Commercial cargo ship reaches International Space Station

By Irene Klotz

Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:18pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - An unmanned U.S. commercial cargo ship flew to the International Space Station on Sunday, completing the primary goal of its test flight before supply runs begin in December.

After a series of successful steering maneuvers, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus freighter parked about 39 feet from the station at 6:50 a.m. EDT/1050 GMT as the ships sailed 260 miles above the Southern Ocean south of Africa.

Ten minutes later, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA's Karen Nyberg used the station's robotic arm to pluck the capsule from orbit and guide it to a berthing slip on the station's Harmony connecting node.

"That's a long time coming, looks great," radioed astronaut Catherine Coleman from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.

Cygnus' arrival had been delayed a week - first by a software glitch and then by the higher priority docking of a Russian Soyuz capsule ferrying three new crewmembers to the $100 billion outpost, a project of 15 nations.

Orbital Sciences' new unmanned Antares rocket blasted off on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast to put Cygnus into orbit.

"We learned a lot on this one," Orbital Sciences executive vice president Frank Culbertson told reporters after launch.

NASA contributed $288 million toward Antares' and Cygnus' development and awarded Orbital Sciences a $1.9 billion contract for eight station resupply missions, the first of which is targeted for December.

The U.S. space agency also provided $396 million to privately owned Space Exploration Technologies to help develop the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship. The company, known as SpaceX, holds a $1.5 billion NASA contract for 12 cargo runs to the station, two of which already have been completed.

Unlike SpaceX's Dragon capsule, Cygnus is not designed to return to Earth. After astronauts unload more than 1,500 pounds (680 kg) of food, clothing and supplies that were packed aboard Cygnus, it will be filled with trash, detached from the station and flown into the atmosphere for incineration.

Thales Alenia Space, a consortium led by Europe's largest defense electronics company, France's Thales, is a prime contractor on the capsule.

For now, NASA is the only customer for Cygnus, but Orbital Sciences expects additional business as the United States and other countries launch exploration initiatives beyond the space station's orbit.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Lompoc, California; Editing by Bill Trott and Stacey Joyce)

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New cargo ship's docking at space station delayed to Saturday

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL | Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:22pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL (Reuters) - A traffic jam at the International Space Station is prompting a second delay in the arrival of a new commercial cargo ship that is making a test run to the orbital outpost, officials said on Monday.

The docking of the Cygnus freighter was retargeted for Saturday to avoid conflicting with Wednesday's scheduled arrival of new crew members at the space station.

Orbital Sciences originally had planned to fly the Cygnus to the station on Sunday following four days of maneuvers and communications tests. A problem processing navigation data from the space station early on Sunday forced the rendezvous to be rescheduled for Tuesday.

Resolving the problem with a software fix left Orbital Sciences with a tight schedule to rendezvous and dock the Cygnus capsule at the space station before the Wednesday arrival of a Russian Soyuz spaceship carrying three new crew members.

Station operators need at least 48 hours between arrivals of spacecraft at the orbital outpost, a $100 billion complex that flies about 250 miles above Earth.

"Both Orbital and NASA felt it was the right decision to postpone the Cygnus approach and rendezvous until after Soyuz operations," the company wrote in a status report on its website.

Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy and NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins are scheduled for launch at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They should reach the station about six hours later.

"This new schedule will allow the Orbital operations team to carefully plan and be well-rested before restarting the critical final approach to the space station," Frank Culbertson, Orbital's executive vice president, said in the statement. "Meanwhile, Cygnus has all the resources needed to remain in orbit for an extended period of time."

Cygnus blasted off for a debut mission aboard an Orbital Sciences' unmanned Antares rocket from a new spaceport in Virginia on September 18. The company is the second of two hired by NASA to restore U.S. supply lines to the station following the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.

Competitor Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which began working with the U.S. space agency about 18 months before Orbital, so far has made a test flight and two cargo runs to the station.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Bill Trott)

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Joint U.S.-Russian crew reaches space station

By Irene Klotz

Wed Sep 25, 2013 11:21pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT on an express route to the station, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth.

Less than six hours after liftoff, veteran Russian commander Oleg Kotov and rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Michael Hopkins of the United States reached the outpost, a $100 billion project of 15 nations. Only two other crews have made the journey as quickly. Previous Soyuz capsules took two days of orbital maneuvers to reach the station.

The arrival of Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins returns the station to its full, six-member live-aboard crew. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano have been running the station on their own since September 10.

The skeleton crew was to have overseen the arrival of a commercial cargo ship on a test flight to the station this week.

But a software problem left the unmanned Cygnus freighter unable to receive navigation data properly from the station, delaying its arrival until no earlier than Saturday to avoid conflicting with the Soyuz's berthing. Typically, at least 48 hours are needed between spacecraft dockings.

The cargo ship, built and launched by Orbital Sciences with backing from NASA, blasted off aboard an Antares rocket on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast.

"As a crew we're very excited to be up there when Cygnus rendezvous and docks and (we're) looking forward to opening that hatch," Hopkins said on Tuesday during a prelaunch press conference.

Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are making their first flights. Kotov, who will take over command of the station when Yurchikhin leaves in November, has made two previous long-duration missions on the station.

During their five-month stay, Kotov and Ryazanskiy are scheduled to make three spacewalks, the first of which will include taking an unlighted Olympic torch outside the airlock to promote the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, which open in February 2014.

"Our goal here is to make it look spectacular," Kotov, speaking through a translator, told reporters.

"We'd like to showcase our Olympic torch in space. We will try to do it in a beautiful manner. Millions of people will see it live on TV and they will see the station and see how we work," Kotov said.

The torch is scheduled to be delivered to the station on November 6 by the next crew launching to the outpost. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will then bring it back to Earth when they return home four days later so the traditional torch relay can continue.

"Unfortunately we cannot light it in space so we will simply take it to space and take pictures and some video with the station and the Earth in the background," Ryazanskiy said in a prelaunch NASA interview.

An Olympic torch previously flew aboard NASA's now-retired space shuttle Atlantis prior to the 1996 Olympics.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Mojave, California; Editing by Jane Sutton, Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)

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Joint Russian-U.S. crew blasts off for space station

By Irene Klotz

Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:51pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT on an express route to the station, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth.

Veteran Russian commander Oleg Kotov and rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy of Russia and Michael Hopkins of the United States were expected to reach the outpost less than six hours after liftoff. Only two other crews have made the journey as quickly. Previous Soyuz capsules took two days of orbital maneuvers to reach the station.

The arrival of Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins will return the station to its full, six-member live-aboard crew. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano have been running the station on their own since September 10.

The skeleton crew was to have overseen the arrival of a commercial cargo ship on a test flight to the station this week.

But a software problem left the unmanned Cygnus freighter unable to receive navigation data properly from the station, delaying its arrival until no earlier than Saturday to avoid conflicting with the Soyuz's berthing. Typically, at least 48 hours are needed between spacecraft dockings.

The cargo ship, built and launched by Orbital Sciences with backing from NASA, blasted off aboard an Antares rocket on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast.

"As a crew we're very excited to be up there when Cygnus rendezvous and docks and (we're) looking forward to opening that hatch," Hopkins said on Tuesday during a prelaunch press conference.

Hopkins and Ryazanskiy are making their first flights. Kotov, who will take over command of the station when Yurchikhin leaves in November, has made two previous long-duration missions on the station.

During their five-month stay, Kotov and Ryazanskiy are scheduled to make three spacewalks, the first of which will include taking an unlighted Olympic torch outside the airlock to promote the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia, which open in February 2014.

"Our goal here is to make it look spectacular," Kotov, speaking through a translator, told reporters.

"We'd like to showcase our Olympic torch in space. We will try to do it in a beautiful manner. Millions of people will see it live on TV and they will see the station and see how we work," Kotov said.

The torch is scheduled to be delivered to the station on November 6 by the next crew launching to the outpost. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will then bring it back to Earth when they return home four days later so the traditional torch relay can continue.

"Unfortunately we cannot light it in space so we will simply take it to space and take pictures and some video with the station and the Earth in the background," Ryazanskiy said in a prelaunch NASA interview.

An Olympic torch previously flew aboard NASA's now-retired space shuttle Atlantis prior to the 1996 Olympics.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz, Editing by Jane Sutton and Cynthia Osterman)

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Commercial cargo ship reaches International Space Station

By Irene Klotz

Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:18pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - An unmanned U.S. commercial cargo ship flew to the International Space Station on Sunday, completing the primary goal of its test flight before supply runs begin in December.

After a series of successful steering maneuvers, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus freighter parked about 39 feet from the station at 6:50 a.m. EDT/1050 GMT as the ships sailed 260 miles above the Southern Ocean south of Africa.

Ten minutes later, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA's Karen Nyberg used the station's robotic arm to pluck the capsule from orbit and guide it to a berthing slip on the station's Harmony connecting node.

"That's a long time coming, looks great," radioed astronaut Catherine Coleman from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.

Cygnus' arrival had been delayed a week - first by a software glitch and then by the higher priority docking of a Russian Soyuz capsule ferrying three new crewmembers to the $100 billion outpost, a project of 15 nations.

Orbital Sciences' new unmanned Antares rocket blasted off on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast to put Cygnus into orbit.

"We learned a lot on this one," Orbital Sciences executive vice president Frank Culbertson told reporters after launch.

NASA contributed $288 million toward Antares' and Cygnus' development and awarded Orbital Sciences a $1.9 billion contract for eight station resupply missions, the first of which is targeted for December.

The U.S. space agency also provided $396 million to privately owned Space Exploration Technologies to help develop the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship. The company, known as SpaceX, holds a $1.5 billion NASA contract for 12 cargo runs to the station, two of which already have been completed.

Unlike SpaceX's Dragon capsule, Cygnus is not designed to return to Earth. After astronauts unload more than 1,500 pounds (680 kg) of food, clothing and supplies that were packed aboard Cygnus, it will be filled with trash, detached from the station and flown into the atmosphere for incineration.

Thales Alenia Space, a consortium led by Europe's largest defense electronics company, France's Thales, is a prime contractor on the capsule.

For now, NASA is the only customer for Cygnus, but Orbital Sciences expects additional business as the United States and other countries launch exploration initiatives beyond the space station's orbit.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz in Lompoc, California; Editing by Bill Trott and Stacey Joyce)

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Japanese astronaut to command space station in March

Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata is seen on a monitor during a training exercise in a cetrifuge at the Star City space centre outside Moscow, August 9, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Sergei Remezov

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Wed Aug 28, 2013 5:58pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The first Japanese astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station is preparing for a return flight, this time to serve as commander, officials said on Wednesday.

Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is due to leave in November with a pair of veteran astronauts from the United States and Russia.

Wakata, 50, is expected to take command of the orbital research outpost in March, marking the first time a Japanese astronaut will lead a human space mission.

"It means a lot to Japan to have its own representative to command the International Space Station," Wakata told a news conference broadcast from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"It's a big milestone for Japan ... to have this experience," he said.

In 2009, Wakata became the first astronaut from Japan to live aboard the $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth.

Japan, one of 15 nations participating in the project, provided the station's largest and most elaborate laboratory, named Kibo, as well as cargo resupply ships.

Wakata, who was part of two missions on NASA's now-retired space shuttles, is training for his fourth flight along with NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, both 53.

Mastracchio, a veteran of three shuttle missions and one of NASA's most experienced spacewalkers, will be making his first long-duration flight. Tyurin will be living aboard the station for a third time.

Command of the station typically rotates between a U.S. astronaut and Russian cosmonaut. In 2009, Belgium astronaut Frank De Winne became the first European to command the station. Canada's first commander, Chris Hadfield, was in charge from March until May.

Wakata, a native of Saitama, Japan, holds a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering, a master's in applied mechanics and a doctorate in aerospace engineering from Kyushu University. Before being selected as an astronaut in 1992, he worked as an aircraft structural engineer for Japan Airlines.

Wakata's first two spaceflights, in January 1996 and October 2000, were aboard NASA space shuttles. He was Japan's first live-aboard space station resident from March to July 2009. Upon returning to the station in November, Wakata will serve as a flight engineer before taking over command in March.

(Reporting by Tom Brown,; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Three space station crewmembers land after 166-day mission

The International Space Station crew members (L to R) U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin walk after donning space suits before the launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome March 28, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Tue Sep 10, 2013 11:18pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut left the International Space Station on Tuesday, leaving a skeleton crew to maintain the outpost until replacements arrive later this month.

Outgoing station commander Pavel Vinogradov, NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin bid their crewmates good-bye and climbed aboard their Russian Soyuz capsule to prepare for a 3.5-hour flight back to Earth after 166 days in orbit.

"The time has gone by so incredibly fast," Cassidy said during an inflight interview last week.

"It'll be really sad to leave. This is an incredible experience ... but by the same token, I'm ready to go. It's time for some other people to come ... and I'm really excited to go back and see my friends and family."

Before leaving, Vinogradov, a veteran of three spaceflights, transferred command of the $100 billion station, a project of 15 nations, to fellow cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who remains aboard with Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA's Karen Nyberg.

"We had a great environment here, very friendly and very warm," Vinogradov said through a translator in a ceremony on NASA TV on Monday marking the change in command.

Strapped inside their Soyuz capsule, Vinogradov, Cassidy and Misurkin pulled away from the station's Poisk module at 7:35 p.m. EDT/1135 GMT as the two ships sailed 258 miles above Mongolia, said NASA mission commentator Brandi Dean.

Three hours later, the Soyuz hit the top of Earth's atmosphere, giving the men their first sampling of gravity since their launch on March 28.

The final leg of the journey took place under parachutes, with the capsule finally coming to a stop on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:58 p.m. EDT/0258 GMT, marking the end of the Expedition 36 mission.

The space station has been continuously staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.

Following medical checks, Vinogradov and Misurkin will be flown to Star City near Moscow. Cassidy will fly on a NASA jet back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A replacement space station crew, headed by veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kotov and including rookies Sergey Ryazanskiy and Michael Hopkins, is due to launch on September 25.

(Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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NASA Plans Test of Electronic Nose on International Space Station

International Space Station November 19, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA astronauts on Space Shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 mission will install an instrument on the International Space Station that can "smell" dangerous chemicals in the air. Designed to help protect crew members' health and safety, the experimental "ENose" will monitor the space station's environment for chemicals such as ammonia, mercury, methanol and formaldehyde.

The ENose fills the long-standing gap between onboard alarms and complex analytical instruments. Air-quality problems have occurred on the International Space Station, space shuttle and Russian Space Station Mir. In most cases, the chemicals were identified only after the crew had been exposed to them, if at all. The ENose, which will run continuously and autonomously, is the first instrument on station that will detect and quantify chemical leaks or spills as they happen.

"The ENose is a 'first-responder' that will alert crew members of possible contaminants in the air and also analyze and quantify targeted changes in cabin environment," said Margaret A. Ryan, the principal investigator of the ENose project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, in Pasadena, Calif. JPL built and manages the device.

Station crew members will unpack the ENose on Dec. 9 to begin the instrument's six-month demonstration in the crew cabin. If the experiment is successful, the ENose might be used in future space missions as part of an automated system to monitor and control astronauts' in-space environments.

"This ENose is a very capable instrument that will increase crew awareness of the state of their air quality," said Carl Walz, an International Space Station astronaut and Director for NASA's Advanced Capabilities Division, which funds the ENose. "Having experienced an air-quality event during my Expedition 4 mission on the space station, I wish I had the information that this ENose will provide future crews. This technology demonstration will provide important information for environmental control and life-support system designers for the future lunar outpost."

Specifically, the shoebox-sized ENose contains an array of 32 sensors that can identify and quantify several organic and inorganic chemical species, including organic solvents and marker chemicals that signal the start of electrical fires. The ENose sensors are polymer films that change their electrical conductivity in response to different chemicals. The pattern of the sensor array's response depends on the particular chemical types present in the air.

The instrument can analyze volatile aerosols and vapors, help monitor the cleanup of chemical spills or leaks, and enable more intensive chemical analysis by collecting raw data and streaming it to a computer at JPL's ENose laboratory. The instrument has a wide range of chemical sensitivity, from fractional parts per million to 10,000 parts per million. For all of its capabilities, the ENose weighs less than nine pounds and requires only 20 watts of power.

The ENose is now in its third generation. The first ENose was tested during a six-day demonstration on the STS-95 shuttle mission in 1998. That prototype could detect 10 compounds but could not analyze data immediately. The second-generation ENose could detect, identify and quantify 21 chemical species. It was extensively ground-tested. The third-generation ENose includes data-analysis software to identify and quantify the release of chemicals within 40 minutes of detection. While it will look for 10 chemical species in this six-month experiment, the new ENose can be trained to detect many others.

For more information about the ENose and the Advanced Environmental Monitoring and Control Project, visit: http://aemc.jpl.nasa.gov/instruments/enose.cfm

For more information about NASA's exploration program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

Media contacts: Rhea Borja
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0850
Rhea.R.Borja@jpl.nasa.gov

Grey Hautaluoma/Ashley Edwards
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668/1756
grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov
ashley.edwards-1@nasa.gov

2008-218

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