Despite a prediction by NASA that a piece of space debris from an inoperative Chinese weather satellite would fly dangerously close to the ISS, Russian mission control stated on Thursday that the debris posed no risk. The NASA prediction estimated that the 10-cm object could pass as near as 850 meters from the space station; however, an updated prediction by [...]
Archive for November, 2011
ESA’s PromISSe Mission
Source: ESA A fully assembled and operational International Space Station will receive ESA astronaut André Kuipers at Christmas in the fourth European long-duration mission to the orbital outpost. André is scheduled to be launched on 21 December from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz spacecraft as flight engineer for Expeditions 30 and 31, together with Russian cosmonaut [...]
Video Captures Experience of Returning from ISS
Source: NASA Entitled “Coming Back Down to our Fragile Oasis,” this time-lapse video is a collaboration between images taken by Ron Garan and Mike Fossum from the International Space Station and music from Peter Gabriel. The music featured in the video is Peter Gabriel’s “Down to Earth”. All of the sequences for this video were shot by either Mike Fossum [...]
Canadian Space Agency Invests in Advanced Exploration Technologies
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced on October 27th that it will be investing in concept studies of “advanced exploration technologies”. Steve MacLean, the president of the CSA and a former CSA Chief Astronaut, said that: “space business is about turning science fiction into reality. By funding concept studies, the CSA helps nurture ingenious Canadian ideas so that our space [...]
Thanksgiving in Space
With the United States Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 24, a food-centric national holiday, focus has centered recently on the quality of space food. A new study, published in the Journal of Food Science, explores the long-term stability of foods packaged for use in Space. Stability of five years or more would be required for a long duration mission such as a crewed [...]
ESA Tracking Station Receives Signal from Phobos Grunt
On November 22, at 20:25 GMT, an ESA tracking station in Perth, Australia made successful contact with the Phobos Grunt probe. “We have sent a command, and the probe has replied,” said an ESA spokesperson in Darmstadt, Germany, “Now it is clear that the Phobos Grunt is alive.” Although the contact consisted only of the reception of a radio signal [...]
Armadillo Aerospace Performs Stig-A Hover Test
On November 22, Armadillo Aerospace performed a hover test on their tube rocket Stig-A. According to Armadillo, the goal was to simply keep the rocket upright during the test and Stig-A performed successfully, despite some visible side-to-side drift. The Stig rocket line is a Vertical Take- off Vertical Landing (VTVL) rocket. It is designed as a preliminary step towards a fully reusable [...]
First Ever Graduate Course in Space Safety Announced
The University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering has annouced the first ever graduate-level course in space safety. Entitled Safety of Space Systems and Space Missions, the course is designed to teach engineers and program managers how to design systems that will meet human rating certification standards. It will focus on systems engineering of human spaceflight craft, building on real-life [...]
German Firm to Insure Space Tourists
Allianz, a German insurance firm, has announced plans to offer insurance policy coverage for commercial suborbital flight passengers. The policy, which will become available in 2012, would insure passengers against loss of their deposits in case of cancellation of the flight by the passenger. “We are looking into space tourism as a new market for the next generation of travelers,” said Erick [...]
ISS Expedition 29 Crew Returns Home
International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers Commander Mike Fossum and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov returned safely to Earth aboard a Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft on November 22. Their departure from ISS brought an end to ISS Expedition 29. Command of ISS now devolves upon Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank, who docked with ISS on November 16 along with Flight Engineers [...]
