How NASA steers the International Space Station around space junk

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Orbiting about 250 miles (400-ish km) above our heads is one of the most complex and expensive engineering projects that the human race has ever put together: the International Space Station(ISS). The station masses around 450 tons (400 metric tons) and is a bit larger than an American football field. Its assembly required dozens and dozens of launches by Russia and the US (including 37 space shuttle flights), and it took astronauts and cosmonauts 155 spacewalks to get the whole thing bolted together2.5 times more spacewalks than had previously occurred since the beginning of space flight.

NASA

The ISS has taken 13 years and as much as $150 billion to build and fly; to call it valuable real estate is an understatement. As we Americans are relaxing for the Fourth of July and drinking beers or lighting off fireworks, high above our heads,six human beings are working in space. But the station isn't just sitting up there, static and unmoving. The ISS' orbit decays due to atmospheric drag at the rate of about two kilometers per year; it must periodically be boosted in order to maintain its height. Moreover, the entire massive structure is mobileit can be rolled and pitched and yawed, or even moved ("translated," in NASA parlance) in three dimensions to avoid a potential collision with debris.

Lee Hutchinson

Ars Senior Science Editor John Timmer wrote back in May about the complex process behind moving unmanned satellites around in orbitspecifically, what it took to move NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope out of the way of some debris in its orbital path. But the ISS isn't an unmanned satellite; its mass is much larger. More importantly, it has six living, breathing human beings on board. How does one move 400 tons of fragile space station when there's an asteroid or something bearing down on it?

To find out how to throttle-jockey the ISS around in orbit, I took a drive over to NASA's Johnson Space Center and met up with Josh Parris, a NASA ISS flight controller. Parris is one of the people tasked with manning a console in the ISS flight control roomor "Mission Control" as it's more commonly known. His station name is TOPOTrajectory Operations Officer. As has been the case since the earliest days of manned space flight, the ISS flight controllers are all highly skilled individuals; Parris and his coworkers have all undergone years of specialized training to reach the point where they are trusted with "sitting a console."

Lee Hutchinson

"TOPO is in charge of maintaining the knowledge of where the space station and visiting vehicles are, where they're going to be, and to make sure they don't get hit by anything," he explained. There aren't a lot of operational satellites at the ISS' normal flying altitude of about 400 km, but there is a fair amount of debris circling the earth at about the same height. There have been hundreds of potential "conjunctions" in the last couple of yearsthat is, warnings by ground-based radar sources about potential collisions between the station and some debris. In 2013 alone, there have been 67 potential conjunction notifications.

"What exactly makes up the debris?" I asked Parris. "Is it from the Chinese blowing up satellites?" "That's a big chunk of it," he confirmed. "Also, the collision between the old Russian Kosmos satellite and the Iridium satellite is a source of a lot of the debris we see. And that's just the stuff that's made it down to our orbit; there's plenty of debris still above us, just waiting to come down."

"Who tracks these things?" I asked. "Is there a big computer map like you see in the movies with fancy graphs and stuff?"

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How NASA steers the International Space Station around space junk

Canadian Officials Get Flood Imaging Help From New Space Station Camera

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July 4, 2013

Image Caption: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield sets up the ISS SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System (ISERV) in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

A new camera aboard the International Space Station (ISS) known as the ISS SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System (ISERV) is helping officials working in the flooded regions of downtown Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

NASAs ISERV camera snapped 24 images of the flooded area, and the team sent out the photos to Canadian officials to help with response and assessment. This camera system is based on a modified commercial telescope and driven by custom software. It uses its downward viewpoint to obtain near real-time images and transmits the data within hours back to Earth.

Im happy that this NASA camera can help the space station lend support to countries around the world, making the station even more of an international asset, said Dan Irwin, project director of NASAs SERVIR project. ISERV is proving itself as a testbed that will inform the development of future operational systems.

Flooding in Calgary began on June 20, causing more than 100,000 residents to evacuate the city and nearby towns.

My heart goes out to my fellow Canadians affected by the disaster, said Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, who returned from the International Space Station in May after a six-month mission. I am also proud that we are using the unique view from the space station with ISERV to help make response efforts more effective. The space station has a global reach in its ability to help those in need and make lives better here on Earth.

Hadfield helped to install ISERV in the Earth-facing window of the orbiting laboratorys Destiny module. Nearly 95 percent of the planets populated area is visible during the stations orbit, so the window is the perfect spot to take photos with the high-resolution camera. NASA said ISERV images are helping decision makers address environmental issues, humanitarian crises and disasters.

The [space] station imagery captured over Calgary is a great example of the importance of high-resolution optical images for flood mapping in urban environments, weather permitting, said Alice Deschamps, alternate lead for the Emergency Geomatics Service (EGS), Earth Observation and Geosolutions Division, Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. It is a complementary source of information to the large area Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-based flood mapping products generated by EGS. Our team will use the photos for validation purposes as we move forward with improving our SAR flood mapping algorithms.

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Canadian Officials Get Flood Imaging Help From New Space Station Camera

Cryogenic Tank Development, Manufacturing, and Testing 2013 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center – Video

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Cryogenic Tank Development, Manufacturing, and Testing 2013 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
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Cryogenic Tank Development, Manufacturing, and Testing 2013 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center - Video

Nanotechnology produt for car paint – easy to clean effect, extra long durability by NanoProm – Video

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The Global Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Industry 2013 Report: Stage of Development, Global Activity and Market …

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DUBLIN, July 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets ( http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wpw7c6/the_global) has announced the addition of the "The Global Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Industry: Stage of Development, Global Activity and Market Opportunities" report to their offering.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 )

Nanotechnology applications and nanomaterials are being applied across a raft of industries due to their outstanding magnetic, optical, catalytic and electronic properties. There are already established market for nanomaterials including titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, silicon oxide nanopowders and carbon nanotubes, nanofibers, nanosilver, nanoclays, quantum dots and nanoporous materials driven by demand from applications in filtration, electronics, cosmetics, energy, medicine, chemicals, coatings and catalysts. Recent breakthroughs have heralded new market opportunities in graphene and nanocellulose. This new 696-page report from Future Market, Inc., the world's leading provider of nanotechnology and nanomaterials information and publisher of Nanotech Magazine, provides a comprehensive insight into all aspects of the market for these materials.

What does the report include?

- Comprehensive data and forecasts for the global nanotechnology and nanomaterials market to 2019. Nanomaterials covered include aluminium oxide nanopowders, antimony tin, bismuth oxide, carbon nanotubes, cerium oxide, cobalt oxide, fullerenes and POSS, graphene, graphyne, graphdiyne, graphane, indium, iron oxide, magnesium oxide, manganese oxide, molybdenum disulphide, nanocellulose, nanoclays, nanofibers, nanosilver, nickel oxide, nano-precipitated calcium carbonate, nanoporous materials, quantum dots, silicone, silicon oxide, titanium dioxide, yttrium oxide, zinc oxide and zirconium oxide

- Technology roadmaps/commercialization timelines to 2019, by nanomaterials and by market

- Financial estimates for the markets nanotechnology and nanomaterials will impact including aerospace and aviation, automotive, civil engineering and construction, exterior protection, communications, hygiene, cleaning and sanitary, electronics and semiconductors, energy, environment, food, agricultural, beverage, marine, medical and life sciences, military and defence, packaging, paper, personal care, plastics and rubber, printing, product security and anti-counterfeiting, sensors, sporting and consumer goods, textiles, tools and metals

- Latest global regulations for nanomaterials

- Patent analysis

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The Global Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Industry 2013 Report: Stage of Development, Global Activity and Market ...