 The final touchdown of US space shuttle Endeavor took place at 06.34 GMT, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, bringing an end to the space craft’s last 16 day mission to the International Space Station.
For the record, Endeavour flew into Space a total of 25 times, orbited the Earth 4,671 times, covered 123 million miles, and spent 299 days in Space.
Retirement now beckons for the craft that was named after the ship commanded in 1769 by British explorer James Cook, with Endeavor going on public display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
 Yet another problem with long term Space travel has been highlighted this week, following the release of results for a study by NASA researcher Lakshmi Putcha and her colleagues.
Need a medication here on Earth? No problem – simply visit your local chemists or look in your medicine cabinet at home where simple medications such as pain-killers or antibiotics, if stored correctly, have a shelf life of up to a couple of years and retain most of their potency in that time. However, astronauts in Space it would seem might not be quite so lucky.
Longer duration Space travel, such as to Mars, may require astronauts to spend up to 2 years on board a space craft, and so the need to take greater volumes of medication will be required. Little is currently know in relation to the potential effects that the Space environment can have on these – an environment subject to such factors as microgravity, radiation, flight vibration, as well as variations in temperature and humidity.
Consequently, a study was conducted involving flying four boxes of drugs, each containing 35 medications up to the International Space Station (ISS). In accordance with good scientific practice, four identical boxes were also kept under controlled conditions at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, USA, to act as a control for comparison. The four boxes from the ISS were returned one by one, back to Earth after varying lengths of time, with one box returning after just 13 days and the last box returning after 28 months on the ISS.
The medications were analysed to see how they compared to the control kits and it was found that; less than third of the medications kept in Space met US requirements for levels of active ingredients; the longer the kits were in Space, the fewer the number of formulations that retained acceptable potency levels.
The authors conclude that "It is important to characterize space-specific degradation products and toxicity limits using ground-based analogue environments of space that include proton and heavy ion radiation, vibration and multiple gravity conditions. This information can facilitate research for the development of space-hardy pharmaceuticals and packaging technologies."
 April 12th 2011 will see celebrated the 50th anniversary of the historic Space flight of Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin.
Born March 9th 1934 and although coming from a humble background, he gained the rank of senior lieutenant in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s Air Force.
However, it was in 1960 that Gagarin's life would change forever when he was one of 20 pilots selected for the Soviet Space program. The selection process consisted of physical and psychological testing, as well as a detailed assessment of performance obtained in training, so life was not easy for the young cosmonaut candidate.
The long awaited answer to who would be chosen finally came and Gagarin found himself selected to participate in the first manned space mission in history. Besides his good performances in the selection process, other factors counted in his favour such as coming from a simple background with both parents being farmers, an important factor within the Soviet communist system. He had a flamboyant and charismatic personality, and more importantly Gagarin was short, measuring only 1.60m or 5 foot 3 inches tall – a crucial consideration when the spacecraft designed for the mission, Vostok-1, was compact and left little room to accommodate a pilot.
Vostok-1 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 12th 1961, arrived in orbit and completed one lap around planet Earth before reentry, taking a total time of 1 hr 48 minutes. The flight of the space craft was fully automatic and the control panel locked. Gagarin did though have a code key with which to take control of the ship in case of necessity, though this did not turn out to be needed. However, not quite all went as planned with one service module failing to separate from the main sphere as intended, remaining attached by some wires. This caused some wild gyrations of the craft to take place upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere, before the wires eventually burned through freeing the remaining sphere and allowing a smoother descent.
With just 7km to go before landing, Gagarin ejected from the sphere and landed safely by parachute. This fact was denied by the Soviet Union for many years, for fear of the flight not being recognised by the FAI, the world governing body for air sports. The rules of the day stated that astronaut and craft must come down together and thus the true facts were kept quiet until 1971.
Fifty years ago today Yuri Gagarin took less than 2 hours to write his name in the history books, forever to be remembered as the first person in Space, and heralded the beginning of a new relationship between mankind and his blue planet.
 The dangers presented to astronauts by long term missions into Space have long been known, are numerous, and for the most part remain in the realms of theory and supposition due to a lack of real life situations and physical data.
What can be done by scientists is to create an artificial environment that simulates one or more of the conditions that may be faced by astronauts, and conduct appropriate experiments to evaluate the possible effects on the human physiology.
For example, scientists at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, USA have done exactly this in relation to the possible effects of cosmic radiation on the human heart, details published April 6 2011, in the journal Radiation Research.
Researchers analysed the effect of exposure to iron ion radiation on mice, a radiation commonly occurring in Space, to see if exposure promotes the development of arterial disease (atherosclerosis).
According to Prof. Dennis Kucik, associate professor in the department of pathology, UAB, “It's well known that prolonged exposure to radiation sources here on Earth, including those used in cancer treatment, excessive occupational exposure and atomic bombs, are associated with an increased risk for atherosclerosis. But cosmic radiation is very different from X-rays and other radiation found on Earth. The radiation risks of deep-space travel are difficult to predict, largely because so few people have been exposed."
Results from the research found that permanent damage to the aorta and carotid arteries in mice did take place, which suggests that deep Space missions, such as those to Mars, might present health risks for astronauts from radiation that could give rise to heart problems.
For more details click HERE
 Russian Soyuz TMA-21 named after Yuri Gagarin The docking of a soyuz spaceship with the International Space Station is not in itself anything out of the ordinary these days.
However, the soyuz that successfully docked in the early hours of this morning (7 April 02:13UT) is officially named in tribute to Yuri Gagarin and the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of the first man in Space.
And rather fittingly, the soyuz blasted off from the same launch pad, Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan that was used 50 years ago for the historic event on 12th April 1961.
 Just a few short weeks after safely returning to Earth from her last mission STS-133 on March 9th 2011, the Discovery space shuttle is already going through the process of decommissioning before making her way to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, in Washington DC, USA.
Technicians from Kennedy Space Centre’s Orbiter Processing Facility are presently pulling her to bits to make her safe for the general public to play with!
Pictures below show the removal of the front nose where lies the forward reaction control system (FRCS), or in layman’s terms an array of tiny little rocket engines used to control the precise movements and orientation of the shuttle in Space. As such, these tend to contain toxic explosive material and so it all needs a good clean out. The engines will also be removed and replaced with replicas, and the originals put into storage for possible use at a later date with a future spacecraft.
Only two more space shuttle flights now remain, with Endeavour due to fly on mission STS-134 on April 19th 2011, to be followed in June this year by the last historic shuttle flight ever by Atlantis.
Click on the images below to enlarge.
 The Mars500 experiment achieved a major milestone this week with the safe ‘arrival’ of the ‘spacecraft’ to Mars, after a virtual interplanetary flight of 244 days.
The $15 million joint experiment by ESA, Russia and China is aimed at studying the complex psychological and technical challenges that need to be solved if long duration spaceflights are to become a reality. The project has now been running at the Institute of Biomedical Problems, Moscow, for more than eight months, using a series of sealed modules to imitate a mock spacecraft.
The crew of six (3 Russians, 2 Europeans, 1 Chinese) have been living and working together, sealed off from the outside world, as if on a real expedition to Mars. Their life onboard is comparable to that of the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), with similar routines and work schedules filled with experiments, daily exercise, and maintenance jobs to do.
Tuesday 1st Feb 2011, in accordance with the mission scenario, saw the craft ‘enter a circular orbit around Mars’, with three crewmembers destined to ‘land’ on the Red Planet on 12th February, to take part over the next few days in three maneuvers onto a simulated Martian terrain.
Return journey back to planet Earth will begin on 1st March but crew cannot expect to arrive home until early November 2011
 The coming week sees the 25th anniversary of a disaster that shocked a nation and resulted in an investigation revealing a space agency that had allegedly become more concerned with schedules and public relations than with safety.
28th January 1986 saw the launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida of the NASA space shuttle Challenger, complete with a crew of seven. Just 73 seconds into the flight, disaster struck when the shuttle broke apart and disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean. The crew compartment was eventually recovered from the ocean floor, and although some crew members are thought to have lived through the initial breakup of the spacecraft, nobody could have survived the impact of the crew compartment with the ocean surface.
An investigating commission concluded that the accident cause was a faulty O-ring in one of two solid-fuel rocket boosters, coupled with the very cold weather on the launch day which caused the O-ring to shrink and allow hot gases to escape, and consequently ignite. Unfortunately, NASA managers had known about this potential problem from previous launches but ignored the warning signs.
Understandably, no chances are being taken with the final and much postponed launch of shuttle Discovery following ongoing problems with the fuel tanks. Launch is currently due to take place on 24th February 2011.
 Nasa astronaut Timothy L Kopra NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra will not now be flying on space shuttle Discovery's last flight (STS-133), should it at last manage to take off on 24th February 2011. Having taken a tumble while riding his bicycle at the weekend, he is currently recuperating from his injuries, and thus will be replaced by Stephen Bowen, a veteran of two previous launches. Bowen, having flown on the last mission STS-132, will become the first astronaut to fly consecutive missions.
Doubts also linger regarding the command position onboard the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour, due to take place 19th April 2011. Current official man in charge of STS-134 Mark Kelly, remains at the hospital bedside of his wife US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was seriously wounded in the shooting incident in Tucson, Arizona on 8th Jan 2011, in which six people were killed. Back-up commander Rick Sturckow has been put on standby.
Shuttle crew replacement has occasionally occurred over the years, though not usually at such a late stage. To try and prevent preflight injuries NASA has a list of high risk activities that astronauts assigned to flights are not allowed to take part in, such as skiing, parachuting, and motorcycle riding. Riding a bike, however, is not currently on the banned list!
Yesterday saw what is potentially a huge step for the future of Space travel, and for the future of the US Space program, with the launch into orbit and safe return of the SpaceX Dragon capsule.
It is the first time that a private enterprise has managed to launch its own space craft into orbit, and is a vital step forward for NASA’s plans to rely on commercial development of new human Space flight vehicles.
SpaceX, a private company based in California, USA and run by Elon Musk (co-founder of PayPal ), has been developing the Falcon 9 launch rocket to carry the Dragon Space craft module into orbit. Blast-off took place yesterday 8th December 2010, from Cape Canaveral, with the Dragon entering into orbit 10 minutes after, and proceeding to circle the Earth twice before successfully re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down into the Pacific Ocean west of Mexico, around four hours later.
The Dragon capsule is initially intended to take cargo up to the International Space Station (ISS), but potentially if all goes well, it could also be used to transport new crew members to the ISS, up to seven at a time. After the retirement of the Space shuttles in 2011, transportation of astronauts will be totally reliant on the Russian Soyuz craft, thus the continued development of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, and others like it, is of vital importance to the continuation of the USA Space program.
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