Traffic at the International Space Station

This has been a busy weekend on the International Space Station (ISS), where the amazing has become mundane. 

First, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft delivered three new crew members to the station - US astronaut Robert Shane and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko.  One could even argue a fourth crew member accompanied them - the relics of Saint Seraphim of Sarov.  

Second, Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship also arrived at the ISS.  Orbital ATK knows these missions are not mundane having lost a rocket and Cygnus cargo ship two years ago.

Someday we may see such traffic heading to the Moon and Mars as well.  However, the Orbital ATK mishap, SpaceX rocket explosions, and recent ExoMars lander failure shows that the space industry is still facing enormous risks. Fortunately, all of the missions just named did not involve human passengers. That adds a whole new level of risk and related risk management. 

Image Credit:  The photo at the top from NASA shows the new six-member Expedition 49 crew gathers in the Zvezda service module. The three newest arrivals (front row from left) Andrey Borisenko, Sergey Ryzhikov and Shane Kimbrough talk to family members and mission officials back on Earth. In the back row from left are, Kate Rubins, Anatoly Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi. The bottom photo shows the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship arriving at the ISS and is also from NASA.

A $600 Million Ride to the Moon?

The Russians made an offer sometime back to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to see how much he wanted to go to the moon - $200 million to circle the moon in a Soyuz spacecraft. When Mr. Bezos said he wanted Russia to test the mission first, the Russians agreed for another $400 million. I guess anything is possible with a few dollars on your pocket.

Of course, Mr. Bezos said no and now he hopes to create new space tourists via his company Blue Origin at a much lower costs. I think this is a much better way to spend his funds.

You can read the full story at Space.com.

Space Station Traffic Picking Up

The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) just went to nine yesterday as the Russian Soyuz spacecraft (TMA-18M) docked at the station and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, and Aidyn Aimbetov of the Kazakh Space Agency stepped aboard. We are already a long way from earlier this year when we were worried about even getting supplies to the station after numerous rocket explosions.  Since then, a Russian Soyuz resupplied the station and just last week a Japanese mission added more emergency supplies. 

The NASA image above shows the ISS configuration with all of the attached capsules. The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft is docked to the Poisk mini-research module. The Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft is docked to the Zvezda service module. The ISS Progress 60 spacecraft is docked to the Pirs docking compartment. The Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft is docked to the Rassvet mini-research module. Japan’s “Kounotori” HTV-5 is berthed to the Harmony module.

Supplies Aboard the Space Station

After numerous attempts, the International Space Station finally has been resupplied by a Russian Soyuz capsule.  The Progress 60 mission (shown above) successfully docked with the station earlier today, bringing water, spare parts, propellant, oxygen, and more.  You can watch the docking process here. 

I imagine all of this is more excitement that Astronaut Scott Kelly was anticipating when he signed up to spend a year on the station.  If the purpose of the mission is to test his reaction to stress, NASA is doing a great job piling it on. 

Update: Speaking of Mr. Kelly, he shared his experiences recently with CBS Evening News.  He compared his time on the space station to time in prison:

...no matter what happens, you're not going home. We don't get to go outside, so that's a little bit different. I would imagine in a lot of jails people get fresh air. You don't get that here. And you don't get real sunlight. ... The big difference, though, is we're here by choice. So that makes, I guess, the situation a little bit better.

But he also discussed the importance of his research, giving an example concerning why NASA needs to study the impact of long-term space travel on the eyes:

 You wouldn't want some astronauts to get on Mars after a year and a half, or longer when they're coming home, and not be able to see...It's something we don't understand, but it's something we're working hard at understanding and mitigating the effects. We've done a lot of research up here since I've been here to better understand that.

SpaceX Explosion: Maybe Low Earth Orbit is Not so Routine After All

It appears getting supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) is becoming quite the challenge.  For the third time in about nine months, a resupply mission has ended in failure (the first failure being in October with Orbital Sciences and the second taking in place in April with a Russian launch).  This time it was SpaceX that experienced the disaster about 2 and a half minutes into the launch earlier today. 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had this to say about the failure:

We are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight. The commercial cargo program was designed to accommodate loss of cargo vehicles. We will continue operation of the station in a safe and effective way as we continue to use it as our test bed for preparing for longer duration missions farther into the solar system. 

Administrator Bolden also noted that the Russians and Japanese have missions that will go up shortly to keep the ISS well-supplied.  This is encouraging, yet the decline is successful missions is very worrying, particularly since this same technology is (Russians) or will be (Space X) used for human transportation.  

So far, the SpaceX website has nothing on the incident.  The last piece for the press is from June 25.  I am sure quite a bit more information from NASA and SpaceX is to follow.   You can watch for more news at this link. 

ISS: Russian Progress 59 Lost in Space

Tuesday's International Space Station Russian resupply spacecraft, Progress 59, started spinning out of control after separating from its Soyuz rocket.  The resupply mission has now been written off as a failure, which is the second in a year after the Antares rocket explosion last October (blamed on an old Soviet rocket).

Fortunately, SpaceX's Dragon resupplied the station earlier this month and will return in June with more supplies. Redundancy, and private ventures, to the rescue.

Update: Progress 59 is expected to reenter to atmosphere and burn up in the next two weeks.

Crimean Cosmonauts?

Russia has done it again. It is purposely poking the U.S. and Europe as it stated it plans to train its cosmonauts in Crimea, the occupied portion of Ukraine. Needless to say, NASA is not impressed and it again shows why a space partnership with Russia is dangerous and our reliance on Russians to travel to the International Space Station was short-sighted.

At the moment, according to news reports, Russia will use the naval base in Sevastopol for Soyuz survival training.  Will US astronauts be expected to train there? I hope not, and if NASA does not understand this then Congress should forbid it (assuming current laws do not already cover this).  

While one could argue the naval base was leased Russian property before the occupation, Putin's recent decision (and you can be certain nothing happens without his approval) is ill-timed and insulting to Ukrainians. It is one more example that Russia has gone off course and is willing to further jeopardize its reduced standing in the world for cheap political showmanship.

Russian Rocket Problems

SpaceX wasn't the only space company with rocket issues last week.  The French company Arianespace's launch from South America was unable place to two Galileo satellites into proper orbit after the failure of a Russian-made Soyuz rocket.  The 30 planned Galileo satellites are part of the Europe Union's effort to duplicate America's GPS satellites and obtain some independence from the US system. The two satellites would have been the fifth and sixth satellites in the new system.  Two more satellites were to be launched in December using the same Russian rocket, though this launch will most likely be on hold until after a full investigation of this incident.  It is also possible that these two errant satellites can still be used in some way to support the system. 

An Expensive Miss on a Russian Rocket

Given that we are now paying the Russians about $71 million per seat to get an astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS), maybe they felt a longer ride would give us more for our money.  That seems to be the case since the most recent Russian Soyuz space capture missed its connection with the ISS and the American and Russian passengers will have to wait another 36 hours before trying again.  The good news is that they are used to this longer trip, with the shorter 6 hour trip being a pretty new development since last year.

NASA's Steve Swanson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev are fine and everything should continue without a hitch.  The problem seems to be a software glitch that prevented a 24-second engine burn to align the capsule with the ISS.

We are lucky we still have the Russians to get passengers to the ISS until we can bring in our private sector partners.  SpaceX has another ISS resupply mission this weekend, so things are on track for the U.S. to be back in the space station transportation business.

Update:  The new ISS crew is safe and sound after a longer than expected delay.  NASA reported:

The new trio docked Thursday to the Poisk docking compartment at 7:53 p.m. EDT and opened the hatches less than two hours later to greet Commander Koichi Wakata and Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mikhail Tyurin. The sextet then gathered inside the Zvezda service module for a welcoming ceremony with words of congratulations from family members and mission officials.