Space station makes good viewing for new year

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South Texas Stargazing

The San Antonio Astronomical Association invites you to participate in all of its public astronomy events. It's free, and you can view the calendar at http://www.sanantonioastronomy.org.

I can't think of a better way to begin the new year than to watch some bright International Space Station passes.

This is the perfect way to kick-start that promise you made a couple of days ago when you resolved to watch the sky more in 2012.

Tuesday night brings us an excellent opportunity to see the ISS fly overhead. Start watching for it to appear low in the north-northwest around 7:25 p.m. as a fast-moving stellar point of light. It will make a short pass through Cygnus and then fade from view in Pegasus at 7:29 p.m.

The moon will be high in the south and Jupiter will be to the moon's lower right.

Another chance to spot the station will occur Wednesday evening.

Look toward the north-northwest at 6:29 p.m. The station will be bright and easy to spot as a moving starlike light.

At 6:31 p.m. it will fly just above Polaris in the north and then glide through the horns of Taurus the bull at 6:33 p.m.

The moon will be just to the right and below the Pleiades open star cluster, so this should be an extra-special sighting opportunity.

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Space station makes good viewing for new year

4MIN News September 13, 2013: CNN, NASA Vids, Rapid Fire News, Spaceweather – Video

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4MIN News September 13, 2013: CNN, NASA Vids, Rapid Fire News, Spaceweather
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4MIN News September 13, 2013: CNN, NASA Vids, Rapid Fire News, Spaceweather - Video

NASA has confidence in Russian colleagues

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The future of NASA's orbital laboratory may be on the line Sunday night, with a much-anticipated launch of a Russian rocket carrying three astronauts to the International Space Station.

That's because it will be the first human launch since August, when a Russian rocket lifting a Progress spacecraft carrying supplies to the station blew up en route.

Both the unmanned Progress and crewed Soyuz vehicles use a similar launch system.

The Russians said a faulty component caused the failed launch, but the launch system itself had no fundamental flaw. Since the accident, two Progress vehicles have reached orbit without issue.

We have complete confidence in our Russian colleagues, said Mike Suffredini, manager of the International Space Station Program.

Flying aboard the Soyuz are NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoli Ivanishin.

They'll relieve the station's commander, Mike Fossum, as well as Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov, who have spent more than five months in orbit and are due to return to Earth on Nov. 21.

Like Suffredini, the space station astronauts have expressed confidence in the Russian rocket.

With as many successful launches as they've had for many years, it's clearly not a design problem, Fossum said from orbit.

It goes back to some kind of a process problem, they went all the way through that, they rebuilt the engine to make sure there were no lingering concerns, and I think these launches are going to be some of the highest probability-of-success launches ever.

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NASA has confidence in Russian colleagues