Category Archives: NASA

ISS Hooks Up with Commercial Space Craft – making history!

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Around 400 kilometres above northwest Australia the International Space Station Expedition 31 crew successfully captured the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the station’s robotic arm just before midnight AEST. The feat came 3 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 23 seconds after the mission’s launch.

When the crew of the ISS reached out today with the Canada robotic arm to grab SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule and bring it in for the Space Station’s first-ever hook-up with a commercial spaceship, history was made.

It marks the first contact with a U.S.-made spacecraft at the station since last year’s retirement of NASA’s space shuttle fleet, and potentially opens the way for dozens of orbital cargo shipments. If the long-range plan unfolds as NASA hopes, U.S. astronauts could be shuttled back and forth on the Dragon or similar spacecraft within just a few years.

The hook-up follows from Tuesday’s successful launch of the Dragon atop a Falcon 9 rocket, and represents the culmination of years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars of spending by NASA and California-based SpaceX, known more formally as Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

Now if all goes to plan, berthing should be finished by 7am AEST and later on in the day the hatch to the Dragon would be opened and the six astronauts on board the ISS will unload about 460 kilograms of cargo, including food, clothes, batteries and a laptop as well as 15 student-designed experiments. Then they will load the ship up with approximately 660 kilograms of Earth-bound cargo, including personal items from the crew as well as completed experiments and old equipment.

On May 31, the capsule would be detached from the station and sent back down toward a Pacific Ocean splashdown and recovery off the coast of Southern California, which would mark the first-ever return of a commercial spacecraft from the space station. Russia’s Soyuz capsule is the only other existing space vehicle capable of returning space station payloads.

If today’s operation doesn’t work out, NASA and SpaceX could make another attempt at a berthing and if that failed, another demonstration mission would have to be mounted. But once SpaceX proves that its system works reliably, the company could proceed with cargo resupply missions in earnest. It already has a $US1.6 billion contract with NASA for 12 Dragon shipments through 2016.

It is anticipated that if all goes ahead then the first astronaut flights could take place as early as 2017. Until then, NASA will have to depend on the Russians to transport U.S. astronauts on Soyuz spacecraft, at a cost of more than $60 million a seat. SpaceX and other players in the commercial space race say they can meet or beat that price.

Another interesting piece of cargo on board the second stage of the rocket were the ashes of 308 hard-core space fans finally making it to  “Space – the Final Frontier”.  Each set of remains was in a lipstick sized container and included the ashes of Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, who died in 2004, and actor James Doohan, who portrayed chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original Star Trek television series and who died in 2005.

Falcon’s second stage separated from the Dragon less than 10 minutes after lift-off and went into its own orbit. The stage should spend the next year or so circling Earth as an orbital space memorial before it is pulled back into the atmosphere and incinerated. In case you are interested costs for these Earth Orbiting memorials is about $US3,000.

Try for a photo of Jupiter, Venus and the crescent Moon tongiht

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A month ago, Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon were nicely for evening sky watchers around the world. Tonight it’s happening again. Tonight the three will form a bright triangle in the western sky at sunset afte around 7pm.

See Jupiter, Venus and the Crescent Moon form a lovely traingle tonight

Mission to Land on a Comet

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Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet– and to make history. In 2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkoand land a probe on it, two firsts.

 Rosetta’s goal is to learn the primordial story a comet tells as it gloriously falls to pieces. Comets are primitive leftovers from our solar system’s ‘construction’ about 4.5 billion years ago. Because they spend much of their time in the deep freeze of the outer solar system, comets are well preserved—a gold mine for astronomers who want to know what conditions were like back “in the beginning.”

 As their elongated orbits swing them closer to the sun, comets transform into the most breathtaking bodies in the night sky. A European Space Agency mission launched in 2004 with U.S. instruments on board, Rosetta will have a front-row seat for the metamorphosis.

 At the moment, Rosetta is “resting up” for the challenges ahead. It’s hibernating, engaged in its high-speed chase while fast asleep.

It will be woken up on or around New Year’s Day 2014, to begin a months-long program of self-checkups.

 If all goes well, in August that year, Rosetta will enter orbit around 67P’s nucleus and begin scanning its surface for a landing site. Once a site is chosen, the spacecraft will descend as low as 1 km to deploy the lander.

 The lander’s name is “Philae” after an island in the Nile, the site of an obelisk that helped decipher—you guessed it—the Rosetta Stone.  Touchdown is scheduled for November 2014, whenPhilaewill make the first ever controlled landing on a comet’s nucleus. Because a comet has little gravity, the lander will anchor itself with harpoons.

 Once it is fastened, the lander will commence an unprecedented first-hand study of a comet’s nucleus. 

 Meanwhile, orbiting overhead, the Rosetta spacecraft will be busy, too. On board sensors will map the comet’s surface and magnetic field, monitor the comet’s erupting jets and geysers, measure outflow rates, and much more.  Together, the orbiter and lander will build up the first 3D picture of the layers and pockets under the surface of a comet.