ATV-2 Johannes Kepler to Raise ISS Orbit

ESA - ATV-2 Johannes Kepler Mission patch / ISS - International Space Station patch.

31.05.2011

In accordance with the International Space Station mission ballistics support program, ISS reboost is scheduled for June 3.

ISS reboost by ATV

The maneuver is to be assisted by 8 attitude thrusters of ATV-2 Johannes Kepler. ISS spatial position will be supported by Zvezda and Progress M-10M thrusters during the maneuver.

Animation of the ISS re-boost performed by Jules Verne ATV 2008

The engines will be started at 02:30 Moscow time (22:30 GMT, June 2). After the burn, which is to last 897 sec, the altitude of the station shall become 3.74 km higher, or to achieve 346,4 km.

Image above: Close-up view of Johannes Kepler ATV, photographed by an STS-133 crew member on the departing Space Shuttle Discovery.

ATV cutaway description

Several other ISS reboosts are planned to be supported by ATV thrusters.

See the Station in the Sky

Find out when the ISS is over your city, or track where it is right now: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/index.html

Related link:

European Space Agency (ESA): http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

EADS-Astrium: http://www.astrium.eads.net/fr/

Images, Text, Credits: Roscosmos PAO / ESA / NASA / Video Credits: ESA / EADS-Astrium.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Endeavour leaves Space Station

NASA - STS-134 Mission patch.

30 May 2011

Shortly after 7 a.m. EDT, the six crew members of space shuttle Endeavour said farewell to the three Expedition 28 crew members aboard the International Space Station. At 7:23 a.m., hatches were closed between Endeavour and the station 12 days, 22 hours and 27 minutes into the mission. The hatches between the two spacecraft were opened at 7:38 a.m. on May 18 and were open for joint crew operations for a total of 10 days, 23 hours, and 45 minutes.

Image above: The STS-134 and Expedition 28 crews say goodbye during a farewell ceremony shortly before closing the hatches between the shuttle and station. Photo credit: NASA TV.

Space Shuttle Endeavour undocked from the Space Station on Monday morning at 03:55 GMT after being docked to the orbital outpost for almost 12 days. The STS-134 mission will end on Wednesday at 06:32 GMT with a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

STS-134 Endeavour Undocking

The mission’s main task was accomplished on 19 May, when the AMS-02 Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer cosmic-ray detector was attached to the S3 truss in a carefully choreographed operation of the Shuttle and Station robot arms.

ISS seen from Endeavour before docking

ESA’s Roberto Vittori was at the arm controls in Endeavour with Drew Feustel, while the other arm was controlled from the Station’s Cupola by Gregory Johnson and Gregory Chamitoff.

Following three hours of zero-gravity ballet, AMS-02 was firmly attached and all the power and data lines connected.

AMS-02 being installed

The instrument almost immediately began recording data and captured its first cosmic rays the next day.

Four spacewalks and goodbye

After installing AMS, the Shuttle astronauts made two spacewalks to retrieve external experiments and attach new ones. They also added an antenna on the Destiny laboratory for external wireless communications.

Last Monday evening, the crews bade farewell to three Expedition 27 colleagues, including ESA’s Paolo Nespoli, who returned to Earth after 159 days in space.

Image above: A fish-eye lens attached to an electronic still camera was used to capture this image of NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff during the mission's fourth STS-134 spacewalk. Credit: NASA TV.

The Shuttle astronauts then performed two more spacewalks. They installed a grapple fixture for a robotic arm on the Zarya module and upgraded the power feed to the Station’s Russian section. They also repaired the thermal insulation on one of the spare gas tanks of the Quest airlock.

The crew members for space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori.

Related links:

STS-134 mission (NASA): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts134/index.html

AMS: ready to discover the particle universe: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/SEMF5BMSNNG_index_0.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: NASA / ESA / NASA TV.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Astronauts Complete Final STS-134 Spacewalk

NASA - STS-134 Mission patch.

Fri, 27 May 2011

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff completed a seven-hour, 24-minute spacewalk at 7:39 a.m. EDT. The primary objectives for the spacewalk were accomplished, including stowing the 50-foot-long boom and adding a power and data grapple fixture to make it the Enhanced International Space Station Boom Assembly, available to extend the reach of the space station's robotic arm.

Today's mission status briefing now is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. NASA Television will air the briefing with International Space Station Lead Flight Director Derek Hassmann and STS-134 Lead Spacewalk Officer Allison Bolinger, who will discuss today's spacewalk.

Image above: Astronauts Greg Chamitoff and Mike Fincke work on the exterior of the International Space Station during the fourth spacewalk of the STS-134 mission. Photo credit: NASA TV.

This was the final spacewalk conducted by space shuttle astronauts. It also was the last of the four spacewalks for the STS-134 mission, for a mission total of 28 hours, 44 minutes.

Fourth and final spacewalk for STS-134

At 5:02 a.m., Fincke and Chamitoff surpassed the 1,000th hour astronauts and cosmonauts have spent spacewalking in support of space station assembly and maintenance. The milestone occurred four hours and 47 minutes into today's spacewalk, the 159th in support of station assembly and maintenance, totaling 1,002 hours, 37 min.

It was the 248th spacewalk U.S. astronauts have conducted and the 118th from space station airlocks.

It was Fincke's ninth spacewalk for a total time of 48 hours and 37 minutes; he is sixth on the all-time list. At about 8 p.m. this evening, he will become the U.S. astronaut who has spent the most number of days in space, surpassing Peggy Whitson's record of 377 days in space.

It was Chamitoff's second spacewalk for a total time of 13 hours and 43 minutes.

Otherworldly Pas De Deux

Image above: With components of the International Space Station in the view, NASA astronauts Andrew Feustel (right) and Michael Fincke are pictured during the STS-134 mission's third spacewalk. They coordinated their shared activity with NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who stayed in communication with the pair and with Mission Control Center in Houston from inside the station.

The crew members for space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Gregory H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori.

During the 16-day mission, Endeavour and its crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre.

Image above: A portion of the docked space shuttle Endeavour is featured in this image photographed by an STS-134 crew member from a cupola on ISS.

NASA's web coverage of STS-134 includes mission information, a press kit, interactive features, news conference images, graphics and videos. Mission coverage, including the latest NASA Television schedule, is available on the main space shuttle website at: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

NASA is providing continuous television and Internet coverage of the mission. NASA TV features live mission events, daily status news conferences and 24-hour commentary. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Images, Video, Text, Credit: NASA / NASA TV.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA'S Spitzer Sees Crystal "Rain" In Outer Clouds Of Infant Star

NASA - SPITZER Space Telescope logo.

May 26, 2011

Tiny crystals of a green mineral called olivine are falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, according to observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

This is the first time such crystals have been observed in the dusty clouds of gas that collapse around forming stars. Astronomers are still debating how the crystals got there, but the most likely culprits are jets of gas blasting away from the embryonic star.

This graphic illustrates a stellar fountain of crystal rain, beginning with a Spitzer picture of the star in question, and ending with an artist's concept of what the crystal "rain" might look like. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Toledo.

"You need temperatures as hot as lava to make these crystals," said Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is the principal investigator of the research and the second author of a new study appearing in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We propose that the crystals were cooked up near the surface of the forming star, then carried up into the surrounding cloud where temperatures are much colder, and ultimately fell down again like glitter."

Spitzer's infrared detectors spotted the crystal rain around a distant, sun-like embryonic star, or proto-star, referred to as HOPS-68, in the constellation Orion.

The crystals are in the form of forsterite. They belong to the olivine family of silicate minerals and can be found everywhere from a periodot gemstone to the green sand beaches of Hawaii to remote galaxies. NASA's Stardust and Deep Impact missions both detected the crystals in their close-up studies of comets.

This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows what lies near the sword of the constellation Orion. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Toledo.

"If you could somehow transport yourself inside this proto-star's collapsing gas cloud, it would be very dark," said Charles Poteet, lead author of the new study, also from the University of Toledo. "But the tiny crystals might catch whatever light is present, resulting in a green sparkle against a black, dusty backdrop."

Forsterite crystals were spotted before in the swirling planet-forming disks that surround young stars. The discovery of the crystals in the outer collapsing cloud of a proto-star is surprising because of the cloud's colder temperatures, about minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 170 degrees Celsius). This led the team of astronomers to speculate the jets may in fact be transporting the cooked-up crystals to the chilly outer cloud.

The findings might also explain why comets, which form in the frigid outskirts of our solar system, contain the same type of crystals. Comets are born in regions where water is frozen, much colder than the searing temperatures needed to form the crystals, approximately 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius). The leading theory on how comets acquired the crystals is that materials in our young solar system mingled together in a planet-forming disk. In this scenario, materials that formed near the sun, such as the crystals, eventually migrated out to the outer, cooler regions of the solar system.

Poteet and his colleagues say this scenario could still be true but speculate that jets might have lifted crystals into the collapsing cloud of gas surrounding our early sun before raining onto the outer regions of our forming solar system. Eventually, the crystals would have been frozen into comets.

The Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, also participated in the study by characterizing the forming star.

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have, for the first time, found signatures of silicate crystals around a newly forming protostar in the constellation of Orion. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Toledo.

"Infrared telescopes such as Spitzer and now Herschel are providing an exciting picture of how all the ingredients of the cosmic stew that makes planetary systems are blended together," said Bill Danchi, senior astrophysicist and program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Spitzer observations were made before it used up its liquid coolant in May 2009 and began its warm mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer and http://spitzer.caltech.edu/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA'S Hubble Finds Rare 'Blue Straggler' Stars In Milky Way's Hub

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

May 26, 2011

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found a rare class of oddball stars called blue stragglers in the hub of our Milky Way, the first detected within our galaxy's bulge.

Blue stragglers are so named because they seemingly lag behind in the aging process, appearing younger than the population from which they formed. While they have been detected in many distant star clusters, and among nearby stars, they never have been seen inside the core of our galaxy.

Image above: The Hubble Telescope captures blue straggler stars in the Milky Way bulge Credit: NASA, ESA, W. Clarkson (Indiana University and UCLA), and K. Sahu (STScl). (click on the image to enlarge).

It is not clear how blue stragglers form. A common theory is that they emerge from binary pairs. As the more massive star evolves and expands, the smaller star gains material from its companion. This stirs up hydrogen fuel and causes the growing star to undergo nuclear fusion at a faster rate. It burns hotter and bluer, like a massive young star.

The findings support the idea that the Milky Way's central bulge stopped making stars billions of years ago. It now is home to aging sun-like stars and cooler red dwarfs. Giant blue stars that once lived there have long since exploded as supernovae. The results have been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Will Clarkson of Indiana University in Bloomington, will discuss them today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston.

"Although the Milky Way bulge is by far the closest galaxy bulge, several key aspects of its formation and subsequent evolution remain poorly understood," Clarkson said. "Many details of its star-formation history remain controversial. The extent of the blue straggler population detected provides two new constraints for models of the star-formation history of the bulge."

The discovery followed a seven-day survey in 2006 called the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). Hubble peered at 180,000 stars in the crowded central bulge of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away. The survey was intended to find hot Jupiter-class planets that orbit very close to their stars. In doing so, the SWEEPS team also uncovered 42 oddball blue stars with brightness and temperatures typical for stars much younger than ordinary bulge stars.

The observations clearly indicate that if there is a young star population in the bulge, it is very small. It was not detected in the SWEEPS program. Blue stragglers long have been suspected to be living in the bulge, but had not been observed because younger stars in the disk of our galaxy lie along the line-of-sight to the core, confusing and contaminating the view.

Hubble Space Telescope

Astronomers used Hubble to distinguish the motion of the core population from foreground stars in the Milky Way. Bulge stars orbit the galactic center at a different speed than foreground stars. Plotting their motion required returning to the SWEEPS target region with Hubble two years after the first observations were made. The blue stragglers were identified as moving along with the other stars in the bulge.
"The size of the field of view on the sky is roughly that of the thickness of a human fingernail held at arm's length, and within this region, Hubble sees about a quarter million stars toward the bulge," Clarkson said. "Only the superb image quality and stability of Hubble allowed us to make this measurement in such a crowded field."

From the 42 candidate blue stragglers, the investigators estimate 18 to 37 are likely genuine. The remainder could be a mix of foreground objects and, at most, a small population of genuinely young bulge stars.

"The SWEEPS program was designed to detect transiting planets through small light variations" said Kailash Sahu, the principal investigator of the SWEEPS program. "Therefore the program could easily detect the variability of binary pairs, which was crucial in confirming these are indeed blue stragglers."

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington. For images and more information about the findings, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and http://hubblesite.org/news/2011/16

HubbleSite: http://hubblesite.org/

Images, Text, Credits: NASA, ESA, W. Clarkson (Indiana University and UCLA), and K. Sahu (STScl).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ATV-4 to carry name Albert Einstein

ESA - ATV-4 Albert Einstein patch.

26 May 2011

With ATV Johannes Kepler in space and ATV Edoardo Amaldi almost built, the next Space Station supply craft coming off the production line has been named after the most famous scientist of all time: Albert Einstein. Launch is expected in early 2013.

With relativity and E=mc2, Albert Einstein is a major icon of 20th century science.

Albert Einstein photographed in 1921 while lecturing in Vienna

His theories have been stringently tested in space and his work is used to guide spacecraft to other planets – and now he will fly into orbit. ESA has decided to name the fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) after Albert Einstein. 

ATVs are an essential contribution by Europe for supplying and maintaining the International Space Station.

The vessels are named after great European scientists and visionaries to highlight Europe’s deep roots in science, technology and culture.

ATV-2 docking with ISS on 24 February 2011

Naming ATV-4 after Albert Einstein, as proposed by the Swiss delegation to ESA, reflects this approach. Einstein’s contributions to humanity and, in particular, science overturned our perception of the Universe.

ATV is also strongly linked to Switzerland: its structure is built by Swiss industry.

World citizen with roots in Switzerland

Albert Einstein was born in 1879 in Ulm, in Germany, but studied and spent his early career in Switzerland.

His job at the patent office in Bern gave him time to develop his revolutionary ideas. His annus mirabilis of 1905 – year of wonder – saw him publish four fundamental scientific papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of matter and energy.

Albert Einstein in Princeton, USA

In 1908 he moved to an academic career in Bern and went on to Zurich, Prague, Berlin and, finally, after emigration to the USA before World War II, Princeton University.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. He died in the USA in 1955 at the age of 76.

Next two ATVs on production line

Pressurised module for Albert Einstein

After launching ATV Johannes Kepler to the Space Station this February, ESA plans to maintain a steady cadence of one vessel per year.

The next, Edoardo Amaldi, is already assembled and is being tested in Bremen, Germany. ATV-3 will be shipped to Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, in August for dispatch to the Station in February 2012.

Equipped External Bay of the ATV-4

The three main parts of ATV-4 are being built. The Integrated Cargo Carrier, designed to carry water, gas, refuelling propellants and dry cargo, is in Turin, Italy, and will be shipped in December to Bremen.

The Equipped Propulsion Bay, housing the engines and propellant tanks, is built in Bremen.

The Equipped Avionics Bay – ATV’s ‘brain’ – will be mated at end of the year with the propulsion section.

The plan is to launch Albert Einstein to the Station at the beginning of 2013.

Related links:

Swiss Space Office (SSO): http://www.sbf.admin.ch/htm/themen/weltraum_en.html

International Space Station: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/iss.html

EADS Astrium: http://www.astrium.eads.net/

Thales Alenia Space: http://www.thalesaleniaspace.com/

Arianespace: http://www.arianespace.com/index/index.asp

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / Albert Einstein Archives / Ferdinand Schmutzer / Princeton University Library.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

NASA to Launch New Science Mission to Asteroid in 2016

NASA - OSIRIS-REx Mission patch.

May 25, 2011

NASA will launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016 and use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system's formation and how life began. The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth.

"This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. "It’s robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations."

NASA selected OSIRIS-REx after reviewing three concept study reports for new scientific missions, which also included a sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and a mission to the surface of Venus.

Asteroids are leftovers formed from the cloud of gas and dust -- the solar nebula -- that collapsed to form our sun and the planets about 4.5 billion years ago. As such, they contain the original material from the solar nebula, which can tell us about the conditions of our solar system's birth.

After traveling four years, OSIRIS-REx will approach the primitive, near Earth asteroid designated 1999 RQ36 in 2020. Once within three miles of the asteroid, the spacecraft will begin six months of comprehensive surface mapping. The science team then will pick a location from where the spacecraft's arm will take a sample. The spacecraft gradually will move closer to the site, and the arm will extend to collect more than two ounces of material for return to Earth in 2023. The mission, excluding the launch vehicle, is expected to cost approximately $800 million.

The sample will be stored in a capsule that will land at Utah's Test and Training Range in 2023. The capsule's design will be similar to that used by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which returned the world's first comet particles from comet Wild 2 in 2006. The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The material will be removed and delivered to a dedicated research facility following stringent planetary protection protocol. Precise analysis will be performed that cannot be duplicated by spacecraft-based instruments.

RQ36 is approximately 1,900 feet in diameter or roughly the size of five football fields. The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating some of life's ingredients can be created in space. Scientists want to see if they also are present on RQ36.

Conceptual image of OSIRIS-REx. Credit: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona

"This asteroid is a time capsule from the birth of our solar system and ushers in a new era of planetary exploration," said Jim Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "The knowledge from the mission also will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids."

The mission will accurately measure the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The effect is a small push caused by the sun on an asteroid, as it absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat. The small push adds up over time, but it is uneven due to an asteroid's shape, wobble, surface composition and rotation. For scientists to predict an Earth-approaching asteroid's path, they must understand how the effect will change its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will help refine RQ36's orbit to ascertain its trajectory and devise future strategies to mitigate possible Earth impacts from celestial objects.

Michael Drake of the University of Arizona in Tucson is the mission's principal investigator. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx payload includes instruments from the University of Arizona, Goddard, Arizona State University in Tempe and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the Langley Research Center in Hampton Va., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., also are involved. The science team is composed of numerous researchers from universities, private and government agencies.

This is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006. It will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in July 2015, then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, Juno, will launch in August to become the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole and study the giant planet's atmosphere and interior. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Image, Video, Text, Credits: NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch