Monthly Archives: July 2017

A Russian Soyuz rocket made a railroad journey Wednesday to its launch pad in Kazakhstan, two days before blastoff with a crew of three spaceflight veterans from the United States, Italy and Russia heading for the International Space Station.

The three-stage rocket departed an assembly building just after sunrise Wednesday on a special rail car for the journey to Launch Pad No. 1, the same mount from which Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched on the first piloted space mission in April 1961.

A hydraulic lift raised the Soyuz vertical before swing arms moved into place around the rocket. The launch structure containing the Soyuz booster then rotated to align with the planned launch azimuth.

Fridays liftoff is scheduled for 1541 GMT (11:41 a.m. EDT; 9:41 p.m. Baikonur time). The three-man crew inside the Soyuz MS-05 capsule will head into orbit on a fast-track pursuit of the space station, with docking set for approximately 2200 GMT (6 p.m. EDT) with the research outposts Rassvet module.

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy, 42, will occupy the Soyuz spacecrafts center seat during Fridays launch and docking. The Soyuz commander, a biochemist with a career in space medicine before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2003, is making his second trip to the space station after spending 166 days in orbit as a flight engineer on the Expedition 37 and 38 crews.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik will be the Soyuz MS-05 spaceships board engineer, assisting Ryazanskiy with cockpit duties during the six-hour voyage from liftoff to docking. The 49-year-old retired Marine Corps fighter pilot hails from Santa Monica, California, and logged nearly 11 days in orbit aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on a 2009 mission to the space station.

Bresnik will take command of the stations Expedition 53 crew in September.

European Space Agency flight engineer Paolo Nespoli has 174 days of space experience on two previous missions, including a flight on the shuttle Discovery in 2007 and a long-duration stay on the space station in 2010 and 2011. Nespoli, 60, is a native of Milan and was a special forces operator in the Italian Army before working on several European space projects as an engineer.

The trio will become part of the space stations Expedition 52 and 53 crews, joining commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and flight engineers Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer on the orbiting complex. Yurchikhin, Whitson and Fischer are due to depart the station and return to Earth on Sept. 2, and three fresh crew members will launch on the next Soyuz spaceship from Baikonur on Sept. 12.

The space station has been flying with a three-person crew since early June, and Fridays docking will boost the outposts occupancy back to six.

Yurchikhin and Ryazanskiy will conduct a spacewalk Aug. 17 to deploy several small satellites and work outside the Russian segment of the station.

A SpaceX Dragon supply ship launched from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida is expected to arrive at the complex the same week, but its liftoff will have to work around the scheduled Russian spacewalk. Station managers want to ensure the satellites released by the Russian spacewalkers are accurately tracked before committing the Dragon cargo freighter to approach the outpost, minimizing the chance for a collision with one of the small craft.

The Dragon capsule is currently set to launch around Aug. 14, but if it slips more than a day or two, the launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket could be further delayed until officials are sure the small satellites are well away from the space station. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is also expected to launch the same week, potentially complicating bookings on the U.S. Air Forces Eastern Range, which is responsible for flight safety, communications and tracking support for all missions from Cape Canaveral.

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Launcher for next space station crew in position for liftoff Friday - Spaceflight Now

PETER HOLLEY

Last updated12:05, July 27 2017

GOOGLE MAPS

Peek inside the cramped, chaotic and dizzying homes of humans not anchored to Earth.

You've used Google Street View to check out a new apartment, map traffic before you hit the road and search for haunting slices of the everyday world.

Now, the comprehensive terrestrial mapping system has gone Extra-Terrestrial, allowing users to peer inside the International Space Station (ISS) from their computerwith 360-degree, panoramic views.

The Street View imagery was captured by Thomas Pesquet, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, who spent six months aboard the ISS before returning to Earth in June.

Google Street View, which is featured in Google Maps and Google World, was launched in 2007 and quickly expanded locations around the globe, including places as remote as Mt. Everest base camp and as offbeat as Loch Ness.

READ MORE: *Astronaut captures stunning pictures of New Zealand *Kiwi daredevil takes Google Street View inside seething Vanuatu volcano *Group of Kiwis immortalised on Google Street View in Italy

The vast majority of Street View's photography is shot by a vehicle, whose movement is available to fans online.

THOMAS PESQUET

Thomas Pesquet captured the images for Google Street View on board the International Space Station.

Google's foray into space is the first time Street View imagery was captured beyond planet Earth.

In a blog post about his experience, Pesquet wrote that "it was difficult to find the words or take a picture that accurately describes the feeling of being in space."

"Working with Google on my latest mission, I captured Street View imagery to show what the ISS looks like from the inside, and share what it's like to look down on Earth from space," he added.

GOOGLE MAPS

What a view: Looking back at Earth.

The virtual tour allows users to peek into areas where astronauts eat, exercise, work and even bathe.

Pesquet's imagery reveal an environment that may look a bit cramped and chaotic - if not altogether dizzying - to humans anchored on Earth, but some of the scenes from side the ISS are downright mesmerising.

GOOGLE MAPS

A street view image from the Joint Airlock, an area contains space suits also known as Extravehicular Mobility Units. They provide crew members with life support that enables extravehicular activity.

The images were captured using DSLR cameras and then "stitched together" back on Earth to create panoramic views.

Pesquet noted that the ISS is a "busy place" with six crew members working and researching 12 hours a day.

"There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work. Oh, and there's that whole zero gravity thing," he wrote.

Floating through the ISS online you'll notice clickable dots with detailed descriptions of the space and it's objects to help viewers understand what exactly they're looking at.

Pesquet noted that this is the first time annotations -"helpful little notes that pop up as you explore the ISS" - have been added to Street View imagery.

The ISS is a "large spacecraft" that orbits around Earth at more than 28,163kmhand is home for astronauts from countries around the world, according to Nasa.

The ISS is made up of many pieces that were constructed by astronauts beginning in 1998. By 2000, as more pieces of the station were added, the station was ready for people, according to Nasa. Portions of the station are connected via modules known as "nodes," according to Nasa.

"The first crew arrived on November 2, 2000," Nasareports. "People have lived on the space station ever since. Over time more pieces have been added. Nasaand its partners around the world finished the space station in 2011."

NASA compares the inside of the station to the inside of a house, noting that the structure -- which weighs almost one million pounds and covers an area the side of a football field -- has five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a big bay window.

The station houses labs from the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe.

"We can collect data on the Earth's oceans, atmosphere and land surface," Pesquet wrote. "We can conduct experiments and studies that we wouldn't be able to do from Earth, like monitoring how the human body reacts to microgravity, solving mysteries of the immune system, studying cyclones in order to alert populations and governments when a storm is approaching, or monitoring marine litter -- the rapidly increasing amount waste found in our oceans."

Several times a week, Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, determines where earthlings can spot the station from the ground below from thousands of locations all over the globe.

-The Washington Post

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Google Street View's latest destination: the International Space Station - Stuff.co.nz

Street View worked with Nasa to design a gravity-free method of collecting imagery using DSLR cameras and equipment already on the ISS.

From the Amazon rainforest to Antarctica, Googles interactive 360-degree panoramic Street View technology has taken users to some pretty remote places on planet Earth but this marks the first time it takes us on a journey of exploration outside Earth. Google worked with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Nasa to map out the 15 interconnected modules that make up the International Space Station (ISS) complete with a new feature annotations to help virtual explorers get to know the various locations and components within ISS.

Because of the particular constraints of living and working in space, it wasnt possible to collect Street View using Googles usual methods, explained Thomas Pesquet, an ESA astronaut who worked on the project.

Instead, the Street View team worked with Nasa at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, and Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, to design a gravity-free method of collecting the imagery using DSLR cameras and equipment already on the ISS.

Pesquet himself took many still images around the space station, which were then transmitted back to Earth and stitched together to create the resulting 360-degree panoramic imagery that gives us a glimpse into life on board ISS.

google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/cupola-observational-module

Excerpt from:
Google Street View docks with International Space Station - Irish Times