International Space Station:News, Events, etc

[orbitingpluto]

The ESA has made a neat little 3d panorama of most of the US-side of of the ISS, with not only the pictures that make up the panoramas taken in June by the ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, but she also did the videos that one can view in some of the clickable parts.

[orbitingpluto]

Some news:

The validation of the Veggie plant growing system is getting to the point where astronaut can start eating some of the stuff they are growing with it.

There will be a spacewalk from the ISS tomorrow(Aug 10th),exiting on the Russian side of the station and the two spacewalkers are Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, who will be photographing the exterior of the Russian modules, upgrading hardware and retrieving experiments. If you wish, you can watch it live via NASA TV(starts 1:45pm UTC, or 9:45am EST).

Also, NASA went from stating it's 'intention' to purchase more Soyuz seats for ISS crew rotations in 2018, [ur=http://spacenews.com/nasa-blaming-comme ... contract/l]to formally notifying Congress that it has issued a $490 million extension the existing Soyuz contract[/url]. NASA is hoping to have American crew vehicles in service then, under the Commercial Crew effort, but with Congress intending to under fund the effort again in FY2016, NASA is forced to source seats from Russia just to insure that funding-related changes/delays in CC don't leave American astronauts without a ride to the ISS.

[Pu-239]

Everybody wins CRS2! And I'll still have a job (working on Cygnus). Announced awhile back on Jan 14 but didn't see any updates in this thread.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/01/ ... ra-nevada/