A study based on Mars500 data revealed that the crew experienced increasing lethargy over the course of the mission, resulting in hypokinesis connected to sleep disturbances. “The success of interplanetary human spaceflight will depend on many factors,” said biomedical and psychiatric researchers from the US and Russia who published the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “including the behavioral activity [...]
Post Tagged with: “microgravity”
Russian Energia Won $11 Million Contract for Unmanned Space Lab
RSC Energia (РКК «Энергия»), the largest Russian space corporation has won a 350 million ruble (about $11 million) contract to design the orbital laboratory Oka-T-MKS. The tender was announced by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) in October and it only received one bid from Energia Corporation. RSC Energia manufactures manned and unmanned spacecraft and it is the principal contractor [...]
Crew Arrives at Station in Festive Spirits
On December 21, the second half of International Space Station Expedition 34 joined their crewmates after two days travelling aboard their Soyuz TMA-07M. Astronauts Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko docked at 1409 GMT, opening hatches at 1637 GMT. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” Hadfield told current residents Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers [...]
VEGGIE to Provide Salad for Astronauts
U.S. astronauts working and living aboard the International Space Station might soon have their own fresh vegetables grown in space. A newly developed vegetable production system, called VEGGIE, is planned to be delivered aboard NASA’s third Commercial Resupply Services mission with the SpaceX’s Dragon capsule in 2013. For the astronauts living 200 miles above Earth’s surface, it would mean having [...]
Crew Selected for Year Long Mission to ISS
Source: NASA NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and their international partners have selected two veteran spacefarers for a one-year mission aboard the International Space Station in 2015. This mission will include collecting scientific data important to future human exploration of our solar system. NASA has selected Scott Kelly and Roscosmos has chosen Mikhail Kornienko. Kelly and Kornienko will [...]
Cool Flames Aboard ISS
In the weightless environment of space, fire burns differently because the convective forces are not present. Flames burn in a sphere, at lower temperature, and require less oxygen compared to those in the gravity of Earth. The Flame Extinguishment Experiment-2 (FLEX-2) is a continuation of the FLEX program, which studies the special burning characteristics of fireballs on board the International [...]
Space Research Yields Light, Safe Alloy
Researchers working on the Intermetallic Materials Processing in Relation to Earth and Space Solidification (IMPRESS) Project at the European Space Agency (ESA) have used hypergravity to develop a new aircraft-grade alloy. The IMPRESS project gathered together 42 research groups from Europe and Russia, under the coordination of ESA. According to ESA, the new titanium aluminide alloy, while offering equally good [...]
Shuttle Engineer Henry Pohl Discusses the Non-intuitiveness of Microgravity
In this lecture on power and propulsion systems, provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Space Shuttle engineer Henry Pohl discusses $10 million toilets, the difficulty in predicting fluid flows in microgravity, and the need for testing in a field where intuition can be a poor guide. Staff WritersMore Posts
Aqueous Immersion Space Surgery to be Microgravity Tested
The longer a space mission lasts and the further it travels from Earth, the more prepared its crew must be to deal with medical emergencies on its own. That was on the minds of a group of researchers composed of medical doctors and engineers as they considered taking their Aqueous Immersion Surgical System to space. The system is composed of [...]
Space Bacteria, Plants Hold Lessons for Earth
Source: NASA What can we learn from sending codependent bacteria and plants into space? Quite a bit, it would appear. An experiment with the tongue-twisting name Symbiotic Nodulation in a Reduced Gravity Environment, or SyNRGE for short, could yield benefits on Earth as well as space. “We live in a world of microorganisms. Bacteria, archaea, viruses, and fungi are intimately associated with [...]
