I recently visited a science center where there was a mock up of part of the International Space Station (ISS), types of scientific experiments done on the station, plus videos of the astronauts giving tours and showing the everyday functions and routines needed to keep the hulk in running condition. Very interesting and impressive that this long-term space venture is going on and that people are living in space for long periods. Noted that I should make a thread on this in SMP. Of course I delayed but now with the following bit of fun news this it the perfect moment. See link below:


NASA: Russia seeks contact with craft bound for International Space Station

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/world/...an-cargo-ship/



(CNN)—Russia is trying to figure out its next steps after losing contact with an unmanned cargo spacecraft on a resupply mission to the International Space Station that is now spinning out of control, NASA said Wednesday.

The ISS Progress 59 cargo spacecraft launched successfully early Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

But after it separated from the Soyuz booster rocket's third stage, Russian flight controllers were unable to confirm the health of all the spacecraft's systems, including the deployment of navigational antennae, NASA said.

A planned rendezvous with the ISS six hours later was initially postponed to Thursday but has now been canceled, NASA said in its latest update.

"Docking has been called off for the Progress 59 spacecraft," it said. "Russian flight controllers are continuing to assess the vehicle and what the plan going forward will be. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available."

Few details have been forthcoming so far from Russia's space agency, Roscosmos.

According to NASA, the cargo ship is carrying more than 3 tons of food, fuel, oxygen, spare parts and scientific experiment hardware for the space station.

But the hitch will not put the six ISS crew members at risk, NASA said.

"The spacecraft was not carrying any supplies critical for the United States Operating Segment (USOS) of the station," a statement said. "Both the Russian and USOS segments of the station continue to operate normally and are adequately supplied well beyond the next planned resupply flight."

That next flight, which will be the seventh SpaceX commercial resupply services mission to the space station, is not scheduled to take off before June 19, NASA said.

Meanwhile, Russian flight controllers continue their efforts to make contact with Progress 59 as it passes over Russian ground stations.


NASA said Tuesday that Russian flight controllers had "confirmed that the vehicle had entered into a slow spin and have issued commands to attempt to control it."

According to Russian state news agency Tass, six attempts to make contact were to be made Wednesday.

The U.S. supplies on board the spacecraft include spare parts for the station's environmental control and life support system, backup spacewalk hardware and crew clothing, "all of which are replaceable," NASA said.

U.S. astronaut Terry Virts, from Maryland, is the current space station commander.
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Doesn't sound very good. If contact and 'control' is not regained then cargo spacecraft could crash to earth, I assume mostly burning up in the process. Would be fun to see it hit and take out Paris, France. But we are not that lucky.

More updates/information on the ISS and other sky/space debris soon.

Below is a link that shows the current position in relation to the ground of the ISS orbiting the earth.

http://iss.astroviewer.net/

Update on Russian Roulette Spacecraft - Falling to Earth: unmanned Russian spacecraft ‘has nowhere else to go’
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...-says-official

From above link:

A Russian spacecraft that is tumbling around the Earth after it malfunctioned en route to the International Space Station (ISS) could remain in orbit for more than a week before crashing down to Earth.

Thomas Reiter, director of human spaceflight and operations at the European Space Agency, said that if Russian engineers could not regain control of the stricken vessel it could spiral down to Earth within the next 10 days.

The 7-metre-long Progress 59 vessel malfunctioned soon after reaching orbit on Tuesday and went into an uncontrolled spin. Flight controllers have failed to establish two-way communications with the spacecraft as it passes over Russian ground stations.

An official Russian space agency statement is expected later on Wednesday. An official familiar with the situation told Agence France-Presse: “It has started descending. It has nowhere else to go. It is clear that absolutely uncontrollable reactions have begun.”

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I love the last sentence. So, should we start taking bets/odds on where the debris will hit?

Australia, I would think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

The ISS has been chugging along for 15 years. A great achievement that receives little if any recognition from the throbbing masses. The European Space Agency (ESA) maintains an excellent website that is worth browsing through for updates on science, activities, and those fun pictures that make it all worthwhile.

Link to all things ISS from the ESA:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Hu..._Space_Station

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Zeno, I appreciate the effort to blow life into ISS.

Space is the final frontier; and it is not just having humans going into space it is finding out how it all works/fits together, cosmology in essence. From dark matter to dark energy to supernovae to starting a bar on the Moon, Mars, Titian, Ceres and other fun locations.

You hit a soft spot there.

With all that nazi coke, who would pay for a drink on Ceres?

I have questioned the nazi theory from the beginning.

is there any reason other than the obvious that Americans can't decide how say, 5% of their taxes every year is spent?

just make a website, have general areas that get more specific and let us decide how a small portion of our taxes are spent.

want to improve roads? want to fund local schools? want to fund the ISS? choose...

makes me mad kinda when I think about it

Additional information links on satellites, orbits, gravity and the ISS. All useful and worth your time if you wish to learn something.

Satellite Orbit Types & Definitions

http://www.radio-electronics.com/inf...efinitions.php

How NASA steers the International Space Station around space junk, excellent article and useful website:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...nd-space-junk/


Mechanics: Circular Motion and Gravitation

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/calcpad/circgrav

Mathematics of Satellite Motion

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/clas...tellite-Motion

Dude, the ISS makes up for less than 0.1% of the US federal budget. I'm all for more civil rights on how our money is spent but you should also ask this question for the other 99.9%.

There are a lot of folks in the space/science communities that think the ISS has ******ed progress in space. It has been a massive investment, including the accompanying costs of operating the shuttle fleet for over a decade to support it, to "explore" space 249 miles away. There have been many interesting experiments, but at enormous opportunity cost. One can make a case that Hubble has been more important than the ISS for pushing scientific understanding. And for technological advances, ferrying to/from LEO for >15 years hasn't led to much innovation. Heck, we're over 15 years into the program and the primary system still in use for this purpose is a 1960s Russian design.

Bulky slow steps to be sure. The driving force for ISS is not like the space race to the moon was in the 60's. For many different reasons. But denigrating the idea and progress thus far made is moving backward in thinking not forward.

And time is required to see all the future problems or needs of humans to live, work, and interact in the controlled and weightless environment of space for long periods. So we can get to the Moon again and to Mars and so that SMP posters can, within my lifetime, start a bar and brothel on the rim of Valles Marineris, and host a tall glass of fresh brew to the home planet and to all the stars that beckon out beyond, in the vast sea of wasteland that we humans need to conquer and pollute.

Put bluntly; people like me move and push civilization forward - the rest are laggards and fools that deserve the backward hovels they want all to crawl into with force fear; under the watchful draconian eye of sanctimonious moralists and their lackeys.

I'm Lord Nelson at the battle of the Nile; you are the French laid at anchor in the bay.

I suppose this is you trying to be cute, but what do you actually do to push civilization and technology forward? Serious question.

For the record, I have taught graduate courses in space technology and currently manage a $15M R&D portfolio.

Excellent - your expertise is much better than mine. How would you handle the next step in space exploration, replacing the use of ISS, if that is what you think is needed as a better step forward?

For the record, I have taught college level science classes and took care and concern at the rather dismal quality of science education and critical thinking skills that many college bound students displayed.

For the record, I have managed multimillion dollar projects for the government with a high sense of duty, not any cutting edge research, but useful, and also with enough experience to know the frustrations and blockades and waste that is mostly the norm in trying to accomplished want you are actually contracted to accomplish, and the high percentage of poor quality personnel that you must fight and appease and mollify to meet set goals and schedules. Not to mention the perpetual funding problems and issues.

I also worked for a U.S. government agency for three years as a science and technical lackey, before going to graduate school. I meet, worked with and interacted daily with smart and very dedicated and very hard working scientists that were doing cutting-edge research. I learned a great deal. Including how to be cute. But also was impressed that important (and not-so-important) things can be accomplished by dedicated people working together; despite long odds and a perpetual stifling bureaucracy.

But this thread is not about me or you. It is about ISS. Well, it is also about getting my bar build on Mars but that is secondary and we have get there first.

The next step is already happening. The shuttles are retired. Commercialization of space access has begun. ESA is landing probes on comets. The Constellation program is underway for lunar and eventually Martian exploration.

I wasn't denigrating the ISS in that it was a bad thing. I love space exploration and the pursuit of science and technology, including the ISS (which some of my colleagues have flown on). I was only pointing out that the ISS program was not really pushing the bounds of exploration in either S&T to a huge degree at this point. It has been a massive successin getting countries and their various space agencies to work together better, however, and has led to many interesting experiments and kept a spark of interest alive in the public eye (a small spark, as you allude to).

I'm glad to hear your credentials and background. Thank you for the response. I too spent years working for a government agency involved in science, engineering, and technology development. More than 20 in fact. And I concur that the layman's impression of most civil servants in that arena is extremely far off. The government is full of many brilliant technical staff members doing brilliant things under often demanding circumstances.

I agree. My original post was about the ISS until you made it about you and me, to which I then responded to clarify I was not among the "laggards and fools that deserve the backward hovels they want all to crawl into with force fear; under the watchful draconian eye of sanctimonious moralists and their lackeys" nor "the French navy laid at bay" as you put it.

Thank you Cytri for the very civil and informative response. I hope one day that we can all toast to a successful manned mission in space again to the Moon, Mars, or beyond. That I'm a bit of a caustic, eccentric, and contradictory character at times (true misanthropes often are) should not belie the honest fact that I view space exploration and the pushing of man's frontier and limits in science and technology as goals all civilized people should support and cheer.

Zeno, from one caustic space enthusiast to another, it's all good. Thanks as well.

Next time you go out on a date, make it one that counts!



You may even have some time for experiments



Here is another maybe (more prominent) less humble experiment;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_M...c_Spectrometer



For a detailed overview of the experiments in ISS;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti..._Space_Station

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...on_experiments

Hubble, dark matter investigations, extrasolar planets, the Mars lander, flybys of Ceres and Pluto... with so many big-ticket discoveries coming from either unmanned craft or Earth-based measurements, it gets harder and harder to justify funding the ISS. Ideally, we'd fund the heck out of everything, but I think there's a solid case to be made that the enormous amount of money it takes to keep the ISS manned and running could be better spent on other space research programs.

You couldn't do this without ISS: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...4/10apr_twins/

As long as we have the vision of getting humans into space, we need to test how they are reacting. Before sending them to Mars. So ISS simply is necessary, it's the only place to make the tests.

Or then forget about getting humans out there, also plausible. It may be a bit old-fashioned to have some guy, needing to breathe, eat, drink, urinate and produce excrements, to jump around on foreign stellar bodies.

But guess this is the familiar: "Can it be done?"