International Space Station:News, Events, etc

[orbitingpluto]

So, a landing date for Soyuz TMA-15M has finally been announced, but it's not a rocket launch, so despite it having a live webcast it's not a fit for the Rocket(s) launching live topic; and being one of many flights to and from the station, it doesn't merit a topic to itself. So, I think a general ISS topic has merit: not just the comings and goings of crew flights and cargo missions, but also for spacewalks, news related to the station, and I imagine Q&A as well, though I'm just a interested layman, so there's a limit to what questions I can actually answer. So there's the topic, let's dig in.

Since I can't start at the beginning, summing up a small part of the present will have to do. The ISS currently has it's crewmembers brought up in the Soyuz spacecraft, the first of it's type having first flown in the late 1960s. The version used today is the TMA-M, and it seats three. Coincidentally, the usual crew of the ISS is composed of six, each group arriving in there own Soyuz, usually launched in a staggered way so there is always three people aboard the station at all times. The current crew is composed of Terry Virts(Current Station commander), Anton Shkaplerov, Samantha Cristoforetti, Gennady Padalka, and the two One-Year mission members, Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly. Virts, Shkaplerov, and Cristoforetti were due to return to Earth in Soyuz TMA-15M on May 14th, but because of the recent Progress accident, they were stuck waiting on the station till Russian investigators ruled out the possibility of malfunction with the Progress cargo ship- Soyuz and Progress share many components and systems, and Progress was originally developed out of the Soyuz spacecraft itself, so problems with one can have implications for the other. That not being the case, they now have a landing date again, on June 11th. NASA TV will be showing the landing, both on it's cable/satellite television channel and on the NASA TV website, along with earlier activities such as the handover of the Station from Terry Virts to Gennady Padalka, hatch closing ceremony, undocking, and deorbit of the Soyuz TMA-15M.

Unlike the Ariane 5 flight that kicked off the Rocket(s) launching live topic, I've got time to put up some background information, so I look forward to that in the next few days. Also, coming up is a SpaceX resupply mission to the ISS, which we can see the launching of the Falcon 9 in the Rocket(s) launching live thread, and then watch the Dragon cargo vehicle's docking and later landing here. That's towards the end of the month and farther out though, but thinking ahead, that kind of how I see these two topics coexisting.

[Simon_Jester]

Does anyone know if they ever got around to putting up the Cosmic Ray Energy And Mass instrument?

[SpottedKitty]

Also, coming up is a SpaceX resupply mission to the ISS, which we can see the launching of the Falcon 9

Any word on whether they'll try for another first stage soft(ish) landing?

[orbitingpluto]

Does anyone know if they ever got around to putting up the Cosmic Ray Energy And Mass instrument?

I think your talking about ISS-CREAM, and it looks like it has yet to launch. I seen a rumor on a forum that it was to be on the SpX-3 Dragon flight, but it's not in the press release or cargo manifest I found for that flight. I've seen resources, like the website by the team behind CREAM and ISS-CREAM, suggesting a 2015 flight, and with two other Dragon flights scheduled for this year, besides the one later this month, it might fly this year, though I can't tell when at the moment. Both SpX-7(flying later this month) and SpX-8(August) have large payloads in their trunks, which might be big enough to prevent ISS-CREAM going up on either of those, but I haven't spent time figuring that out to be sure. SpX-9(December), depending what else gets manifested, might be ISS-CREAM's flight, but if it can share the trunk with either IDA-1 or BEAM might go up earlier. I'll dig up the manifests as they get released and post links.

Also, coming up is a SpaceX resupply mission to the ISS, which we can see the launching of the Falcon 9

Any word on whether they'll try for another first stage soft(ish) landing?

Resupply flights are SpaceX's best chances for trying to return the first stage, so it's a safe bet they will be working on getting ready for one. Actually attempting the return is something I'm less willing to bet on, mostly because of weather, but there could be technical problems as well. We will have to wait and see.


If you have twenty minutes to spare, the ESA has a video explaining undocking, reentry, and landing of a Soyuz. It's the last of three videos done by the ESA about Soyuz, but those two will get linked when the next crew launches; right now it's Soyuz TMA-15M's turn to return, not launch or dock. Enjoy the video below, and thanks for the questions.

[orbitingpluto]

In two days time, three people travel back to Earth, a event so routine most networks don't bother to mention it during newscasts. I linked to the wrong thing last time, so here is the actual NASA TV schedule.

Anyway, here is part of the schedule from that link, with times being in EDT. Europeans are in luck, since deorbit starts sometime after noon, but in most of America it's going to be sometime in the morning. It might be too early for me, but that's partly my sleeping habits.

Thursday, June 11

2:30 a.m. - Farewell and hatch closure coverage (hatch closure scheduled for 2:55 a.m.)
6 a.m. - Undocking coverage (undocking scheduled at 6:20 a.m.)
8:30 a.m. - Deorbit burn and landing coverage (deorbit burn scheduled at 8:51 a.m., with landing at 9:43 a.m.)

The landing will take place at 7:43 pm local, in Kazakhstan, where according to forecasts, it will be cloudy with likely temperatures in the 80s F / upper 20s to 30 degrees C.

[orbitingpluto]

Damn, I had Russian car joke lined up, but I forgot to keep a copy of it handy. Anyway, it's just under two hours before Samantha Cristoforetti, Terry Virts, and Anton Shkaplerov will close the hatch on their Soyuz, and the three crewmates they are leaving behind will shut the corresponding hatch on the station's side. Words will be said beforehand though, and everyone will get a chance to say goodbye; NASA TV will be broadcasting it here.

That link will also be the one to turn to when they undock, deorbit, and land. Check the schedule in the post above for the times to tune in, and keep your fingers crossed that these three make it safely home. I'd stick around for commentary, but I've got to sleep.

[orbitingpluto]

I managed to check the net just now, and the capsule is on the ground, and the recovery teams are pulling out Soyuz center seater Anton Shkaplerov. Next should be right seater Samantha Cristoforetti, then Terry Virts.

[Prannon]

Keep posting this stuff man.

Also, quick question! I seem to remember reading an article back in the day (forget the name or the venue) that talked about how the Russians and the Americans get along on the ISS. I seem to recall that both groups largely kept to themselves, especially lately. Any information on that? Might be interesting side discussion.

[orbitingpluto]

With this Soyuz safely landed and nothing pressing on the horizon, I foresee two weeks of none too much happening on the ISS. Perfect time for Q&A.

I seem to remember reading an article back in the day (forget the name or the venue) that talked about how the Russians and the Americans get along on the ISS. I seem to recall that both groups largely kept to themselves, especially lately. Any information on that? Might be interesting side discussion.

Glad your enjoying it so far. Anyway, I think that's it's true to some degree, though I doubt it it's due to politics. Mostly because crews going to the ISS go through something like a year or more training with each other on the ground, and also each one of them has a professional and human interest in being able connecting with each other. Space is an empty place, even close to Earth where ground teams are always on radio and there is enough bandwidth for limited internet. I've read stuff from journals or quotes from astronauts* on different expeditions, and from what I remember, most or all of them mentioned the whole crew getting together for meals.

Part of why getting together at meals is important is that they do end up split up- the work routines for American and ESA astronauts and the mostly Russian cosmonauts commonly means that work on a particular side of the station will be handled by crew on that 'side'. Combined with the size of the ISS, it's not unheard of for people there to end up working alone most of the day, and maybe only seeing someone else at mealtimes. And since your stuck working on a particular side of the station, if someone floats by, it's usually because their work brings them round. In that sense, a crew can get divided along national lines, but often enough a Italian will end up acting as copilot to a Russian Soyuz commander, or an American and two Russians will be doing a shifting fluid experiment, to name two recent examples I know of, so there is a fair amount of joint work.

There's more I could type about this, but it's late and I can't stand editing or adding more.



*I'm only fluent in English ATM, so I'm handicapped when it comes to finding out information from Russian sources- most cosmonauts end up learning English just like how American astronauts learn Russian, but I don't know of any English-language cosmonaut blogs yet. Quite a number of European astronauts are comfortable enough with English to use it though, with the recent example of Samantha Cristoforetti, who tweeted and did some Google+ stuff in English during her stay on the ISS.

[Simon_Jester]

Does anyone know if they ever got around to putting up the Cosmic Ray Energy And Mass instrument?

I think your talking about ISS-CREAM, and it looks like it has yet to launch. I seen a rumor on a forum that it was to be on the SpX-3 Dragon flight, but it's not in the press release or cargo manifest I found for that flight. I've seen resources, like the website by the team behind CREAM and ISS-CREAM, suggesting a 2015 flight, and with two other Dragon flights scheduled for this year, besides the one later this month, it might fly this year, though I can't tell when at the moment. Both SpX-7(flying later this month) and SpX-8(August) have large payloads in their trunks, which might be big enough to prevent ISS-CREAM going up on either of those, but I haven't spent time figuring that out to be sure. SpX-9(December), depending what else gets manifested, might be ISS-CREAM's flight, but if it can share the trunk with either IDA-1 or BEAM might go up earlier. I'll dig up the manifests as they get released and post links.

Yeah; they had the thing partially assembled back in the spring of 2011, but I assume that actually getting it slotted into a supply flight has been a bear what with the dislocations of the supply chain.

[orbitingpluto]

I kinda hesitated to bring this up, because it is really deals with politics and more beyond simply developing an American ability to transport people to and from the ISS, but yet again Congress has decided to produce a bill that would slash two hundred million dollars from the Commercial Crew effort. The amendment mentioned in the article, the one proposed by Senator Mikulski to restore full funding, failed to pass.

I don't have anything against the Soyuz, but it's all too clear that if for whatever reason if Soyuz can't be used, there isn't a backup or alternative right now to fill the void and enable someone to at least maintain the station, if not actually work there while Soyuz is grounded. But since it's hard convincing most Congresspeople that this is even important, it's even harder to overcome those opposing Comm. Crew or the idiots that see any discretionary program as 'fat' to be 'trimmed'. It's exasperating.

[orbitingpluto]

I forgot to put up the links before hand, but around 3:11 am EDT the Progress successfully docked with the ISS. To make up for the fact I didn't post links to the webcast, here's a video of of the docking.

[SpottedKitty]

Good to see, but does anyone know how to decipher those data overlays? I don't really know any Russian, so I'm pretty much lost. I think the bottom left number is closing velocity, but if the number above that is distance, it isn't keeping track with the distance callouts. And what about all the other numbers?

Interesting how the actual docking was just after "sunset" — I would have thought even with the reliability of the auto-dock system, they would have preferred to dock in sunlight.

[Lagmonster]

Stickied, because science.

[Irbis]

Good to see, but does anyone know how to decipher those data overlays? I don't really know any Russian, so I'm pretty much lost. I think the bottom left number is closing velocity, but if the number above that is distance, it isn't keeping track with the distance callouts. And what about all the other numbers?

Top left line - Zblizhenye (distance, closeness), presumably time from start. Line below - dock, repeated twice. KYPC in right middle - course. Rest is abbreviations or Greek letters, presumably meaning physical units. I could try looking them up tomorrow if no one else does.

[SpottedKitty]

KYPC in right middle - course. Rest is abbreviations or Greek letters, presumably meaning physical units. I could try looking them up tomorrow if no one else does.

The little light comes on

I might have a bit of a handle on it now, the Greek bits below "КУРС" are probably either the actual orbital elements, or (more likely, I think) the course relative to the station as determined by the onboard docking radar. I read up a bit on orbital mechanics once, they do use figures like that. It gets complicated; you have to get used to thinking in half a dozen different directions at once.

[orbitingpluto]

This webpage has translations for most of the text that pops up over the course of a docking, but since the pictures it links to are dead, not so helpful. This one .pdf on the modeling of Soyuz displays for a simulator located at the Space Systems Institute at the University of Stuttgart, has some info on the displays, on page 57; Soyuz and Progress use the same systems, so differences could be small, if any.

Interesting how the actual docking was just after "sunset" — I would have thought even with the reliability of the auto-dock system, they would have preferred to dock in sunlight.

I think that by the time a Progress gets up close to the docking port, whatever problem that might have occurred would have happened already, and now your close enough that the Progress's onboard lights should be illuminating the station- should a cosmonaut need to take over with the TORU system, they should still have enough light to work with. Starting in darkness or too close to orbital sunset would be a no go, but so long as a normal approach gets in close enough during daylight that headlights will be able to illuminate the station when the sun sets, they can deal with Kurs getting balky or even failing.

[SpottedKitty]

As long as they keep in mind the two occasions when a Progress under TORU control has collided with the station (this was with Mir, about 20 years ago I think). One of the modules was moderately damaged in the second incident, and I remember they were close to abandoning the station.

[orbitingpluto]

As long as they keep in mind the two occasions when a Progress under TORU control has collided with the station (this was with Mir, about 20 years ago I think). One of the modules was moderately damaged in the second incident, and I remember they were close to abandoning the station.

There was a near-collision and one actual collision, not two. Anyway, during the both events control was lost during the approach phase, and trying to tell how far or how fast your going by sight is really difficult the farther you are from the station. The first time the Progress came in far too fast but was moved to avoid Mir, but the second time the cosmonaut flying the Progress didn't manage to translate the Progress far enough away away, and it hit Spektr. Damage included knocking Mir hard enough to start a spin, and punching a hole small enough not to kill the crew immediately, but big enough to cause a leak. Lucky for English speakers, Astronaut Micheal Foale was on the station, and you read his own words about his tour of duty on Mir, including stuff about the collision with this transcript from an oral history project, just use crtl+f and search for collision. Interesting stuff, even if the actual collision is only a small part in the story of dealing with the aftermath.

With the ISS, should Kurs get squirrely or simply quit working when it's too far to use TORU to continue, there's still the option to postpone the attempt and see if Kurs can be fixed. Unlike the cash strapped Russia of the 90s, there's no need to risk TORU approaches to save money, and maybe new or different measures in training or in the hardware have made approaching a station easier with TORU.

[K. A. Pital]

Сближение is closing in or approaching. The Kurs system displays the status of the docking process, where there are several status indications depending on what happens. Сближение [sbleezhenie] is the approach, then there is касание [kasanie] which is literally touch/contact, and finally the ship is docked. Причал (preechal) is docking port, lit. docking berth.

Hope this helps.

[orbitingpluto]

NASA has selected the first astronauts to train for commercial crew, which is another step closer to getting those vehicles in service, providing a backup to Soyuz and also enabling one more astronaut aboard the ISS. The NASA article doesn't quite spell out that last bit, but then increasing the station's crew is a bit beyond initial service, which depending on Congress might not even start in 2017 as it is currently hoped.

Also, this year has been good for breaking time-in-space records: Gennady Padalka broke the previous cumulative total-time-in-space record of 803 days set by Sergei Krikalev ten years ago, surpassing Krikalev on June 28th, and is continuing to rack up days in space. Samantha Cristoforetti broke the record for a female on a single mission, staying in space for 200 days, in part due the the failure of a Progress ship postponing her return, breaking the record set by Sunita Williams back in 2007 with a stay of 195 days. Scott Kelly should surpass Michael Lopez-Alegria’s record of 215 days in space for a single mission(set in 2006) in October, but that's only the record for Americans. Neither Kelly nor his fellow One Year Crew member Mikhail Kornienko are set to topple the record for a single mission in space set by Valeri Polyakov back in 1995, who spent 437 days on Mir.

The ISS itself holds the record for being continuously occupied, which it took from Mr in 2010; this September 2 will hopefully mark 15 years of having humans aloft without a day with no crew aboard. Here's hoping it stays a good year for records.

Source for most of the facts used, except Valeri Polyakov's record, to which I remembered mostly on my own and turned to Wikipedia to get the days correct.

[orbitingpluto]

As ground control and the three crewmembers guide Soyuz TMA-17M towards the ISS, there's not much to watch via the webcast until the Soyuz gets close enough to be seen. Among the things to be seen at that point will be whether manual commands deployed the panel at the end of the port solar array, but that's still a while from now. So please enjoy this second part of series of videos on Soyuz made by the ESA, it's about rendezvous and docking and should add to your understanding of what has happened, is happening, and going to happen over the next two to two and half hours.

[orbitingpluto]

The Soyuz is only a few hundred meters away from the ISS, currently flying around to it's assigned docking port, with final approach set to start in 5 minutes, with docking about 15 minutes off. The webcast is here.

[orbitingpluto]

The Soyuz is now securing itself to the Rassvet module of the ISS, with hooks and latches. The docking phase is nearing it's end, and now the process turns to making the Soyuz secure and safe, getting the area between the hatch of the ISS and the hatch of Soyuz ready so the crew of the Soyuz TMA-17M can join up with the crew on the ISS. Also, it has been reported that the solar panel that didn't deploy has successfully deployed.

There's not a video available right now for anyone who missed the rendezvous and docking, but when I find one I'll post it.

[orbitingpluto]

Sorry for the delay, here's that docking video, along with one of the hatch opening.