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. ω.

Whatever Your Field of Work and Wherever in the World You are, Please, Make a Choice to Do All You Can 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. The Humanion

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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

|| 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: ω.

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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. ω.

Whatever Your Field of Work and Wherever in the World You are, Please, Make a Choice to Do All You Can 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. 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: ω.

Whatever Your Field of Work and Wherever in the World You are, Please, Make a Choice to Do All You Can 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. The Humanion

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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: ω.

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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. ω.

Whatever Your Field of Work and Wherever in the World You are, Please, Make a Choice to Do All You Can 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. The Humanion

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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. ω.

Whatever Your Field of Work and Wherever in the World You are, Please, Make a Choice to Do All You Can 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. The Humanion

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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:  ω.

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

|| 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

||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.

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

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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