Tag Results: international space station
I glanced briefly at NASA TV yesterday, but it all looked rather boring - the usual shots of men in Mission Control eating their biscuits and scratching their ears. Had I perservered, I would have seen some live footage of one of the most dangerous spacewalks ever. (NB There are some very beautiful photos on this Guardian site. I assume they're NASA copyright, but just in case they're not, I won't reproduce them here - check them out for yourself.)
This morning (Sunday 4th November) on NASA TV I've been watching an interview with the Commander of the Space Shuttle Discovery, Pam Melroy, and Italian asronaut Paolo Nespoli (the interview was conducted in both English and Italian.) Because of the microgravity, Melroy and Paolo looked for all the world like Thunderbirds puppets, bobbing up and down slowly, with their arms and legs held at odd angles. They shared a microphone, which floated in mid air between them.
Pam Melroy explained that the latest spacewalk was an unplanned mission to repair a torn solar array. And she spoke warmly at the way that all the members of the crews of the Shuttle and the ISS worked together on this mission. The genius of NASA is that they make these things look boring - that's how they keep it safe - but it was clearly a hazardous enterprise.
As readers of this blog will know, this is the first time in NASA history that both the Shuttle and the ISS have had female commanders. If we end up with a female American US President, that will be a hat trick.
A really dumb fact; the crew of the Discovery have taken with them the actual lightsaber used in the Star Wars movies. They won't use it to battle any Jedi Knights; it just sits in a locker for the duration of the mission, and then will return home to take pride of place on the mantelpiece in George Lucas's ranch.
I've added a new link on the Blogroll to the right of these words...it gives you direct access to NASA TV, that little known TV station which offers live coverage of NASA missions. At the moment, you can see live film of Expedition 16 on board the International Space Station. I just spent a few valuable minutes which could have been spent doing something I get paid for doing watching the solar panel of the ISS slowly moving against the backdrop of the planet Earth.
I can't believe how much time I'm going to waste watching this. It's surreal to suddenly be catapulted out of Ordinary World into the world of space.
There was a wonderful episode of Heartbeat last year in which the 1960s characters gathered in the Aidensfield Arms to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon...and it was clear that the power of that moment lay in its extraordinary uniqueness.
Now, the moment is not unique; you can access it any time, day or night (though you have to check the schedules or take pot luck, because sometimes it's just archive or educational stuff) , just by clicking on the following words:
Commander Peggy Whitson is now aboard the International Space Station - we can see her in the photo above in one of her most glamorous and fetching space ensembles looking, um, like the robot from Lost in Space. That's her on the right.
The NASA website account of the changeover between Expeditions is as detailed and dry as always; the reality of life in space is endless grinding detail and routine. But of course the unexpected does sometimes happen. In Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter's splendid novel Time's Eye, the crew of the ISS are jolted out of their usual routine when the Earth is subject to a massive time dislocation which causes Mission Control to vanish, and compels the crew of the ISS to make a hazardous landing without any assistance, only to find themselves confronted by the massed hordes of Genghis Khan's army.
It is, I reluctantly concede, very unlikely that Peggy and her gang will face a similar plight. (Although if they do, we won't know about it... We'll be the ones who are obliterated!) But in the real world, things are usually dull most of the time; that's why we read novels.
Still, it's reassuring to see the ordinary, workaday business of space going on...and I will in this blog keep popping in to see how Expedition 16 are faring.
All photographs reproduced by kind permission of NASA.
It continues to be a busy time up in space...after some difficulties, the plucky robot explorer Opportunity is now roaming in Victoria Crater, Mars. A fly-past of Iapetus has yielded some amazing images of its odd equatorial bulge, which makes it resemble an orbiting walnut.
And on the ISS (the world-circling anti-celebrity reality show, which this blogs reports on from time to time) a group of weary astronauts and cosmonauts are preparing for the end of their mission. (For a virtual tour of the International Space Station, click here.) On October 10th, a Soyuz spaceship will dock with the ISS, and Expedition 15 will go home to their families, and will be replaced by the 'spacenauts' of Expedition 16. (Apart from the irrepressible Flight Engineer Clay Anderson, who featured in that wonderful space press conference for American schoolkids, juggling ping pong balls and grinning at the camera - he'll be staying on a little longer.)
I was intrigued to see that the Commander of the new team, Peggy Whitson, is a veteran space-dweller; she was Flight Engineer on Expedition 5, from June till December 2002. She's a scientist-astronaut, as they mostly are; born in 1960 in Iowa, with a doctorate in biochemistry. At the end of her first expedition, she had logged 184 days, 22 hours and 14 minutes in space. She has phenomenal academic credentials, and according to her biog she enjoys weightlifting, biking, basketball and water skiing.
These bare facts can't of course give much sense of her personality. Though it's plain to see that she's brainy, fit, and so far as I can glean, entirely fearless. Er, what's not to love about this lady?
In a 'letter home' during her time with Expedition 5, she wrote beautifully of her experiences in space:
As the Soyuz capsule began to fill my video monitor, the sun began to peek around the edge of the planet, making that incredible royal blue curvilinear entrance. Alpha and the new Soyuz capsule were soon bathed in brilliant white light from the sun. While the Earth below was still dark, the Soyuz made contact and became our new rescue vehicle.
Every six months a new Soyuz capsule is sent up to the ISS to replace the capsule that is in orbit, and serves as the emergency return vehicle for the station. It's a chance to swap crews, and convey materials to and fro. Later in her account, Peggy descibes how the old Soyuz capsule returned to Earth:
I shut off all the lights in the lab to watch from the window there. The thing I noticed first was what appeared to be a milky white contrail in the darkness. It brightened and the Soyuz became visible as it began to glow from the heat of re-entry. The Soyuz consists of three parts, the engine section, the "living compartment", which is not larger than a subcompact car volume, and the cramped descent module, sandwiched in between them. I was surprised to actually see "razdalenea" (separation) of these three modules. The three glowing pieces separated, and the engine compartment and the living compartment trailed behind the descent module and began a fiery disintegration, looking much like a bright orange Fourth of July sparkler...We were able to see the descent module for a few minutes after separation, before it seemed to be swallowed up in the cloudy darkness below. After 4 hours of separation from the station, the taxi crew had landed in the cold desert of Kazakstan.
NASA astronauts are not selected on the basis of their flair for writing evocative prose - they are selected because they are brainy, fit, capable of working staggeringly hard doing routine but essential jobs, and fearless. (This, by the way, rules me out as an astronaut on every single count.) But on the basis of this letter home, this woman has poetry in her heart and typing fingers, as well as a science brain.
Peggy will spend the next six months with the (irrepressible!) Clay, who has promised to write a song in space and may well inflict it on the unwary newcomers, and with the other members of Expedition 16: Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko, Flight Engineer Daniel M. Tani; Flight Engineer Leopold Eyharts from France; Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman; and Spaceflight Participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor.
If you have any idle moments, check out their progress from time to time; the link is on the right of this page.
Photo Gallery
The ISS in space, seen against a blue Earth.
Rick Mastracchio and Clay Anderson, space walking.
Peggy gets a haircut...
Peggy looks at some soy beans that she's grown in space.
Rick Mastracchio, still spacewalking...er, looks like they're not going to let him back in....
All photographs reproduced by kind permission of NASA, who claim no copyright on images used for non-commercial purposes.