Tag: ISS

Tool Bag Dropped During ISS Spacewalk

CNN reports that NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara “marked their first spacewalk this month with a tool bag floating through space.” The pair “concluded their maintenance work outside the International Space Station (ISS) in six hours and 42 minutes, according to the space agency.” The spacewalk on November 1 “saw Moghbeli and O’Hara complete works on the station’s solar arrays, which track the sun, but they ran out of time to remove and stow a communications electronics box.” Leaving this task “for a future spacewalk, the pair instead conducted an assessment of how the job could be done.” During the mission, a tool bag “gave them the slip and was ‘lost,’ NASA said, with flight controllers spotting it using the ISS’ external cameras.” Fortunately, the tools “were not required for the remainder of their tasks.” According to EarthSky, “a website tracking cosmic events, the tool bag is currently orbiting Earth ahead of the ISS, and can potentially be spotted from Earth with a pair of binoculars during the next few months until it disintegrates in our planet’s atmosphere.”
Full Story (CNN)

Canada Commits to 2030 ISS Extension

Space News reported that the Canadian government “formally committed March 24 to an extension of the International Space Station to 2030, joining other Western partners but not Russia.” As part of last week’s meeting between US President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, Canada confirmed it would participate in the ISS through 2030 “as part of a renewed commitment to space exploration that includes contributions to the NASA-led lunar Gateway.” The US announced that it intended to make the same commitment in 2021.
Full Story (Space News)

SpaceX Launches Cargo Dragon Ship to ISS

CBS News reports that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket “boosted a Dragon cargo ship into orbit Tuesday evening, carrying 6,300 pounds of research gear, crew supplies, spare parts and other hardware on a two-day flight to the International Space Station.” The Falcon 9 “roared to life at 8:30 p.m. EDT and raced away from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop 1.7 million pounds of thrust, and a torrent of fiery exhaust visible for scores of miles around.” The booster rocket “shot off on a northeasterly trajectory paralleling the East Coast of the United States, dimming to an ember-like speck, as it accelerated away from Florida and out of the lower atmosphere.”
Full Story (CBS News)

 

 Video
CRS-27 Mission

On Tuesday, March 14 at 8:30 p.m. ET, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launches Dragon’s 27th Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-27) to the ISS from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
(SpaceX; YouTube)

NASA Looks to Develop a ‘Deorbit Tug’ to Bring ISS in Controlled Destruction in 2030

SPACE reports that NASA is looking “to develop a spacecraft capable of steering the International Space Station (ISS) to a controlled destruction in Earth’s atmosphere when its time in orbit is up.” The plans were revealed when NASA’s $27.2 billion allocation included $180 million “to initiate development of a new space tug” that could safely “deorbit the ISS over the open ocean after its operational life ends in 2030, as well as potentially perform other activities.” NASA’s human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders said the cost estimate was just under $1 billion and added, “Our goal is to go out with an RFP [request for proposals], and then, obviously, when we get the proposals, then we’re hoping to get a better price than that. But this gives us a healthy start in ‘24 to get that critical capability onboard.”airplanes.”
Full Story (SPACE)

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Mission Nearly Over

Aviation Week reports that NASA’s four-person Crew-5 Dragon crew is “scheduled to depart the International Space Station (ISS) early March 11 for a splashdown in the ocean waters off the Florida peninsula at 9:19 p.m. EST, to bring a more than five-month mission to a close.”
Full Story (Aviation Week)

 

 Video
Crew-5 Mission | Undocking

SpaceX and NASA are targeting no earlier than Saturday, March 11 at 2:05 a.m. ET for Dragon to autonomously undock from the ISS.
(SpaceX; YouTube)

ISS Adjusts Orbit to Avoid Collision

Space News reports that the International Space Station “adjusted its orbit March 6 to avoid a close approach by an imaging satellite operated by Satellogic, the latest evidence of growing congestion in low Earth orbit.” A March 6 blog post from NASA said “that the Progress MS-22 spacecraft docked to the station fired its thrusters for a little more than six minutes, raising the station’s orbit to move out of the way of what the agency called an Earth observation satellite.” The satellite would have passed within 3 kilometers of the ISS without the maneuver.
Full Story (Space News)

Astronauts Install Hardware on Outside of ISS

CNN reports, “First-time spacewalkers and NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio began their excursion outside the space station at 9:14 a.m. ET and ended at 4:25 p.m. ET, lasting for 7 hours and 11 minutes.” The purpose of the excursion was to assemble a mounting bracket on the space station’s starboard side, which will allow for more rollout solar arrays (iROSAs), which will increase the power to the space station. “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.”
Full Story (CNN)

Russian Spacecraft Leak Caused by External Impact

The AP reports that Roscosmos said a coolant leak “from an uncrewed Russian supply ship docked at the International Space Station resulted from an external impact and not a manufacturing flaw.” The leak was spotted on the Progress MS-21 cargo ship on February 11, and came after a similar leak from a Soyuz capsule last December. Russian space officials “said that December’s leak was caused by a tiny meteoroid that left a small hole in the exterior radiator and sent coolant spewing into space.” The new leak “from another ship raised doubts about that theory, and Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos launched a probe into the incident to check whether it could have resulted from a manufacturing defect.”
More Info (Associated Press)

ISS National Lab Looks for Projects

Aviation Week reports that demand for conducting experiments “on board the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory remains strong after 75 payloads were sent to the orbiting platform last year.” The laboratory, “which hosts non-NASA experiments, is looking for its next crop of in-space projects.”
Full Story (Aviation Week)

Airbus Partners With Nanoracks for Commercial Space Station

Aviation Week reports that Europe’s Airbus Defense and Space “is joining a U.S. partnership led by Voyager Space-owned Nanoracks to develop and operate a commercial space station in low Earth orbit (LEO), one of four NASA-backed projects vying to host government research and commercial ventures after the International Space Station” is transitioned away from.
Full Story (Aviation Week)

Congress Approves ISS Mission Extension to 2030

The Orlando (FL) Sentinel reported that Congress has passed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, authorizing NASA to keep the ISS operational until 2030. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “This act shows continued bipartisan support of NASA’s many missions, including our Moon to Mars approach, as well extension of U.S. participation in the International Space Station to 2030.”
Full Story (Orlando Sentinel)

Roscosmos Chief Clarifies Comments About ISS Departure

SPACE reports that Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov “expanded on comments he made last week indicating the country’s intent to disassociate from the International Space Station ‘after 2024.’” In an interview with Russia 24, Borisov said, “We announced that we intend to do this not in 2024, but after 2024. In Russian, these are two big differences.” Borisov elaborated, “We must warn our colleagues a year in advance that we will do this for such and such circumstances. We have not warned [NASA] about this yet; there is no need for this. We just said that after 2024 we will start the exit process.”
Full Story (SPACE)

NASA Warned to Avoid Space Station Gap

Space News reports that industry officials warned NASA that it “needs to ensure that commercial space stations are ready before the International Space Station is retired to avoid a ‘space station gap’ with geopolitical consequences.” NASA currently plans to retire the ISS around 2030 and calls for a new commercial space station by the end of this decade.
Full Story (Space News)

Cygnus Resupply Mission to Launch to ISS August 10

ExecutiveGov reported that Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to lift off atop an Antares rocket August 10 for a mission to the International Space Station. The spacecraft will “deliver another batch of NASA’s science investigations, supplies and equipment to” the ISS. The mission “will support research on 3D printing in space, the behavior of slime molds in microgravity, a spacecraft thermal protection system and a carbon dioxide removal technology.”
Full Story (ExecutiveGov)

SpaceX Cargo Dragon Undocks from ISS

SPACE reports that at 10:40 a.m. EDT Thursday, SpaceX’s CRS-22 Cargo Dragon spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station’s Harmony module. NASA officials said that the spacecraft is expected to land off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, on Friday at 11:30 p.m. EDT. Experiments from the cargo spacecraft “will be sent back to NASA’s Space Station Processing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to minimize the effects of gravity on the samples,” according to a NASA press release. The ship, “carrying 5,000 lbs. (roughly 2,265 kilograms) of equipment, experiments and other things, was supposed to depart the station on Tuesday (July 6) and then Wednesday (July 7), but continued high winds and dangerous conditions from” Tropical Storm Elsa caused the undocking to be delayed.
Full Story (SPACE)

NASA Administrator to Speak With Roscosmos Counterpart Friday On Future of ISS

The Houston Chronicle reports that NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano “on Friday will exit the confines of the International Space Station for the first of four spacewalks to fix a vital piece of hardware that was not designed to be repaired in space.” The astronauts will repair part of a failed cooling system on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). On Tuesday, NASA officials indicated that “the technical challenges of the mission…rival those of any previous spacewalk, including the Hubble Space Telescope between 1993 and 2009.” NASA program manager Ken Bollweg said, “When they get into this area behind the debris shield, they’re very constrained, they’ll get in there with their hands but then their head, their shoulders, the rest of the suit, the work station, everything is interfering with what they’re doing within that tiny space.”
Full Story (Houston Chronicle)

Russian Progress Cargo Ship Docks With ISS

SPACE reports that the Russian Progress MS-16 cargo ship docked safely at the International Space Station Wednesday, bringing “new research experiments, crew supplies (such as clothing and food), fresh water, nitrogen gas and propellant for the station’s Zvezda service module propulsion system,” among other cargo. When it leaves the station, Progress “will remain connected to Pirs and pull the entire docking compartment away from the ISS for a planned destruction in Earth’s atmosphere.” The move will come “just days after the launch of the ‘Nauka’ multipurpose laboratory module,” which will dock at the port vacated by Pirs.
Full Story (SPACE)