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NASA's Marshall Center to Conduct Active Shooter Emergency Exercise April 17

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NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will conduct a full-scale active shooter emergency exercise on the morning of Thursday, April 17. The event will involve a mock shooter and victims; simulated emergency radio traffic, alerts and announcements; Marshall, Redstone Arsenal and area emergency responders and response teams; and other activities to test the center's emergency response and communications preparedness.

During the event, Emergency Notification System announcements and other messages will be preceded by "EXERCISE." While the event will be held at the center's facilities on Redstone Arsenal, it is important the community at large is aware that any unusual activity that might be seen or heard is part of the test and not an actual emergency.

The active shooter exercise is part of the Marshall Center's ongoing commitment to protecting employees its most valuable assets. For more information or for interviews with Carole Valenti, Marshall's emergency management director, contact Marshall Public Affairs Officer Jennifer Stanfield at 256-544-7199.

For more information about NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, visit us on the Web:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall

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NASA's Marshall Center to Conduct Active Shooter Emergency Exercise April 17

One twin to spend year in space to study impact on body

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NASA HRP Twins Research Study with Craig KundrotNASA.gov Video

Identical twins Scott and Mark Kelly are to be separated for a year: Scott will spend a year on the International Space Station while Mark will stay behind. This unprecedented experiment aims to improve understanding of the impact of long-term space flight on the human body.

Nasa astronaut Scott will head up to the ISS in March 2015, where he will join cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko for a year. Mark is also an astronaut, although has retired, so will stay at home acting as a control while his brother orbits the Earth at 27,000 KPH. The twins will undergo a series of tests before, during and after the mission. "For the first time, we'll be able to study two individuals who are genetically identical," said Craig Kundrot of Nasa's Human Research Program at Johnson Space Centre.

Nasa is to fund 10 investigations into the molecular, physiological and psychological effects of spaceflight. It has selected 10 proposals (out of 40) from 10 institutions, and has allocated $1.5 million (900,000) in funding to them in total over three years. These include studies of vision and intracranial pressure, gut bacteria, DNA and RNA methylation, cognition and vascular function. In one study, for example, both twins will be given a flu vaccine to see how their immune systems react.

Scott has already spent six months on the space station and been on board two space shuttle flights. Mark has been on four space shuttle flights and spent 54 days in low-Earth orbit. Throughout the year that Scott is on the Space Station, Mark will be living out his life in Arizona.

Nasa has a keen interest on the impact of microgravity on the human body, particularly as we cross into an era of long-term space travel, such as manned missions to Mars.

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One twin to spend year in space to study impact on body

Space station launch Monday despite dead computer

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) A space station cargo ship will remain Earthbound for a while longer.

With just over an hour remaining, the Space X company called off Monday's planned launch because of a rocket leak. A new launch date was not set; the next opportunity would be Friday.

Officials said a helium leak in the first-stage of the unmanned Falcon rocket forced the postponement. The launch already had been delayed a full month for various reasons.

Over the weekend, NASA almost postponed the launch because of a computer outage at the International Space Station. But it decided Sunday that everything would be safe for the arrival of the Dragon capsule and its 2 tons of supplies.

The computer, a critical backup, failed outside the space station Friday as flight controllers were trying to activate it for a routine software load.

It's the first breakdown ever of one of these so-called space station MDMs, or multiplexer-demultiplexers, used to route computer commands for a wide variety of systems. Forty-five MDMs are scattered around the orbiting lab. The failed one is located outside and therefore will require spacewalking repairs.

The Dragon capsule holds a gasket-like material for next week's computer replacement. This new material was rushed to the launch site over the weekend and loaded into the Dragon.

NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson will perform the spacewalk next Tuesday regardless of whether the Dragon flies by then. It will take several days to get the replacement computer ready for installing, thus the one-week wait before the job, NASA's Kenny Todd, a station operations manager, said Monday.

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of California is one of two American companies hired by NASA to fill the cargo gap left when the space shuttles retired in 2011. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia is the other.

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Space station launch Monday despite dead computer

Russia Celebrates Cosmonautics Day

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RIA Novosti

Published: April 14, 2014 (Issue # 1805)

Yury Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in the world, remained a down-to-earth and approachable person to the end of his life. Photo: AP

Russia celebrates Cosmonautics Day every April 12. This holiday was instituted by the April 9, 1962 executive order of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet (Parliament) in honor of the first manned space flight.

On April 12, 1961, a launch vehicle orbited the Vostok spacecraft with the first cosmonaut, Soviet citizen Yury Gagarin, on board.

After circling the Earth once, the spacecrafts descent module landed in the USSR. The cosmonaut ejected at an altitude of several kilometers above the ground and parachuted into a field at 10.55 am Moscow Time. He landed on the bank of the Volga River near the village of Smelovka in the Ternovsky District of the Saratov Region.

The flight lasted 108 minutes, and the launch of the worlds first manned spacecraft was supervised by Sergei Korolev, Anatoly Kirillov and Leonid Voskresensky.

This history-making event paved the way for space exploration for the benefit of the entire humankind. New opportunities in space were created in 2000 when the first crew boarded the International Space Station (ISS), a joint space project involving 15 countries.

The station is tracked 24 hours a day from the Russian Federal Space Agencys Mission Control Center in Korolev near Moscow and NASA's Mission Control Center at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

Since the start of its operation, the ISS has gradually turned into a huge laboratory in near-Earth space.

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Russia Celebrates Cosmonautics Day

SpaceX delays delivery launch to International Space Station

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May 22, 2012: The Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from space launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla. This launch marks the first time, a private company sends its own rocket to deliver supplies to the International Space Station.AP Photo/John Raoux

A space station cargo ship will remain Earthbound for a while longer.

With just over an hour remaining, the Space X company called off Monday's planned launch because of a rocket leak. A new launch date was not set; the next opportunity would be Friday.

Officials said a helium leak in the first-stage of the unmanned Falcon rocket forced the postponement. The launch already had been delayed a full month for various reasons.

Over the weekend, NASA almost postponed the launch because of a computer outage at the International Space Station. But it decided Sunday that everything would be safe for the arrival of the Dragon capsule and its 2 1/2 tons of supplies.

The computer, a critical backup, failed outside the space station Friday as flight controllers were trying to activate it for a routine software load.

It's the first breakdown ever of one of these so-called space station MDMs, or multiplexer-demultiplexers, used to route computer commands for a wide variety of systems. Forty-five MDMs are scattered around the orbiting lab. The failed one is located outside and therefore will require spacewalking repairs.

The Dragon capsule holds a gasket-like material for next week's computer replacement. This new material was rushed to the launch site over the weekend and loaded into the Dragon.

NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson will perform the spacewalk next Tuesday -- regardless of whether the Dragon flies by then. It will take several days to get the replacement computer ready for installing, thus the one-week wait before the job, NASA's Kenny Todd, a station operations manager, said Monday.

SpaceX -- Space Exploration Technologies Corp. of California -- is one of two American companies hired by NASA to fill the cargo gap left when the space shuttles retired in 2011. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Virginia is the other.

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SpaceX delays delivery launch to International Space Station

UN marks Day of human space flight, encourages exploration

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New York, Apr 12 : The necessity for international cooperation in space and the universal utility of duct tape were among insights revealed when the United Nations sent a former astronaut into cyberspace on Friday to inspire young people to explore new frontiers on the anniversary of the first human space flight.

Takao Doi, an expert on space applications with the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), who was an astronaut prior to joining the world Organization, conducted a Twitter chat to answer questions about his experiences ahead of the International Day of Human Space Flight, celebrated on 12 April.

On that day in 1961, Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union became the first human to go into space. Fifty years later, the UN General Assembly declared the International Day to mark the new era that had dawned and to encourage peaceful uses of outer space that would benefit all people.The exploration of outer space is a truly global undertaking and I hope that the International Day of Human Space Flight will inspire young people, in particular, to strive towards new frontiers of knowledge and understanding.

Doi flew in the space shuttles Columbia and Endeavour, in 1997 and 2008, respectively, undertaking a space walk in the first mission and visiting the International Space Station in the second.

Answering questions in Friday's Twitter chat, he compared the experience of walking in space to swimming in a scuba suit, and said that the space station was much larger than people imagined - "as big as a football field, lots of live and work space."

Asked if duct tape is ever used to temporarily repair equipment in space, Doi wrote, "All the time! Duct tape is an astronaut's best friend, carry it everywhere."

He told a questioner from a developing country that everyone's contributions are needed to make advances in outer space that would benefit humankind: "No one country has all innovative ideas; need international cooperation," he tweeted.

"The exploration of outer space is a truly global undertaking and I hope that the International Day of Human Space Flight will inspire young people, in particular, to strive towards new frontiers of knowledge and understanding," the new Director of UNOOSA, Simonetta Di Pippo said in her video message for the International Day.

Also to celebrate the day, UNOOSA, which is based at UN headquarters in Vienna, has launched its third edition of the online autograph album "Messages from Space Explorers for future generations," which features notes from international astronauts in English, French and Russian.

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UN marks Day of human space flight, encourages exploration


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