Soyuz prepped for crew ferry flight to space station

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Russian ground crews are preparing a Soyuz spacecraft for launch Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to ferry three fresh crew members -- a veteran Russian cosmonaut, an Italian test pilot and an American shuttle veteran -- to the International Space Station.

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Boosting the lab's staff back to six, the Expedition 36/37 crews face a busy stay in space highlighted by a full slate of scientific research, six spacewalks, the arrival of multiple cargo ships carrying critical supplies and, in early November, the Olympic torch, which will herald the 2014 Winter Games at Sochi, Russia, in February.

"I'm very much looking forward to living there," said astronaut Karen Nyberg, who visited the station during a 14-day shuttle flight in 2008. A shuttle mission is "a sprint, you're go, go, go constantly, and you don't have a lot of time to reflect on what you're doing as you're doing it.

"In fact, there's a lot of that mission that I don't really remember," Nyberg said. "I look at pictures and I'm like, 'oh yeah, we did that.' I think with a longer period of time, I'll have time to actually get it ingrained in my brain of where I am and what I'm doing, and I won't need to go back and look at those pictures to remember what it is that I've done."

Married to astronaut Douglas Hurley and mother of a 3-year-old son, Nyberg holds a PhD in mechanical engineering. She said she was eager to participate in station research, but hopes to find a bit of time for her hobbies amid the hectic schedule.

"I don't watch a lot of movies or things like that," she said. "To relax, I like to sew and draw, do things like that. So I've brought a sketch pad and some pencils that I can hopefully do a little bit of sketching. I brought a little bit of fabric and needle and thread. I have no clue yet what I'm going to do with it, but I'll come up with something!"

Asked if she planned to follow in the footsteps of former commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut who gained internet fame with his prolific Twitter postings, Nyberg said she was still considering how she might utilize social media.

"I haven't decided yet whether I'll do Twitter," she said. "I've been using Pinterest for a couple of years and absolutely love it because of my other hobbies and have actually started my own personal account, adding some space things. I think it will be kind of neat to add on to that while I'm there if I can. Definitely, we're going to do as much as we can to share what we're doing up there with the rest of the world."

Nyberg, Soyuz TMA-09M commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and European Space Agency flight engineer Luca Parmitano are scheduled to blast off Tuesday at 4:31:24 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 2:34 a.m. Wednesday local time) from the same pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age.

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Soyuz prepped for crew ferry flight to space station

Crew set for space station mission

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28 May 2013 Last updated at 06:57 ET

Three new crew members are set to launch to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz carrying Fyodor Yurchikhin, Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano is expected to lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 02:31 local time on Wednesday (20:31 GMT Tuesday).

Georgian Yurchikhin and American Nyberg have both been into space before.

Italian Parmitano is a first-timer, and at 36 is the youngest person to be given a long-duration ISS assignment.

He is also the European Space Agency's (Esa) newest astronaut, having been selected for training just four years ago.

The former fighter pilot will stay on the station with Yurchikhin and Nyberg until November.

Their mission has the designation of Expedition 36. They will join three individuals already at the ISS - Russians Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, and American Chris Cassidy.

Tuesday's flight will be only the second accelerated rendezvous with the orbiting platform.

Traditionally, Soyuz capsules have taken two days to get to the 415km-high ISS.

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Crew set for space station mission

Astronaut packs for Tuesday trip to international space station

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NASA's Karen Nyberg sits in the Soyuz spacecraft that is scheduled to launch her and two other astronauts to the International Space Station on May 28. Image released on May 17, 2013Karen Nyberg / @AstroKarenN / NASA

NASA's Karen Nyberg, the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station on May 28, 2013. Image released May 17, 2013.NASA/Victor Zelentsov

NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Expedition 36/37 flight engineer, poses with the Russian Sokol spacesuit she will wear during her trip to the International Space Station. Liftoff set for May 28 (EDT), 2013.NASA

An American astronaut is about to get seriously crafty in space.

When NASA's Karen Nyberg, the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin officially launch on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station on May 28, the American astronaut will bring a few key creative items with her.

- NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg

"I actually enjoy sewing and quilting and I am bringing some fabric with me and thread and I'm hoping to create something," Nyberg said. "I don't know yet what it will be but that's part of creativity is that it comes with the feeling of the day so I have the supplies in my hands to create if I get the opportunity and the creative notion to do so." [Women in Space: A Gallery of Firsts (Photos)]

Although the six-month-stint will be Nyberg's longest in space, it is not her first time visiting the International Space Station.

"I'm looking forward to the most this time actually living there," Nyberg told SPACE.com. "I visited the space station in 2008 on the space shuttle Discovery, and it was a very, very quick trip, only 14 days and honestly, I don't really remember a lot of it because it just flew on by so fast."

Nyberg, 43, is planning on sharing her experiences on board the station with the world using social media, although she has only be using Twitter (where she posts from the account @AstroKarenN) for a little over a month. She is also on Pintrest with the handle: knyberg.

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Astronaut packs for Tuesday trip to international space station

Astronaut Crew Launching to Space Station Today: Watch It Live

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A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying an American astronaut, an Italian astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut will launch on the second-ever express trip to the International Space Station today (May 28).

NASA's Karen Nyberg, the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano and Russia's Fyodor Yurchikhin are scheduled to launch to space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan onboard a Russian Soyuz spaceship at 4:31 p.m. EDT (2031 GMT), arriving at the space station about six hours later.

You can watch the launch and docking live on SPACE.com via NASA TV. Launch coverage begins at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT) although it will be May 29 local time in Kazakhstan. Arrival coverage starts at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 May 29 GMT) with docking expected at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 GMT). [See Photos of the Expedition 36 Crew]

Nyberg, a veteran of a brief visit to the space station during a previous space shuttle flight, said she's looking forward to actually living in orbit this time. "I visited space station in 2008 on the space shuttle Discovery, and it was a very, very quick trip, only 14 days, and honestly, I don't really remember a lot of it because it just flew by so fast," Nyberg told SPACE.com.

Although Nyberg is beginning a long stay aboard the station (about six months), her trip to the orbiting outpost will be much quicker than usual. Usually it takes about two days for a Soyuz to reach the International Space Station, but the three astronauts launching today will need to make only four obits of the Earth before docking to the station's Poisk module.

"We will be doing four-orbit rendezvous, a quick rendezvous, it's so-called," Parmitano said in a pre-flight NASA interview. "Instead of waiting in orbit for two days before docking to the station after launch, right after launch we will get the spacecraft ready to just inject in higher orbit and then dock on the station, only six hours after launch."

Unmanned cargo ships do these express launches and dockings regularly, but this will mark just the second time a manned crew has flown to the station this quickly.

Parmitano, Yurchikhin and Nyberg will be able to compare notes about the quick trip with the three astronauts already onboard the space station. NASA's Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin were the first group to launch and dock to the station in six hours. Together, the six astronauts make up the station's Expedition 36 crew.

Cassidy, Vindogradov and Misurkin are expected to fly back to Earth in September, while Nyberg, Yurchikhin and Parmitano are scheduled to stay on the station until November.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter and Google+. Follow us on Twitter, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

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Astronaut Crew Launching to Space Station Today: Watch It Live

Sounds from the Planets recorded by NASA’s Voyager ~ Sacred Geometry ~ Relaxation, Meditation – Video

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Sounds from the Planets recorded by NASA #39;s Voyager ~ Sacred Geometry ~ Relaxation, Meditation
The music is "NASA Voyager Sounds". It is the True sounds picked up from the planets of our Solar System ! (with random sitar music) Real recorded "Music of ...

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Sounds from the Planets recorded by NASA's Voyager ~ Sacred Geometry ~ Relaxation, Meditation - Video

NASA Telescope May Hunt for Rocky Mars-Size Planets Around 'Failed Stars'

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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope could be used to find Mars-size alien planets orbiting strange "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, according to a new proposal by a multinational astronomy team.

The group, led by a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, proposes to use the venerable observatory to find small, rocky exoplanets around brown dwarfs, which are larger than planets but too small to ignite the nuclear fusion reactions that power stars.

Astronomers will seek planets crossing the face of these brown dwarfs, in the hopes that some of them will end up being capable of supporting life as we know it. [9 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

The planets sought would orbit more closely than Mercury does to the sun, but the faint warmth of brown dwarfs could still make such inner regions habitable, researchers said.

"Our program represents an essential step towards the atmospheric characterization of terrestrial planets and carries the compelling promise of studying the concept of habitability beyond Earth-like conditions," the team's paper stated.

Spotting small planets around brown dwarfs

The team is aiming for Mars-size planets because of their importance in planetary formation models, lead author Armaury Triaud told SPACE.com.

Models suggest our solar system emerged from a spinning disk of dust and gas, with planets slowly clumping together as particles collided, Triaud said, cautioning that we can't be completely sure of what actually occurred.

Our nascent solar system crossed an important threshold when those protoplanets reached the size of Mars, he said.

"Eventually these planet embryos, the size of Mars, those would collide and form bigger rocky planets, or the core of [gas giant] planets such as Jupiter," Triaud said.

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NASA Telescope May Hunt for Rocky Mars-Size Planets Around 'Failed Stars'

NASA Ames Selects SGI UV, the Big Brain Computer, for a Wide Range of Research

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SGI (SGI), the trusted leader in technical computing, today announced that NASA's Ames Research Center has selected an SGI(R) UV(TM) 2000 shared memory system to support more than a thousand active users around the country who are doing research for earth, space and aeronautics missions.

Installed early this year at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames, Moffett Field, Calif., Endeavour is a shared-memory system that took the place of the Columbia supercomputer. Named in honor of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the last orbiter built during NASA's Space Shuttle Program, this new system is based on the latest Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor E5-4600 product family. This processing power, combined in a large, shared-memory cluster, allows Endeavour to provide more high-end computing resources for users while occupying just 10 percent of the previous Columbia system's floor space. Endeavour will provide large, shared memory capability and will enable solutions for many NASA science and engineering applications, including simulation and modeling of global ocean circulation, galaxy and planet formation, and aerodynamic design for air and space vehicles.

"A portion of our current code base requires either large memory within a node or utilizes Open MP as the communication software between tens to hundreds of processors," said William Thigpen, high-end computing project manager at the NAS facility. "The largest portion of Endeavour is able to meet the large shared memory requirement with 4 terabytes of addressable memory and can apply over 1,000 cores against an Open MP application."

The new Endeavour system includes a total of 1536 cores and 6TB of global shared memory. NASA Ames has an existing community of users who could not easily transition to MPI programming models, and the previous system needed to be replaced by a new platform to support this community. Today, user productivity has improved, and the machines are busy.

"NASA scientists are leading the way in studying climate and earth sciences," said Jorge Titinger, president and CEO of SGI. "This is important work that affects current and future generations. SGI is proud to partner with NASA to provide the necessary infrastructure to enable its research." "The Endeavor System has a compelling scientific mission that requires advanced capabilities in memory size, processing capability and efficiency," said Raj Hazra, vice president and general manager of Intel Technical Computing Group. "Intel provides the essential computing technology to help SGI's innovative system launch these critical scientific missions into orbit through the Intel Xeon E5-4600 family of products."

About the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division

The NAS Division is enabling advances in high-end computing technologies and in modeling and simulations methods to tackle some of the toughest science and engineering challenges facing NASA today.

About SGI

SGI, the trusted leader in technical computing, is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit sgi.com for more information. Connect with SGI on Twitter (@sgi_corp), YouTube (youtube.com/sgicorp), Facebook (facebook.com/sgiglobal) and LinkedIn.

Contact Information: Ogilvy Public Relations: Meghan Fintland 415-677-2704 SGImedia@ogilvy.com

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NASA Ames Selects SGI UV, the Big Brain Computer, for a Wide Range of Research