International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

cIclops · 2007-10-21 08:46:50

Expedition 15 back on Earth - 21 Oct 2007

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov, the 15th crew of the International Space Station, landed safely in their Soyuz spacecraft at 6:36 a.m. EDT Sunday in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
A ballistic descent for the returning Soyuz resulted in a landing about 210 miles west of the nominal landing site.

cIclops · 2007-10-22 08:13:56

European Briefing - video 43:09 mins - 21 Oct 2007

Comprehensive briefing by Alan Thirkettle, ESA ISS program manager, about the European involvement in ISS. Includes Columbus, Harmony, Node 3 & cupola, and ATV status. Discussion about the program extension to 2020 and cooperation in the VSE.

cIclops · 2007-10-25 09:37:01

Expedition 16 greet STS-120 crew - 25 Oct 2007

Expedition 16 Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Clay Anderson welcomed the seven-member STS-120 crew aboard the station at 10:39 a.m. EDT. The STS-120 crew arrived at the station when Space Shuttle Discovery docked at 8:40 a.m. Attention now turns to a crew exchange and on-orbit construction work.
One of the first major tasks is the station crew rotation. STS-120 Mission Specialist Daniel Tani will switch places with Anderson, who will be wrapping up a four-month tour of duty as an Expedition crew member. Tani is scheduled to stay on the station until he returns to Earth with STS-122 later this year.
Discovery also delivered the Harmony module, which will be attached to the station Friday. In addition, the STS-120 crew will conduct the first of five scheduled spacewalks Friday.

cIclops · 2007-10-26 09:26:20

Harmony module about to dock with Unity - 26 Oct 2007

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-10-26 10:03:39

China hopes to join Int'l Space Station project
BEIJING, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- China hopes to become the 17th nation joining the International Space Station (ISS) project, Vice Minister of Science and Technology Li Xueyong said on Tuesday.
"China sincerely wants to cooperate with the United States in space exploration and join the International Space Station project that has already involved 16 nations," said Li, a delegate to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), on the sidelines of the event.
The Chinese government has been pursuing a policy of peaceful use of airspace, Li said.
While ISS critics want to give it away, the Chinese want to take it away.

Well why not? The ISS is mostly complete anyway. If the Chinese want to build another module and lift it up themselves, why not? i want to make it claer that the competition to get to the Moon and Mars first is a friendly one. We want to encourage China to be a "joiner" and not a "conqueror" as Putin's Russia apparently wants to do.

cIclops · 2007-10-26 16:17:53

Very flashy presentation of the Processing Facility with details of five more modules waiting for launch.

cIclops · 2007-10-27 06:48:11

Newly attached Harmony module opened by ISS commander Peggy Whitson - 27 Oct 2007

high quality image

Commodore · 2007-10-27 21:28:27

Mmmm.... it's got that new module smell....

cIclops · 2007-10-29 08:07:12

Spacewalker finds debris in critical station truss joint - 28 Oct 2007

Space station engineers are scrambling to determine the source of unexpected debris in a critical solar array rotary joint and considering whether to order an additional, more thorough spacewalk inspection to figure out what sort of downstream repair work might be necessary.

Bad news for ISS just a day after the new Harmony module was opened.

cIclops · 2007-10-29 12:12:44

Image of particles taken from the starboard SARJ by Dan Tani during EVA-2

The particles were attracted by a magnet indicating that they came from steel parts. The ISS crew are testing the sample to better characterize the nature of the particles.

cIclops · 2007-10-30 08:26:08

Astronaut working on attaching the P6 truss - 30 Oct 2007

The P6 is being held slightly away from the main truss by the SSRMS as astronauts Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock check the fixing bolts.

After P6 was attached and connected, Scott Parazynski checked the nearby port SARJ and found no debris.

cIclops · 2007-10-30 13:54:17

P6 4B solar array wing tears during deployment - 30 Oct 2007

Yet another problem for the ISS, first the starboard SARJ had a serious problem and now so does the port P6 array

RedStreak · 2007-10-31 18:03:30

Damn this is a bad twist. Hopefully something can be done to patch it.

Commodore · 2007-10-31 21:40:51

Evidently it's not hurting power output a whole lot, but they are concerned about it tearing further.

cIclops · 2007-11-01 01:21:28

Yep, it produces enough power but the array is not fully extended and tensioned so there are structural load issues. An EVA is being planned to make a repair. It will be difficult because the tear is beyond the range of the SSRMS so it will have to use the Orbiter OBMS to reach it. Just to make it harder the array is "live" with 10kW of power!

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-01 10:30:13

This is sort of like Skylab all over again. As I recall, that space station also had problems with one of its solar panels.

cIclops · 2007-11-03 17:42:26

Scott Parazynski working on the torn solar array at the end of the OBMS - 3 Nov 2007

Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock successfully repaired a torn solar array Saturday during STS-120’s fourth spacewalk. The 7-hour, 19-minute excursion wrapped up at 1:22 p.m. EDT.
Parazynski rode the station’s robotic arm up to the damaged area of the array. After reaching the area of the damage, Parazynski installed the cufflinks that were built by the crew. Once the five cufflinks were in place, the crew inside then deployed the array half a bay at a time until the array was fully deployed.
With that task behind them, the shuttle’s crew will prepare to leave the station. They will close the hatch between the shuttle and the station at 1:43 p.m. EST on Sunday, after interviews with European media, off-duty time, and farewells. Discovery is scheduled to undock from the station Monday morning.

cIclops · 2007-11-05 08:55:16

Peggy Whitson, expedition 16 commander with flight engineers Yuri Malenchenko (right) and Dan Tani

Discovery undocked from the International Space Station at 5:32 a.m. today. The shuttle and station crews ended joint operations when the hatches closed at 3:03 p.m. EST Sunday.

cIclops · 2007-11-06 05:21:40

Another image of the new configuration showing the P6 array fully deployed and the Harmony module - imaged 5 Nov 2007

Harmony is partly illuminated below the horizontal truss, to the left of the Destiny lab module.

High resolution version (2.5 MB)

The "cufflinks" are just visible as thicker white lines halfway along on the left outermost lower solar array.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-06 08:27:38

I noticed the Solar panels to the right is at a right angle to the Solar Panels on the left. I understand one of those two arrays is not tracking the Sun, as a result it looks twisted. Is that correct or is the ISS supposed to look this way?

cIclops · 2007-11-06 10:09:21

Yep. The array on the right hand side of the image, called S4, is not tracking because of problems with the rotary joint (SARJ) - see earlier post above. They have been parked in a position to maximize power.

Josh Cryer · 2007-11-06 18:18:46

I downloaded STS-120 EVA4 from NASA Space Flight. What an incredible EVA and what an incredible mission overall. We haven't seen anything like this since Hubble (and I was a lot younger when Hubble was worked on).

cIclops · 2007-11-07 04:01:46

I downloaded STS-120 EVA4 from NASA Space Flight. What an incredible EVA and what an incredible mission overall. We haven't seen anything like this since Hubble (and I was a lot younger when Hubble was worked on).

Hi Josh, good to see you posting again!

Yes that EVA was amazing, they figured out how to repair the array, planned the spacewalk and robotic ops, made the tools and new array parts, and executed it all within 4 days. A normal spacewalk takes months of preparation and training.

Video of the whole spacewalk is here

Expedition 16 will be doing three spacewalk in the next few weeks to fully install and prepare Harmony for the Columbus and Kibo labs.

SpaceNut · 2007-11-07 08:02:43

I downloaded STS-120 EVA4 from NASA Space Flight. What an incredible EVA and what an incredible mission overall. We haven't seen anything like this since Hubble (and I was a lot younger when Hubble was worked on).

Ya I echo cIclops post of glad to see you are back.

Yes it was spectacular and it reminded me of the Nasa of old that we once saw during the Apollo program, Skylab and yes with Hubble.
We will see another Hubble mission but the suspense of risk of failure will not be as high as it was for any of the others or of the Iss solar panels repair.

SpaceNut · 2007-11-08 07:51:52

The place where we can learn what we are doing on the ISS for what we have spent and hopefully some of this will port directly towards a future mars mission.

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#76 2007-10-21 08:46:50

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#77 2007-10-22 08:13:56

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#78 2007-10-25 09:37:01

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#79 2007-10-26 09:26:20

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#80 2007-10-26 10:03:39

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#81 2007-10-26 16:17:53

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#82 2007-10-27 06:48:11

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#83 2007-10-27 21:28:27

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#84 2007-10-29 08:07:12

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#85 2007-10-29 12:12:44

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#86 2007-10-30 08:26:08

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#87 2007-10-30 13:54:17

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#88 2007-10-31 18:03:30

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#89 2007-10-31 21:40:51

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#90 2007-11-01 01:21:28

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#91 2007-11-01 10:30:13

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#92 2007-11-03 17:42:26

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#93 2007-11-05 08:55:16

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#94 2007-11-06 05:21:40

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#95 2007-11-06 08:27:38

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#96 2007-11-06 10:09:21

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#97 2007-11-06 18:18:46

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#98 2007-11-07 04:01:46

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#99 2007-11-07 08:02:43

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

#100 2007-11-08 07:51:52

Re: International Space Station (ISS / Alpha)

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