30 March 2012
Are you turning off the lights in your home this weekend for Earth Hour? ESA astronaut André Kuipers will be watching that you do from the International Space Station.
Earth Hour is a world effort to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change. At 20:30 local time on Saturday, people all over the world will be turning off non-essential lights. World Wide Fund for Nature ambassador André Kuipers and ESA are doing their part.
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Space station engineers are troubleshooting an apparent problem with a Russian system used to route electrical power from the lab complex to a European Space Agency cargo ship that docked at the Zvezda command module's aft port Wednesday. One of two power channels failed when a Russian air scrubber was activated to filter the cargo ship's air supply, but it's not yet known whether the problem was the result of scrubber operation or a coincidental malfunction in another system.
But the two-channel Russian equipment control system, or RECS, is crucial for normal operation, providing station power to ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle. While the ATV is equipped with four solar panels, the angle between the space station's orbit and the sun will reach a point early next week where the arrays alone will be unable to generate the necessary power. At least one RECS channel must be available, or the crew will have no choice but to undock the ATV.
Flight controllers are hopeful that won't be necessary and that the ATV can remain in place until early September as planned. The second RECS power channel was briefly tested Friday and appeared to operate normally on battery power. Engineers plan to connect the ATV's electrical system to the station's Saturday using the RECS backup channel and if all goes well, the cargo ship's rocket thrusters will be used later in the day to raise the station's orbit.
But engineers still do not understand what caused the primary channel to fail and if the second channel suffers a similar glitch when it is tied into the station's electrical system, the lab's six-man crew would be forced to carry out an expedited unpacking of the ATV. In that case, the crew would work as fast as possible to remove the highest-priority supplies from the cargo ship before the "beta angle" -- the angle between the sun and the plane of the station's orbit -- reaches a point where the ATV's solar arrays cannot generate the necessary power. That is expected to occur Monday.
The ATV would be jettisoned before that could happen. But a premature departure could prevent the crew from completely unloading the craft and repacking it with trash and discarded equipment. That, in turn, would cause a major stowage problem aboard the station. While flight controllers are hopeful it won't come to that, plans are in place for an expedited undocking if that becomes necessary.
"Plans call for the backup channel to be connected to the ATV around 11 a.m. Central time (GMT-5) Saturday," NASA said in a web posting late Saturday. "In advance of that, again, as a precautionary measure, the crew will be directed to forego its off-duty day Saturday and will begin unloading cargo from the ATV-3 starting at 5 a.m. Central time.
"This will protect a timeline that would enable the crew to unload cargo all day Saturday, and stay up three hours past its regular bedtime on Saturday to sleep shift for a potential expedited undocking of the ATV-3 on Monday sometime between 1:45 p.m. and 6:18 p.m. Central time, if the power connection on the RECS backup channel does not work."
If the backup channel works normally when it is tied in Saturday, "then the crew will be told to stand down from any further cargo transfer and the flight control team in Houston will be directed to stop working toward an undocking on Monday," NASA said in its web posting.
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With electricity flowing through a backup Russia power source, the European Space Agency's recently arrived Automated Transfer Vehicle-3 roared to life for a near five-minute International Space Station orbit raising maneuver late Saturday.
The boost capped a long day for the station's six-man crew and flight control teams in Houston, Moscow and Toulouse.
And in the long term, the 5:54 p.m., EST, maneuver positioned the station for the arrival of Russia's Progress 47 supply craft, which is scheduled to lift off for the orbiting science laboratory on April 20; the April 27 Soyuz descent to Earth by three of the crew; and the May 15 Soyuz launch with a trio of replacements.
"Everything is nominal," Russia's Mission Control informed station commander Dan Burbank and his five U. S., European and Russian colleagues at the maneuver's conclusion.
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The engines will ignite at 19:05 UTC, Apr. 5, and will be firing for 904.2 seconds. As a result, the ISS will receive additional dV of 2.2 m/s.
So a little bit less delta-V than this time but nearly eight times shorter, let's say 1/7 of the acceleration of the video.This morning's ISS reboost by the two KD engines of the SM's (Service Module's) ODU (Integrated Propulsion System) was performed on time (12:52 PM GMT) with a burn duration of 1 min 54 sec, yielding a delta-V of 1.90 m/s/6.2 ft/s (planned: 1.82/5.9).
CAPE CANAVERAL — A multinational crew aboard the International Space Station will take time today to share special meals to celebrate the 51st anniversary of the world’s first human spaceflight.
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Burbank, the current station commander, said he and his crewmates have planned a lighter-than-normal schedule today, giving them time to “enjoy a couple of meals together.”
That is a rarity because of the pace of scientific research and outpost operations.
“In fact, a lot of us end up eating individually, on the fly, as we go,” Burbank said. “And so this will be a good opportunity for us to take a few minutes and think about the history of our space program up until this point, and kind of talk about where we think we’ll be going in the future.”
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Apr.16, 2012
"Here, there be dragons”…the phrase used to designate the boundaries of the known world on historical maps seems fitting as the U.S. space program embarks upon a new frontier in space exploration with the launch of the first commercial demonstration flight to the International Space Station. However, rarely were the monsters of yore as eagerly anticipated as SpaceX’s Dragon, the first privately built cargo ship destined for the orbiting outpost.
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NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba who is set to travel to the International Space Station on Wednesday said he has chosen Smokey the Bear as the mascot for the new crew .
Acaba said he will hang the toy bear on board the spacecraft and use it as weightlessness indicator, the astronaut said at a press conference in Moscow Region’s Zvezdny Gorodok.
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