NASA shut down one of the International Space Station's four pointing gyroscopes on Tuesday after it exhibited unusually strong vibrations. The station has several methods of orienting itself so its solar arrays get enough sunlight to produce electricity and the station can maintain communications with the ground. The main method is a system of four 270–kilogram (600-pound) gyroscopes that spin at 6600 revolutions per minute. On 28 September, one of them, known as Control Moment Gyro 3, began to vibrate more than usual and experienced a small spike in electrical current when the station performed a routine thruster manoeuvre. So NASA opted not to use it to help control the station's orientation.
Mission controllers have turned off one of four spinning gyroscopes that keep the international space station properly positioned in space because it was vibrating excessively. Although the space station needs only two of the four devices functioning, having one down could be a problem when in December the space shuttle Discovery docks with the ISS.
During the manoeuvre, the station was left unstaffed as it orbited 220 miles above Earth. When the Soyuz reached a point about 30 metres from the station, Tyurin stopped and fired steering thrusters to pivot the spacecraft and head toward the Soyuz’s new parking space on the Zarya module.
The crew aboard the International Space Station climbed into their Soyuz capsule Tuesday and drove to another parking spot, clearing the berth for a cargo ship set to arrive later this month.
Station commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, Soyuz commander Mikhail Tyurin and Germany's Thomas Reiter spent about 20 minutes making the slow flight from the Zvezda service module on the research outpost to the Zarya propulsion module.
The International Space Station dumped its rubbish on Tuesday, ahead of the arrival of a new crew and the first female space tourist, Anousheh Ansari.
A Progress cargo ship packed with old supplies was despatched from the ISS and sent to burn up in the atmosphere. The new commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin are scheduled to dock at the station at 05:24 GMT on Wednesday.
International space station astronauts donned protective gear on Monday after smelling a foul odour that turned out to be potassium hydroxide, a harmful chemical leaking from an oxygen vent.
The crew first reported smoke leaking from an oxygen vent. The crew donned surgical gloves and masks but did not have to put on gas or oxygen masks. NASA declared a spacecraft emergency for only the second time in the eight-year history of the station. The first time was for a false alarm of an ammonia spill.
Anousheh Ansari`s blog from space. Anousheh Ansari Space Blog was made her friends at the X PRIZE Foundation to support Anousheh in her wish to inspire others with her historic spaceflight — the first woman to buy her own ticket to space.
Huge new solar wings have been unfurled on the International Space Station.
The new arrays, which are 73m long and have a width of 11.5m, will double the amount of power available to the orbiting outpost. They are attached to the platform's P3/P4 truss, a new "backbone" segment fitted to the ISS this week by astronauts from the Atlantis shuttle.
During the EVA the astronauts from the Atlantis mission have lost a bolt, a spring and a washer while they were installing a new extension to the international space station. NASA is now trying to work out whether this is a problem.