NASA Renews $490Mln Contract With Russian Space Agency
06.08.2015
Congressional failure to fund spacecraft development has forced the National Aeronautical Space Administration’s (NASA) to extend a nearly half-billion dollar contract with Russia to fly astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote in a letter to members of Congress on Wednesday.
Bolden explained NASA modified its contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) valued at $490 million in order to meet the agency’s need to send astronauts to the ISS.
“The Congress, while incrementally increasing annual funding, has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year. This has resulted in continued sole reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle for American and international partner crews to the International Space Station.”
NASA has sought funding since 2010 to develop a US made and launched spacecraft with Boeing and SpaceX. Congressional funding shortfalls for the program, however, have slowed down the development of a domestic spacecraft.
With full Congressional funding, NASA and industry partners could develop a US launch capability by 2017, Bolden told Congress. Without full funding, however, any US ability to carry astronauts into space would miss milestones and in the long-run increase costs.
“The safe, reliable, and cost-effective solutions being developed here at home will allow for more astronauts to conduct research aboard the space station, enable new jobs, and ensure US leadership in spaceflight this century.”
The fastest path to bringing about the new systems, he added, and ending the United States’ sole reliance on Russia is to fully fund NASA's Commercial Crew Program in Fiscal Year 2016.
Current congressional funding proposals for the Commercial Crew Program will make NASA unable to develop the program on schedule.
http://sputniknews.com/science/20150806/1025443855.html
Russia Delivers First Two RD-181 Rocket Engines Under $1Bln Contract to US
04.08.2015
Russia has shipped two RD-181 rocket engines to the US under a $1 billion contract with US Orbital Sciences Corporation for the delivery of 60 engines for its Antares launcher.
“On July 16 the first two engines were delivered to the US,” the statement of the press service of the Russian rocket producer Energiya read, adding that the date of supply of the next consignment hasn’t been revealed.
In January, Russian rocket producer Energiya signed a $1 billion contract with US Orbital Sciences Corporation, which includes a provision specifying a range of included services such as flight training, the installation of the engine on the rocket and engine tests.
The contract, which took Energia three years to prepare, envisages that the company’s cooperation will last 15 to 25 years.
Back in December, Orbital said that they had looked at several other propulsion providers, but decided to use the RD-181 engines because the Russia-designed engine offered "the best combination of schedule availability, technical performance and cost parameters as compared to other possible options."
This is the second large-scale deal Energomash (a subsidiary of Energiya) has made with a US company. In the late 1990s, the company won a contract with United Launch Alliance to supply RD-180 engines for Atlas rockets. This contract was also valued at about $1 billion, and is still being fulfilled.
http://sputniknews.com/science/20150804/1025377718.html
:thumbup:
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First Time Ever: ISS Crew Eats Food Grown in Outer Space
10.08.2015
Achieving a major milestone for the future of space exploration, astronauts onboard the International Space Station sat down to a meal prepared with space-grown lettuce.
On Monday, humanity took one giant bite for mankind, sampling produce grown in the first cosmic farm.
For this first meal, scientists kept it simple, preparing red romaine lettuce brushed with citric-acid based sanitizing wipes. It’s not exactly five-star, but it has to be a major improvement over freeze-dried peas.
"There is evidence that supports fresh foods, such as tomatoes, blueberries, and red lettuce, are a good source of antioxidants," Ray Wheeler, the project’s lead researcher, told NASA’s website.
How do you grow lettuce without the sun? The crops have spent the 15 months inside a system called Veg-01, which uses blue, red, and green LED lights which allows the plants to undergo artificial photosynthesis.
There’s also the gravity challenge. Water doesn’t exactly seep into the soil in zero-g’s, and plant roots don’t even know in which direction to spread. To overcome those obstacles, astronauts packed the seed and soil into special, self-contained "pillows." Stakes were also placed to help guide the roots downward.
Astronauts ate half of the harvest, while the other half will be frozen and sent back to Earth for further analysis.
Which begs the question: Did scientists just eat astro-lettuce without knowing if it’s safe? Isn’t that how the Fantastic Four were created?
Not quite. A test for bacterial contamination came up negative.
If successful, space gardening could prove vitally important for manned missions to space. It could also be crucial for any future plans to establish a settlement on foreign planets. A colony on the Moon or Mars is much more likely if those bases can grow enough food to become self-sufficient.
Freshly grown food can also be of enormous benefit to the mental health of the astronauts.
Astronauts Kjell Lindgren (left) and Scott Kelly taste lettuce harvested in space
This handout photo provided by NASA shows a crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce from the Veggie plant growth system on the International Space Station.
"The farther and longer humans go away from Earth, the greater the need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits," Gioia Massa, a scientist involved in the experiment, said in a statement.
"I think that plant systems will become important components of any long-duration exploration scenario."
A single harvest of lettuce may be the first step, but it could pave the way for future space stations to have entire multi-crop farms onboard.
And after that, extraterrestrial livestock? That would be the very distant future. Having a cow floating around the International Space Station would probably do more harm than good.
http://sputniknews.com/science/20150810/1025602007/astronauts-eat-space-lettuce.html
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Russian cosmonauts begin this year’s first space walk
August 10, 2015
All operations outside the ISS till the moment the hatch is closed again are to last about six hours 28 minutes
Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko
Russia’s cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko have opened the hatch of the International Space Station’s Pirs compartment to begin a spacewalk under the Russian flight program, Mission Control near Moscow told TASS.
"All operations outside the ISS till the moment the hatch is closed again are to last about six hours 28 minutes," Mission Control spokesman said.
The spacewalk is to end at 23:48 on August 10.
Before leaving the docking compartment the cosmonauts placed a special safety ring that prevents the hatch from closing while they are outside.
Padalka is wearing an Orlan-MK spacesuit with red stripes identifying him as commander, and Korniyenko, a spacesuit with blue stripes.
This is the 41st spacewalk under Russia’s ISS program and 48th spacewalk from the Russian segment, including the unscheduled ones.
Padalka and Korniyenko are to install soft railing on the Zvezda service module, clean the porthole of the same module and install fixtures of radio antennas. After that they will take pictures of the Expose-R instruments, dismantle an experimental sensor and take smears from solar cell panels and other areas.
After that the cosmonauts will change the attitude of the pressure control block instrument on the smaller research module Poisk and finally take pictures of the outer surface of the Russian segment, Roscosmos said.
Padalka has eight space walks to his credit, including one to the depressurized module of the Mir space station, which lasted 33 hours and four minutes. Korniyenko had made only one spacewalk, staying 6 hours and 43 minutes outside spacecraft.
Russia’s cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, the United States’ Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren, and Japan’s Kimiya Yui, will remain on board.
http://tass.ru/en/non-political/813535
