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TOPIC: International Space Station
Blobrana


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RE: International Space Station
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NASA's Shuttle Discovery Begins Mission to the Space Station
The space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew lifted off Saturday from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre at 8:47 p.m. EST on one of the most complex missions ever to the International Space Station.

Shortly before launch, Discovery's Commander Mark Polansky said he and his crew were excited to continue assembly of the station, "We look forward to lighting up the night sky and rewiring ISS."

After hearing of the successful liftoff, Expedition 14 Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria told Mission Control in Houston "We'll leave the light on," in anticipation of the space shuttle crew's arrival, now scheduled for Monday.

Low clouds delayed Discovery's launch on Thursday night. After standing down on Friday, weather was much better for Saturday's launch.
During the 12-day mission, designated STS-116, a new structural component will be added to the station. Shuttle and station crews will work with ground teams to install the P5 truss. This latest addition to the station's backbone weighs 4,000 pounds and will extend the left side of the truss to allow future solar panels to rotate.
The mission also includes extensive work to reconfigure the station's electrical and cooling systems from temporary to permanent mode. During the mission, ground control will shut down and reroute the station's power in stages so that the astronauts can reconfigure the power system and make the P4 solar arrays delivered during the last mission fully operational. This complex operation has never been done before. Part of an existing solar panel will be retracted to allow the P4 arrays to track the sun for a full 360 degrees and provide power to the rest of the station.
As part of these operations, the station's temporary cooling system will be deactivated and a permanent system will become operational.
The station's newest resident will also be travelling aboard Discovery. Astronaut Sunita Williams joins the Expedition 14 crew. Thomas Reiter, a European Space Agency astronaut who has been aboard the station since July, will return to Earth with the Discovery crew. Williams is scheduled to spend six months on the station.
Discovery's crew is Polansky, Pilot Bill Oefelein and mission specialists Bob Curbeam, Joan Higginbotham, Nicholas Patrick, Williams and Christer Fuglesang, a European Space Agency astronaut.

Source

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Blobrana


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Flag to be launched into space
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A saltire which has flown above the Scottish Parliament is to be blasted into space, it has been announced.

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Blobrana


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RE: International Space Station
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Confident after two nearly flawless launches, NASA will send the Discovery shuttle on Thursday on what it calls the most complex mission yet, to give the International Space Station a new electrical system.
In two spacewalks the astronauts will rewire the orbiting station, replacing its eight-year-old temporary power cable system with a permanent one, made possible after the previous mission in September installed two huge electricity-generating solar array panels on the ISS.
Discovery will also transport a new $11-million truss segment weighing two tons for the ISS that will be installed during a spacewalk.
The mission, one of the hardest ever for NASA's astronauts, the agency says, is key to getting ISS construction back on pace.
Building the station is years behind schedule after long safety-related delays, and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is in a race to complete the ISS before its aging shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
The US and international partners Russia and Europe eye using the orbiting laboratory as a base for further exploration of the solar system once construction is completed.

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Blobrana


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RE: ISS
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The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) will be raised by approximately eight kilometres on Tuesday morning.

"The engines of Progress spacecraft will be fired at 00:36 a.m. Moscow time on December 5. The adjustment will be conducted at the initiative of the U.S. side to create the best conditions for the upcoming docking Discovery space shuttle with ISS" - Igor Panarin, press secretary of the Federal Space Agency.

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Blobrana


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Russia's Mission Control Centre will not make an additional correction to the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) following Thursday's abortive attempt, a Federal Space Agency spokesman said Friday.
The space agency official said a new correction could be performed once the shuttle has docked, presumably after December 9, if the shuttle is launched December 7 as scheduled.

Source Novosti

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Blobrana


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ISS orbital boost
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Yesterdays operation to boost the orbital height of the International Space Station (ISS) was unsuccessful.
According to the Moscow Mission Control Centre, "jets of the Progress ferry, with the use of which the operation was to be carried out, suddenly switched off after 78 seconds. As a result, the ISS orbit was lifted up only by 1-1.5 kilometres instead of the planned 7.3".

The ISS orbit will eventually be increased to an altitude of around 355 kilometres before docking with the Discovery shuttle which is scheduled to lift off on December 7.
The space stations orbit decreases by 150-200 meters daily. The previous orbit adjustment was carried out late in August for the docking with the Russian Soyuz TMA-9 spaceship which brought the ISS-14 crew and the first woman space tourist to the station.
Reasons for the unlucky attempt are being examined.

Source Tass

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Blobrana


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Cosmonaut slices golf shot
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Golf is an unforgiving game, wherever you play it.
In tricky conditions this morning, Mikhail Tyurin, an experienced Russian cosmonaut wearing an overheating space suit, did his best to address a ball. He was strapped upside-down to the International Space Station as it orbited Earth at 17,500 miles an hour.

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Blobrana


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Golf in space
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A Russian cosmonaut has made golfing history by firing a tee shot from a precarious perch outside the International Space Station (ISS).
Flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin stood on a ladder by the docking port and hit a light-weight ball using a gold-plated six-iron club.
A Canadian golf club maker is paying the Russian space agency an undisclosed sum for the stunt.
Experts disagree on how far the ball will travel in space.

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Blobrana


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RE: ISS
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T-Online and ESA web video chat
On 28 November, Europe's largest online portal and ESA will produce the first-ever space web video chat when ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter responds to questions via the Internet live from the International Space Station.
In a unique media tie-up, Germany's leading Internet service provider, T-Online, and ESA will conduct a live space video chat via the Internet on 28 November 2006, starting at 21:15 (CET).
The event will enable German-speaking space enthusiasts to communicate with ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter - from Germany - via the web direct from the ISS, 400 km above the Earth where Reiter is now in the closing stages of the historic Astrolab Mission.

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Blobrana


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ESA's Columbus Control Centre
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ESA's Columbus Control Centre is in operation now for Astrolab while readying for the European Columbus laboratory in 2007.
Inaugurated in 2004 under contract from ESA, the Columbus Control Centre, located at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) facility in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, joins the ranks of International Space Station (ISS) control centres including Houston and Moscow.
Under the call sign 'Munich', the Columbus Control Centre will, from 2007, be responsible for systems onboard the orbiting Columbus laboratory and for European science activities on board the ISS. The centre is already building operational expertise during ESA's ongoing Astrolab mission.

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