 The possibility has emerged that the International Space Station (ISS) may be left unmanned for a period of time if launch problems with the Russian Soyuz rockets cannot be rectified soon.
Earlier this month, 24th August 2011, saw the crash soon after launch from Kazakhstan of an unmanned Soyuz carrying food and fuel to the ISS, following the failure of one of the booster rockets. The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos has delayed the next manned mission by at least a month to allow time for safety checks to be carried out, and it is likely that at least two test launches of an unmanned rocket will be conducted before sending anymore astronauts up.
The delay means that replacement crew will not go to the ISS until late October at the earliest, assuming that all goes well with the testing. The station is currently manned by a team of 6, with 3 likely to return to Earth in mid September and a decision needing to be made about the remaining crew.
Alexei Krasnov, head of manned flights at Roscosmos recently indicated that: 'If for any reason we will not be able to deliver the crew before the end of November, we will need to review all possibilities including leaving the station unmanned.'
The ISS has been continuously manned for more than a decade. It can in fact be flown without a crew if needed, though this is not an ideal situation as repairs can be made and problems fixed faster with crew members onboard, reducing the possibilities of major damage occurring.
 NASA's Juno solar powered probe Today should see the launch from Cape Canaveral of an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket carrying onboard NASA’s Jupiter bound Juno spacecraft.
It is equipped with three large areas of solar panel that will be deployed and unfold after launch, giving around 60 square metres of panel in total and leaving the craft looking rather like a windmill. It will take Juno five years to reach its destination, where it will be placed into a polar orbit around the planet to study the composition, gravity and magnetic fields, and polar magnetoshpere. Juno will also search for clues about the formation of Jupiter, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the mass is distributed within the planet. Juno will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 600 kms per hour (370 mph).
The robotic explorer will become the first probe to have ever travelled so far, powered by the solar wings which will still provide 400 watts of power despite being nearly 500 million miles away from the sun. After orbiting Jupiter 33 times in one year gathering data, the probe will be crashed into the planet, concluding the mission in 2017.
 This week in London saw the unveiling of a tribute to Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, 50 years after he became the first man in Space on 12th April 1961, and also half a century after he visited London and was greeted by cheering crowds on July 14th that same year.
The statue, which is a gift from the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, is placed just off The Mall outside the British Council offices, and opposite the statue of another great explorer Captain James Cook. The monument showing Gagarin standing on a globe in his spacesuit, is a copy of one that can be found just outside Moscow, in the town of Lyubertsy where Gagarin worked in his teens as a foundry worker.
In addition to the statue, an exhibition called 'Gagarin in Britain' is also taking place at the British Council from 19 July to 13 September 2011. The display includes items from the Vostok manned space program, the first space suit, and an ejector seat from the model used by Gagarin when he parachuted out of Vostok 1 at an altitude of 7km.
It is an excellent opportunity to see some of the earliest space items that marked the beginning of space exploration so get along there if you are in the city – I certainly hope to in August!
 Tiangong 1 Space capsule CNSA Just as the thirty year era of the USA Space Shuttle program is about to come to an end, China has shipped its Tiangong 1 mini space station to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, where it will be prepared for launch in the next three months.
This module weighing in at 9,500 kgs and being just 9 metres long is about half the size of the first space station ever to go into orbit, Salyut 1, sent by the Russians in 1971. Tiangong, which in Chinese means ‘heavenly palace’ is equipped with a docking port, navigation/communications instruments, as well as a pressurized cabin for future visitors.
According to the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA), launch should take place by the end of September this year on a Long March 2F rocket, with plans to test the docking system a few weeks later using an unmanned Shenzhou 8 vehicle. All being well, two more manned Shenzhou flights to the mini space station should follow in 2012.
With the final flight of NASA's shuttle Atlantis due to take place later this week, it will bring with it an end to the capability of the USA to send its own astronauts into Space. I'm sure it is going to be a very sad day for many when Atlantis makes its final landing after a 12 day mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and many people I am sure will be left shaking their heads in disappointment. The US will now be reliant on Russia for future astronaut transportation to the ISS until such time as privately developed commercial crew transport becomes available, hopefully in the next few years but with no guarantees as to time scale. Quite coincidentally today I came across this graphic which shows the yearly cost per seat the US will have to pay on board the Russian Soyuz capsules. According to Charlie Bolden, current Nasa Administrator, the price is going up due to inflation and not because the Russians are taking advantage of their monopoly. Perhaps true, but inflation would seem to be very high at the moment!
 The European Space Agency Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV2), named after Johannes Kepler, undocked from the International Space Station yesterday, Monday 20th June 2011, and will soon be making a destructive fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The supply ship first docked with the ISS earlier in February this year, taking up with it supplies for the station, and also laden with enough fuel to perform a series of manoeuvres to rotate and move the ISS to a higher altitude.
The 420 tonne orbiting complex now sits at more than 380km above the Earth, 40km higher up than previously, with boosts being needed every now and then to prevent the ISS from crashing back down to Earth.
The ATV is now filled with rubbish and unneeded cargo, and will perform two de-orbit burns before making a controlled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the South Pacific ocean. The majority of the vehicle and cargo will burn up in the very high temperatures experienced during re-entry, around 1600C, and any residue parts will fall into the ocean below.
The next ATV is already under preparation, named after Italian physicist Eduardo Amaldi, and should launch early next year from a spaceport in French Guiana.
 Astronomers have released this picture of the spiral galaxy NGC 6744, which lies some 174 million trillion miles away from our own Milky Way galaxy, in the southern hemisphere Pavo (The Peacock) constellation, 30 million light years away.
The image, taken by the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2 metre telescope in Chile, gives us a good idea of what our own galaxy must look like from afar.
The spiral galaxy is almost twice as large as the Mily Way but shows the same sharply defined spiral arms and stretched central region. It even has a small companion galaxy, seen as a smudge to the lower right of the main galaxy, which is reminiscent of one of the Milky Way’s neighbouring Magellanic Clouds.
I wonder what else the two galaxies have in common?
 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.
 Space shuttle Endeavor blasted off today on its final mission before being decommissioned and put on display to the public at the California Science Center, USA.
The 16 day mission which will be its 25th flight into Space and the 11th calling at the International Space Station, will deliver $2bn worth of astrophysics equipment to the ISS, designed to search Space for antimatter.
The final countdown for the launch of the last shuttle will take place in July when Atlantis will fly for the last time, bringing to an end the 30 year NASA shuttle program.
What follows next will be a significant period of time when the US will be unable to put astronauts into Space under its own steam, relying totally on the Russian Soyuz program. The future of American led missions into Space will only restart again once private companies have developed and built rockets to take over the job, with 2015 being estimated as the earliest date for new launches to begin.
Uneasy times ahead for the USA Space program I think!
 Eminent British physicist Stephen Hawking has once more been ruffling a few feathers with his beliefs, or rather, his lack of belief in the hereafter.
In an interview published in The Guardian newspaper in the UK yesterday, the 69 year old physicist who was diagnosed with a form of motor neuron disease at the age of 21, made clear once more his lack of belief in the existence of heaven. In response to a question about his fear of death, Hawking responded:
"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he told the newspaper.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark."
Fact or fairy tale? Are you afraid of the dark?
To read the full article, click here.
|
RSS Feed
