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Tag: space stations

  • International Space Station Fast Facts | CNN

    International Space Station Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the International Space Station (ISS), a spacecraft built by a partnership of 16 nations: United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

    Information on ISS crews and expeditions can be found here.

    The ISS includes three main modules connected by nodes: the US Laboratory Module Destiny, the European Research Laboratory Columbus, and the Japanese Experiment Module Kibo (Hope). Each was launched separately and connected in space by astronauts.

    Mass: 925,335 pounds (419,725 kilograms)

    Habitable Volume: 13,696 cubic feet (388 cubic meters)

    Solar Array Length: 239 feet (75 meters)

    The ISS orbits Earth 16 times a day.

    As of June 22, 2023, 266 spacewalks have been conducted for station assembly and maintenance.

    November 1998 – A Russian Proton rocket places the first piece, the Zarya module, in orbit.

    December 1998 – The space shuttle Endeavour crew, on the STS-88 mission, attaches the Unity module to Zarya initiating the first ISS assembly sequence.

    June 1999 – The space shuttle Discovery crew, on mission STS-96, supplies two modules with tools and cranes.

    July 2000 – Zvezda, the fifth flight, docks with the ISS to become the third major component of the station.

    November 2000 – The first permanent crew, Expedition One, arrives at the station.

    November/December 2000 – The space shuttle Endeavour crew, on mission STS-97, installs the first set of US solar arrays on the station and visits Expedition One.

    February 2001 – Mission STS-98 delivers the US Destiny Laboratory Module.

    March 2001 – STS-102 delivers Expedition Two to the station and brings Expedition One home. The crew also brings Leonardo, the first Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, to the station.

    September 16, 2001 – The Russian Docking Compartment, Pirs, arrives at the ISS.

    June 2002 – STS-111 delivers the Expedition Five crew and brings the Expedition Four crew home. The crew also brings the Mobile Base System to the orbital outpost.

    December 2002 – STS-113 delivers the Expedition Six crew and the P1 Truss.

    May 3, 2003 – Expedition Six crew return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-1. Crew members Kenneth Bowersox and Don Pettit are the first American astronauts ever to land in a Soyuz spacecraft.

    July 29, 2003 – Marks the 1,000th consecutive day of people living and working aboard the ISS (this is a record for the station, but not for space).

    August 10, 2003 – Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko marries his fiancée Ekaterina Dmitriev from space. The bride and groom exchange vows over a hotline set up for the event. Dmitriev stands next to a life-sized picture of Malenchenko.

    April 22, 2004 – The second of four gyroscopes that stabilize the orbiting outpost of the ISS fails. NASA officials say this does not pose an immediate threat to the crew. An extra spacewalk will have to be conducted to the fix the electrical component box thought to be at fault.

    November 2, 2005 – Fifth anniversary of continuous human presence in space on the ISS.

    February 3, 2006 – SuitSat-1, an unmanned space suit containing a radio transmitter is deployed as a part of an ISS spacewalk. The suit is supposed to transmit recorded messages in six languages to school children and amateur radio operators for several days before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up, but it goes silent shortly after its deployment.

    March 31, 2006 – Arriving with the crew of Expedition Thirteen is Marcos Pontes, the first Brazilian astronaut. Staying eight days, Pontes conducts scientific experiments before returning to Earth with the crew of Expedition Twelve.

    July 7, 2006 – The arrival of Thomas Reiter of Germany via the Space Shuttle Discovery returns the station’s long-duration crew to three for the first time since May 2003 and the Columbia shuttle disaster. Reiter is the first non-US and non-Russian long-duration station crewmember, and he remains onboard during the first part of Expedition Fourteen.

    September 9, 2006 – Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the ISS, delivering the P3/P4 truss and its solar wings before undocking September 21 and returning to Earth.

    September 20, 2006 – Arriving with the crew of Expedition Fourteen is Anousheh Ansari, an American businesswoman. She spends about eight days conducting experiments and blogging about her experiences before returning to Earth with two of the three members of Expedition Thirteen.

    December 2006 – Arrival of Flight Engineer Sunita Williams via space shuttle mission STS-116. Williams replaces Reiter, who returns to Earth with the crew of STS-116.

    April 7, 2007 – Charles Simonyi becomes the fifth space tourist when he accompanies the Expedition Fifteen crew to the ISS. He spends 12 days aboard the space station before returning to Earth with the crew of Expedition Fourteen.

    June 10, 2007 – Space Shuttle Atlantis docks with the the ISS to install a new segment and solar panel on the space station and retrieve astronaut Williams, who has been at the space station since December. Williams is replaced by Flight Engineer Clayton Anderson, who will return to earth aboard Discovery on Mission STS-120.

    June 15, 2007 – Four days after ISS’s computers crash, two Russian cosmonauts bring them back online. The computers control the station’s orientation as well as oxygen production. The crew used Atlantis’ thrusters to help maintain the station’s position while its computers were down.

    October 25, 2007 – Space Shuttle Discovery docks with the ISS. In the days while docked with the ISS, the Discovery crew delivers and connects Harmony to the ISS, a living and working compartment that will also serve as the docking port for Japanese and European Union laboratories. Discovery and ISS crew also move an ISS solar array to prepare for future ISS expansion, planning a special spacewalk to repair damage to the solar array that occurred during its unfurling.

    November 14, 2007 – ISS crew move the Harmony node from its temporary location on the Unity node to its permanent location attached to Destiny.

    February 9, 2008 – Space Shuttle Atlantis arrives. Its crew delivers the European-made Columbus laboratory, a 23-foot long module that will be home to a variety of science experiments. Atlantis remains docked with the ISS for just under nine days.

    March 9, 2008 – “Jules Verne,” the first of a series of European space vessels designed to deliver supplies to the ISS, launches from the Ariane Launch Complex in Kourou, French Guiana. The vessels, called Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATV), are propelled into space atop an Ariane 5 rocket, and are designed to dock with the ISS with no human assistance. The Jules Verne will wait to dock with the ISS until after Space Shuttle Endeavour’s March mission is completed.

    March 12, 2008 – Space Shuttle Endeavour docks with the ISS.

    March 24, 2008 – Endeavour detaches from the ISS. While docked, crew members make five spacewalks to deliver and assemble the Dextre Robotics System, deliver and attach the Kibo logistics module, attach science experiments to the exterior of the ISS, and perform other inspection and maintenance tasks.

    April 3, 2008 – The unmanned European cargo ship Jules Verne successfully docks with the ISS. Able to carry more than three times the volume of the Russian-built Progress resupply vehicles, the Jules Verne contains fuel, water, oxygen and other supplies.

    April 10, 2008 – Two members of Expedition 17 crew arrive at the ISS via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Travelling with them is Yi So-yeon, a space flight participant and South Korea’s first astronaut. Yi later returns to Earth aboard an older Soyuz spacecraft along with members of the Expedition 16 crew.

    June 2, 2008 – Space Shuttle Discovery docks with the ISS. Discovery is carrying Japan’s Kibo lab, a replacement pump for the station’s toilet, and astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, who is replacing Garrett Reisman as part of the station’s crew.

    June 11, 2008 – Discovery undocks with the ISS after its crew successfully delivers and installs the Japanese-built Kibo lab, delivers parts to repair the ISS’s malfunctioning toilet, collects debris samples from the station’s faulty solar power wing, and retrieves an inspection boom left behind during a previous shuttle mission. Station crewmember Reisman departs with Discovery.

    October 12, 2008 – The Soyuz TMA-13 capsule carrying two Americans – flight commander Michael Fincke and computer game millionaire Richard Garriott, and Russian flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov – lifts off from Kazakhstan. It docks with the ISS on October 14.

    March 12, 2009 – Orbital debris from a prior space shuttle mission forces the crew of Expedition 18 to temporarily retreat to its Soyuz capsule.

    August 24, 2011 – Russian emergency officials report that an unmanned Russian cargo craft, the Progress-M12M that was to deliver 3.85 tons of food and supplies to the ISS, crashed in a remote area of Siberia.

    May 19, 2012 – SpaceX’s launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, the first private spacecraft bound for the ISS, is aborted a half a second before liftoff. SpaceX engineers trace the problem to a faulty rocket engine valve.

    May 22, 2012 – The unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket carries the Dragon spacecraft, which is filled with food, supplies and science experiments and bound for the ISS.

    May 25, 2012 – The unmanned SpaceX Dragon spacecraft connects to the International Space Station, the first private spacecraft to successfully reach an orbiting space station.

    October 7, 2012 – SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, with its Dragon capsule carrying 1,000 pounds of supplies bound for the ISS, launches from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. It is the first of a dozen NASA-contracted flights to resupply the International Space Station, at a total cost of $1.6 billion.

    May 9, 2013 – The crew discovers that the ISS is leaking ammonia. The crew performs a spacewalk and corrects the leak two days later.

    November 9, 2013 – Russian cosmonauts perform the first ever spacewalk of the Olympic Torch ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

    December 11, 2013 – A pump on one of the station’s two external cooling loops shuts down after hitting a temperature limit, according to NASA. The malfunctioning loop had been producing too much ammonia, possibly the result of a malfunctioning valve.

    December 24, 2013 – Astronauts complete a repair job to replace the problematic pump. Their spacewalk lasts seven and a half hours, and is the second ever spacewalk on Christmas Eve. The first was in 1999 for a Hubble Repair Mission.

    March 10, 2014 – After five and a half months aboard the ISS, Expedition 38 astronauts return to earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft.

    September 16, 2014 – NASA announces that Boeing and Space X have been awarded contracts to build vehicles that will shuttle astronauts to and from the space station.

    December 15, 2015 – Astronaut Tim Peake is the first British European Space Agency astronaut to arrive at the ISS.

    March 2, 2016 – NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko land in the Kazakhstan desert after a nearly yearlong mission on the ISS.

    August 3, 2018 – NASA selects nine astronauts, seven men and two women, for missions in spacecraft developed by Boeing and SpaceX. The flights, scheduled for 2019, will be the first launches to space from US soil since the Space Shuttle program was retired in 2011, and the first in capsules developed and built by the private sector.

    June 2019 – NASA announces the ISS is opening for commercial use. The newest NASA directive is intended to allow “commercial manufacturing and production and allow both NASA and private astronauts to conduct new commercial activities aboard the orbiting laboratory.”

    October 18, 2019 – NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch conduct the first all-female spacewalk outside of the ISS. The spacewalk last seven hours and 17 minutes.

    May 30, 2020 – SpaceX and NASA’s Falcon 9, bound for the ISS, launches. This is the first crewed spaceflight to launch from US soil since 2011. The astronauts spend two months working on the ISS, then return to Earth on August 2.

    November 16, 2020 – The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts on board safely docks with the ISS. The spacecraft launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on November 15 and marks the first fully operational crewed mission for SpaceX.

    April 21, 2021 – Russia announces that it is ready to start building its own space station with the aim of launching it into orbit by 2030, according to Interfax news agency. The project will mark a new chapter for Russian space exploration. Russia, which signed a memorandum of understanding in March to explore establishing a joint lunar base with China, will notify its ISS partners regarding its departure from ISS at a future date.

    June 16, 2021 – NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet conduct a spacewalk to install solar arrays on the space station. After technical delays, the work is completed four days later. The arrays are rolled up like carpet and are 750 pounds (340 kilograms) and 10 feet (three meters) wide. They will provide a power boost to the space station.

    January 31, 2022 – NASA reveals it intends to keep operating the ISS until the end of 2030, after which the ISS will be crashed into a remote part of the Pacific Ocean known as Point Nemo.

    April 9, 2022 – The first crew entirely comprised of private citizens reaches the ISS.

    July 26, 2022 – Russia announces it is planning to pull out of the ISS after 2024, ending its decades-long partnership with NASA at the orbiting outpost.

    October 6, 2022 – A SpaceX capsule carrying a multinational crew of astronauts docks with the ISS after a 29-hour trek. The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12 p.m. ET on October 5. The four crew members included astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, astronaut Koichi Wakata of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos, the first Russian to travel on a SpaceX spaceflight.

    October 24, 2022 – According to NASA, the ISS fires its thrusters to maneuver out of the way of a piece of oncoming Russian space junk.

    December 22, 2022 – Two NASA astronauts carry out a spacewalk to install a new solar panel on the ISS. The spacewalk lasts about seven hours.

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  • India shoots for the moon with historic Chandrayaan-3 mission | CNN

    India shoots for the moon with historic Chandrayaan-3 mission | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    India is bidding to become only the fourth country to execute a controlled landing on the moon with the launch Friday of its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

    Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, is expected to take off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state at 2:30 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET).

    It’s India’s second attempt at a soft landing, after its previous effort with the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 failed. Its first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon and was then deliberately crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.

    Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 is comprised of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its aim is to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the moon’s composition.

    Only three other countries have achieved the complicated feat of soft-landing a spacecraft on the moon’s surface – the United States, Russia and China.

    Indian engineers have been working on the launch for years. They are aiming to land Chandrayaan-3 near the challenging terrain of the moon’s unexplored South Pole.

    India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, discovered water molecules on the moon’s surface. Eleven years later, the Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered lunar orbit but its rover crash-landed on the moon’s surface. It too was supposed to explore the moon’s South Pole.

    At the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the engineers behind the mission despite the failure, promising to keep working on India’s space program and ambitions.

    Just before Friday’s launch, Modi said the day “will always be etched in golden letters as far as India’s space sector is concerned.”

    “This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” he said in a Twitter post.

    India has since spent about $75 million on its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

    Modi said the rocket will cover more than 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles) and reach the moon in the “coming weeks.”

    India’s space program dates back more than six decades, to when it was a newly independent republic and a deeply poor country reeling from a bloody partition.

    When it launched its first rocket into space in 1963, the country was no match for the ambitions of the US and the former Soviet Union, which were way ahead in the space race.

    Now, India is the world’s most populous nation and its fifth largest economy. It boasts a burgeoning young population and is home to a growing hub of innovation and technology.

    And India’s space ambitions have been playing catch up under Modi.

    For the leader, who swept to power in 2014 on a ticket of nationalism and future greatness, India’s space program is a symbol of the country’s rising prominence on the global stage.

    In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars, when it put the Mangalyaan probe into orbit around the Red Planet, for $74 million – less than the $100 million Hollywood spent making space thriller “Gravity.”

    Three years later, India launched a record 104 satellites in one mission.

    In 2019, Modi announced in a rare televised address that India had shot down one of its own satellites, in what it claimed was an anti-satellite test, making it one of only four countries to do so.

    That same year ISRO’s former chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said India was planning to set up an independent space station by 2030. Currently, the only space stations available for expedition crews are the International Space Station (a joint project between several countries) and China’s Tiangong Space Station.

    The rapid development and innovation has made space tech one of India’s hottest sectors for investors – and world leaders appear to have taken notice.

    Last month, when Modi met US President Joe Biden in Washington on a state visit, the White House said both leaders sought more collaboration in the space economy.

    And India’s space ambitions do not stop at the moon or Mars. ISRO has also proposed sending an orbiter to Venus.

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  • NASA set to unveil the crew of astronauts for moon flyby mission | CNN

    NASA set to unveil the crew of astronauts for moon flyby mission | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Four astronauts — including three Americans and one Canadian — will be tapped by NASA to complete a generation-defining mission to the moon’s orbit, returning humans to deeper into the solar system than has been reached in five decades.

    On Monday, the public will finally learn the crew members’ names.

    Scheduled to launch in 2024, Artemis II will be the program’s first crewed mission to orbit the moon, flying farther into space than any humans since the Apollo program. It will pave the way for the Artemis III crew to walk on the moon in 2025, all aboard the world’s most powerful rocket and at a price tag that by then will approach $100 billion.

    Following months of closed-door decision making, NASA officials plan to unveil the names of the crew members in a ceremony scheduled for Monday at 11 am ET.

    Though officials have remained tight-lipped about their choices, CNN previously spoke with nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts to pull back the curtain on the secretive selection process.

    Reid Wiseman, a 47-year-old decorated naval aviator and test pilot who was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009, is at the top of the list, according to CNN’s prior reporting.

    Wiseman served as chief of the astronaut office until November 2022. While the chief is not permitted to fly while holding the post, they are able to wrangle the best flight assignments upon stepping down, an “acknowledged perk” of the job, according to former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman.

    Before stepping down as astronaut chief, Wiseman was also responsible for the decision to broaden the pool of astronauts eligible to fly in order to include himself. While NASA had initially deemed 18 astronauts to be the “Artemis Team” and eligible to fly on moon missions, Wiseman expanded the group of candidates to all 41 active NASA astronauts.

    People familiar with the process also told CNN that along with Wiseman, there are a handful of other candidates atop the list:

    • Randy Bresnik, 55, is also a decorated naval aviator and test pilot who flew combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has flown two missions to the International Space Station: one on the Space Shuttle, another on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Bresnik is often mentioned as a top contender for Artemis because, since 2018, he has overseen the astronaut office’s development and testing of all rockets and spacecraft that will be used in the Artemis missions.
    • Anne McClain, 43, is a decorated army pilot and West Point graduate who flew more than 200 combat missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and went on to graduate from the US Naval Test Pilot School in 2013, the same year she was selected to be a NASA astronaut. After launching on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2018, she spent more than 200 days at the International Space Station and served as the lead of two spacewalks.
    • Stephanie Wilson is the most senior astronaut on this list. The 56-year-old joined NASA’s 1996 astronaut class, and she served as a mission specialist on three Space Shuttle flights, including the first flight after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed seven astronauts.
    • Christina Koch, 44, is a veteran of six spacewalks. She holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with a total of 328 days in space. Koch is also an an electrical engineer who helped develop scientific instruments for multiple NASA mission. She’s also spent a year at the South Pole, an arduous stay that could well prepare her for the intensity of a moon mission.
    • Jessica Meir is 45-year-old biologist with a doctorate from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She was a member of a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission in 2002, which involved spending days in an underwater research facility, and, in 2016, completed a two-week caving mission in Italy.

    Koch and Meir together conducted the first three all-female spacewalks in 2019 and 2020.

    Rounding out the Artemis II crew will be one astronaut from Canada, terms that were cemented in a 2020 treaty between the two countries.

    The Canadian Space Agency’s currently has a cadre of just four astronauts, but among them, Jeremy Hansen has generated the most buzz, according to CNN’s reporting. Hansen was selected to be an astronaut almost 14 years ago, but he’s still waiting for his first flight assignment. The 47-year-old fighter pilot recently became the first Canadian to be put in charge of training for a new class of NASA astronauts.

    NASA has also previously committed to selecting a crew with racial, gender and professional diversity.

    Those criteria have not historically been the case for high-profile missions. Going back to the Gemini era, astronauts selected for inaugural crewed missions have been only White and male, and typically come from a background as a military test pilot — a profile notably characterized in the 1979 book “The Right Stuff” by Tom Wolfe.

    That has held true through NASA’s most recent inaugural crewed flight, of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station in 2020, which included former military test pilots Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

    And it may hold mostly true for the Artemis II mission as well: Nearly a dozen current and former NASA officials and astronauts told CNN they anticipated multiple test pilots being named.

    However, if Wiseman, a White man, is selected, that means the other spots will almost certainly need to go to at least one woman and at least one person of color.

    The Artemis II mission will build on Artemis I, an uncrewed test mission that sent NASA’s Orion capsule on a 1.4 million-mile voyage to lap the moon that concluded in December. The space agency deemed that mission a success and is still working to review all the data collected.

    If all goes to plan, Artemis II will take off around November 2024. The crew members, strapped inside the Orion spacecraft, will launch atop a NASA-developed Space Launch System rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    The journey is expected to last about 10 days and will send the crew out beyond the moon, potentially further than any human has traveled in history, though the exact distance is yet to be determined.

    The “exact distance beyond the Moon will depend on the day of liftoff and the relative distance of the Moon from the Earth at the time of the mission,” NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton said via email.

    After circling the moon, the spacecraft will return to Earth for a splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean.

    Artemis II is expected to pave the way for the Artemis III mission later this decade, which NASA has vowed will put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface. It will also mark the first time humans have touched down on the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

    The Artemis III mission is expected to take off later this decade. But much of the technology the mission will require, including spacesuits for walking on the moon and a lunar lander to ferry the astronauts to the moon’s surface, is still in development.

    NASA is targeting a 2025 launch date for Artemis III, though the space agency’s inspector general has already said delays will likely push the mission to 2026 or later.

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  • Astronaut crew heads home after five-month stay on the International Space Station | CNN

    Astronaut crew heads home after five-month stay on the International Space Station | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The four astronauts who make up the Crew-5 team aboard the International Space Station began their return trip home Saturday morning, marking the end of a five-month stay in space.

    The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule disembarked from the space station at 2:20 am ET, beginning the final leg of the astronauts’ journey. The spacecraft is set to splash down off Florida at around 9:02 p.m. ET Saturday.

    Rescue ships will be awaiting the team’s arrival, ready to haul the capsule out of the ocean and allow the crew to disembark, giving the astronauts their first breath of fresh air in nearly 160 days. Shortly afterward, the crew will depart for NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.

    The four crew members — NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos — launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule this past October. They’ve spent the past few months carrying out research experiments and keeping up with maintenance of the two-decade-old orbiting laboratory.

    And for the past few days, the four have been handing off operations to the Crew-6 team of astronauts who arrived at the space station on March 3.

    Mann, a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley reservation, became the first Native American woman to travel into orbit. Like the other astronauts, she devoted time on her journey to public outreach, some of which focused on inspiring Indigenous children. During one outreach event in November 2022, Mann showed off a dream catcher — a traditional totem for Native Americans meant to ward off bad dreams — that she took with her to the space station.

    “I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage,” Mann told reporters before launch. “I think it’s important to celebrate our diversity and also realize how important it is when we collaborate and unite, the incredible accomplishments that we can have.”

    Kikina’s participation in this flight came as part of a ride-sharing agreement by NASA and Roscosmos in July 2022. Despite geopolitical tensions between the United States and Russia as the war in Ukraine has escalated, NASA has repeatedly said its partnership with Roscosmos is vital to continuing the space station’s operations and the valuable scientific research carried out on board.

    The journey marked the first trip to space for Mann, Cassada and Kikina.

    Wakata previously flew on NASA’s space shuttle flights and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. This trip was the Japanese astronaut’s fifth spaceflight mission.

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  • Russia to launch replacement spacecraft for astronauts stranded by coolant leak | CNN

    Russia to launch replacement spacecraft for astronauts stranded by coolant leak | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Russia is gearing up to launch a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station that will replace a capsule that sprang a coolant leak in December, leaving two cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut without a ride home.

    Liftoff of the capsule, called the Soyuz MS-23, is expected to occur out of Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 7:24 p.m. ET, which is 5:24 a.m. Friday local time. NASA will air coverage of the event beginning at 7 p.m. ET Thursday.

    The uncrewed spacecraft will spend two days in orbit, maneuvering toward the orbiting laboratory. It’s expected to dock with the Poisk module — which is on the space station’s Russian-run portion — just after 8 p.m. ET Saturday.

    The Soyuz MS-23 will be the return vehicle for cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, all of whom traveled to the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-22 capsule in September.

    About two months into the three men’s journey, the MS-22 experienced a coolant leak, leaving the cabin at temperatures deemed unsafe for the crewmates. The Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA quickly worked to establish plans to send a replacement vehicle. Roscosmos officials said they had determined that the leak resulted from a small hole caused by an impact with a micrometeoroid.

    Plans to launch the rescue vehicle, however, were drawn into question when a Russian cargo ship, called Progress, experienced a similar coolant leak after docking with the space station on February 11. Three days later, Roscosmos had said in a post on the social media site Telegram, that it would delay the Soyuz MS-23 launch until at least March while the agency investigated the cause of the Progress vehicle’s coolant leak.

    On Tuesday, however, Roscosmos said in an updated Telegram post that it had determined the cause of the Progress spacecraft leak was “external influences.”

    “The Russians are continuing to take a very close look at both the Soyuz and the Progress coolant leaks,” Dana Weigel, the space station’s deputy manager for NASA, said during a Wednesday briefing.

    “They formed a state commission that is assessing the anomalies,” she added, noting that the team is analyzing potential causes from the time the capsules launched through their journey in orbit.

    Originally, Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara were expected to launch to the space station on March 16 aboard MS-23.

    Instead, Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio’s time will be extended on the space station until they can return to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-23 later this year. That return could happen in September, according to a report from Russia state-run media outlet TASS.

    If that timeline holds, the three crewmates will have extended their expected six-month stay in space to about one year.

    When asked about the extended stay, Joel Montalbano, the space station’s program manager for NASA, said the crew remains in good health and there is no reason to expedite their journey home.

    The crew is “willing to help wherever we ask,” Montalbano said during a January 11 news conference. “They’re excited to be in space, excited to work and excited to do the research that we do on orbit. So they are ready to go with whatever decision that we give them.”

    He added, “I may have to fly some more ice cream to reward them.”

    The launch of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft comes just days before NASA and SpaceX will launch their Crew-6 mission. Expected to lift off early Monday morning, Crew-6 will carry NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg as well as Sultan Alneyadi, an astronaut with the United Arab Emirates, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

    Shortly after those four arrive at the space station, NASA’s Crew-5 astronauts will return home from their five-month stay there aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. NASA officials said this week that the coolant leaks experienced on the Soyuz and Progress vehicles would not have any impact on the SpaceX missions and that no similar issues were discovered on Crew Dragon vehicles.

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  • NASA and Russia weigh options for astronaut return after spacecraft leak | CNN

    NASA and Russia weigh options for astronaut return after spacecraft leak | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Officials at NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, are working to decide how to bring home several people at the International Space Station after a Russian Soyuz spacecraft sprang a leak last week.

    None of the seven people currently on board the ISS — including three Roscosmos cosmonauts, three NASA astronauts and one astronaut with Japan’s space agency — were ever in any danger as a result of the leak, officials have noted. But it’s not yet clear whether the spacecraft will be able to make a trip back home with its crew on board.

    The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft ferried NASA’s Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, to the space station on September 21. It was scheduled to bring them back to Earth in March. But Roscosmos is now evaluating whether to fly its next Soyuz mission to the ISS empty and move the launch up two to three weeks so that the spacecraft can serve as a rescue vehicle for Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin if Soyuz MS-22 is deemed not safe enough for the crew. If Roscosmos goes with that plan, the next Soyuz mission could lift off in February, according to Montalbano.

    The leak on the Soyuz MS-22, which is currently attached to the ISS at one of the orbiting laboratory’s eight docking ports, was identified on December 14. It forced the delay of a planned spacewalk by two cosmonauts last week, and live images during a NASA broadcast showed liquid spewing out from the spacecraft.

    Roscosmos determined that the leak occurred on an external cooling loop of the Soyuz. The leak is not expected to cause any external corrosion or damage to the exterior of the ISS, Montalbano noted, saying the leaked coolant “boils up very quickly” as it’s exposed.

    It’s not yet clear was caused the leak, which has been traced to a small hole that could have been caused by a collision with a piece of space debris, a mechanical problem or some other issue, according to Montalbano.

    Space debris was, however, the certain cause of a one-day delay for a spacewalk planned by the United States. Two astronauts were slated to venture out on Wednesday to install a new solar array to the space station’s exterior, but the ISS had to maneuver out of the way of a piece of spaceborne garbage. The debris was determined to be a piece of an old Russian rocket.

    The ISS was able to maneuver successfully, and the US spacewalk kicked off Thursday morning without issue.

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  • Soyuz spacecraft docked to International Space Station springs ‘fairly significant’ coolant leak | CNN

    Soyuz spacecraft docked to International Space Station springs ‘fairly significant’ coolant leak | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A planned spacewalk by the Russian space agency Roscosmos has been called off following the discovery of a coolant leak coming from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is currently docked to the International Space Station.

    NASA’s Rob Navias, speaking on the NASA TV broadcast, called it a “fairly significant” leak. Live images during the broadcast showed liquid spewing out from the Soyuz. Navias said the leak was first observed around 7:45 p.m. ET Wednesday.

    The Soyuz spacecraft is docked to the Russian segment of the space station.

    The crew is safe, and all systems of the space station and the ship are operating normally, according to Roscosmos, in a statement in Russian released Thursday morning on Twitter. (CNN translated the statement.)

    “The crew reported that the warning device of the ship’s diagnostic system went off, indicating a pressure drop in the cooling system,” according to Roscosmos. “A visual inspection confirmed the leak, after which it was decided to interrupt the planned extravehicular activities by the crew members of the ISS Russian Segment Sergey Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin.”

    Navias said the cause of the coolant leak is “unknown and the effect at this point unknown as Russian managers continue to look over the data and consult with both NASA managers and engineers” and outside experts. He said the astronauts inside the space station were “never in any danger.”

    Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, using the camera on Russia’s Nauka module on the space station, “photographed and filmed the outer surface of the ship,” according to Roscosmos. “The data was transmitted to Earth, and the specialists have already begun to study the images.”

    “No decisions have been made regarding the integrity of the Soyuz MS-22 or what the next course of action will be,” Navias added, wrapping up NASA-TV coverage of the canceled spacewalk.

    Roscosmos added that the situation will be analyzed before a decision is made about what comes next.

    NASA took a similar tone in a Thursday statement: “NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action following the ongoing analysis.”

    The Soyuz MS-22 ferried NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts to the space station on September 21 and is scheduled to bring them back to Earth in late March.

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  • Astronauts will give the space station a power boost during Saturday spacewalk | CNN

    Astronauts will give the space station a power boost during Saturday spacewalk | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The International Space Station will receive a power boost during a spacewalk on Saturday, as NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio install a solar array outside the floating laboratory.

    The spacewalk is on track to begin at 7:25 a.m. ET and will last for about seven hours, with live coverage streaming on NASA’s website.

    During the event, Cassada will serve as extravehicular crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes, while Rubio will wear an unmarked white suit as extravehicular crew member 2. The duo conducted their first spacewalk together in November. Against the backdrop of spectacular views of Earth, the team assembled a mounting bracket on the starboard side of the space station’s truss.

    This hardware allows for the installation of more rollout solar arrays, called iROSAs, to increase electrical power on the space station.

    The first two rollout solar arrays were installed outside the station in June 2021. The plan is to add a total of six iROSAs, which will likely boost the space station’s power generation by more than 30% once all are operational.

    Two more arrays were delivered to the space station on November 27 aboard the 26th SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission, which also carried dwarf tomato seeds and other experiments to the orbiting laboratory.

    The arrays were rolled up like carpet and are 750 pounds (340 kilograms) and 10 feet (3 meters) wide.

    During Saturday’s spacewalk, Cassada and Rubio will install a solar array to increase capacity in one of the space station’s eight power channels, located on the station’s starboard truss.

    Once the array is unfurled and bolted into place by the astronauts, it will be about 63 feet (19 meters) long and 20 feet (6 meters) wide.

    The spacewalking duo will also disconnect a cable to reactivate another power channel that recently experienced “unexpected tripping” on November 26.

    “By isolating a section of the impacted array, which was one of several damaged strings, the goal is to restore 75% of the array’s functionality,” according to a release from NASA.

    Cassada and Rubio will go on another spacewalk on December 19 to install a second roll-out solar array on another power channel, located on the station’s port truss.

    The original solar arrays on the space station are still functioning, but they have been supplying power there for more than 20 years and are showing some signs of wear after long-term exposure to the space environment. The arrays were originally designed to last 15 years.

    Erosion can be caused by thruster plumes, which come from both the station’s thrusters and the crew and cargo vehicles that come and go from the station, as well as micrometeorite debris.

    The new solar arrays are being placed in front of the original ones. It’s a good test for the new solar arrays, because this same design will power parts of the planned Gateway lunar outpost, which will help humans return to the moon through NASA’s Artemis program.

    The new arrays will have a similar 15-year life expectancy. However, since the degradation on the original arrays was expected to be worse, the team will monitor the new arrays to test their true longevity, because they may last longer.

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  • New era begins with China’s launch of crewed mission to its space station | CNN

    New era begins with China’s launch of crewed mission to its space station | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three astronauts lifted off to China’s nearly completed space station on Tuesday, marking the beginning of the country’s long-term presence in space.

    It’s a major achievement for China’s ambitious space program, which has explored the far side of the moon and Mars. The milestone also means the aging International Space Station’s role as the sole venue for continuous human occupancy in Earth’s orbit is coming to an end.

    The three astronauts launched aboard the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft at 11:08 p.m. local time (10:08 a.m. ET) on Tuesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, Inner Mongolia. The Shenzhou-15 spacecraft is expected to dock with the Tiangong Space Station about 6.5 hours after launch.

    The arrival of the three astronauts — Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu — will mark the first crew rotation on the space station, with two teams overlapping for five to 10 days before the Shenzhou-14 crew, who landed at the station in June, returns to Earth.

    The Shenzhou-15 mission will finish the orbital outpost’s construction, expected by the end of December, and launch the first stage of “its application and development,” Ji Qiming, assistant to the China Manned Space Agency director, said at a press conference on Monday, according to state media Xinhua.

    During the mission, according to state media, the crew will also conduct more than 40 experiments and tests in the fields of space science research, space medicine and space technology, as well as three to four extravehicular activities — performed by astronauts in space suits.

    Once construction is completed, the space station is expected to last for 15 years. China plans to launch two crewed missions and two cargo missions to the station every year, according to the CMSA.

    Tiangong, which means heavenly palace, is smaller than the International Space Station but similar in its modular design. The new space station will typically house three rather than six astronauts.

    Officials at NASA have said it will retire the ISS, which is a collaboration between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency, in 2030.

    However, Russia has threatened to quit the ISS starting in 2024, which would make operating the ISS difficult, said Dr. Stefania Paladini, a reader in economics and global security at Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom.

    “There is no clarity about the future of the ISS after 2024. While the US seems committed to extend its life until 2030, Russia threatened to withdraw its participation after that date, (which would) make it extremely challenging to continue flying the ISS,” said Paladini, author of “The New Frontiers of Space: Economic Implications, Security Issues and Evolving Scenarios.”

    “The Chinese Space Station may … end up remaining the only human presence in Earth’s orbit for a while.”

    The new space station is expected to host around 1,000 scientific experiments during its life span.

    Most of the experiments taking place on board the Tiangong will involve research originating from China, but the country has invited experiments from international researchers, including how cancer tumors react to zero gravity.

    China’s astronauts have long been excluded from the ISS, due to US political objections and legislative restrictions. However, CMSA astronauts have trained with their counterparts at the European Space Agency.

    It’s not clear whether China would welcome astronauts from other countries to its space station, but Molly Silk, a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester in the UK focused on China’s space program, said she thought it very likely that international astronauts would visit in the coming years.

    “Several European astronauts have been learning Chinese in order to better cooperate with their Chinese counterparts, which suggests that a visit to the CSS could be on the cards. Pakistan has also been trying to coordinate with China to send their first astronaut to space,” she said.

    “This project demonstrates to the world that China has both the vision and capabilities to pull off such an immensely challenging feat. The CSS will not only allow for China and other nations to conduct experiments in space, but acts as an important checkpoint for China’s planned international research base on the moon.”

    Earlier this year, the space station’s two laboratory modules — Wentian and Mengtian — docked along the Tianhe core cabin, the main living space for the astronauts.

    The Mengtian lab was launched by China’s massive Long March 5B rocket, remnants of which made an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere in early November.

    It was the fourth uncontrolled reentry for a Long March 5B rocket since China’s space agency started flying it two years ago, as the vehicle was designed without the necessary equipment to steer itself to a safe landing.

    Officials at NASA have slammed China for taking unnecessary risks. However, Tuesday’s launch involved China’s smaller Long March-2F rocket, used for human space flight, which experts have previously said is less likely to produce hazardous debris.

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  • First-time NASA spacewalkers venture outside the space station | CNN

    First-time NASA spacewalkers venture outside the space station | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Things are about to get busy on the International Space Station as the first in a series of end-of-the-year spacewalks kicked off Tuesday morning.

    First-time spacewalkers and NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio began their excursion outside the space station at 9:14 a.m. ET, with live coverage on NASA’s website. The event is expected to last for about seven hours.

    Cassada is wearing the spacesuit with red stripes as extravehicular crew member 1, while Rubio is in the unmarked suit as extravehicular crew member 2.

    The astronauts will assemble a mounting bracket on the starboard side of the space station’s truss. The hardware that will be installed during the spacewalk was delivered to the space station on November 9 aboard a Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, which safely delivered its cargo despite only one of its two solar arrays deploying after launch.

    This hardware will allow for the installation of more rollout solar arrays, called iROSAs, to give the space station a power boost. The first two rollout solar arrays were installed outside the station in June 2021. Six iROSAs total have been planned and will likely boost the space station’s power generation by more than 30% once all are operational.

    During two more spacewalks on November 28 and December 1, a two-astronaut crew will unroll and install another pair of solar arrays once the mounting hardware is in place. The solar arrays will be delivered on the next SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission, currently slated for launch on November 21.

    Spacewalks are part of the space station crew’s routine as they maintain and upgrade the aging orbital laboratory, but Tuesday’s spacewalk is NASA’s first since March. The agency’s spacewalks came to a halt after European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer ended his first spacewalk with water in his helmet.

    A thin layer of moisture that exceeded the normal, expected amount was discovered in Maurer’s helmet once he returned to the airlock after a nearly seven-hour spacewalk. Maurer quickly shed the helmet, in an event deemed “a close-call” by NASA, and water samples, suit hardware and the spacesuit itself were returned to Earth for investigation. Officials at NASA determined the suit didn’t experience any hardware failures.

    “The cause for the water in the helmet was likely due to integrated system performance where several variables such as crew exertion and crew cooling settings led to the generation of comparatively larger than normal amounts of condensation within the system,” according to NASA in a blog post update.

    “Based on the findings, the team has updated operational procedures and developed new mitigation hardware to minimize scenarios where integrated performance results in water accumulation, while absorbing any water that does appear. These measures will help contain any liquid in the helmet to continue to keep crew safe.”

    Officials at NASA gave the “go” for spacewalks to resume after concluding the review in October.

    The investigation team has developed techniques to manage temperatures in the suit and added new absorption bands to the helmet, said Dina Contella, operations integration manager for the International Space Station Program.

    The thin orange pieces have been placed in different parts of the helmet, which has already been tested on orbit by the astronauts inside the space station.

    “We’ve taken several different models of this up and the crew on board sloshed water around, essentially tried to inject water into the helmet at the same rate that would be kind of a worst, worst case. And we found that these pads were very, very effective,” Contella said.

    Tuesday’s spacewalk will allow the crew to test the new pads as they work outside of the space station before the more complex solar array installation spacewalks within the next couple of weeks.

    Meanwhile, a Russian spacewalk is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will begin their walk at 9 a.m. ET to work on the outside of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. The duo will prepare a radiator for transfer from the Rassvet module to Nauka during their seven-hour spacewalk, which will also stream live on NASA’s website.

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  • International Space Station swerves to avoid Russian space debris, NASA says | CNN

    International Space Station swerves to avoid Russian space debris, NASA says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The International Space Station fired its thrusters to maneuver out of the way of a piece of oncoming Russian space junk, NASA said late Monday.

    The space agency said in a news release that the ISS conducted a five minute, five second burn to avoid a fragment of Russia’s Cosmos 1408 satellite, which the country destroyed in a weapons test in November last year.

    Officials at NASA have previously warned about the risks of the proliferation of debris in space, caused by a dramatic increase in the number of satellites in orbit and several instances of governments intentionally destroying satellites and creating new plumes of junk.

    The space station conducted a “Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver,” or PDAM, to give the ISS “an extra measure of distance away from the predicted track of a fragment of Russian Cosmos 1408 debris,” the space agency said.

    “The thruster firing occurred at 8:25 p.m. EDT and the maneuver had no impact on station operations. Without the maneuver, it was predicted that the fragment could have passed within about three miles from the station.”

    The burn raised the space station’s altitude by 2/10 of a mile, according to the space agency.

    On November 15, 2021, Cosmos 1408, a no longer operational satellite, was destroyed, generating a cloud of debris including some 1,500 pieces of trackable space debris.

    US Space Command said Russia tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite, or DA-ASAT missile and strongly condemned the anti-satellite test, calling it “a reckless and dangerous act” and saying that it “won’t tolerate” behavior that puts international interests at risk.

    The ISS was forced to make a similar maneuver in June to avoid debris created by the anti-satellite test. In January, a piece of debris created by that test came within striking distance of a Chinese satellite, in an encounter the Chinese government called “extremely dangerous.”

    The ISS typically has to shift its orbit to avoid space junk around once a year, maneuvering away from the object if the chance of a collision exceeds one in 10,000, according to NASA.

    Invisible in the night sky, there are hundreds of millions of debris objects orbiting our planet. This debris is composed of parts of old satellites as well as entire defunct satellites and rocket bodies.

    According to a 2021 report by NASA, at least 26,000 of the pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth are the size of a softball or larger – big enough to wreck a satellite; more than 500,000 pieces of debris are marble-sized – capable of damaging spacecraft; while “over 100 million pieces are the size of a grain of salt that could puncture a spacesuit.”

    As these fragments knock into each other, they can create yet more pieces of smaller orbital debris.

    Russia said earlier this year it is planning to pull out of the International Space Station and end its decades-long partnership with NASA at the orbiting outpost, which is due to be retired by 2031.

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  • SpaceX, NASA to launch 3 astronauts and 1 cosmonaut to the ISS. Here’s everything you need to know | CNN

    SpaceX, NASA to launch 3 astronauts and 1 cosmonaut to the ISS. Here’s everything you need to know | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    SpaceX and NASA are set to launch a crew of astronauts who hail from all over the world on a trip to the International Space Station.

    The mission, which will include some historic firsts, is moving forward even as rising geopolitical tensions brew on the ground.

    The four crew members — astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos — are on track to launch aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at 12 p.m. ET Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If bad weather or other issues interfere, the teams could try again Thursday at 11:38 a.m. ET.

    A live broadcast on NASA’s website kicked off just after 8:30 a.m. ET Wednesday. NASA will also stream a post-event briefing, tentatively scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET, to discuss the launch.

    Dubbed Crew-5, the mission is the sixth astronaut flight launched as a joint endeavor between NASA and SpaceX, a privately held aerospace company, to the space station.

    The upcoming spaceflight marks a historic moment, as Mann will not only become the first Native American woman ever to travel to space. She’ll also serve as mission commander, making her the first woman ever to take on such a role for a SpaceX mission.

    What’s more, Kikina will be the first Russian to join a SpaceX mission as part of a ride-sharing deal NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, inked in July. Her participation in the flight is the latest clear signal that, despite mounting tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the decades-long US-Russia partnership in space will persist — at least for now.

    After the anticipated launch on Wednesday, the Crew Dragon spacecraft will separate from the SpaceX rocket that boosts it to orbit and begin a slow, precise trek to the ISS, which orbits about 200 miles (322 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. The spacecraft is aiming to dock with the space station on Thursday around 5 p.m. ET.

    Launching NASA astronauts to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is nothing new. The space agency collaborated with SpaceX for years to transition the task of shuttling people to and from the space station after NASA retired its Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

    With the return of astronaut launches from US soil, SpaceX has offered a stage for several historic firsts. The Crew-4 Dragon mission, for example, carried NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, the first Black woman ever to join the ISS crew.

    On this flight, Mann, a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley Reservation, will become the first Native American woman ever to travel to orbit.

    “I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage,” Mann said. “I think it’s important to celebrate our diversity and also realize how important it is when we collaborate and unite, the incredible accomplishments that we can have.”

    In her role as commander, Mann will be responsible for ensuring the spacecraft is on track from the time it launches until it docks with the ISS and again when it returns home with the four Crew-5 astronauts next year. Never before has a woman taken on the commander role on a SpaceX mission, though a couple of women served in that position during the Space Shuttle Program.

    Kikina, the Roscosmos cosmonaut, will become the first Russian ever to launch on a SpaceX vehicle at a time when US-Russian relations are hitting near fever pitch over the Ukraine war.

    But officials at NASA have said repeatedly that joint operations with Russia on the ISS, where the two countries are the primary operators, will remain isolated from the fray. Kikina’s flight comes just weeks after NASA’s Dr. Frank Rubio launched to the ISS aboard a Roscosmos Soyuz capsule.

    “I really love my crewmates,” Kikina told reporters after she arrived at the Florida launch site on Saturday. “I really feel good, comfortable. … We will do our job the best way: happy.”

    READ MORE: Meet the space trailblazers of color who empowered others to dream

    Mann and her fellow NASA astronaut Josh Cassada, who grew up in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, both joined NASA in 2013. Cassada has described Mann as one of his “closest friends on the planet.”

    As with Mann, this mission will be the first trip to space for Cassada and Kikina.

    For veteran astronaut Wakata, who has previously flown on both NASA’s space shuttle and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, this trip marks his fifth spaceflight mission.

    “I still remember when I first flew and saw our beautiful home planet,” he recalled during an August press conference. “It was so wonderful, such a beautiful planet, then I felt very lucky to be able to call this planet our home.”

    After reaching the ISS, the crew will join the seven astronauts already aboard the ISS — including four NASA astronauts, a European Space Agency astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts.

    There will be a handover period, where the current ISS crew will help the newly arrived astronauts settle in before a separate Crew Dragon spacecraft brings the four astronauts who were part of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission back home.

    Then the Crew-5 astronauts will set to work conducting spacewalks, during which astronauts exit the ISS, to maintain the space station’s exterior, as well as performing more than 200 science experiments.

    “Experiments will include studies on printing human organs in space, understanding fuel systems operating on the Moon, and better understanding heart disease,” according to NASA.

    Crew-5 is slated to return from space in about five months.

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