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NASA

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Title: NASA


1
NASA
  • International Space Station
  • Why Explore Space?
  • Michael GriffinAdministratorNational
    Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • As NASA resumes flights of the space shuttle to
    finish building the International Space Station,
    many are questioning whether the project the
    most complex construction feat ever undertaken
    is worth the risk and expense.

2
  • I have been asked, and asked myself, this
    question many times during my career,
    particularly when the United States lacked a plan
    to go beyond the space station to other
    destinations in the solar system. The issue was
    addressed eloquently in the report of the
    Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which
    examined the 2003 loss of the shuttle and its
    crew. That report pointed out that for the
    foreseeable future, space travel is going to be
    expensive, difficult and dangerous. But, for the
    United States, it is strategic. It is part of
    what makes us a great nation. And the report
    declared that if we are going to send humans into
    space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost,
    the risk and the difficulty. A human spaceflight
    program with no plan to send people anywhere
    beyond the orbiting space station certainly did
    not meet that standard. President Bush
    responded to the Columbia report. The
    administration looked at where we had been in
    space and concluded that we needed to do more, to
    go further. The result was the Vision for Space
    Exploration, announced nearly three years ago,
    which commits the United States to using the
    shuttle to complete the space station, then
    retiring the shuttle and building a new
    generation of spacecraft to venture out into the
    solar system. Congress has ratified that position
    with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, making
    the Vision for Space Exploration the law of the
    land.






3
  • I have been asked, and asked myself, this
    question many times during my career,
    particularly when the United States lacked a plan
    to go beyond the space station to other
    destinations in the solar system. The issue was
    addressed eloquently in the report of the
    Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which
    examined the 2003 loss of the shuttle and its
    crew. That report pointed out that for the
    foreseeable future, space travel is going to be
    expensive, difficult and dangerous. But, for the
    United States, it is strategic. It is part of
    what makes us a great nation. And the report
    declared that if we are going to send humans into
    space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost,
    the risk and the difficulty. A human spaceflight
    program with no plan to send people anywhere
    beyond the orbiting space station certainly did
    not meet that standard. President Bush
    responded to the Columbia report. The
    administration looked at where we had been in
    space and concluded that we needed to do more, to
    go further. The result was the Vision for Space
    Exploration, announced nearly three years ago,
    which commits the United States to using the
    shuttle to complete the space station, then
    retiring the shuttle and building a new
    generation of spacecraft to venture out into the
    solar system. Congress has ratified that position
    with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, making
    the Vision for Space Exploration the law of the
    land.

4
  • Today, NASA is moving forward with a new focus
    for the manned space program to go out beyond
    Earth orbit for purposes of human exploration and
    scientific discovery. And the International Space
    Station is now a stepping stone on the way,
    rather than being the end of the line. On the
    space station, we will learn how to live and work
    in space. We will learn how to build hardware
    that can survive and function for the years
    required to make the round-trip voyage from Earth
    to Mars. If humans are indeed going to go to
    Mars, if we're going to go beyond, we have to
    learn how to live on other planetary surfaces, to
    use what we find there and bend it to our will,
    just as the Pilgrims did when they came to what
    is now New England where half of them died
    during that first frigid winter in 1620. There
    was a reason their celebration was called
    "Thanksgiving."

5
  • The Pilgrims had to learn to survive in a strange
    new place across a vast ocean. If we are to
    become a spacefaring nation, the next generation
    of explorers is going to have to learn how to
    survive in other forbidding, faraway places
    across the vastness of space. The moon is a
    crucially important stepping stone along that
    path an alien world, yet one that is only a
    three-day journey from Earth. Using the space
    station and building an outpost on the moon to
    prepare for the trip to Mars are critical
    milestones in America's quest to become a truly
    spacefaring nation. I think that we should want
    that. I want that. I want it for the American
    people, for my grandchildren, for my
    great-grandchildren. Throughout history, the
    great nations have been the ones at the forefront
    of the frontiers of their time. Britain became
    great in the 17th century through its exploration
    and mastery of the seas. America's greatness in
    the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery
    of the air. For the next generations, the
    frontier will be space.Other countries will
    explore the cosmos, whether the United States
    does or not. And those will be Earth's great
    nations in the years and centuries to come. I
    believe America should look to its future and
    consider what that future will look like if we
    choose not to be a spacefaring nation.

6
Latest News
  • Station Recovers From Power Loss
  • Mission control teams are working to assess
    systems affected by a power loss aboard the
    International Space Station early Sunday morning.
    The station's three crew members were not in any
    danger, but it did turn an off-duty day into a
    full work shift. About 1 a.m. EST, one of the
    power channels of the P4 solar array electrical
    system went down because of a glitch with a
    device known as a direct current switching unit.
    It controls power distribution from the solar
    array to the battery systems and other hardware.
    The glitch resulted in a temporary loss of
    communications, and shut down some equipment,
    including a few science facilities and heating
    units and control moment gyroscope 2. The
    station never lost orientation control, but it
    operated most of the day with two of four gyros.
    Control moment gyroscope 3 previously had been
    powered down. Flight controllers restored power
    to nearly all affected systems and equipment by
    Monday morning. They are still investigating what
    caused the glitch, but they believe it was an
    isolated event.

7
Record Setting Spacewalks
  • Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer
    Suni Williams finished a 6-hour, 40-minute
    spacewalk Thursday. Their completed tasks will
    allow for the attachment of a cargo platform
    during the STS-118 mission this summer and
    relocation of the P6 truss during STS-120 later
    this year. The crew now begins to review
    Russian procedures for the next spacewalk on Feb.
    22. Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail
    Tyurin will work on an antenna on the Progress 23
    cargo ship docked at the aft port of the Zvezda
    service module. The three spacewalks from the
    Quest airlock in U.S. spacesuits and a Russian
    spacewalk on Feb. 22 will be the most ever done
    by station crew members during such a short
    period and will mark five spacewalks in all for
    Expedition 14, a record for any expedition.

8
Station Crew Conducts Three Back-to-Back
Spacewalks
  • The third spacewalk in nine days by International
    Space Station Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and
    Flight Engineer Sunita Williams wrapped up on
    Thursday, Feb. 8. The three spacewalks, from
    the Quest airlock in U.S. spacesuits, and a
    Russian spacewalk scheduled for Feb. 22 will be
    the most ever done by station crew members during
    an increment, said Mike Suffredini, station
    program manager. The three spacewalks are
    termed EVAs 6, 7, and 8 because there were five
    previous station spacewalks from the U.S. airlock
    Quest during increments, times when no shuttle
    was present.

9
Season's Greetings to All Onboard the Space
Station, and to All a Good Mission
  • While stockings were hung by chimneys with care
    and children were snug in their beds across the
    globe, Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight
    Engineers Sunita Williams and Mikhail Tyurin
    voyaged around the world in space.
  • Like millions around the world, for the crew of
    Expedition 14, this holiday season was met with
    bundles of joy, cheer and a special delivery. The
    winter festivities brought to the station crew
    more than 7,000 electronic postcards with warm
    wishes from those celebrating on Earth below.
    From Mesa, Ariz. to London, England, here are
    some of the greetings that reached the trio who
    celebrated this holiday season orbiting 230 miles
    above their home on Earth.

10
Progress Docks with Space Station
  • A new Progress docked to the International Space
    Station at 959 p.m. EST Friday with more than
    2.5 tons of fuel, oxygen, other supplies and
    equipment aboard. The station's 24th Progress
    unpiloted cargo carrier brings to the orbiting
    laboratory more than 1,720 pounds of propellant,
    about 110 pounds of oxygen, and 3,285 pounds of
    dry cargo a total of 5,115 pounds.
  • P24 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
    Kazakhstan Wednesday at 912 p.m. It reached the
    station after a flight of just over two days.
    The spacecraft used the automated Kurs system
    to dock at the Pirs Docking Compartment.
    Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin
    stood by at the manual Toru docking system
    controls, should his intervention have become
    necessary. Expedition 14 crew members,
    Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria, Tyurin and Flight
    Engineer Sunita Williams, finished filling P24's
    sister cargo carrier ISS Progress 22, with trash
    and other discards for its Jan. 16 undocking from
    Pirs and subsequent destruction on re-entry.
  • After its unloading P22 was used as a storage
    area for a while. Many items brought to the
    station aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on
    STS-121 in July eventually found a temporary home
    there until crew members could put them in more
    permanent places. ISS Progress 23 remains at
    the aft compartment of the Zvezda Service Module.
    It is scheduled to undock in April. The
    Progress is similar in appearance and some design
    elements to the Soyuz spacecraft, which brings
    crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat
    while they are there and returns them to Earth.
    The aft module, the instrumentation and
    propulsion module, is nearly identical. But the
    second of the three Progress sections is a
    refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the
    Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo
    module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where
    the crew is seated on launch and which returns
    them to Earth, is the middle module and the third
    is called the orbital module.

11
Spacewalkers Tee Off on Science, Mechanics
  • Two International Space Station crew members
    wrapped up a 5-hour, 38-minute spacewalk from the
    Pirs docking compartment airlock at 1255 a.m.
    EST Thursday. The spacewalk included a golf
    shot that merited a high-flying birdie rating.
  • Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin was the lead
    spacewalker, EV1, and Commander Mike
    Lopez-Alegria was EV2. They wore Russian Orlan
    spacesuits. Golf was the first major spacewalk
    activity. Lopez-Alegria put the tee on the ladder
    outside Pirs. Tyurin set up a camera and then
    stepped up and addressed the ball for his
    one-handed shot. Lopez-Alegria helped secure
    Tyurin's feet. The golf was a commercial
    activity sponsored by a Canadian golf company
    through a contract with the Russian Federal Space
    Agency. The ball left the station toward the
    right side instead of to the rear, a substantial
    slice. The ball weighs just 3 grams, a tenth of
    an ounce or about three times the weight of a
    dollar bill, compared to 1.62 ounces for a
    standard golf ball. At that weight it was
    unlikely to damage any station components if the
    shot had gone awry. The ball will have a short
    stay in orbit, perhaps three days. Inspection
    of a Kurs antenna on the Progress 23 unpiloted
    cargo carrier that docked at the aft end of the
    station's Zvezda Service Module Oct. 26 was the
    next task. Final latching of the spacecraft to
    the station was delayed by more than three hours
    because Mission Control Moscow was not sure the
    antenna was completely retracted. Tyurin and
    Lopez-Alegria moved to the rear of Zvezda and
    photographed the antenna. It was still fully
    extended, so Tyurin used a screwdriver to release
    a latch and tried to retract the antenna. Russian
    flight controllers also tried to retract it by
    activating a drive. Neither succeeded, and the
    task was abandoned. Next they relocated a WAL
    antenna, which will guide the unpiloted European
    cargo carrier to docking with the station. That
    vehicle, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, is
    scheduled to make its first flight next year. In
    its previous position the antenna interfered with
    a cover for a Zvezda booster engine.
  • Then the two installed a BTN neutron experiment,
    which characterizes charged and neutral particles
    in low Earth orbit. Atop Zvezda, its readings
    during solar bursts should be of special interest
    to scientists. Two thermal covers from the BTN
    were jettisoned before the spacewalkers returned
    to the Pirs airlock. A final scheduled task, an
    inspection of bolts on one of two Strela
    hand-operated cranes on the docking compartment,
    was postponed. The scheduled 6 p.m. EST start
    of the spacewalk was delayed because of a cooling
    issue in Tyurin's suit. Tyurin got out of the
    suit and straightened a suspect hose which
    apparently had become kinked. A balky hatch
    further delayed start of the spacewalk. This
    was the first spacewalk during Expedition 14, the
    sixth for Lopez-Alegria and the fourth for
    Tyurin.
  • If you've ever burned your dinner, you know how
    startling a smoke alarm can be. Now, imagine
    you're 220 miles away from Earth in an orbiting
    lab when the alarm sounds. Fires are no
    laughing matter on Earth, but in space they could
    be even more devastating."If a chair is on fire
    in your home, you have time to get out. In a
    spacecraft, you don't," said NASA scientist Dr.
    David Urban. "You have to detect smoke in an
    early pre-fire state, so you can stop it before
    it starts."
  • Urban and a team of scientists and engineers at
    NASA's Glenn Research Center are developing a
    space station experiment to help engineers design
    smoke detectors that are sensitive enough to
    catch fires early, but not so sensitive that they
    cause false alarms.
  • This may not sound like a major challenge. After
    all, household smoke detectors are mass produced
    and inexpensive. But detecting smoke in space
    isn't quite so simple. Smoke detectors work by
    looking for particles in the air that are about
    the same size as the particles normally found in
    smoke. However, a 1996 NASA Glenn study showed
    that smoke particles in space are bigger than
    those on Earth. "Smoke particles form
    differently in microgravity than they do on the
    ground," said William Sheredy, project manager
    for the Smoke Aerosol Measurement Experiment
    (SAME). "When smoke is created in microgravity,
    the particles have more time to gather together,
    producing larger particles or particle chains
    than in normal gravity."So far, nobody knows
    exactly how big those particles are. That's why
    the NASA Glenn team created SAME. This space
    station experiment will burn samples of materials
    normally found in space -- like Teflon, silicon,
    cellulose and Kapton -- and then measure the size
    of the particles in the smoke. Engineers will use
    this information to design the next generation of
    spacecraft smoke detectors.As NASA often does,
    the team used several commercial parts to build
    the experiment. One of those parts, the P-Trak,
    was made by Minnesota company TSI. Designed to
    measure air quality, this small handheld device
    is capable of counting individual smoke
    particles. It's also the perfect size and weight
    for a space station experiment. There's just one
    catch It wasn't designed for space.
  • P-Trak works by passing air through a heated
    chamber of vaporous alcohol. When the air is
    cooled, the alcohol condenses around dust
    particles much like water condenses on a cold
    glass. This makes the particles large enough that
    an optical sensor can detect them as they scatter
    light from a laser beam. "We were concerned
    because gravity assists in the circulation of the
    alcohol inside the device," Sheredy said. "We
    weren't sure it would work properly in the
    absence of gravity."So the scientists modified
    the device by carving tiny grooves inside its
    chambers to improve the flow of alcohol in
    microgravity. Of course, the scientific method
    requires every theory to be tested, and this
    experiment was no exception.Before they could
    use the device in SAME, the team had to be sure
    the modification would work. To do so, they
    created another space station experiment called
    the Dust and Aerosol Measurement Feasibility Test
    (DAFT), to test the modified P-Trak.In
    September, astronaut and Expedition 13 Flight
    Engineer Jeff Williams operated DAFT on the
    station. Urban, Sheredy and other DAFT team
    members watched in real time as Williams called
    in the recordings to Payload Communications. The
    results showed that the commercial particle
    counter works in space."It was really exciting.
    For people who work on projects like we do, days
    like this are highlights in our careers," said
    Sheredy. "From beginning to end, DAFT took about
    3.5 years, and it all came down to about six
    hours of operation."Those crucial six hours
    brought the team one step closer to understanding
    the nature of space smoke and improving NASA's
    detectors. They look forward to another career
    highlight next summer when their primary
    experiment, SAME, is scheduled to travel to the
    station aboard the space shuttle.

12
Hockey Star Ovechkin Receives Tyurin Autographed
Photo
  • Before he was sent to live and work on the
    International Space Station for six months,
    Expedition 14 Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin
    autographed his crew photo for another famous
    Russian. Now, the photo has reached its intended
    recipient National Hockey League star Alexander
    Ovechkin.
  • While Tyurin orbited aboard the station some 220
    miles above Earth, Ovechkin was presented with
    the framed photo following practice with his
    Washington Capitals teammates. Ovechkin was
    thrilled to receive the photo from a
    cosmonaut."Very important people for any
    country," said Ovechkin, "Russia or
    U.S."Ovechkin was pleased to learn that before
    Tyurin took up engineering as a career, he had
    wanted to grow up to be a hockey player.
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