on 28 October, Kelly and Lindgren—both first-time spacewalkers—are tasked with myriad activities. They will install a thermal cover onto the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which resides at the Upper Inboard Payload Attach Site on the S-3 element of the starboard-side Integrated Truss Structure (ITS), and tie down some Multi-Layered Insulation (MLI) on a 220-pound (100 kg) Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU). Four MBSUs act as distribution hubs for the station’s Electrical Power System (EPS), whilst the unit to be tended by Kelly and Lindgren was delivered to the ISS as a replacement spare aboard Japan’s HTV-4 Kounotori cargo ship in August 2013 and is located on a Flight Releasable Attach Mechanism (FRAM) on the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC)-2 at the interface between the S-3 and S-1 truss segments. “We just want to tie it down so that the [Mobile Base System of Canadarm2] has a clear path for movement,” Mr. Navias told AmericaSpace.

In addition to their work on the AMS and MBSU tasks, Kelly and Lindgren will perform lubrication work on the Latching End Effector (LEE) of the 57.7-foot-long (17.6-meter) Canadarm2 robotic arm, which was previously tended by Expedition 42 spacewalker Terry Virts during U.S. EVA-30 in February 2015. They will also install a Non-Propulsive Valve (NPV) onto the exterior of the United States’ Destiny laboratory and begin the process of routing cables in anticipation for the PMA-3/IDA-3 installation at some point in the future. Labeled as an “ISS Upgrades EVA”, Mr. Navias told AmericaSpace that EVA-32 will see Kelly as “EV1”, with red stripes on the legs of his Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) space suit for identification, and Lindgren in a pure-white suit as “EV2”.

A week later, on U.S. EVA-33, the spacewalkers will switch roles, with Lindgren assuming the EV1 role and Kelly serving as EV2 on the United States’ fifth spacewalk of 2015, following on the heels of the trio of EVAs performed by Expedition 42 astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Terry Virts in the February-March timeframe to prepare the station’s U.S. Orbital Segment (USOS) for Commercial Crew, the IDA installations and the PMA-3 relocation. The primary objective of EVA-33 can trace its ancestry back to November 2012, when Expedition 33 spacewalkers Suni Williams and Aki Hoshide attempted to isolate an ammonia leak in the cooling system of the P-6 port-side element of the ITS. It was speculated at the time that the leak possibly arose following an MMOD strike to its Photovoltaic Radiator (PVR) or perhaps age-induced cracking, but by mid-2012 the leak had increased to 5.2 pounds (2.4 kg) per year, which represented about 10 percent of P-6’s original ammonia load. This, in turn, raised the alarming risk that the critical 2B power channel—which carries major electrical loads across the whole ISS—could have been forced to shut down before the end of 2012.

Williams and Hoshide’s EVA isolated the 2B coolant loop and used the Trailing Thermal Control Radiator (TTCR) for subsequent cooling, allowing engineers to pinpoint the exact location of the ammonia leak. However, six months later, in May 2013, ammonia “snow” was seen emanating from the 2B power channel, which necessitated a contingency EVA by Expedition 35 spacewalkers Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn. The pair were unable to locate the source of the leakage, but removed, replaced and tested a suspect Pump Flow Control Subassembly (PFCS), which was expected to yield additional clues for investigators in their search for a solution. More than two years later, Kelly and Lindgren’s task on U.S. EVA-33 will be “to restore the P-6 truss cooling system to the original state it was in prior to the Williams/Hoshide EVA”. Mr. Navias noted that no timelines are available yet with regard to U.S. EVAs 32 and 33.

Dovetailed into the U.S. EVA manifest, Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-5 Kounotori (“White Stork”) cargo ship is expected to be robotically unberthed from Harmony’s nadir interface and depart the station on 28 September, after which Russia’s Progress M-29M will arrive on 1/2 October and dock at the Zvezda aft port. Another Russian cargo craft, Progress M-28M—which has been docked at the Pirs module since early July—will depart on 19 November, to be replaced a few days later by the first flight of a new vessel, Progress-MS. Orbital Sciences is expected to launch its next Cygnus cargo mission, ORB-4, no sooner than 4 December, atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 booster from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

more data at the link....
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=86298#more-86298

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Space picture time.......

Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo of an aurora taken from the International Space Station to Twitter on August 15, 2015 with the caption, “Another pass through #Aurora. The sun is very active today, apparently.

Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo of the Perseid meteor shower taken from the International Space Station on Instagram with the caption, "Space weather forecast from @ISS: Moonless with a chance of #Perseid meteors!

Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo of an aurora taken from the International Space Station to Instagram with the caption, "Day 154.#Aurora's purple glow adds mystery to the nightscape. Good night from @ISS!

Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this picture of the Bahamas taken from the International Space Station on Twitter on July 19, 2015 with the caption, "#Bahamas, the strokes of your watercolors are always a refreshing sight.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2015/09/15/one-year-crew-reaches-midway-point-aboard-station/

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NASA to Hold Teleconference to Discuss Orion Spacecraft Progress

Press Release From: NASA HQ
Posted: Tuesday, September 15, 2015

NASA officials will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 16 to discuss the agency’s progress on the Orion spacecraft, which will carry humans on missions into deep space.

Participants in the teleconference will be Robert Lightfoot, NASA associate administrator, and William Gerstenmaier, the agency’s associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations.

To participate, reporters must contact Kathryn Hambleton or Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-1100, kathryn.hambleton@nasa.gov or stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov, and provide their media affiliation no later than 11 a.m. Wednesday.

The teleconference will stream live on NASA’s website at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

Orion will enable astronauts to travel farther into space than ever before, including to an asteroid placed in lunar orbit and on the journey to Mars. The spacecraft is designed to provide an emergency abort capability, sustain the astronauts and provide safe re-entry from deep space velocities. Orion will launch on the world’s most powerful rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System.

For more information about Orion, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/orion

// end //

http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=46847

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Sundiving comets.....

SUNDIVING COMET: A comet is plunging toward the sun today, Sept. 16th, and it is unlikely to survive the encounter. ESA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is monitoring the death plunge:

Telescopes on Earth cannot see this event. The sun is too bright. From its orbit 1.5 million km from Earth, however, SOHO is able to observe the comet's disintegration using an opaque disk to block the glare.

Sundiving comets are more common than you might think. SOHO has found more than 3000 of them. Most are members of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago. They get their name from 19th century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in detail. Kreutz fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate almost every day. Most, measuring less than a few meters across, are too small to see, but occasionally a bigger fragment like this one attracts attention.

The comet is vaporizing furiously. Will it make it around the sun? Probably not. Monitor the SOHO realtime images page for developments.

http://spaceweather.com/

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Science extra.....

Neurotechnology Provides Near-Natural Sense of Touch

In the very first set of tests, in which researchers gently touched each of the prosthetic hand's fingers while the volunteer was blindfolded, he was able to report with nearly 100 percent accuracy which mechanical finger was being touched. The feeling, he reported, was as if his own hand were being touched.

A 28-year-old who has been paralyzed for more than a decade as a result of a spinal cord injury has become the first person to be able to "feel" physical sensations through a prosthetic hand directly connected to his brain, and even identify which mechanical finger is being gently touched.

The advance, made possible by sophisticated neural technologies developed under DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics points to a future in which people living with paralyzed or missing limbs will not only be able to manipulate objects by sending signals from their brain to robotic devices, but also be able to sense precisely what those devices are touching.

"We've completed the circuit," said DARPA program manager Justin Sanchez. "Prosthetic limbs that can be controlled by thoughts are showing great promise, but without feedback from signals traveling back to the brain it can be difficult to achieve the level of control needed to perform precise movements. By wiring a sense of touch from a mechanical hand directly into the brain, this work shows the potential for seamless bio-technological restoration of near-natural function."

The clinical work involved the placement of electrode arrays onto the paralyzed volunteer's sensory cortex-the brain region responsible for identifying tactile sensations such as pressure. In addition, the team placed arrays on the volunteer's motor cortex, the part of the brain that directs body movements.

Wires were run from the arrays on the motor cortex to a mechanical hand developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University. That gave the volunteer-whose identity is being withheld to protect his privacy-the capacity to control the hand's movements with his thoughts, a feat previously accomplished under the DARPA program by another person with similar injuries.

Then, breaking new neurotechnological ground, the researchers went on to provide the volunteer a sense of touch. The APL hand contains sophisticated torque sensors that can detect when pressure is being applied to any of its fingers, and can convert those physical "sensations" into electrical signals. The team used wires to route those signals to the arrays on the volunteer's brain.

In the very first set of tests, in which researchers gently touched each of the prosthetic hand's fingers while the volunteer was blindfolded, he was able to report with nearly 100 percent accuracy which mechanical finger was being touched. The feeling, he reported, was as if his own hand were being touched.

"At one point, instead of pressing one finger, the team decided to press two without telling him," said Sanchez, who oversees the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. "He responded in jest asking whether somebody was trying to play a trick on him. That is when we knew that the feelings he was perceiving through the robotic hand were near-natural."

Sanchez described the basic findings on Thursday at Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum, hosted by DARPA in St. Louis. Further details about the work are being withheld pending peer review and acceptance for publication in a scientific journal.

The restoration of sensation with implanted neural arrays is one of several neurotechnology-based advances emerging from DARPA's 18-month-old Biological Technologies Office, Sanchez said. "DARPA's investments in neurotechnologies are helping to open entirely new worlds of function and experience for individuals living with paralysis and have the potential to benefit people with similarly debilitating brain injuries or diseases," he said.

In addition to the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program that focuses on restoring movement and sensation, DARPA's portfolio of neurotechnology programs includes the Restoring Active Memory (RAM) and Systems-Based Neurotechnology for Emerging Therapies (SUBNETS) programs, which seek to develop closed-loop direct interfaces to the brain to restore function to individuals living with memory loss from traumatic brain injury or complex neuropsychiatric illness.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Neurotechnology_Provides_Near_Natural_Sense_of_Touch_999.html

I am excited by this breakthrough....so many people can be helped by this.........

Later...........

6,181 · September 16, 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 15 September 2015

Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo taken from the International Space Station to Twitter on Sept. 5, 2015 with the caption, "#goodnight #Earth! Make me proud and I'll try and do the same. #YearInSpace". Credit: NASA.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko clocked in for their 171st day aboard the International Space Station since arriving on March 27.

The pair, set to come home March 3, 2016, are spending 342 days in space to help researchers better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long duration spaceflight. Read more about the One-Year Crew's midway point.

Meanwhile, a pair of first-time astronauts transferred gear to Japan's "Kounotori" HTV-5 cargo craft. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui conducted robotics work inserting an experiment platform into the side of the HTV-5 after the research it had delivered was installed on the outside of the Kibo lab module. The HTV-5 resupply mission will end Sept. 28 and the cargo craft will be released for a destructive entry over the Pacific Ocean.

Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Operations: Yesterday afternoon, the Robotics Ground Controllers powered up the MSS and maneuvered the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) into position to survey the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) Earth Sensor Assembly (ESA) unit B, which had experienced an anomaly on GMT 234. Afterwards, the SSRMS was moved back to its original position.

Today, Robotic Ground Controllers maneuvered the SSRMS into position to receive a hand off of the Exposed Pallet (EP) from the JEM Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS). Once the handoff was completed, the Robotics Ground Controllers maneuvered the EP to H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-5 where ISS Crew Members Lindgren and Yui inserted it into the HTV-5 Unpressurized Logistics Carrier (ULC). HTV-5 is scheduled to unberth from ISS on September 28th.

Russian Pilot-T Experiment: Kelly performed his third session for Pilot-T. The goal of the Pilot-T experiment is to improve methods and develop equipment to assess and predict crewmember performance reliability during the execution of complex operator tasks (piloting a space vehicle and controlling transport and robotic equipment on the surface of a spacecraft) during various stages of long-term spaceflight.

Ground Activities
All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

SSRMS and JEMRMS Operations

Three-Day Look Ahead:
Wednesday, 09/16: Fluid Shifts, JEM ITCS Refill, HTV Cargo Ops, RSP Rack Transfer, CIR Manifold Bottle Replace JEMAL Depress,
Thursday, 09/17: Fluid Shifts, HTV Cargo Ops, Sprint Ultrasound, LAB1P5 Cleanout, JSSOD #4 deploy
Friday, 09/18: Fluid Shifts, HTV Cargo Ops, C2V2 Locker Remove, WRS Recycle Tank Changeout

QUICK ISS Status - Environmental Control Group:

Component - Status
Elektron - On
Vozdukh - Manual
[СКВ] 1 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV1") - Off
[СКВ] 2 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV2") - On
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab - Standby
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 - Operate
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab - Shutdown
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 - Operate
Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) - Process
Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) - Norm
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab - Off
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 - Full Up

more data at the link....
http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/nasa-international-space-station-on-orbit-status-15-september-2015.html

Monthly ISS Research Video Update for August 2015 video is 4:58 min

Imagine: A Year Off The Earth, For The Earth video is 1:48 min

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Forest-Mapping Instrument for Space Station Passes Major Milestone

Forest in Gabon, Africa NASA

A laser-based instrument for mapping the 3-D structure of Earth's forests has passed a major milestone toward deployment on the International Space Station (ISS).

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), led by the University of Maryland, College Park, and built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, successfully transitioned to "Phase B," moving from requirements development and mission definition to preliminary design. GEDI will provide the first comprehensive, high-resolution measurements of the vertical canopy structure of Earth's temperate and tropical forests.

These data will enable scientists to better address key questions about Earth's carbon cycle and biodiversity. NASA selected the GEDI proposal in July 2014 to join a growing suite of technologies deployed on the ISS providing key observations about Earth's environment.

"The largest uncertainties in the global carbon cycle concern the net impact of forest disturbance and subsequent regrowth on the amount of carbon stored in forest biomass and its impact on atmospheric CO2," said Ralph Dubayah, GEDI's principal investigator and a professor and assistant chair of the University of Maryland's Department of Geographical Sciences. "With these data from GEDI, we will advance our ability to model the role of forests in the carbon cycle and to evaluate the impact of potential policy actions to mitigate CO2 emissions, such as planting trees or reducing deforestation."

Op-ed | Policing the (Cosmic) Neighborhood

A 20-meter asteroid on its way to Earth dramatically disintegrated above Chelyabinsk, Russia on Feb. 15, 2013. Credit: M. Ahmetvaleev

At 9:20 in the morning on Feb. 15, 2013, Sergei Serskov looked out his window in the Russian town of Chelyabinsk and saw a bright light streak across the sky. What he witnessed, according to the BBC, was the disintegration and burn-up of a 20-meter asteroid on its way to Earth.

“I looked out the window and saw a huge line of smoke, like you get from a plane but many times bigger,” he said. “A few minutes later the window suddenly came open and there was a huge explosion, followed by lots of little explosions. It felt like a war zone and it lasted about 20 to 30 minutes.”

The subsequent blast was strong enough to send over a thousand people to the hospital and damage 7,000 buildings.

Long before this, 66 million years ago, it is believed that a 10-kilometer asteroid that hit the Yucatan caused an extinction event wiping out most species including, famously, the ground-based dinosaurs.

Asteroids sized between a small house (like the Chelyabinsk asteroid) and an apartment building (100 meters), which could have dire consequences, will continue to bombard Earth — the smaller and less-devastating ones sooner and more frequently and the larger ones, probably not for several generations.

We might see the danger of asteroid impact, fatalistically, as a matter of chance, like predicting the weather a decade hence. However, this is not so. We should be able to identify and track essentially all of the bodies that will strike Earth catastrophically by observing the night sky with large telescopes — some on the ground, others orbiting in space. Several telescopes are already working on this hunt while they carry out their prime scientific programs; others will carry out this task faster in the future, and some will have to be designed around this central goal.

What if all of this detective work identifies a “mass murderer”? Where and when will it land on the spinning Earth? Fortunately, we would not be playing roulette and can calculate this accurately. Provided that detection is early enough, we should be able to nudge the asteroid off its trajectory and ensure that it misses Earth entirely. This is government surveillance and strategic defense that we can all support.

Yet, overall, progress on finding asteroids that could hit Earth has been far too slow. In 2005, Congress tasked NASA with finding 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters or larger by 2020. The energy released an impact with such an asteroid would exceed that of a 100-megaton nuclear weapon, or roughly 7,000 times the energy of the bomb dropped over Hiroshima. NASA’s inspector general reported in 2014 that the agency estimates it has only found 10 percent of these asteroids and given its current pace and resources it will not meet the goal by 2020.

Is 140 meters even the right goal? An asteroid much smaller, just 45 meters across, exploded in 1908 over Tunguska with an explosive energy of several megatons and destroyed an area as large as New York City. Congress calls these smaller asteroids “city killers,” and although they are 30 times more numerous, we have located less than 1 percent of them.

Part of the reason for falling so far behind target is that planetary defense is currently treated as a scientific issue, and forced to compete with other science missions instead of being seen as a long-term imperative for the protection of humanity and an opportunity for the United States to provide international leadership on a globally important problem.

One way forward is for Congress to direct the National Research Council to follow up on its 2010 study (“Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies”) to determine what additional asteroid search programs in space and on the ground, including other countries, are both feasible and affordable.

The next step would be for a government agency, such as NASA, to carry out an open solicitation to government centers, industry, educational institutions and nonprofits while engaging the international community in order to get the best possible implementation.

Despite its capacity for serious harm, asteroid impact is not the largest existential threat we face right now. Climate change, resource limits, pandemics, nuclear war, societal breakdown, earthquakes and tsunamis are even more alarming. However, in each of these cases there are serious debates about how to proceed, and the path to alleviation is entangled with economic, political, legal and social complications. What distinguishes the asteroid threat is that mitigation is seemingly straightforward, relatively cheap and an activity in which every nation should be able to participate fearing only the consequences of inaction instead of those of action.

I do not know if Mr. Serskov has or will have grandchildren, but I hope he does and that they can grow into a world that will have learned how to respond to these frightening ultimatums. Working proactively and internationally to prevent serious asteroid impact is a good step along the path.

(red highlite done by me to emphasis results so far)

http://spacenews.com/op-ed-policing-the-cosmic-neighborhood/

Scientists reveal the full power of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion

At its most intense, meteor fireball glowed 30 times brighter than the sun causing skin and retinal burns, say researchers.

Scientists have published the most complete picture yet of the devastation caused by the meteor that exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia this year.

The 20-metre-wide space rock hurtled into the skies over the city in February and began to tear apart at an altitude of 28 miles. Travelling at a speed of 12 miles per second, the rock exploded with the energy of around 500 kilotonnes of TNT, researchers found.

Directly beneath the meteor's path, the shockwave was powerful enough toknock people off their feet. Windows were shattered in more than 3,600 apartment blocks, and a factory roof collapsed.

In the local library in Yemanzhelinsk, 30 miles away, a statue of Pushkin cracked when it was struck by a blown-out window frame. At least 1,210 people were treated for injuries, most from falling building debris and flying glass.

At its most intense, the streaking fireball glowed 30 times brighter than the sun, leaving people on the ground below with skin and retinal burns. One resident in Korkino, 18 miles from the point of peak brightness, lost skin from their face after being burned by radiation. The intense heat evaporated three quarters of the meteor. Around four to six tonnes reached the ground as meteorites, representing just 0.05% of the original rock.

The Chelyabinsk airburst was the largest since Tunguska in 1908, but unlike that and other historic events, the strike was recorded by a full suite of modern technology: satellites photographed the meteor from space; security and personal video cameras filmed the rock's violent path across the sky; and sensors picked up infrasound waves as lumps hit the ground.

The largest single piece, weighing around 650kg, punched a 7 metre-wide hole in ice 70cm thick on Lake Chebarkul, and was recovered from the lakebed in October.

An international team of researchers, led by Olga Popova at the Russian Academy of Sciences, visited Chelyabinsk and 50 nearby villages in the weeks after the event to map the extent of the destruction. The shockwave left a trail of damage 55 miles on either side of the rock's trajectory, according to a report in the journal,Science.

"Our goal was to understand all circumstances that resulted in the damaging shockwave that sent over 1,200 people to hospitals in the Chelyabinsk Oblast area that day," said Peter Jenniskens at Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California.

The unforeseen arrival of the meteor and the violence of its impact were a wake-up call, according to Qing-Zhu Yin, an author on the study at the University of California, Davis. "If humanity does not want to go the way of the dinosaurs, we need to study an event like this in detail," he said.

Further details of the Chelyabinsk strike appear in two reports in the journal Nature. The first, led by Jirí Borovicka at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, traces the orbit of the meteor back to another object, known as asteroid 86039. This asteroid has also orbited close to Earth and was probably once part of the same rock as the Chelyabinsk meteor.

The second Nature study, led by Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario, calculated the energy of the Chelyabinsk airbust at 400 to 600 kilotonnes of TNT, but found that scientists' models for estimating damage from airbursts were off the mark. The glitch in the models means that the number of space rocks with sizes of the order of tens of metres, which pose a threat, may be ten times greater than previously thought.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/06/chelyabinsk-meteor-russia

Russia: huge chunk of Chelyabinsk meteor recovered from lake

video is 1:20 min

Chelyabinsk Meteor Shockwave Compilation

video is 2:46 min........Turn down volume...blast is loud.........

-----------------------------------------------------------

3D-Printed Bubble House Made for Mars

The Sfero Bubble House was designed by Fabulous for future Mars missions.
Credit: Fabulous

Last week, NASA announced the top 30 finalists for their 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge.

The contest is meant to encourage innovation in the area of 3D-printing and to develop a shelter on Mars using local materials, such as Martian soil, or recycled materials from spacecraft.

There are several cool designs, but one team from France either didn't submit their design on time or weren't invited. (Inhabitat and Fabulous both claim that only American teams were allowed to apply, but I found no mention of that in the rules.)

Nonetheless, the Sfero Bubble House design from Fabulous is compelling. (They named it Sfero by combining the words "Sphere," "Iron" and "Water.")

Construction of the habitat would be begin with a long pole that would drill into the ground and from which two robotic arms would extend. One arm would suck up and sort material from the surface, while the other one would use the material to construct a dome overhead.

Printed from Martian soil, the home is partially buried underground so that only the top floor is on the surface. In this space, the astronauts could maintain an indoor garden and workspace. The lower floors would be reserved for sleeping, with all floors connected by a spiral staircase.

The structure's exterior walls would be made of two shells sandwiching water melted from permafrost, which would serve as a radiation barrier.

The team recommends building the structure in the crater Gale, which is known to contain large deposits of iron.

http://www.space.com/30551-3d-printed-mars-bubble-house.html

This was the challenge information site...
http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challenges/3DPHab/index.html

Competition Finalists page
http://3dpchallenge.tumblr.com/

Later......

4,806 · September 17, 2015

Oh Mars, how you like to taunt us ...

6,181 · September 17, 2015

Oh Mars, how you like to taunt us ...

I would like to see a lunar complex for testing Mars goodies. It appears that Bigelo wants to go this route at some time, as well as the Russian Space Agency. I could see ESA being involved as well as NASA. Commercial ventures is a definite....By the late 2020's, things will be moving along nice.....

6,181 · September 17, 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 16 September 2015

Astronaut Scott Kelly posted this photo of Spain taken from the International Space Station on Instagram with the caption, “Color palette of the #Spanish coast is an appealing morning view. #GoodMorning from @ISS! #YearInSpace #colors #colorful. #earth #space #spacestation #iss #morning”. View the best pics taken by the One-Year Crew. Credit: Scott Kelly/NASA.

Kelly and Kornienko participated in the Fluid Shifts study Wednesday morning performing ultrasound scans on themselves. The long-running human research program explores brain pressure and visual impairment some astronauts have experienced due to microgravity affecting the direction of fluids in their bodies.

Kelly later joined Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui transferring cargo to and from Japan's "Kounotori" H-II Transfer Vehicle-5 (HTV-5) resupply ship. The HTV-5 will end its mission at the International Space Station Sept. 28 when it will be robotically released from the Harmony module for a fiery destruction over the Pacific Ocean.

Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Airlock Preparation for JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (JSSOD) #4 Launch: Yui, in concert with a ground team, depressed and vented the JEM Airlock in support of the deploy of two JSSOD satellites this Thursday, September 17th. The first satellite is designed to observe the Ultraviolet (UV) spectrum during the Orionid meteor shower in October. The second satellite, sponsored by the University of Brasilia and the Brazilian government, focuses on meteorological data collection.

Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Internal Thermal Control Systems (ITCS) Fill: As part of routine maintenance, Lindgren setup and used the Fluid System Servicer (FSS) Fluids Control Pump Assembly (FCPA) to refill the JEM Internal Thermal Control System (ITCS) Moderate Temperature Loop (MTL) and Low Temperature loop (LTL) accumulators. After FSS operations were complete, he drained and purged the FSS FCPA and ITCS Jumpers.

Resupply Stowage Platform (RSP) Transfer: Kelly and Yui transferred the RSP Rack from the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) to H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) today. Once the RSP was transferred, the crew restowed all the items that were moved as a result of the RSP Rack transfer activity.

Columbus Trash Gather: Yui gathered European Space Agency (ESA) items located within the Columbus module and staged them for future disposal on HTV-5.

Russian Treadmill (БД-2): The Russian crew reported that БД-2 was experiencing hardware issues. Photos have been downlinked for ground analysis. Russian crew will use Treadmill-2 (T2) while БД-2 is down.

Ground Activities
All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.
Solar Array Maximum Power Test

Three-Day Look Ahead:
Thursday, 09/17: Fluid Shifts, HTV Cargo Ops, Sprint Ultrasound, LAB1P5 Cleanout, JSSOD #4 Deploy
Friday, 09/18: Fluid Shifts, HTV Cargo Ops, MSS Locker Remove, WRS Recycle Tank Changeout
Saturday, 09/19: Weekly Cleaning, Crew Off Duty

QUICK ISS Status - Environmental Control Group:

Component - Status
Elektron - On
Vozdukh - Manual
[СКВ] 1 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV1") - On
[СКВ] 2 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV2") - Off
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab - Standby
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 - Operate
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab - Shutdown
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 - Operate
Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) - Process
Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) - Standby
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab - Off
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 - Full Up

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/nasa-international-space-station-on-orbit-status-16-september-2015.html

Space Station Live Interview : ISS Program Manager Kirk Shireman

video is 7:59 min

----------------------------------------------------------------

New Life for Old Buddy: Russia Tests Renewed Soyuz-MS Spacecraft

Specialists of RSC Energia work to install the payload shroud on a manned "Soyuz TMA-02M" spacecraft in the assembly and test complex at Baikonur Cosmodrome, where work proceeds on building a "Soyuz-FG" space rocket. Image courtesy Sputnik and Oleg Urusov.

A new, modified version of Russia's workhorse spacecraft, the Soyuz-TMA-MS (or Soyuz-MS), is undergoing tests in the production facilities of Rocket and Space Corporation Energia; before being finally installed in the manned spacecraft, all the modern avionics will be initially tested on Progress cargo spacecraft in October.

"At this stage, the spacecraft is undergoing all the technical examination before being sent to the launch pad. A little over half a year is left before its first take off," said Aleksandr Gordyaev, the head of the sector of the Soyuz project department of Energia that oversees the spacecraft.

The engineers are testing the wielding of approaching and orientation thrusters, pressure leaks and hundreds of butt joints.

The outward appearance of the Soyuz hasn't changed much since it was first launched in November 1966. However, the interior has been constantly re-equipped with modernized avionics.

The Soyuz is not reuseable; a new one is built for each flight and is docked to the ISS. The old one is piloted by the crew returning to Earth; the central crew cabin separates from the other two compartments (these burn up in the atmosphere), and makes a ballistic re-entry, parachutes deploying to slow it down before touchdown on Earth.

The development of the previous manned version, the Soyuz TMA-M, which is now on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), was primarily aimed at upgrading its digital computer and telemetry transmission system.

Earlier Soyuz craft were fitted with an analog telemetry system. The new solution is more compact, and has an advanced TsVM-101-class computer.

The modernization saw the replacement of the original 36 obsolete instruments with 19 newly designed ones, necessitating corresponding updates to the on-board control system and thermal control system.

The new craft is easier to manufacture, and its total empty weight is 70 kg less than that of the predecessor.

The Soyuz TMA-MS will be equipped with more efficient solar panels featuring photovoltaic converters. The docking and attitude control thrusters would be rearranged for reliably linking the ship to the ISS even if one of the thrusters failed, and safely return to Earth if two thrusters failed.

Unlike previous versions of the craft, the Soyuz-MS will be equipped with a GLONASS/ GPS satellite navigation system, an advanced control radio link with a satellite communication channel, and the Kurs NA automated docking system, which is two times lighter than the previous one and consumes three times less power.

The old command radio link will be replaced with a unified command/telemetry system which will make it possible to receive telemetry via satellite and control the vehicle when it is not within sight of Russian ground stations.

It will provide the crew with uninterrupted updates on the trajectory parameters without relying on ground tracking equipment. The communications system will utilize Luch relay satellites for constant direct contact with ground control.

GLONASS/GPS receivers will be able to send exact coordinates to Mission Control via the Kospas/Sarsat system after parachute deployment and after touchdown, allowing teams on the ground to find the crew much faster.

The modernization program makes Soyuz, which is currently the main mean of transporting crews to and from the ISS, more reliable and safe to operate, improves structural commonality, and replaces obsolete equipment and components.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Life_for_Old_Buddy_Russia_Tests_Renewed_Soyuz_MS_Spacecraft_999.html

Later..........

6,181 · September 19, 2015

NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 17 September 2015

CubeSat deployed from the Japanese KIBO module. JAXA

Human research studies continued on the orbital laboratory today, aiming to help scientists understand the long-term effects of living and working in space as NASA prepares for the Journey to Mars. Also, more small satellites were deployed outside the Kibo laboratory module.

The One-Year Crew members Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko continued the Fluid Shifts study with eye checks Thursday. The experiment studies pressure inside the head and visual impairment some astronauts have reported experiencing on long-term missions. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren performed ultrasound scans for the Sprint exercise study to help keep astronauts in shape while living in space.

Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui was inside the Kibo lab monitoring the deployment of two sets of nanosatellites outside the lab module. The nanosatellites were delivered aboard the "Kounotori" HTV-5 resupply ship last month some of which will aid in air and vessel navigation, meteorology and meteor shower observation.

Cosmonauts Sergey Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Kornienko worked on their complement of Russian research and maintenance. The trio explored new tools and techniques to locate pressure leaks inside the station. They also looked at ways to improve the performance of cosmonauts on such things as spacecraft piloting tasks.

Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Airlock Preparation for JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (JSSOD) #4 Launch: In preparation for the deploy of two JSSOD satellites this morning, Yui opened the outer JEM Airlock hatch and extended the slide table to the outside of the ISS. Ground Controllers used the JEM Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS) Small Fine Arm (SFA) to remove the JSSOD from the slide table and positioned it for deploy of two satellites. Both satellites were succesfully deployed approximately 10 minutes apart. The first satellite is designed to observe the Ultraviolet (UV) spectrum during the Orionid meteor shower in October. The second satellite, sponsored by the University of Brasilia and the Brazilian government, focuses on meteorological data collection.

HTV Cargo Transfer Status: Lindgren and Kelly continued working on HTV-5 Cargo transfer operations today. Cargo specialist estimate the crew will need approximately 5 hours to complete the HTV-5 cargo operations.

LAB1P5 Cleanout: Lindgren removed all stowage from LAB1P5 lockers in preparation for Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Locker removal and disposal tomorrow. This volume will eventually be used by Common Communications for Visiting Vehicle (C2V2) hardware, which will be installed during Increment 46.

Ground Activities
All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.
JEMRMS Operations associated with JSSOD #4 Deploy

Three-Day Look Ahead:
Friday, 09/18: Fluid Shifts, HTV Cargo Ops, MSS Locker Remove, WRS Recycle Tank Changeout
Saturday, 09/19: Weekly Cleaning, Crew Off Duty
Sunday, 09/20: Crew Off Duty

QUICK ISS Status - Environmental Control Group:

Component - Status
Elektron - On
Vozdukh - Manual
[СКВ] 1 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV1") - On
[СКВ] 2 - SM Air Conditioner System ("SKV2") - Off
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab - Standby
Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 - Operate
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab - Shutdown
Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 - Operate
Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) - Process
Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) - Standby
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab - Off
Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 - Full Up

http://spaceref.com/international-space-station/nasa-international-space-station-on-orbit-status-17-september-2015.html

-------------------------------------------------

Big Iron gets technology boost

ESA deploys 'big iron' to communicate with its deep-space missions: three 35 m-diameter dishes employing some of the world's most advanced tracking technology. And it's about to get a boost.

ESA's three Deep Space Antenna stations at New Norcia, Australia, Cebreros, Spain and Malargue, Argentina, beam commands and receive data from spacecraft voyaging hundreds of millions of kilometres into our Solar System.

The trio form part of ESA's Estrack tracking network a global system of stations providing links between satellites in orbit and the European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The core network comprises 10 stations in seven countries.

The huge dishes - whose moveable structures weigh in at 620 tonnes - can be rotated, elevated and aimed with pinpoint accuracy despite high winds and heat, and transmit radio signals with up to 20 kW of power - enough to run over 20 000 domestic coffee makers .

The stations' stellar performance, however, isn't just about big moving, mechanical things: they make use of advanced, made-in-Europe electronics, including cryogenically cooled low-noise amplifiers and exquisitely machined mirrors made of metal.

ESA Malargue tracking station - The 35m ESTRACK deep-space tracking station in Argentina, now supporting the Rosetta mission.

Mirrors made of metal
Exploiting the fundamental physics of radio waves and properties of geometric shapes, the stations use 'dichroic mirrors' made of metal, not glass, to reflect and separate the transmitted and received beams.

These mirrors are a metallic latticework comprising thousands of small shapes - either rectangles or crosses - and enable the stations to differentiate between radio signals ranging in frequency from 2 GHz to 40 GHz.

Using their original mirrors and frequencies, the stations, which entered service in 2001 (Australia), 2006 (Spain) and 2013 (Argentina), have provided flawless links with multiple ESA missions, including Gaia, Mars Express and Rosetta, as well as those of partner agencies such as NASA.

But they were designed to allow future upgrades, and with ESA's growing Solar System exploration plans, the future is here.

More data, deeper space
"Future exploration missions to destinations like Jupiter, Ganymede and Mercury will deliver much more scientific data from much further away, and this requires increasing the stations' transmit and receive capabilities," says Pier Mario Besso, an ESA antenna engineer.

Furthermore, spaceborne observatories like Herschel/Planck in the past and Gaia today traditionally use the 8 GHz band for beaming data back, while future missions such as Euclid will move to the 26 GHz band, which offers four times more data bandwidth.

This means upgrading the current fixed, solid dichroic mirrors with newer versions that can move between various mechanical positions, and cryogenically cooling microwave components to make them more sensitive.

As a measure of how much this will improve performance, consider that the stations typically offer a download rate of 228 kbit /s from Mars Express circling the Red Planet, and 7.6 Mbit/s from Gaia, some 1.5 million km from Earth.

When complete, the station improvements will boost this to, typically, 2.2 Mbit/s for ExoMars, and a whopping 74 Mbit/s for Euclid at Gaia's distance - about four times faster than a typical home broadband Internet connection.

Future proofing the stations
ESA is now upgrading the three deep-space sites to work at these new frequencies.

"The work we're doing now to improve the design and performance will enable additional improvements as technology matures in the future," notes Pier Mario.

Plans already foresee improved cryogenic cooling for the microwave feed systems, and 80 kW power amplifiers are being developed, which would give ESA the invaluable ability of coping with emergency situations at interplanetary distances - only NASA's 70 m dishes can do that today.

Further into the future, ESA is exploring new possibilities for increasing data return, perhaps through arrays of deep-space antennas.

"The demand for data from deep space is only going to increase," says Pier Mario. "ESA operates, or will soon operate, spacecraft exploring increasingly farther away that deliver increasing amounts of information.

"They are travelling to the frontiers of human knowledge, and Estrack provides the link that brings their data down to Earth."

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Big_Iron_gets_technology_boost_999.html

----------------------------------------------------------------

New Way to Chart the Cosmos in 3-D

CHIME and Dispersion University of British Columbia, Canada

If only calculating the distance between Earth and far-off galaxies was as easy as pulling out the old measuring tape. Now UBC researchers are proposing a new way to calculate distances in the cosmos using mysterious bursts of energy.

In a study featured today in the journal Physical Review Letters, UBC researchers propose a new way to calculate cosmological distances using the bursts of energy also known as fast radio bursts. The method allows researchers to position distant galaxies in three dimensions and map out the cosmos.

"We've introduced the idea of using these new phenomena to study cosmological objects in the universe," said Kiyoshi Masui, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC and a global scholar with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. "We believe we'll be able to use these flashes to put together a picture of how galaxies are spread through space."

Some unknown astrophysical phenomenon is causing these bursts of energy that appear as a short flashes of radio waves. While only 10 fast radio bursts have ever been recorded, scientists believe there could be thousands of them a day.

As these fast radio bursts travel toward Earth, they spread out and arrive at different times based on their wavelengths. The researchers propose using the delay between the arrival times of different frequencies to map the cosmos. The amount of spread in the signal that arrives on Earth gives scientists a sense of how many electrons, and by extension how much material including stars, gas and dark matter, are in between Earth and the source of the burst.

Canada's CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope could offer the first set of regular data from fast radio bursts. The project is a collaboration between Canadian universities UBC, McGill, and the University of Toronto and is currently under construction at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton, Canada.

"CHIME has the potential of seeing tens to hundreds of these events per day so we can build a catalogue of events," said Kris Sigurdson, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy who is also part of the CHIME project. "If they are cosmological, we can use this information to build catalogue of galaxies."

This method could be an efficient way to build a three-dimensional image of the cosmos. The tool could also be used to map the distribution of material in the universe and inform our understanding of how it evolved.

http://spaceref.com/astronomy/new-way-to-chart-the-cosmos-in-3-d.html

Later..........

This is for Arachnoid.........

For all bursts, the short-wavelength component arrived at the telescope a fraction of a second before the longer wavelengths. This is due to an effect known as interstellar dispersion: through any medium, longer-wavelength light moves slightly slower than short-wavelength light.

Edited September 19, 2015 by Draggendrop
Explanation for shift

Primary crew	Backup crew
Gennady Padalka, Soyuz commander, Roskosmos	Alesei Ovchinin, Soyuz commander,Roskosmos
Mikhail Kornienko, Flight engineer, Roskosmos (up only)	Sergei Volkov, flight engineer, Roskosmos
Scott Kelly, Flight engineer, NASA (up only)	Jeffrey Williams, Flight engineer, NASA
Andreas Mogensen, Flight engineer, ESA (down only; arrived to ISS onboard Soyuz TMA-18M)	N/A
Aidyn Aimbetov, Flight engineer, Kazkosmos (down only; arrived to ISS onboard Soyuz TMA-18M)	N/A

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