International Space Station Crew Discusses Life in Space with Chicago Media
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio discussed life and research on the orbital laborator...

By: NASA

Visit link:

International Space Station Crew Discusses Life in Space with Chicago Media - Video

Kerbal Space Program #4 Space Station Core v2
In this video we send up another space station core after losing our old save file. Thanks for watching, if you enjoyed it, please leave a like, helps alot 🙂

By: Zikmorfeous

Read this article:

Kerbal Space Program #4 Space Station Core v2 - Video

The near drowning of a space-station astronaut from water that had collected in his helmet during a spacewalk stemmed from acceptance of unusual conditions known to increase risks.

Willingness to accept as routine minor amounts of water in a space-walking astronaut's helmet and a misdiagnosis of a previous water leak helped set the stage for an incident last summer that could have cost an International Space Station crew member his life, according to an analysis of the event.

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

In a 122-page report released Wednesday, a mishap investigation board identified a range of causes for the near-tragedy, including organizational causes that carried echoes of accident reports that followed the loss of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their crews in 1986 and 2003.

About 44 minutes into a 6.5-hour spacewalk last July, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano noted that water was building up inside his helmet the second consecutive spacewalk during which he reported the problem. Twenty-three minutes later, he and partner Chris Cassidy were ordered to end the spacewalk.

"The good news was that Luca was very close to the air lock when this happened," said Chris Hansen, space-station chiefengineer and head of the board,during a briefing Wednesday that outlined the findings. "When we terminated the EVA, Luca had a pretty close path to the air lock."

Still, as Parmitano worked his way back to the air lock, water covered his eyes, filled his ears, disrupted communications, and eventually began to enter his nose, making it difficult for him to breathe. Later, when crew mates removed his helmet, they found that it contained at least 1.5 quarts of water.

NASA officials immediately set up the five-member mishap investigation board to uncover the broader causes behind the incident, even as a team of engineers at the Johnson Space Center worked to find the precise mechanical cause for the buildup of water.

Engineers traced the leak to a fan-and-pump assembly that is part of a system that extracts moisture from the air inside the suit and returns it to the suit's water-based cooling system. Contaminants clogged holes that would have carried the water to the cooling system after it was extracted from the air. The water backed up and flowed into the suit's air-circulation system, which sent it into Parmitano's helmet. The specific cause of the contamination is still under investigation.

Here is the original post:

Near-drowning of astronaut tied to wrong diagnosis, slow response (+video)

The near drowning of a space-station astronaut from water that had collected in his helmet during a spacewalk stemmed from acceptance of unusual conditions known to increase risks.

Willingness to accept as routine minor amounts of water in a space-walking astronaut's helmet and a misdiagnosis of a previous water leak helped set the stage for an incident last summer that could have cost an International Space Station crew member his life, according to an analysis of the event.

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

In a 122-page report released Wednesday, a mishap investigation board identified a range of causes for the near-tragedy, including organizational causes that carried echoes of accident reports that followed the loss of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia and their crews in 1986 and 2003.

About 44 minutes into a 6.5-hour spacewalk last July, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano noted that water was building up inside his helmet the second consecutive spacewalk during which he reported the problem. Twenty-three minutes later, he and partner Chris Cassidy were ordered to end the spacewalk.

"The good news was that Luca was very close to the air lock when this happened," said Chris Hansen, space-station chiefengineer and head of the board,during a briefing Wednesday that outlined the findings. "When we terminated the EVA, Luca had a pretty close path to the air lock."

Still, as Parmitano worked his way back to the air lock, water covered his eyes, filled his ears, disrupted communications, and eventually began to enter his nose, making it difficult for him to breathe. Later, when crew mates removed his helmet, they found that it contained at least 1.5 quarts of water.

NASA officials immediately set up the five-member mishap investigation board to uncover the broader causes behind the incident, even as a team of engineers at the Johnson Space Center worked to find the precise mechanical cause for the buildup of water.

Engineers traced the leak to a fan-and-pump assembly that is part of a system that extracts moisture from the air inside the suit and returns it to the suit's water-based cooling system. Contaminants clogged holes that would have carried the water to the cooling system after it was extracted from the air. The water backed up and flowed into the suit's air-circulation system, which sent it into Parmitano's helmet. The specific cause of the contamination is still under investigation.

Originally posted here:

Near-drowning of astronaut tied to wrong diagnosis, slow response

February 28, 2014

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Life aboard the International Space Station (ISS) may seem like a carefree existence, but a wealth of evidence has proven otherwise. Years of research shows that the effects of microgravity wreaks havoc on the human body.

However, microgravity isnt the only thing that astronauts need to worry about in space. Going into space means exposure to radiation, which is known to damage our DNA. And when DNA tries to repair itself, errors can occur that increase the odds of developing cancer.

Between the two, humans face serious health risks when journeying into space. But mounting research is not only making spaceflight safer for our astronauts, it is helping to improve the health of people on terra firma as well.

A new study (Micro-7) is now examining the effect of gravity on DNA damage and repair. Because there is no controlled radiation source on the orbiting lab, cells will be treated with the chemotherapy drug bleomycin to induce DNA damage.

When a cell in the human body is exposed to radiation, DNA will be broken and repaired, which is considered the initiation stage of tumor development, explains principal investigator Honglu Wu, PhD, at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston.Cells damaged from radiation exposure in space also experience microgravity, which we know changes gene expressions even without radiation exposure.

This equals a space double-whammy for the human body, noted Wu.

Previous research exposed cells or organisms on Earth to high-energy charged particles to simulate space radiations. The resulting cell damage helped predict the risk of cancer for astronauts from space radiation. However, the research conducted on Earth in controlled environments do not address the effects of microgravity, which could make any results less accurate than this latest study.

The researchers believe the Micro-7 study will address that by examining the effects of bleomycin-induced DNA damage aboard the ISS.

More here:

Studying The Effects Of Microgravity And Radiation On Human Cells

Dusty Space Cloud

This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In the instruments' combined data, this nearby dwarf galaxy looks like a fiery, circular explosion. Rather than fire, however, those ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Significant fields of star formation are noticeable in the center, just left of center and at right. The brightest center-left region is called 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, for its appearance in visible light.

This enhanced-color image shows sand dunes trapped in an impact crater in Noachis Terra, Mars. Dunes and sand ripples of various shapes and sizes display the natural beauty created by physical processes. The area covered in the image is about six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) across. Sand dunes are among the most widespread wind-formed features on Mars. Their distribution and shapes are affected by changes in wind direction and wind strength. Patterns of dune erosion and deposition provide insight into the sedimentary history of the surrounding terrain.

This image obtained by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta. Scientists are discussing whether the circular structure that covers most of this image originated by a collision with another asteroid, or by internal processes early in the asteroid's history. Images in higher resolution from Dawn's lowered orbit might help answer that question. The image was recorded with the framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft from a distance of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). The image resolution is about 260 meters per pixel.

This undated photo shows a classic type 1a supernova remnant. Researchers Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess of the United States and US-Australian Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize on October 4, 2011 for their research on supernovae.

A quartet of Saturn's moons, from tiny to huge, surround and are embedded within the planet's rings in this Cassini composition. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is in the background of the image, and the moon's north polar hood is clearly visible. See PIA08137 to learn more about that feature on Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across). Next, the wispy terrain on the trailing hemisphere of Dione (698 miles, or 1,123 kilometers across) can be seen on that moon which appears just above the rings at the center of the image. See PIA10560 and PIA06163 to learn more about Dione's wisps. Saturn's small moon Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) orbits beyond the rings on the right of the image. Finally, Pan (17 miles, or 28 kilometers across) can be seen in the Encke Gap of the A ring on the left of the image. The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 17, 2011. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 27 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel on Dione.

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite image of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton's X-ray images obtained January 20, 2012, shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself. Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth's atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the lifecycle of stars . (AFP / Getty Images)

Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble's panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust. (NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage)

A bubbling cauldron of star birth is highlighted in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Infrared light that we can't see with our eyes has been color-coded, such that the shortest wavelengths are shown in blue and the longest in red. The middle wavelength range is green. Massive stars have blown bubbles, or cavities, in the dust and gas--a violent process that triggers both the death and birth of stars. The brightest, yellow-white regions are warm centers of star formation. The green shows tendrils of dust, and red indicates other types of dust that may be cooler, in addition to ionized gas from nearby massive stars.

This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred. (NASA / CXC / CfA / J. Wang)

The rest is here:

Nasa 'Could Have Prevented' Astronaut's Near-Drowning In Space Walk

If you want to know how big the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) is at present, the answer depends on whether or not youre counting the robots on board. Some of the non-human residents will soon be getting smarter, with NASA announcing that the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) robots currently on the station will later this year get a new smartphone. The increased capability of the soon to be Smart SPHERES is designed to help transition them from engineering testbeds to workaday companions that can take over some of the duties of the station astronauts.

At the moment, there are three SPHERES robots aboard the ISS. These self-contained plastic polygonal spheres carry their own power, propulsion, computers, and navigation gear, as well as expansion ports for additional appendages. Theyre used for microgravity research as an engineering and robotics testbed, and for exploring the application of free-flying robots. According to NASA, some 77 experiments have been conducted so far, including testing technologies related to automated dockings, satellite servicing, spacecraft assembly, and emergency repairs. Last year, they were even decked out with goggles as part of experiments in 3D navigation and mapping.

Now as part of Project Tango, a new smartphone is being developed by Googles Advanced Technology and Projects division of Mountain View, California. An advance on the smartphones that are currently the brains of the SPHERES, the completed phones are scheduled to be brought to the ISS later this year. According to NASA, once the new smartphones are installed theyll give the SPHERES more computing power (making them into what NASA calls Smart SPHERES), cameras, WiFi connections, and an integrated bespoke 3D sensor, which will allow the robots to map their surroundings in real time. It will also give the robots the capability to carry out inspections using still images and videos and to directly communicate with the stations computers.

Before the phone can be sent into space, it needs to be tested in microgravity, so the next step will be to send on in an airplane on a parabolic trajectory to test its hardware and software. Once the smartphone has passed earthbound tests and has been sent to the ISS, it will be used to test controlling the SPHERES robots from the ground.

Currently, the SPHERES are designed to only operate inside the space station, but the eventual plan for the roots is that they will one day go outside to act as assistants to carry out routine inspections and inventories, monitor EVAs, or carry objects for an astronaut.

"With this latest upgrade, we believe the Smart SPHERES will be a step closer to becoming a mobile assistant' for the astronauts, says DW Wheeler, lead engineer with SGT Inc in the Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames. "This ability for Smart SPHERES to independently perform inventory and environmental surveys on the space station can free up time for astronauts and mission control to perform science experiments and other work.

Source: NASA

Excerpt from:

International Space Station's SPHERES robots to get new smarts

MOSCOW, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- Russian cosmonauts on board the International Space Station will turn schoolteacher, conducting a lesson from space for Russian students, officials said.

The event will broadcast the cosmonauts live to students nationwide on April 11, an Education Ministry official told RIA Novosti Wednesday.

April 11 is the day before the 53rd anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic first manned spaceflight, which saw the cosmonaut and his Vostok spacecraft complete an orbit of the Earth in 1961.

In October, a teleconference was held with cosmonauts working on the station to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first woman to go into space, Valentina Tereshkova.

NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata conducted their own student-oriented activity last week, talking with college and high school students gathered at California State University in Los Angeles as part of NASA's Destination Station awareness campaign.

Go here to read the rest:

Cosmonauts on space station to turn teacher for Russian students