Kibo Has Got Its Work Cut Out as JAXA and Pepti
Dream Sign Strategic Agreement to Expand Their Research
Collaboration

Image: Source: NASA:Bill Dunford
|| June 12: 2017 || ά. Pepti Dream Inc, a Tokyo-based
public biopharmaceutical company and the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency:JAXA, a national research and
development agency, has established a strategic
partnership for the High-Quality Protein Crystal
Growth:PCG experiment on the Japanese Experimental
Module Kibo of the International Space Station:ISS. This
strategic partnership agreement is a renewal of the
current fee-based contract and represents a further
expansion of the relationship between the two
organisations.
Under this Agreement, the number of
experimental protein samples to be investigated is
increased six-fold over the original agreement and the
term is further extended from August 2017 to August
2020. Pepti Dream and JAXA originally entered into a
fee-based Agreement in February 2016. Under this
original Agreement, JAXA has crystallised the HER2
receptor with a non-standard cyclic peptide, the drug
candidate, provided by Pepti Dream.
The first space experiment was
conducted on Kibo from February to March 2017, followed
by diffraction data measurement and structure
determination. The crystal of the HER2-peptide complex
grown in space gave a substantially higher resolution
than those crystals attained on the ground. The crystal
structure clearly showed the macrocyclic drug candidate
bound to the HER2 receptor and showed an unprecedented
binding mode.
These results provide critical
information that Pepti Dream can now use to further
optimise the HER2 targeting macrocyclic peptide
candidate and accelerate its development. The Strategic
Partnership Agreement between Pepti Dream and JAXA
leverages each other's strengths.
Utilising Kibo as a Drug-design
supporting platform, the two institutions strive to
obtain structural information on target proteins and
their drug candidates swiftly and efficiently, aiming to
produce best-in-class and first-in-class drugs for the
world as well as Japan.
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Now Rais Rise and Go and Take 1500
Images of the Sun in Just Five Minutes: For Only This
You are Sending Me 200 Miles Into the Lake Eden Eye and
for Five Minutes Only: Well You Cannot Stay There Longer
Than Twenty Five Minutes Because of Your Parabolic
Trajectory

The RAISE payload, partially enclosed
in a clean tent, is shown after completion of
testing before going to the launch pad. Image: Amir
Caspi, Southwest Research Institute
|| May 04: 2017: Lina Tran Writing ||
ά. Tomorrow May 05, scientists will launch a sounding
rocket 200 miles up into the atmosphere, where in just
five minutes, it will take 1,500 images of the sun. The
NASA-funded RAISE mission is designed to scrutinise
split-second changes occurring near the sun’s active
regions, areas of intense, complex magnetic activity,
that can give rise to solar flares, which eject energy
and solar material out into space.
Several missions continuously study the sun, such as
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:SDO and the Solar
Terrestrial Relations Observatory:STEREO but
certain areas of the sun demand especially high-cadence
observations in order to understand the rapid changes
occurring there. That’s where Rapid Acquisition
Imaging Spectrograph Experiment:RAISE comes in. “Dynamic
processes happen on all timescales.” said Mr Don Hassler,
Principal Investigator for the RAISE mission at the
Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“With RAISE, we’ll read out an image
every two-tenths of a second, so we can study very fast
processes and changes on the sun. That’s around five to
10 times faster than comparable instruments on other
sounding rocket or satellite missions.” RAISE images are
used to create a data product, called, a spectrogram,
which separates light from the sun into all its
different wavelength components.
By looking at the intensity of light
at each wavelength, scientists can assess how solar
material and energy moves around the sun and how that
movement evolves into massive solar eruptions. ''RAISE
is pushing the limits of high-cadence observations, and
doing so is challenging.” Mr Hassler said. “But that’s
exactly what the NASA sounding rocket programme is for.”
The flight of a sounding rocket is short-lived and has a
parabolic trajectory, the shape of a frown. Most
sounding rocket flights last for 15 to 20 minutes and
just five to six of those minutes, are spent making
observations from above the atmosphere, observations
that can only be done in space. In RAISE’s case, the
extreme ultraviolet light the instruments observe can’t
penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. After the flight, the
payload parachutes to the ground, where it can be
recovered for use again.
This will be the RAISE mission’s third flight and the
scientists have continuously updated its technology. For
the upcoming flight, they have refurbished the detectors
and updated the flight software and the payload carries
a new diffraction grating, which reflects light and
separates it into its separate wavelengths.
The launch window for RAISE opens at 14:25 EDT at the
White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The precise timing of the launch depends on weather
conditions and co-ordinated timing with other space
observatories such as NASA’s SDO and IRIS, as well as
the joint Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency:NASA’s
Hinode.
RAISE is supported by NASA’s Sounding Rocket Programme
at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA’s
Heliophysics Division manages the Sounding Rocket
Programme.
: Editor: Rob Garner: NASA:
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to Seek and Demand the End of Death Penalty For It is Your Business What is Done
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Does Not Exist.
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Moonrise Over the Mountain

Image: Source: NASA:Bill Dunford
|| April 17: 2017 || ά. A nearly full moon rises over
the Wasatch Mountains, near Salt Lake City, UT on June
19, 2016. The next day marked both a full moon and the
June solstice, which is the first day of summer in the
northern hemisphere. This photo was published on the
following day, June 20.
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in Your Name. The Law That Makes Humans Take Part in Taking Human Lives and That
Permits and Kills Human Lives is No Law. It is the Rule of the Jungle Where Law
Does Not Exist.
The Humanion
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NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson to Stay Three More
Months at ISS to Make New Record

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is set to
extend her mission with an additional three months at
the International Space Station. Image: NASA
|| April 09: 2017 || ά. Already
poised to break the record for cumulative time spent in
space by a U.S astronaut, Peggy Whitson is set to extend
her mission with an additional three months at the
International Space Station. NASA and the Russian Space
Agency Roscosmos, signed an agreement to extend Peggy
Whitson’s stay on the space station into Expedition 52.
Rather than returning to Earth with her Expedition 51
crew mates Oleg Novitsky of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet
of the European Space Agency:ESA, in June as originally
planned, Whitson will remain on the space station.
She will return home with NASA’s Jack
Fischer and Roscosmos’ Fyodor Yurchikhin, the landing is
targeted for September. “This is great news.” Whitson
said. “I love being up here. Living and working aboard
the space station is where I feel like I make the
greatest contribution, so I am constantly trying to
squeeze every drop out of my time here. Having three
more months to squeeze is just what I would wish for.”
The arrangement takes advantage of a Soyuz seat left
empty by the Roscosmos decision to temporarily reduce
their crew complement to two cosmonauts.
Whitson’s extension will ensure a
full complement of six astronauts on board the station
and increase the amount of valuable astronaut time
available for experiments on board the station.
“Peggy’s skill and experience makes her an incredible
asset aboard the space station.” said Kirk Shireman,
NASA’s International Space Station Program Manager. “By
extending the stay of one of NASA’s most veteran
astronauts, our research, our technology development,
our commercial and our international partner communities
will all benefit."
This is Whitson’s third long-duration stay onboard the
space station. She launched on November 17 with 377 days
in space already under her belt and on April 24 will
break Jeff Williams’ standing United States record of
534 cumulative days in space. In 2008, Whitson became
the first woman to command the space station and on
April 09 will become the first woman to command it
twice. In addition, she holds the record for most
spacewalks by a female.
Kathryn Hambleton: Headquarters, Washington:
202-358-1100: kathryn.hambleton at nasa.gov
Brandi Dean/:Dan Huot: Johnson Space Center, Houston:
281-483-5111: brandi.k.dean at nasa.gov:dan.huot at
nasa.gov
: Editor: Karen Northon: NASA:
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to Seek and Demand the End of Death Penalty For It is Your Business What is Done
in Your Name. The Law That Makes Humans Take Part in Taking Human Lives and That
Permits and Kills Human Lives is No Law. It is the Rule of the Jungle Where Law
Does Not Exist.
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So What Happened to That Piece of Cloth Blanket:
Well, It Went Into the Universe Looking for Human
Ingenuity

Flight Director Emily Nelson and
Capcom Anne McClain in Houston work to come up with a
plan to replace a lost thermal and micrometeoroid shield
during a spacewalk. Image: NASA:James Blair
|| April 06: 2017 || ά. 240 miles
above Earth, travelling 12 times the speed of a bullet,
a cloth blanket gets away, during a spacewalk and
immediately drifts out of reach, into space, away from
the space station, forever. It’s no danger to the
astronauts as it floats away but immediately there is a
new problem: an important station docking port needs
that blanket for protection from the extremes of space
and now it is gone.
That’s when you call Houston or more likely Houston
calls you first and Mission Control finds an answer.
“This was the kind of thing we train for.” said Mission
Control Flight Director Emily Nelson. “Most of the time
we get issues like this to work inside the station. We
have a multi-layered team, that comes together to solve
problems. This is probably the most visible version of
this we’ve had in a long time but we solve problems
large and small with some frequency. It’s part of
operating a complex orbiting space station.”
Nelson oversaw the work to come up with a solution for
protecting the docking port and its critical seal with a
used cover during the March 30 spacewalk. The used cover
had been removed earlier in the spacewalk from another
piece of station equipment and it wasn’t designed to fit
in place of the lost blanket. “People ask me who came up
with the idea to use that cover.” she said.
“Honestly, all the people in the
building watched the crew wrestle with that cover, the
one eventually used to substitute for the lost shield,
earlier in the day, so it occurred to everybody almost
simultaneously that ‘Hey, we’ve got a cover, that’s
roughly the right size and we just stuck that in the
airlock, so maybe, we could use it?’”
“That’s true.” said John Mularski, the Lead EVA or
spacewalk, officer. “Everybody watching the video had
the exact same idea but then somebody had to implement
the details of it. Using the cover was pretty obvious
but knowing we were going to be able to find a way to
securely tether it so that we wouldn’t constrain any
further ISS operations; that part was not at all
obvious.” Nelson said.
As has been the case many times past in both famous and
everyday instances, Mission Control faced the challenge
of not only fitting a square peg into a round hole, but
also doing it on deadline and making it work as if the
two were made to go together. “Anne McClain, our
spacewalk communicator astronaut, and Steve Bowen, an
experienced spacewalker who was working as our
spacecraft communicator for the day, sanity checked how
we were going to do that.” Nelson said. “Anne did a
phenomenal job of reading the concept to the crew. The
crew then did a phenomenal job understanding and
visualising what we really wanted.
The crew was doing it in the dark so that made it more
complicated. We had a great camera view of the big
picture but had no light. When the sun came up, we used
the robotic arm camera to see we were in a good
configuration. From the moment we realised the shield
had escaped to the time we had it fixed was about two
hours and 20 minutes.” Mularski added.
“The unique aspect of this problem was the need for our
greater team to work incredibly quickly.” Nelson
explained. “It was designers, analysts and engineers,
who work behind the scenes, working with operations
engineers, flight controllers, and crew members.
Everyone on the broader team comes from a different
perspective. We all have our different expertise. But
the team works together to make sure we’re doing the
right things, and at the end of the day we need to make
sure we’re making the situation better and not in some
way making it worse.” added Daren Welsh, the EVA flight
controller who was responsible for working with
engineering teams to develop the technical details of
the solution and creating a plan the team could execute.
:Editor: Mark Garcia: NASA:
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to Seek and Demand the End of Death Penalty For It is Your Business What is Done
in Your Name. The Law That Makes Humans Take Part in Taking Human Lives and That
Permits and Kills Human Lives is No Law. It is the Rule of the Jungle Where Law
Does Not Exist.
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Hello Thomas: Can You See Home

Image: Thierry Legault
|| February 14: 2017 || ά. This image of the
International Space Station passing in front of the Moon
on February 04 was taken from Rouen, France, the birth
town of ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Though Thomas
considers Dieppe, France to be his home town, he was
born in Rouen and completed his secondary education
there before studying aerospace engineering. Thomas is
spending six months on the Station conducting science
experiments as part of the Proxima mission.
Astrophotographer
Thierry Legault was
unaware of Thomas’ connection to Rouen at the time. He
first followed the Station’s transit from Lyon but was
unable to capture the sequence owing to cloudy skies.
Two days later, the transit line passed close to Rouen
where, despite frequent cloudiness, Thierry was
successful. He shot this 0.4 second-long transit during
daylight.
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to Seek and Demand the End of Death Penalty For It is Your Business What is Done
in Your Name. The Law That Makes Humans Take Part in Taking Human Lives and That
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Does Not Exist.
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Paris, We Have Lift Off

ESA astronaut Thomas
Pesquet, Roscosmos commander Oleg Novitsky and NASA
astronaut Peggy Whitson in front of their Soyuz MS-03
spacecraft November 11, on their last check before
launch. Image: GCTC
|| November 17: 2016 || ά. ESA
astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson
and Roscosmos commander Oleg Novitsky blasted into space
this evening from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
at 20:20 GMT. Their Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft is now safely
heading towards the International Space Station that is
floating in the Lake Eden Eye. They will dock at 22:00
GMT on Saturday and, depending on which way one is
looking, high up or low, all they could say is 'Hello'
After the spectacular launch that propelled the
astronauts 1640 km in less than 10 minutes, the trio
will now spend two days catching up with the
International Space Station that orbits Earth at 28,800
km/h. The Soyuz spacecraft is a car-sized vehicle
that has been ferrying people to space for almost 50
years. Thomas, Peggy and Oleg will circle Earth 34 times
before arriving at ISS. The journey is relatively smooth
and quiet after the rigours of launch. With no Internet
or satellite phones, the crew relies on radio to
communicate at set intervals with ground control.
Thomas is the first French astronaut to visit the Space
Station since ESA astronaut Léopold Eyrharts helped to
install Europe’s Columbus module in 2008. Peggy and Oleg
have both flown before on a Soyuz, this is Peggy’s third
expedition on the Station and her second time in
command. Once Thomas enters the orbital complex, his
Proxima mission begins with a short link-up with friends
and family.
Nothing can prepare astronauts fully for weightlessness,
but trainers on Earth do their best with underwater
sessions, 20 second zero-g sessions on aircraft flights
and virtual-reality sessions. The first two weeks for
Thomas will be spent getting used to living and working
in microgravity. During this time, his body will adapt
to living without the effects of gravity. His spine will
grow longer, fluids in his body will shift towards his
head and his bones will weaken.
In addition, Thomas needs to readjust his concept of
space. Without weight, there is no traditional sense of
up or down, left or right. It all depends on how you
float. To make matters worse, any equipment, tools or
food that is not fixed will float away. Thomas has a
full schedule of science and experiments planned for his
six-month mission.
In his first week on the Station he
will start work on the Aquamembrane experiment that
promises to simplify testing for water contamination, on
Earth and in space. He will also place samples around
the Columbus laboratory for the Matiss experiment that
is investigating antibacterial properties of materials
in space to see if future spacecraft could be made
easier to clean.
Also during his first week in space, Thomas will place
monitors to chart what space radiation reaches the
International Space Station and his body.
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to Seek and Demand the End of Death Penalty For It is Your Business What is Done
in Your Name. The Law That Makes Humans Take Part in Taking Human Lives and That
Permits and Kills Human Lives is No Law. It is the Rule of the Jungle Where Law
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Testing the Waters at ISS

Image: CNES–E. Grimault, 2016
|| October 18: 2016 || ά. The water
drunk by astronauts on the International Space Station
is recycled by up to 80% from their sweat, urine and
other sources. Recycling reduces the number of supply
missions needed to run the Station, and building a
self-sufficient spacecraft will be necessary for future
mission farther from our planet.
Flight surgeons and astronauts closely monitor the
quality of the drinking water and the Aquapad experiment
that ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet will run in space aims
to simplify the regular testing. Aquapad is a new
approach developed by France’s CNES space agency: paper
impregnated with powdered growth medium creates a 3D
petri dish. When water is added, the microbes form
coloured spots revealing their locations.
Using a tablet app, Thomas will photograph the dots to
calculate precisely how many bacteria are present and
whether the water is safe to drink. Although developed
for space, the technology behind Aquapad is clearly
useful on Earth. For example, in disaster areas, where
water could be contaminated, a quick picture and
calculation are cheaper and faster than sending samples
to a laboratory. ω.
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Thomas to Take the Fight with Bacteria to ISS

Image: CNES:Emmanuel Grimault, 2016
|| September 27: 2016 || ά. Everybody
knows a clean house is a healthy place to live, but what
if you live on the International Space Station? Air and
water are constantly recycled and waste can only be
removed when a spacecraft departs for Earth every few
months. For the six astronauts living in humanity’s
habitat in space, keeping the Station clean is an
important part of their life to avoid bacteria and
fungus. Every Saturday is cleaning day, when the whole
crew wipe surfaces, vacuum and collect waste.
The Matiss experiment is investigating antibacterial
properties of materials in space to see if future
spacecraft could be made easier to clean. The experiment
consists of four identical plaques that ESA astronaut
Thomas Pesquet will place in the European Columbus
laboratory and leave for at least three months. France’s
CNES space agency, in collaboration with the ENS
universityof Lyon, research institute CEA-Leti and
construction company St Gobain, selected five advanced
materials that could stop bacteria from settling and
growing on the surface. A sixth element, made of glass,
is used as control material.
The materials are a diverse mix of advanced technology –
from self-assembly monolayers and green polymers to
ceramic polymers and water-repellent hybrid silica. The
smart materials should stop bacteria from sticking to
the surface and growing, effectively making them easier
to clean and more hygienic, but which one works best?
The units are open on the sides to let air flow
naturally through and collect any bacteria floating
past. Thomas will put the four units on the European
Drawer Rack, on the European Physiology Modules and at
air vents.
At the end of his mission next year he will tape the
sides to block other bacteria from entering and wrap
them in plastic. They will be returned for analysis in
the Soyuz spacecraft alongside Thomas. ω.
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Proba-03: Seeing Through Shadow to View the Sun's
Corona

Proba-03: 2013 ESA’s
double-satellite Proba-03 mission will be
flying where no previous member of the Proba
minisatellite family has gone before, up to
60 000 km away, a seventh of the way to the
Moon. Set for launch in 2019, the two
satellites will be launched together into a
highly elliptical or elongated orbit,
ranging from an perigee (low point) of 600
km up to an apogee, high point of 60 000 km.
Image: ESA:P. Carril |
|| August 22: 2016 || ά. Every 18
months or so, scientists and sensation-seekers gather at
set points on Earth’s surface, to await awe-inspiring
solar eclipses. The Moon briefly blocks the Sun,
revealing its mysterious outer atmosphere, the corona.
Though what if researchers could induce such eclipses at
will? That’s the scientific vision behind ESA’s
double-satellite Proba-03, the world’s first precision
formation-flying mission, planned for launch in 2019.
And this space where this takes place, The Humanion
calls The Lake Eden Eye: the space between the Earth and
the Moon.
An ‘occulter’ satellite will fly 150 m ahead of a second
‘coronagraph’ satellite, casting a precise shadow to
reveal the ghostly tendrils of the solar corona, down to
01.2 solar radii, for hours on end.
“We have two scientific instruments
aboard,” explains Damien Galano, Proba-03 Payload
Manager. “The primary payload is ASPIICS, a coronagraph
to observe the corona in visible light while the DARA
radiometer on the occulter measures the total solar
irradiance coming from the Sun, a scientific parameter
about which there is still some uncertainty.

Diffraction of light: An
example of diffraction, called the 'Bright
Spot of Arago' or 'Poisson's Spot': a bright
point that appears at the centre of a
circular object's shadow due to diffraction.
In 1818, physicist Augustin Fresnel
submitted a paper on the theory of
diffraction to the French Academy. His
proposed light moved a wave, as opposed to a
stream of particles. Physicist Siméon
Poisson was critical of this theory, arguing
that if it were true, a bright spot should
appear behind a circular shade, which he
thought was obviously untrue. Unfortunately
for his argument, physicist Dominique Arago
swiftly verified the spot experimentally.
Image: Thomas Bauer at Wellesley |
“The corona is a million times
fainter than the Sun itself, so the light from the solar
disk needs to be blocked in order to see it. The
coronagraph idea was conceived by astronomer Bernard
Lyot in the 1930s, and since then has been developed and
has been incorporated into both Earth-based and space
telescopes.
“But because of the wave nature of light, even within
the cone of shadow cast by the occulter, some light
still spills around the occulter edges, a phenomenon
called ‘diffraction’. To minimise this unwanted light,
the coronagraph can be positioned closer to the occulter,
and therefore deeper into the shadow cone. However, the
deeper it is, the more the solar corona will also be
occulted by the occulter.
Hence the advantage of a larger
occulter and the maximum possible distance between the
occulter and the coronagraph. Obviously a 150-m-long
satellite is not a practical proposition, but our
formation flying approach should provide us with
equivalent performance.
“Furthermore, the ASPIICS coronagraph itself contains a
smaller, secondary occulter disk, to cut down on
diffracted light still further. “Precision is all,
the aperture of the ASPIICS instrument measures 50 mm in
diameter, and for corona observation performance it
should remain as much as possible in the centre of the
shadow, which is about 70 mm across at 150 m.
"So we’ll need to achieve millimetre-scale positioning
control between the two spacecraft, effectively forming
a single giant instrument across space.” Association of
Spacecraft for Polarimetry and Imaging of the Corona of
the Sun:ASPIICS is being developed for ESA by a
consortium led by Centre Spatial de Liège in Belgium,
made up of 15 companies and institutes from five ESA
Member States.
“Many of these companies are
new to ESA, and they’ve proved to be very motivated and
eager to show their capabilities,” remarks Damien.
“We’ve produced various prototypes of instrument
elements, and our first complete ‘structural and thermal
model’ should be complete in the autumn, ahead of our
end-of-year Critical Design Review. “We’re also looking
into various optical aspects, such as the best occulter
edge shape to minimise diffraction.”
There’s a lot of broader interest in this external
occulter approach, especially for the imaging of
Earth-like exoplanets, which would require the blocking
out of their parent stars. “It’s a similar challenge,
the main difference being that the star in question is a
point source of light rather than the extended source
that our Sun is. So it could be that formation-flown
external occulters become versatile scientific tools,
opening many new vistas in astronomy.” ω.
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The Photograph: ISS047e085715

The 3 Millionth Image: Image:NASA
|| May 16: 2016 ||
ά.
ISS047e085715: 30.04.16: The Expedition 47 crew
poses for the 3 millionth image taken aboard the
International Space Station. For more than 15 years,
station crews have been taking photographs of the earth
and inside activities.
In the photo:
Front row from the left: ESA
astronaut Timothy Peake, NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra
and Roscosmos cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.
Back row from left: Russian
cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin along
with NASA astronaut Jeff Williams.
:Editor:Mark Garcia:NASA:
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NASA, ISS Partners Announce Future Mission Crew
Members
Kathryn Hambleton: Jenny Knotts Writing

Image: NASA
|| May 08: 2016 || NASA and
its International Space Station partners have announced
the crew members for missions to the orbiting laboratory
in 2017. The selection includes first-time space flyer
NASA astronaut Scott Tingle and veteran Randy Bresnik.
“There’s so much going on aboard the space station at
this point, so many science experiments and technology
demonstrations,” said Chris Cassidy, chief of the
Astronaut Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in
Houston. “Scott and Randy have their work cut out for
them, but I have no doubt they’ll do excellent jobs.”
Tingle is a member of NASA’s 2009 astronaut class and
will fly with cosmonauts Ivan Vagner, who is also a
first-time flier, and veteran Alexander Skvortsov, both
of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. They will launch
in September 2017. The three will join the station’s
Expedition 53 crew of NASA astronaut Jack Fischer, ESA
(European Space Agency) astronaut Paolo Nespoli and
Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin.
Tingle, a captain in the U.S. Navy, was born in
Attleboro, Massachusetts, but considers Randolph,
Massachusetts, his home. He was commissioned as a naval
officer in 1991 and earned the gold wings of a naval
aviator in 1993. He has accumulated more than 4,000
hours in 48 types of aircraft, 700 carrier landings and
54 combat missions.
Tingle earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical
engineering from Southern Massachusetts University in
Dartmouth in 1987, and a master’s degree in mechanical
engineering, with a specialty in fluid mechanics and
propulsion, from Purdue University in West Lafayette,
Indiana, in 1988. He also is a 1998 graduate of the Navy
Test Pilot School.
Bresnik’s mission will begin in November 2017, when he
and his crewmates Sergey Ryazansky of Roscosmos and
Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency (JAXA) will join Tingle, Skvortsov and Vagner on
the station for Expedition 54.
Bresnik, who considers Santa Monica, California, to be
his hometown, is a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine
Corps. Bresnik received his commission in May 1989 and
was designated a Marine Corps aviator in 1992. He flew
the F/A-18 Hornet in support of Operation Southern Watch
and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has accumulated more
than 6,000 hours in 81 types of aircraft.
Bresnik was selected as an astronaut in May 2004. His
first spaceflight was in November 2009 aboard space
shuttle Atlantis for STS-129, which lasted 11 days. The
flight was the 31st shuttle flight to the space station,
during which Bresnik conducted two spacewalks totaling
11 hours and 50 minutes.
Bresnik graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, South
Carolina, in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in
mathematics, and earned a master’s degree in aviation
systems from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in
2002. He is also a 2008 graduate of the U.S. Air Force
Air War College.
The crew comprising Expedition 53 will be:
Jack Fischer, NASA
Paolo Nespoli, ESA
Fyodor Yurchikin, Roscosmos
Scott Tingle, NASA
Alexander Skvortsov, Roscosmos
Ivan Vagner, Roscosmos
The crew comprising Expedition 54 will be:
Scott Tingle, NASA
Alexander Skvortsov, Roscosmos
Ivan Vagner, Roscosmos
Randy Bresnik, NASA
Sergey Ryazansky, Roscosmos
Norishige Kanai, JAXA
The space station is a convergence of science,
technology and human innovation that enables us to
demonstrate new technologies and make research
breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been
continuously occupied since November 2000 and, since
then, has been visited by more than 200 people and a
variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The
space station remains the springboard to NASA's next
giant leap in exploration, including future missions to
an asteroid and Mars.
Follow Scott Tingle on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Maker
Randy Bresnik will post updates on social media using #AstroKomrade
at:
http://twitter.com/space_station
and
http://www.instagram.com/iss
For Twitter updates from all NASA astronauts, follow:
http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts
Kathryn Hambleton: Headquarters, Washington:
202-358-1100: kathryn.hambleton@nasa.gov
Jenny Knotts: Johnson Space Center, Houston:
281-483-5111: norma.j.knotts@nasa.gov
( Editor: Karen Northon: NASA)
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The Sinai Peninsula Seen from ISS

Sinai: Released 29/04/2016 6:11 pm: Copyright
ESA/NASA
|| April
29: 2016
|| Soyuz spacecraft (left) with Cygnus
spacecraft (right) over the Sinai peninsula between the
Gulf of Suez (left) and Gulf of Aqaba (right) seen from
the International Space Station by ESA astronaut Tim
Peake. Tim shared this image, commenting: "Sinai
squeezed between Soyuz and Cygnus".
Tim's six-month mission to the ISS is named Principia,
after Isaac Newton’s ground-breaking Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, which describes the principal laws of
motion and gravity.
He is performing more than 30 scientific experiments for
ESA and taking part in numerous others from ESA’s
international partners.
ESA and the UK Space Agency have partnered to develop
many exciting educational activities around the
Principia mission, aimed at sparking the interest of
young children in science and space.
More about
the Principia mission
More photos from Tim on his
flickr photostream
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April Aurora in the Lake Eden Eye: Were You at ISS
You Would Have Seen This Magnificence

Credit: NASA
|| April
20: 2016 || This
still shows a stunning aurora captured from the
International Space Station. Auroras are a space weather
phenomenon that occur when electrically-charged
electrons and protons collide with neutral atoms in the
upper atmosphere. The dancing lights of the aurora
provide a spectacular show for those on the ground, but
also capture the imaginations of scientists who study
the aurora and the complex processes that create them.
This frame is from a compilation of ultra-high
definition time-lapses of the aurora shot from the space
station. The full video is available
here.
( Editor: Rob Garner: NASA)
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Judith Resnik Left Her Mark in Human Space
Exploration
Image: NASA on The Commons
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|| April 16, 2016 || Judith Resnik first flew as a mission specialist on STS 41-D which launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on August 30, 1984, the maiden flight of the orbiter Discovery. With the completion of this flight she logged 144 hours and 57 minutes in space.
Dr. Resnik was a mission specialist on STS 51-L which was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 11:38:00 EST on January 28, 1986. The crew on board the Orbiter Challenger included the spacecraft commander, Mr. F.R. Scobee, the pilot, Commander M.J. Smith (USN), fellow mission specialists, Dr. R.E. McNair, and Lieutenant Colonel E.S. Onizuka (USAF), as well as two civilian payload specialists, Mr. G.B. Jarvis and Mrs. S. C. McAuliffe. The STS 51-L crew died on January 28, 1986 when Challenger exploded after launch.
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There is Nothing Like a Good Old-fashioned Book:
Tim Peake Reading Yuri Gagarin's Road to the Stars Among the
Stars on His Day Off
Released 12/04/2016 3:37 pm: Copyright ESA/NASA
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||April 12, 2016|| On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth in his Vostok spacecraft that launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, now in Kazakhstan. ESA astronaut Tim Peake was launched into space from the very same launchpad as Yuri Gagarin and now, 55 years later, he tweeted this picture of himself on the International Space Station reading Yuri’s autobiography Road to the Stars.
Dr Helen Sharman First Briton in Space
Cosmonaut: British Astronaut, Soyuz TM-12 :
“Yuri Gagarin was given the international crown
for inspiration. Wherever he went, crowds of
people thronged the streets to catch a glimpse
of the person who embodied the abilities of
fellow humans, the bravery of exploration, and
the desire to discover what is new.
"On my last night in space, reflecting on my
time, I realised that being away from Earth
reinforced what my Russian friends had told me
on the ground – what’s important is personal
relationships and what people can do together.
Space is grand and being part of it makes people
feel grand.”
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The book is a special copy, signed by Gagarin himself, and it flew to space in 1991 with British astronaut Helen Sharman to the Russian space station Mir. The book is now signed by the current crew on the International Space Station, as well as the crew on Mir during Helen’s mission.
April 12 has become a worldwide day of celebration of human spaceflight. Cosmonauts on the International Space Station are given a day off on this day. Today Yuri Malenchenko, Oleg Skripochka, Alexei Ovchinin are given a break from their busy schedules in space – aside from their obligatory daily exercise.
Follow Tim Peake via
timpeake.esa.int
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Good Night From ISS
April 06, 2016: Earth's thin atmosphere stands out against the blackness of space in this photo shared on Aug. 31, 2015, by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly on board the International Space Station. The station's solar panels can be seen in darkness at the right of the image.
Kelly, in the midst of a year-long stay on the orbital outpost, shared the photo in a tweet: "Day 157. At the end of the day, #sunrise will come again. Good night from @space_station! #YearInSpace."
( Editor: Jim Wilson: NASA)
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The Moonset: Viewed From ISS Window
April 04, 2016: Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Tim Peake of the European Space Agency took this striking photograph of the moon from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station on March 28, 2016. Peake (@astro_timpeake) shared the image on March 30 and wrote to his social media followers, "I was looking for #Antarctica – hard to spot from our orbit. Settled for a moonset instead."
( Editor: Sarah Loff: NASA)
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Find ISS,
Please, If You Can
Michael Carlowicz Writing
Photograph courtesy of Thierry Legault
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April 02, 2016: While the Moon was busy passing between the Sun and Earth on January 4 for the first eclipse of 2011, the International Space Station (ISS) made its own pass between them. Powered by the Sun, orbiting the Earth, a satellite like the Moon—the ISS is an expression of how humanity is connected to and keeping an eye on all three bodies.
This photo was taken by astrophotographer Thierry Legault, who set up near Muscat, Oman, to capture this view at 1:09 p.m. local time (9:09 UTC) on January 4, 2011. He had to shoot quickly, as the transit of the space station through the field of view lasted just 0.86 seconds. The ISS was moving at 7.8 kilometers per second (17,000 mph).
The disk of the Sun is partly obscured on the lower left, as the Moon is 20 minutes past the maximum eclipse. The edges of the image are black because the light filters are strong, like a welder's mask, to prevent sunlight from damaging the camera.
The partial solar eclipse was the first of four in 2011, with others coming on June 1, July 1, and November 25. Eclipses occur when the new Moon passes in the line between Sun and Earth. Because the Moon’s orbit is inclined about 5 degrees to Earth’s, the Moon and its shadow often pass above or below the plane of the Earth. Because both orbits are elliptical, the size and shape of eclipses changes slightly with each event.
The image also includes sunspots 1140 (bottom) and 1142 (center), part of solar cycle 24, which should reach maximum in the next two years. Each spot was only producing relatively weak B-class solar flares on the day of the eclipse. Sunspots, flares, and great eruptions known as coronal mass ejections will become much more common in coming months, and each produces its own type of disturbance on Earth, including radio noise, auroras, and satellite and electric power disruptions. The solar cycle also plays a role in Earth's climate.
As for the space station, it is passing overhead regularly, as it makes 15 to 16 circuits around the Earth each day. It can pass through your local skies anywhere from one to three times per day, depending on your latitude and the path of the orbit. You don't have much time to spot it, though, as it crosses the sky in just a few minutes.
“Most people don’t know that, under the right conditions, you can use a telescope to actually see the shuttle and ISS this clearly,” writes astronomer Phil Plait, “and even then it ain’t easy.”
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