#Space Shuttle Salyut

[lonestarflight]

Cancelled Missions: Apollo-Soyuz Test Program II, with a Salyut Space Station

"The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) had its origins in talks aimed at developing a common U.S./Soviet docking system for space rescue. The concept of a common docking system was first put forward in 1970; it was assumed at that time, however, that the docking system would be developed for future spacecraft, such as the U.S. Space Station/Space Shuttle, not the U.S. Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in operation at the time.

A joint U.S./Soviet space mission served the political aims of both countries, however, so the concept of a near-term docking mission rapidly gained momentum. In May 1972, at the superpower summit meeting held in Moscow, President Richard Nixon and Premier Alexei Kosygin signed an agreement calling for an Apollo-Soyuz docking in July 1975.

NASA and its contractors studied ways of expanding upon ASTP even before it was formally approved; in April 1972, for example, McDonnell Douglas proposed a Skylab-Salyut international space laboratory . A year and a half later (September 1973), however, the aerospace trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology cited unnamed NASA officials when it reported that, while the Soviets had indicated interest in a 1977 second ASTP flight, the U.S. space agency was 'currently unwilling' to divert funds from Space Shuttle development.

Salyut Apollo docking diagram

Nevertheless, early in 1974 the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, examined whether a second ASTP mission might be feasible in 1977. The 1977 ASTP proposal aimed to fill the expected gap in U.S. piloted space missions between the 1975 ASTP mission and the first Space Shuttle flight.

The brief in-house study focused on mission requirements for which NASA JSC had direct responsibility. FOD assumed that Apollo CSM-119 would serve as the prime 1977 ASTP spacecraft and that the U.S. would again provide the Docking Module (DM) for linking the Apollo CSM with the Soyuz spacecraft. CSM-119 had been configured as the five-seat Skylab rescue CSM; work to modify it to serve as the 1975 ASTP backup spacecraft began as FOD conducted its study, soon after the third and final Skylab crew returned to Earth in February 1974. FOD suggested that, if a backup CSM were deemed necessary for the 1977 ASTP mission, then the incomplete CSM-115 spacecraft should get the job. CSM-115, which resided in storage in California, had been tapped originally for the cancelled Apollo 19 moon landing mission.

FOD also assumed that the ASTP prime crew of Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton would serve as the backup crew for the 1977 ASTP mission, while the 1975 ASTP backup crew of Alan Bean, Ronald Evans, and Jack Lousma would become the 1977 ASTP prime crew. FOD conceded, however, that this assumption was probably not realistic. If new crewmembers were needed, FOD noted, then training them would require 20 months. They would undergo 500 hours of intensive language instruction during their training.

FOD estimated that Rockwell International support for the 1977 ASTP flight would cost $49.6 million, while new experiments, nine new space suits, and 'government-furnished equipment' would total $40 million. Completing and modifying CSM-115 for its backup role would cost $25 million. Institutional costs — for example, operating Mission Control and the Command Module Simulator (CMS), printing training manuals and flight documentation, and keeping the cafeteria open after hours — would add up to about $15 million. This would bring the total cost to $104.7 million without the backup CSM and $129.7 million with the backup CSM.

The FOD study identified 'two additional major problems' facing the 1977 ASTP mission, both of which involved NASA JSC's Space Shuttle plans. The first was that the CMS had to be removed to make room for planned Space Shuttle simulators. Leaving it in place to support the 1977 ASTP mission would postpone Shuttle simulator availability.

A thornier problem was that 75% of NASA JSC's existing flight controllers (about 100 people) would be required for the 1977 ASTP in the six months leading up to and during the mission. In the same period, NASA planned to conduct "horizontal" Space Shuttle flight tests. These would see a Shuttle Orbiter flown atop a modified 747; later, the aircraft would release the Orbiter for an unpowered glide back to Earth. FOD estimated that NASA JSC would need to hire new flight controllers if it had to support both the 1977 ASTP and the horizontal flight tests. The new controllers would receive training to support Space Shuttle testing while veteran controllers supported the 1977 ASTP.

The ASTP Apollo CSM (CSM-111) lifted off on a Saturn IB rocket on 15 July 1975 with astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Donald Slayton on board. The ASTP Saturn IB, the last rocket of the Saturn family to fly, lifted off from Launch Complex (LC) 39 Pad B, one of two Saturn V pads at Kennedy Space Center, not the LC 34 and LC 37 pads used for Saturn IB launches in the Apollo lunar program. This was because NASA had judged that maintaining the Saturn IB pads for Skylab and ASTP would be too costly. A 'pedestal' (nicknamed the 'milkstool') raised the Skylab 2, 3, and 4 and ASTP Saturn IB rockets so that they could use the Pad 39B Saturn V umbilicals and crew access arm.

Once in orbit, the ASTP CSM turned and docked with the DM mounted on top of the Saturn IB's second stage. It then withdrew the DM from the stage and set out in pursuit of the Soyuz 19 spacecraft, which had launched about eight hours before the Apollo CSM with cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov on board. The two craft docked on 17 July and undocked for the final time on July 19. Soyuz 19 landed on 21 July. The ASTP Apollo CSM, the last Apollo spacecraft to fly, splashed down near Hawaii on 24 July 1975 — six years to the day after Apollo 11, the first piloted Moon landing mission, returned to Earth.

The proposal for a 1977 ASTP repeat gained little traction. Though talks aimed at a U.S. Space Shuttle docking with a Soviet Salyut space station had resumed in May 1975, no plans for new U.S.-Soviet manned missions existed when the ASTP Apollo splashed down. Shuttle-Salyut negotiators made progress in 1975-1976, but the U.S. deferred signing an agreement until after the results of the November 1976 election were known.

In May 1977, the sides formally agreed that a Shuttle-Salyut mission should occur. In September 1978, however, NASA announced that talks had ended pending results of a comprehensive U.S. government review. Following the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, work toward joint U.S.-Soviet piloted space missions was abandoned on advice from the U.S. Department of State. It would resume a decade later as the Soviet Union underwent radical internal changes that led to its collapse in 1991 and the rebirth of the Soviet space program as the Russian space program."

-Article from "No Shortage of Dreams" blog: link

Drew Granston: link

source, source, source

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.19 (after 1940)

1942 – World War II: In German-occupied Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto is established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp. 1943 – World War II: In German-occupied Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, after German troops enter the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the remaining Jews. 1943 – Albert Hofmann deliberately doses himself with LSD for the first time, three days after having discovered its effects on April 16, an event commonly known and celebrated as Bicycle Day. 1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco. 1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign. 1971 – Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president. 1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station. 1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for conspiracy in the Tate–LaBianca murders. 1973 – The Portuguese Socialist Party is founded in the German town of Bad Münstereifel. 1975 – India's first satellite Aryabhata launched in orbit from Kapustin Yar, Russia. 1975 – South Vietnamese forces withdrew from the town of Xuan Loc in the last major battle of the Vietnam War. 1976 – A violent F5 tornado strikes around Brownwood, Texas, injuring 11 people. Two people were thrown at least 1,000 yards (910 m) by the tornado and survived uninjured. 1984 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours. 1985 – Two hundred ATF and FBI agents lay siege to the compound of the white supremacist survivalist group The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas; the CSA surrenders two days later. 1987 – The Simpsons first appear as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, first starting with "Good Night". 1989 – A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors. 1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building in Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Seventy-six Davidians, including 18 children under age 10, died in the fire. 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six. 1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin. 2000 – Air Philippines Flight 541 crashes in Samal, Davao del Norte, killing all 131 people on board. 2001 – Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on STS-100 carrying the Canadarm2 to the International Space Station. 2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected to the papacy and becomes Pope Benedict XVI. 2011 – Fidel Castro resigns as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba after holding the title since July 1961. 2013 – Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar is later captured hiding in a boat inside a backyard in the suburb of Watertown. 2020 – A killing spree in Nova Scotia, Canada, leaves 22 people and the perpetrator dead, making it the deadliest rampage in the country's history. 2021 – The Ingenuity helicopter becomes the first aircraft to achieve flight on another planet.

[alienateus]

CHARACTER THESIS Q AND A

to him: maybe your empathy’s just a comforting lie; have you ever thought of that? maybe you think you know how the other person feels, but you’re only feeling yourself; maybe you’re even worse than me. or maybe we’re all just guessing. maybe the only difference is that i don’t lie to myself about it — blindslight. to her: ‘ i’m fine.’ a moment of silence, followed by the unmistakable click of a phone hanging up. i end the conversation before it starts. about names, possessions, and everything i have never told anyone: i gave you a false name when we first met; it was comfortable. you called me by it for several weeks before i gave you my real name, out of principle alone — you already knew i was lying. you have the innate ability to weaponize anything, including knowledge; it’s why you’re so prone to destruction and self-destruction. sometimes, it hurts. most times, i am unaffected.

to angels: we need modified symbols of humanity to console us; it’s easier to speak of angels than a god. they’re less threatening, you see them in your image with wings and a halo. in 1985, cosmonaunts vladimir solevev and oleg atkov claimed to have seen angels while performing medical experiments in salyut 7 high above the earth. this isn't the first time i’ve heard of similar incidents happening in the vast emptiness. a former colleague claimed to have seen something lurking in the space shuttle, describing it as an encounter with an angel, describing it with vague description and a sense of awe. he was subsequently silenced and demoted to office work with contractors. unsurprisingly. in the official reports, i attributed it to fatigue.  question to death: i've never been particularly comforting to others regarding this. when asked about death, my response is factual. informative, at best. dismissive, at worst. it's part of nature's recycling system based on the conservation of matter, returning to our origins. no room for frivolous philosophies on the afterlife. ‘ death, scientifically, is the cessation of life processes. the body's energy transforms, not vanishes. ’ my response remains unchanged. questions to the body: do you want to be human? to the heart: i don’t quite feel human anymore.

tagged by: [me] tagging: @susponte, @emnesias, @crushsung, @wellfell, @flmed, @deatheless

[piratesexmachine420]

Ok, I appreciate the sentiment (and tolerate the snowcloning), but this is bordering on misinfo -- I hope you'll indulge me in a little neuro-atypical pedantry rant/infodump.

First, some minor corrections: "Apollo" and "Sputnik" were never names for rockets. The Apollo program used (primarily) Saturn-family rockets, and "Sputnik" was a name used for a variety of spacecraft. (The first and most famous of which, Sputnik 1, launched on an R-7 derived vehicle.)

Furthermore, it's silly to compare Sputnik, a 1950s series of unmanned technology demonstrators and scientific satellites, with Apollo, a 1960s-70s manned deep space lunar exploration program. The real American analog to Sputnik would be either Explorer, a long-running series of earth-orbit scientific satellites starting with 1958's Explorer 1 (first US satellite, third overall); or Vanguard, a similar (but more civilian) program mostly known for their first launch attempt exploding on the pad.

Vanguard is absolutely haughty AF, but I think Explorer isn't too tonally far from "fellow traveller" -- just a little guy up there all alone and learning as much as he can! And, if we wanna pull from later NASA history there's the mars rover Sojourner, which is basically a 1:1 match for Sputnik. (And, if it helps, Sojourner is probably one of the cutest robotic spacecraft ever built.)

Now, as for Apollo, the Soviet lunar spacecraft was derived from the Soyuz, or "Union". This would be like NASA flying an Apollo CSM named "America" ...which they did. (On Apollo 17, to be exact) There's a proud history of both nations giving Good Patriotic Names to their spaceships: the Us also had Liberty Bell 7, Freedom 7, Space Shuttle Columbia, the Apollo 11 CSM also named Columbia, the Apollo 11 LM Eagle, etc. and the USSR had the Salyut space stations ("Salute"), Progress unmanned supply ships, the Vostok program ("East"), etc.

In the end, both countries had pretty similar naming rationales. People are people are people -- we give important things important names, we give friendly things friendly names, and we all look up at night to see the stars.

And yeah, sure, that too is yuri

Love the contrast between the Americans’ “Apollo” and the Soviets’ “Sputnik.” You got the Americans naming their rocket after a Greek god trying to communicate the grandness and importance of this rocket. And you got the Soviets naming their rocket “fellow traveler.” Like a friend you go on an  adventure with together. This rocket is our little friend lol 

[sanjaylodh]

Stone Age, Copper Age, Iron Age

Stone Age, Copper Age, Iron Age, whatever the civilization may be

But the most famous is today's space search era.

maybe you don't understand friends

I am describing the story of human misdeeds in the present world

This new human world of ours has entered a new era.

In today's great civilization, which countries have played a role in the path of space travel?

Space exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space.[1] While the exploration of space is currently carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration is conducted both by uncrewed robotic space probes and human spaceflight. Space exploration, like its classical form astronomy, is one of the main sources for space science.

While the observation of objects in space, known as astronomy, predates reliable recorded history, it was the development of large and relatively efficient rockets during the mid-twentieth century that allowed physical space exploration to become a reality. Common rationales for exploring space include advancing scientific research, national prestige, uniting different nations, ensuring the future survival of humanity, and developing military and strategic advantages against other countries.[2]

The early era of space exploration was driven by a "Space Race" between the Soviet Union and the United States. A driving force of the start of space exploration was during the Cold War. After the ability to create nuclear weapons, the narrative of defense/offense left land and the power to control the air became the focus. Both the Soviet and the U.S. were fighting to prove their superiority in technology through exploring the unknown: space. In fact, the reason NASA was made was due to the response of Sputnik I.[3] The launch of the first human-made object to orbit Earth, the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957, and the first Moon landing by the American Apollo 11 mission on 20 July 1969 are often taken as landmarks for this initial period. The Soviet space program achieved many of the first milestones, including the first living being in orbit in 1957, the first human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1) in 1961, the first spacewalk (by Alexei Leonov) on 18 March 1965, the first automatic landing on another celestial body in 1966, and the launch of the first space station (Salyut 1) in 1971. After the first 20 years of exploration, focus shifted from one-off flights to renewable hardware, such as the Space Shuttle program, and from competition to cooperation as with the International Space Station (ISS).

With the substantial completion of the ISS[4] following STS-133 in March 2011, plans for space exploration by the U.S. remain in flux. Constellation, a Bush administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020[5] was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009.[6] The Obama administration proposed a revision of Constellation in 2010 to focus on the development of the capability for crewed missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), envisioning extending the operation of the ISS beyond 2020, transferring the development of launch vehicles for human crews from NASA to the private sector, and developing technology to enable missions to beyond LEO, such as Earth–Moon L1, the Moon, Earth–Sun L2, near-Earth asteroids, and Phobos or Mars orbit.[7]

In the 2000s, China initiated a successful crewed spaceflight program while India launched Chandraayan 1, while the European Union and Japan have also planned future crewed space missions. China, Russia, and Japan have advocated crewed missions to the Moon during the 21st century, while the European Union has advocated crewed missions to both the Moon and Mars during the 20th and 21st century.

Well our country India is not behind

But one thing is there

We are traveling through planets and satellites so that we can see water there.

So that someday we can settle humans there

That's why water is so important

Translate Hindi

प्रस्तर युग ताम्र युग लौह युग चाहे कोई भी सभ्यता हो

मगर सबसे मशहूर है आज की स्पेस सार्च युग

शायद आप समझे नहीं दोस्तों

मैं वर्तमान दुनिया में इंसानी कर्तूत कहानी का विवरण दे रहा हूँ

हमारी यह नया इंसानी दुनिया नए युग में पधार चुके है

आज की महत सभ्यता में किन किन देश स्पेस भ्रमण की ऱास्ता में भूमिका निभाएं है

अंतरिक्ष अन्वेषण बाहरी अंतरिक्ष का पता लगाने के लिए खगोल विज्ञान और अंतरिक्ष प्रौद्योगिकी का उपयोग है।[1] जबकि अंतरिक्ष की खोज वर्तमान में मुख्य रूप से खगोलविदों द्वारा दूरबीनों के साथ की जाती है, इसका भौतिक अन्वेषण मानव रहित रोबोटिक अंतरिक्ष जांच और मानव अंतरिक्ष उड़ान दोनों द्वारा किया जाता है। अंतरिक्ष अन्वेषण, अपने शास्त्रीय रूप खगोल विज्ञान की तरह, अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान के मुख्य स्रोतों में से एक है।

जबकि अंतरिक्ष में वस्तुओं का अवलोकन, जिसे खगोल विज्ञान के रूप में जाना जाता है, विश्वसनीय दर्ज इतिहास से पहले का है, यह बीसवीं शताब्दी के मध्य के दौरान बड़े और अपेक्षाकृत कुशल रॉकेटों का विकास था जिसने भौतिक अंतरिक्ष अन्वेषण को वास्तविकता बनने की अनुमति दी थी। अंतरिक्ष की खोज के सामान्य तर्कों में वैज्ञानिक अनुसंधान को आगे बढ़ाना, राष्ट्रीय प्रतिष्ठा, विभिन्न देशों को एकजुट करना, मानवता के भविष्य के अस्तित्व को सुनिश्चित करना और अन्य देशों के खिलाफ सैन्य और रण��ीतिक लाभ विकसित करना शामिल है।[2]

अंतरिक्ष अन्वेषण का प्रारंभिक युग सोवियत संघ और संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका के बीच "अंतरिक्ष दौड़" से प्रेरित था। अंतरिक्ष अन्वेषण की शुरुआत की प्रेरक शक्ति शीत युद्ध के दौरान थी। परमाणु हथियार बनाने की क्षमता के बाद, रक्षा/अपराध की कथा ने ज़मीन छोड़ दी और हवा को नियंत्रित करने की शक्ति पर ध्यान केंद्रित किया गया। सोवियत और अमेरिका दोनों अज्ञात अंतरिक्ष की खोज के माध्यम से प्रौद्योगिकी में अपनी श्रेष्ठता साबित करने के लिए लड़ रहे थे। वास्तव में, नासा के निर्माण का कारण स्पुतनिक I की प्रतिक्रिया थी।[3] 4 अक्टूबर 1957 को पृथ्वी की कक्षा में जाने वाली पहली मानव निर्मित वस्तु, सोवियत संघ के स्पुतनिक 1 का प्रक्षेपण, और 20 जुलाई 1969 को अमेरिकी अपोलो 11 मिशन द्वारा चंद्रमा पर पहली लैंडिंग को अक्सर इस प्रारंभिक अवधि के लिए मील के पत्थर के रूप में लिया जाता है। सोवियत अंतरिक्ष कार्यक्रम ने कई पहले मील के पत्थर हासिल किए, जिनमें 1957 में कक्षा में पहला जीवित प्राणी, 1961 में पहली मानव अंतरिक्ष उड़ान (वोस्तोक 1 पर यूरी गगारिन), 18 मार्च 1965 को पहला स्पेसवॉक (एलेक्सी लियोनोव द्वारा), पहला शामिल है। 1966 में एक अन्य खगोलीय पिंड पर स्वचालित लैंडिंग, और 1971 में पहले अंतरिक्ष स्टेशन (सैल्युट 1) का प्रक्षेपण। अन्वेषण के पहले 20 वर्षों के बाद, ध्यान एकबारगी उड़ानों से हटकर नवीकरणीय हार्डवेयर पर स्थानांतरित हो गया, जैसे कि स्पेस शटल कार्यक्रम, और अंतर्राष्ट्रीय अंतरिक्ष स्टेशन (आईएसएस) के साथ प्रतिस्पर्धा से लेकर सहयोग तक।

मार्च 2011 में एसटीएस-133 के बाद आईएसएस[4] के पर्याप्त समापन के साथ, अमेरिका द्वारा अंतरिक्ष अन्वेषण की योजनाएं निरंतर बनी हुई हैं। 2020 तक चंद्रमा पर वापसी के लिए बुश प्रशासन के कार्यक्रम कॉन्स्टेलेशन को 2009 में एक विशेषज्ञ समीक्षा पैनल की रिपोर्ट में अपर्याप्त रूप से वित्त पोषित और अवास्तविक माना गया था। [6] ओबामा प्रशासन ने 2010 में कम पृथ्वी की कक्षा (एलईओ) से परे चालक दल के मिशनों की क्षमता के विकास पर ध्यान केंद्रित करने के लिए तारामंडल में संशोधन का प्रस्ताव रखा, जिसमें आईएसएस के संचालन को 2020 से आगे बढ़ाने की कल्पना की गई, मानव चालक दल के लिए लॉन्च वाहनों के विकास को नासा से स्थानांतरित किया गया। निजी क्षेत्र के लिए, और LEO से परे मिशनों को सक्षम करने के लिए प्रौद्योगिकी विकसित करना, जैसे कि पृथ्वी-चंद्रमा L1, चंद्रमा, पृथ्वी-सूर्य L2, निकट-पृथ्वी क्षुद्रग्रह, और फोबोस या मंगल ग्रह की कक्षा।[7]

2000 के दशक में, चीन ने एक सफल चालक दल अंतरिक्ष उड़ान कार्यक्रम शुरू किया, जबकि भारत ने चंद्रयान 1 लॉन्च किया, जबकि यूरोपीय संघ और जापान ने भी भविष्य के चालक दल अंतरिक्ष मिशन की योजना बनाई है। चीन, रूस और जापान ने 21वीं सदी के दौरान चंद्रमा पर चालक दल मिशन की वकालत की है, जबकि यूरोपीय संघ ने 20वीं और 21वीं सदी के दौरान चंद्रमा और मंगल ग्रह दोनों पर चालक दल मिशन की वकालत की है।

वैसे हमारी देश इंडिया पीछे नहीं है

लेकिन एक बात है

हम ग्रहों उपग्रहों सफर कर रहे है इसलिए ताकी वहाँ पानी का दर्शन प्राप्त हम कर पाएं

ताकी कभी न कभी हम इंसानों को बसा सके वहां

पानी इसलिए ही बहुत जर���री सच्चाई है

[spacenutspod]

The Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year holidays are joyful events typically spent with family and friends. Astronauts and cosmonauts who find themselves in space during the holidays have found their own unique way to celebrate the occasions. In the early years of the space program, holidays spent in space occurred infrequently, most notably the flight of Apollo 8 around the Moon during Christmas 1968, making them more memorable. As missions became longer and more frequent, holidays in space became more common occasions. For the past 23 years, holidays spent aboard the International Space Station have become annual, if not entirely routine, events. Left: The famous Earthrise photograph, taken by the Apollo 8 crew in lunar orbit. Right: Video of the Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders reading from The Book of Genesis. As the first crew to spend Christmas in space, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders, celebrated the holiday while circling the Moon in December 1968, the first humans to leave Earth orbit. They immortalized the event on Christmas Eve by taking turns reading the opening verses from the Bible’s Book of Genesis as they broadcast scenes of the Moon gliding by below. An estimated one billion people in 64 countries tuned in to their Christmas Eve broadcast. As they left lunar orbit, Lovell radioed back to Earth, where Christmas Eve had already turned to Christmas Day, “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus!” Left: Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, left, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue trim their homemade Christmas tree in December 1973. Right: Carr, Gibson, and Pogue hung their stockings aboard Skylab. During their 84-day record-setting mission aboard the Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974, Skylab 4 astronauts Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue, and Edward G. Gibson celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s in space – the first crew to spend Thanksgiving and New Year’s in orbit. They built a homemade Christmas tree from leftover food containers, used colored decals as decorations, and topped it with a cardboard cutout in the shape of a comet. Carr and Pogue spent seven hours on a Christmas Day spacewalk to change out film canisters and observe the passing Comet Kohoutek. Once back inside the station, they enjoyed a Christmas dinner complete with fruitcake, talked to their families, and opened presents. They even had orbital visitors of sorts, as Soviet cosmonauts Pyotr I. Klimuk and Valentin V. Lebedev orbited the planet aboard Soyuz 13 between Dec. 18 and 26, marking the first time that astronauts and cosmonauts were in space at the same time. Different orbits precluded any direct contact between the two crews. Aboard Salyut-6, Georgi M. Grechko, left, and Yuri V. Romanenko, toast to celebrate the new year in space, the first Russian cosmonauts to do so. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos. In the more secular Soviet era, the New Year’s holiday had more significance than the Jan. 7 observance of Orthodox Christmas. The first cosmonauts to ring in a new year in orbit were Yuri V. Romanenko and Georgi M. Grechko, during their record-setting 96-day mission in 1977 and 1978, aboard the Salyut-6 space station. They toasted the new year during a TV broadcast with the ground. The exact nature of the beverage consumed for the occasion has not been passed down to posterity. Left: STS-61 mission specialist Jeffrey A. Hoffman with a dreidel during Hanukkah in December 1993. Right: Video of Hoffman describing how he celebrated Hanukkah aboard space shuttle Endeavour. The eight-day Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, celebrates the recapture of Jerusalem and rededication of the Second Temple in 164 B.C.E. It occurs in the month of Kislev in the Hebrew lunar calendar, which can fall between late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. NASA astronaut Jeffrey A. Hoffman celebrated the first Hanukkah in space during the STS-61 Hubble Space Telescope first servicing mission in 1993. Hanukkah that year began on the evening of Dec. 9, after Hoffman completed his third spacewalk of the mission. He celebrated with a traveling menorah, unlit of course, and by spinning a dreidel. The STS-103 crew show off their Santa hats on the flight deck of space shuttle Discovery in 1999. The crew of another Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, STS-103, celebrated the first space shuttle Christmas in 1999 aboard Discovery. For Christmas dinner, Curtis L. Brown, Scott J. Kelly, Steven L. Smith, Jean-François A. Clervoy of the European Space Agency (ESA), John M. Grunsfeld, C. Michael Foale, and Claude Nicollier of ESA enjoyed duck foie gras on Mexican tortillas, cassoulet, and salted pork with lentils. Smith and Grunsfeld completed repairs on the telescope during a Christmas Eve spacewalk. Left: Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mir Expedition 17 flight engineer Elena V. Kondakova with a bottle of champagne to celebrate New Year’s Eve 1994. Right: Video of Kondakova demonstrating the behavior of champagne in weightlessness aboard Mir. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos. Between 1987 and 1998, 12 Mir expedition crews spent their holidays aboard the ever-expanding orbital outpost. Two of the crews included NASA astronauts, John E. Blaha and David A. Wolf, aboard the Russian space station as part of the Shuttle-Mir Program.   Left: Video of Mir Expedition 22 flight engineer and NASA astronaut John E. Blaha’s 1996 Christmas message from Mir. Right: Mir Expedition 24 flight engineer and NASA astronaut David A. Wolf with his menorah and dreidel to celebrate Hanukkah in 1997.  The last two New Year’s Eve messages from Mir. Left: Mir 24 crew of Pavel V. Vinogradov, left, NASA astronaut David A. Wolf, and Anatoli Y. Solovyev in 1997. Right: Mir 26 crew of Sergei V. Avdeyev, left, and Gennadi I. Padalka in 1998. It was the third time Avdeyev rang in the new year in space. Image credits: Courtesy of Roscosmos. The arrival of Expedition 1 crew members William M. Shepherd of NASA and Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev of Roscosmos aboard the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2000, marked the beginning of a permanent human presence in space. The first to celebrate Christmas and ring in the new year aboard the fledgling orbiting laboratory, they began a tradition of reading a goodwill message to people back on Earth. Shepherd honored a naval tradition of writing a poem as the first entry of the new year in the ship’s log. Left: Video of Expedition 1 crew members Yuri P. Gidzenko of Roscosmos, left, NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd, and Sergei K. Krikalev of Roscosmos reading their Christmas message in December 2000 – this marked Krikalev’s third holiday season spent in orbit, the first two spent aboard Mir in 1988 and 1991. Right: The space station as it appeared in December 2000. Expedition 1 commander NASA astronaut William M. Shepherd’s poem, written for the New Year’s Day 2001 entry in the space station’s log, in keeping with naval tradition. Left: A brief video selection of how some expedition crews celebrated Christmas aboard the space station. Right: From 2019, the Christmas message from the Expedition 61 crew members. Enjoy the following selection of photographs and videos of international crews as they celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas, and rang in the new year over the past 22 years aboard the space station. Left: The Expedition 4 crew of Daniel W. Bursch of NASA, left, Yuri I. Onufriyenko of Roscosmos, and Carl E. Walz of NASA poses for its Christmas photo in 2001. Middle: NASA astronaut C. Michael Foale, left, and Aleksandr Y. Kaleri of Roscosmos of Expedition 8 celebrate Christmas in 2003. Right: The Expedition 10 crew of Salizhan S. Sharipov of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao festooned for New Year’s Eve 2004. Left: Valeri I. Tokarev of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronaut William S. McArthur of Expedition 12 pose with Christmas stockings in 2005. Middle: The Expedition 14 crew of Mikhail V. Tyurin of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronauts Michael E. Lopez-Alegria and Sunita L. Williams pose wearing Santa hats for Christmas 2006. Right: The Expedition 16 crew of Yuri I. Malenchenko of Roscosmos, left, and NASA astronauts Peggy A. Whitson and Daniel M. Tani, with Christmas stockings and presents in 2007. Left: The Expedition 18 crew of E. Michael Fincke, left, and Sandra H. Magnus of NASA, and Yuri V. Lonchakov of Roscosmos enjoys its Christmas dinner in 2008. Middle: The five-member Expedition 22 crew of Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, left, Maksim V. Surayev and Oleg V. Kotov of Roscosmos, and Timothy J. Creamer and Jeffrey N. Williams of NASA around the Christmas dinner table in 2009. Right: The Expedition 26 crew of Oleg I. Skripochka of Roscosmos, left, Paolo A. Nespoli of the European Space Agency, Dmitri Y. Kondratyev of Roscosmos, Catherine G. “Cady” Coleman of NASA, Aleksandr Y. Kaleri of Roscosmos, and NASA’s Scott J. Kelly celebrates New Year’s Eve 2010. This marked Kaleri’s third holiday season spent in space. Left: The Expedition 30 crew of NASA astronaut Donald R. Pettit, left, Anatoli A. Ivanishin and Oleg D. Kononenko of Roscosmos, André Kuipers of the European Space Agency, NASA’s Daniel C. Burbank, and Anton N. Shkaplerov of Roscosmos pose for their Christmas photo in 2011. Middle: Christmas 2012 photograph of Expedition 34 crew members of NASA astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn, left, Roman Y. Romanenko, Oleg V. Novitski, and Yevgeni I. Tarelkin of Roscosmos, Kevin A. Ford of NASA, and Chris A. Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency. Right: For Christmas in 2013, the Expedition 42 crew left milk and cookies for Santa and hung their stockings using the Joint Airlock as a makeshift chimney. Left: Expedition 50 crew members Sergei N. Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, left, R. Shane Kimbrough of NASA, Andrei I. Borisenko and Oleg V. Novitski of Roscosmos, Peggy A. Whitson of NASA, and Thomas G. Pesquet of the European Space Agency celebrate New Year’s Eve in style in 2016. Middle: Expedition 54 crew member Mark T. Vande Hei of NASA strikes a pose as an Elf on the Shelf for Christmas 2017. Right: The Expedition 58 crew of David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, left, Anne C. McClain of NASA, and Oleg D. Kononenko of Roscosmos inspect their Christmas stockings for presents in 2018. Three scenes from the 2019 holiday season aboard the space station. Left: Expedition 61 flight engineer Jessica U. Meir of NASA shows off her Hanukkah-themed socks in the Cupola. Middle: Expedition 61 crew members Andrew R. Morgan, left, and Christina H. Koch of NASA, Luca S. Parmitano of the European Space Agency, and Meir share their Christmas messages. Right: Expedition 61 crew members Koch, left, Morgan, Oleg I. Skripochka of Roscosmos, Meir, Aleksandr A. Skvortsov of Roscosmos, and Parmitano ring in the new year with harmonicas. Three scenes from the 2020 holiday season aboard the space station. Left: Expedition 64 NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, left, Michael S. Hopkins, Kathleen H. Rubins, and Victor J. Glover and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) record Christmas greetings. Middle: Walker, left, Hopkins, Rubins, Glover, and Noguchi use an inflatable Earth globe as a substitute for the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball “drop” aboard the space station. Right: Expedition 64 crew members Sergei V. Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos, left, Hopkins, Walker, Sergei N. Ryzhikov of Roscosmos, Glover, Rubins, and Noguchi welcome in 2021 aboard the space station. Left: During Expedition 66 in 2021, NASA astronauts Mark T. Vande Hei, left, Raja J. Chari, Kayla S. Barron, and Thomas H. Marshburn, and Matthias J. Maurer of the European Space Agency in a still from a video in which they share their thoughts about the holiday season. Right: Barron showing off the presents she wrapped for her six crewmates. “It is a privilege to have the perspective of seeing so many countries,” said Expedition 66 Commander NASA astronaut Thomas H. Marshburn in a video sharing his thoughts about spending the New Year in space. “We can go from one side [of Earth] to another in just a few minutes and it truly gives us a feeling of unification for all human beings around the world.” “We get to see the sunrise many times a day, so thinking about the fact that people are waking up to a New Year each time we see that sunrise is pretty cool,” added NASA astronaut Raja J. Chari. In a social media post, ESA astronaut Matthias J. Maurer wrote about their New Year’s Eve dinner, and included a time lapse video of the festive meal. Left: Expedition 68 crew members Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, left, and NASA astronauts Francisco C. “Frank” Rubio, Josh A. Cassada, and Nicole A. Mann record a holiday greeting from the space station. Right: Expedition 68 crew members wear holiday garb. In 2022, Expedition 68 crew members NASA astronauts Nicole A. Mann, Josh A. Cassada, and Francisco C. “Frank” Rubio, and JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata recorded a holiday message for everyone on the ground. They shared some of their personal traditions for the holidays and provided a glimpse of how they spend the holidays aboard the space station.  Expedition 70 NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli’s felt menorah and dreidel that she used to celebrate Hanukkah. Expedition 70 flight engineer NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli’s husband and two little girls made a felt menorah for her to celebrate Hanukkah during her mission. Since astronauts can’t light real candles aboard the space station, Moghbeli pinned felt “lights” for each night of the eight-day holiday. A dreidel spun in weightlessness will continue spinning until it comes in contact with another object, but can’t land on any of its four faces.  Left: To celebrate New Year’s Day 2022, Shenzhou 13 astronauts Ye Guangfu, left, Zhai Zhigang, and Wang Yaping aboard the China Space Station Tiangong hold a live video call. Right: Wang, left, Zhai, and Ye celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Tiger aboard Tiangong. On Jan. 1, 2022, for the first time Chinese astronauts celebrated a New Year in space. The Shenzhou 13 crew of Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu arrived aboard the China Space Station Tiangong on Oct. 15, 2021, for a six-month mission. On New Year’s Day 2022, they hosted a live video call and interacted with college students at venues in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Macao. For the Feb. 1 start of the Chinese New Year of the Tiger, they decorated the space station and sent best wishes to people on the ground for a happy and prosperous new year. In January 2023, Shenzhou 15 astronauts Fei Junlong, left, Deng Qingming, and Zhang Lu send New Year’s greetings to Earth from the Tiangong China Space Station. We hope you enjoyed these stories, photographs, and videos from holiday celebrations in space. This year, a record-tying 10 people from five nations will celebrate the holidays and ring in the new year while serving aboard two space stations – the International Space Station and the Tiangong China Space Station. We wish them all and everyone here on Earth the very best during the holiday season and hope that 2024 will indeed be a Happy New Year!

[moonwatchuniverse]

60 years Manned Spaceflight ... April 12, 1961 - April 12, 2021 MoonwatchUniverse selection of  “” Top 75  “” wristwatches & chronographs  flown in space by cosmonauts, astronauts, esanauts, spationautes and taikonauts. A few more than 75 to be exact... avoiding difficult choices. (Photo: MoonwatchUniverse)

[dukeofriven]

There's a round-the-moon trip planned with a Youtuber, a DJ, and a K-pop rapper—it was supposed to launch before the end of this year, and the first time i heard about it I became convinced that this is when the bill was going to come due. There's never been a death while traveling through space: there's been deaths on take-offs and landings (Soyuz 11 fatally decompressed during re-entry but while still above atmosphere, making it the only deaths in space), and once while sitting on a pad with no intention of going anywhere at all, but mostly what you take away from studying the lives of people spending time in space is that they have been grotesquely lucky from a statistics standpoint. They've almost been lost on countless space-walks, they've almost collided with debris and space stations, they've almost had an oxygen valve fatally jam or a hatch almost fail to close. They've almost gotten so lost and disoriented they couldn't make it back to safety. Various Apollos came seconds away from running out of fuel or slamming into the lunar surface. Apollo 13 exploded. Mir had an entire module burn up. Half the Salyut's never worked right. Skylab broke on launch.The big surprise of the Shuttle program was that more people didn't die ebcause as various inquest proved, time and time again NASA was over-confident and under-performing: the shuttles were never safe or reliable. Lucky. A 2.3% in-flight fatality rate in 60 odd years of space travel is pretty good for technology that has never gone through the same level of safety/failure testing that single model of commercial aircraft has to go through to get certification. But, equally, every piece of space technology that has ever flown has never had the same level of safety/failure testing that single model of commercial aircraft has to go through to get certification. Every person who has ever flown in space, even the senators and almost Lance Bass once, has functionally been no different from a test pilot. It's not safe. it's never been safe. It's never had the reliability factor that you expect when you hop in the car or on a train. It is, in short, not something you put a fucking DJ and a Youtuber on to shoot them around the Moon. The bill for through-space fatalities has to come due: we can't keep getting lucky forever. And yet these fucking billionaires, overconfident in unproven technologies. are going to keep get people killed, from Teslas to mini subs and eventually in goddamn rockets full of civvies who think they can go to the Moon like the might fly to Cairo to see the pyramids.

if anyone was wondering what would happen to space travel if it were privatized this is a great example

[awesomehistoryloverblog]

Skylab - America's Forgotten First Space Station

Skylab – America’s Forgotten First Space Station

The modules of America’s Skylab Space Station – 1973 The International Space Station has been in operation since 2000. But America’s very first space station was in fact SKYLAB.  It helped pave the way for permanent operations in low-Earth orbit over 50 years ago.  Skylab spent six years in orbit from 1973 to 1979, with three successive three-man crews on board for a record setting 28, 56 and 84…

[shinyexpertgrantenin]

Worst Space Shuttle Disasters

Taking on a mission to space has many risks and dangers for astronauts, whether it is on the way up to space or the return trip home. The worst space disasters of all time are the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster of 2003 and the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster of 1986. In both cases, seven astronauts lost their lives. Here is a list of the worst space-related disasters to ever have occurred.

Soyuz 11

The USSR's Soyuz 11 launched on June 6, 1971, with the mission to board the world's first space station Salyut 1. They arrived at Salyut 1 a day after launch and departed the station and landed back on Earth on June 30, 1971. However, when the recovery team opened the re-entry module they found cosmonauts Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev dead inside.

It was later determined that a breathing ventilation value had been jolted open as the descent module separated from the service module of the Soyuz 11. This event caused the capsule to depressurize, causing the crew to die of asphyxiation. As a result of this tragedy, the Soyuz spacecraft was redesigned to only carry two cosmonauts so that there was room for the crew to wear special space suits which help to keep them alive in case of decompression. The crew of Soyuz 11 are honored with a memorial at the spot where it crashed in the Karaganda Region of Kazakhstan.

The Space Shuttle Challenger

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger, on its tenth mission, lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission ended catastrophically with the Challenger disintegrating only 73 seconds after launch. All seven crew members, Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe, were killed.

In the investigations following the disaster, it was never established as to how and when the crew exactly died. It was determined that the cause of the accident was the failure of the primary and secondary O-ring seals on the right rocket booster. This technical failure set off a series of reactions that resulted in the disintegration of the shuttle. In response to the tragedy, NASA grounded the shuttle fleet for almost three years while a government commission investigated the accident and the space shuttle's rocket boosters underwent a complete redesign. The crew of Challenger is honored with a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

The Space Shuttle Columbia

On January 16th, 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia lifted off on its 28th mission. Columbia's purpose was to conduct different scientific experiments while in orbit, which they succeeded in their mission. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. All seven crew members, Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark and IIan Ramon, were killed. It is unknown how the crew died, but NASA's report after the event suggested it was due to asphyxiation or lethal trauma.

It was determined later that a piece of foam insulation broke off from the external tank and struck the left wing of the orbit upon the launch of the shuttle. This event caused hot atmospheric gasses to penetrate the shuttle upon re-entry, destroying the internal wing structure, which caused the shuttle to break apart. The Columbia disaster resulted in the shuttle program being suspended, thus delaying construction of the International Space Station. The crew of the Columbia is honored with a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery and Sabine County, Texas.

Soyuz 1

On April 24, 1967, after only a one day mission filled with technical problems the flight director of the Soyuz 1 ordered cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov to come back into orbit. Upon re-entry, the drogue parachute of the re-entry module deployed but the main parachute did not. Komarov then activated the reserve chute, but it became entangled with the drogue parachute, which did not deploy correctly.

As a result of the parachute failure, the re-entry module fell to Earth almost entirely unimpeded, killing Komarov upon impact with the ground. The tragic result of the Soyuz 1 mission caused Soyuz 2 and 3 to be delayed and helped to scuttle Soviet plans of landing men on the moon. As a result of the delay, the Soyuz program ended up being much improved. Vladimir Komarov is commemorated with two memorials on the Moon and one at the spot where the Soyuz crashed landed in the Province of Orenburg, Russia.

credit: World Atlas

[sciencespies]

Remembering Mir 20 Years Later

https://sciencespies.com/news/remembering-mir-20-years-later/

Remembering Mir 20 Years Later

20 years ago this week, the Mir space station returned to Earth in a blaze of glory.

For years, Mir’s crews had struggled to keep the station running despite its seeming determination to fall apart: coolant leaks, life support system breakdowns, electronics crashes, and power glitches had plagued the station since the late 1990s. In 1994, a Progress cargo ship had crashed into the Spektr module, damaging it beyond repair.

Mir had been empty since 1999 when its final visitor arrived: a Progress cargo ship, loaded with extra fuel, docked with the abandoned station and used its thrusters to slow the station’s orbit enough that Earth’s gravity could pull it down into the atmosphere. The thruster guidance ensured that the several-ton station entered above the south Pacific, so that whatever pieces didn’t burn up in the friction of atmospheric entry plunged into the watery depths of the spaceship graveyard instead of crashing into cities or farmland.

The space station weathered the fall of a global superpower and became humanity’s first long-term outpost in orbit. It also heralded the beginning of the modern era of space architecture and laid the groundwork for building the International Space Station.

Modular Construction Goes To Space

ISS was built gradually, with each module or construction element getting launched separately and then connected to the others. That modular design allowed launch mass to be spread out, so that you eventually could launch a bigger station by doing some of the assembly once the pieces were in space. But the idea originated with Mir.

Mir’s predecessors, the Soviet Salyut stations and the American Skylab station, were much smaller and relatively much simpler spacecraft, built and launched as single units for much shorter missions. But with Mir, Soviet engineers envisioned something much more complex — and much larger.

Mir’s core module launched on February 19, 1986, and over the next decade, Russian rockets – and eventually a couple of American space shuttle flights – delivered six more pressurized modules and an assortment of girders, trusses, and external racks for mounting science experiments. The first four modules docked with the core module, which held the crew’s living space, the station’s main environmental control, and its main engines. Think of each module as a room (or, usually, a suite of rooms) where crew members lived and worked, and like the rooms in most houses, each module was designed and equipped for different activities.

The Kvant-1 expansion module, for instance, was designed for astrophysics; its 1987 installation added three compartments to the station’s core, and it came fitted with x-ray and ultraviolet telescopes, an x-ray and gamma ray detector, a wide-angle camera, and other instruments for astrophysics observations and experiments. And in 1996, the Priroda module boasted a large synthetic aperture radar dish and other instruments for studying the surface of Earth from above.

But sometimes modules served an eclectic combination of purposes. Kvant-2 in 1989 added an airlock equipped with a thruster-powered maneuvering suit for spacewalking cosmonauts, along with storage space for cargo and an assortment of scientific experiments such as an incubator for quail eggs – but it also added water storage, showers, and a system for purifying urine back into usable water (which should probably not be done in the same room where you’re incubating your quail eggs under normal Earthbound circumstances).

By the time it all came together, Mir contained 350 cubic meters of pressurized crew space inside its 129,700-kilogram hull. The station stretched 19 meters along one axis, from the core module to Kvant-1; 31 meters along another axis from the Priroda Earth observation module to the docking module; and 27.5 meters along a third axis from the Kvant-2 module with the water systems to the Spektr module that housed visiting Americans.

At its peak, the station was the largest spacecraft humanity had ever put into orbit, and it would have been impossible to launch all in one piece. Modularity had become the next big thing in space station design.

Bird’s Eye Witness To The End Of An Era

On October 2, 1991, two cosmonauts blasted off from the USSR’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Soviet administrative unit of Kazakhstan. Both had been citizens of the Soviet Union all their lives, but that Christmas, as they orbited 350 miles above their homeworld, the USSR lowered its flag for the last time. Kasakhstan had declared its independence a few days before. Nearly six months later, on March 25, 1992, the cosmonauts returned to a different world as citizens of a new country, the Russian Federation – and employees of a newly renamed and reorganized national space agency.

A replacement crew had launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, now situated in a newly-independent Kazakhstan, on March 17. On the surface, it looked as if work aboard Mir would carry on unruffled by the changing political winds, and to some extent, it did. Replacement crews kept rotating in, uncrewed resupply ships kept docking, and science experiments kept running.

But the final collapse of the Soviet Union had plunged Russia and the USSR’s former constituent republics into economic turmoil, and that took its toll on Mir and its crews. The station’s last two modules, Spektr and Priroda, had been expected to launch soon, but the new nation’s economic woes put them on hold for several more years.

Worse, cosmonauts noticed that although the uncrewed Progress cargo ships that brought new supplies and science experiments to Mir kept arriving on schedule, they often arrived with items missing. Some of the missing cargo could be chalked up to supply shortages, but some of it seemed to have been stolen. Meanwhile, newly-independent Ukraine had redirected the fleet of ships whose radio antennae usually tracked the space station and provided more regular communications with Earth.

But although the end of the Soviet Union brought upheaval, it also brought new friends. A 1992 agreement put Russian cosmonauts on space shuttle missions and American astronauts aboard Mir, and starting in 1993, American space shuttle missions helped ferry modules and supplies to the Russian space station as part of the Shuttle-Mir program.

Like Mir’s physical design, the Shuttle-Mir program provided a roadmap for the international effort that would eventually build the ISS. Like modularity, international cooperation in space had become the next big thing in space station design.

#News

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.29 (after 1930)

1945 – The Soviet Union annexes the Czechoslovak province of Carpathian Ruthenia. 1950 – Korean War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman authorizes a sea blockade of Korea. 1952 – The first Miss Universe pageant is held. Armi Kuusela from Finland wins the title of Miss Universe 1952. 1956 – The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, officially creating the United States Interstate Highway System. 1971 – Prior to re-entry (following a record-setting stay aboard the Soviet Union’s Salyut 1 space station), the crew capsule of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft depressurizes, killing the three cosmonauts on board. Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev are the first humans to die in space. 1972 – The United States Supreme Court rules in the case Furman v. Georgia that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. 1972 – A Convair CV-580 and De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter collide above Lake Winnebago near Appleton, Wisconsin, killing 13. 1974 – Vice President Isabel Perón assumes powers and duties as Acting President of Argentina, while her husband President Juan Perón is terminally ill. 1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the Soviet Union to Canada while on tour with the Kirov Ballet. 1976 – The Seychelles become independent from the United Kingdom. 1976 – The Conference of Communist and Workers Parties of Europe convenes in East Berlin. 1987 – Vincent van Gogh's painting, the Le Pont de Trinquetaille, is bought for $20.4 million at an auction in London, England. 1995 – Space Shuttle program: STS-71 Mission (Atlantis) docks with the Russian space station Mir for the first time. 1995 – The Sampoong Department Store collapses in the Seocho District of Seoul, South Korea, killing 502 and injuring 937. 2002 – Naval clashes between South Korea and North Korea lead to the death of six South Korean sailors and sinking of a North Korean vessel. 2006 – Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that President George W. Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violates U.S. and international law. 2007 – Apple Inc. releases its first mobile phone, the iPhone. 2012 – A derecho sweeps across the eastern United States, leaving at least 22 people dead and millions without power. 2014 – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant self-declares its caliphate in Syria and northern Iraq.

[spaceexp]

Space Station 20th: Spacewalking History

ISS - 20 Years on the International Space Station patch. June 4, 2020 Assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) would not have been possible without the skilled work of dozens of astronauts and cosmonauts performing intricate tasks in bulky spacesuits in the harsh environment of space. Spacewalks, or extravehicular activities (EVAs), were indispensable to the assembly of ISS and today remain important to the continued maintenance of the world class laboratory in low Earth orbit.

Above: Leonov during the world’s first EVA in March 1965. Bellow: White during the first American EVA in June 1965.

On June 3, 1965, astronaut Edward H. White opened the hatch to the Gemini 4 capsule and, as he floated out of the cabin, became the first American to walk in space. A few weeks earlier, on March 18, Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei A. Leonov took the world’s first spacewalk as he floated out of an airlock attached to his Voskhod 2 spacecraft. Although White’s 36-minute EVA appeared effortless, later spacewalkers in the Gemini Program found accomplishing actual work quite challenging. Because NASA considered mastering spacewalking a critical task for the Apollo Moon landing program, astronauts and engineers expended much effort to learn the required skills, and by the final flight of the Gemini program astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin proved that EVAs could be productive. His training in an underwater environment to simulate spacewalking proved to be a game-changer and the practice has been standard ever since.

Above: Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt during an EVA on the lunar surface in 1972. Middle: Skylab 4 astronaut Edward G. Gibson during the final EVA of the Skylab Program in 1974. Bellow: Soviet cosmonaut Georgi M. Grechko preparing for the first EVA aboard the Salyut-6 space station in 1977.

Most spacewalks during the Apollo Program took place on the lunar surface and extended EVA durations past seven hours through upgrades to the spacesuits or Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMUs). Spacewalks conducted aboard Skylab in the mid-1970s proved the value of spacesuited astronauts to carry out repairs and maintenance of the space station – indeed, the EVA to free Skylab’s jammed solar array played a key role in saving the program. Similarly, beginning in the late 1970s, Soviet then Russian cosmonauts using ever-improved Orlan spacesuits proved the value of EVAs in inspecting, maintaining, repairing and augmenting space stations.

Above: STS-6 astronauts F. Story Musgrave (left) and Donald H. Peterson during the first Shuttle EVA in 1983. Middle: Mir 20 crewmembers Sergei V. Avdeyev (left) and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas A. Reiter in 1995. Bellow: STS-125 astronauts John M. Grunsfeld and Andrew J. Feustel preparing to reenter the Shuttle’s airlock after the final Hubble servicing EVA in 2009.

Spacewalks during the Space Shuttle era demonstrated that astronauts during EVAs could capture, repair and redeploy satellites, test future refueling of spacecraft and evaluate assembly techniques. From the first EVA during STS-6 in 1983 to the last non-space station related Shuttle EVA during STS-125, the final Hubble Servicing Mission in 2009, astronauts completed 52 spacewalks, 23 of them dedicated to servicing the Hubble Space Telescope in the course of five missions. Cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station made extensive use of EVAs for construction, maintenance and scientific and technology research during 79 spacewalks over the facility’s 15-year orbital lifetime. Mir also hosted the first EVA by a non-Russian crewmember, Jean-Loup Chrétien from France in 1988.

Above: Linenger during his EVA with Tsibliev outside Mir. Bellow: Parazynski (left) and Titov during the STS-86 EVA at Mir.

One of the stated objectives of the Shuttle-Mir Program, also known as Phase 1 of ISS, was for the United States and Russia to learn to work together as the two former adversaries prepared to jointly build and operate the space station. One arena where this was clearly demonstrated was in spacewalking. As Phase 1 progressed, astronauts living and working aboard Mir became more involved in the station’s operations, including conducting EVAs. On April 29, 1997, Jerry M. Linenger became the first American astronaut to perform an EVA in a Russian Orlan spacesuit with his Mir 23 commander Vasili V. Tsibliev. C. Michael Foale and David A. Wolfe added to that experience base with their Mir Orlan EVAs later that year. Foale became the first person to perform EVAs in both the US EMU and the Russian Orlan spacesuits. On Oct. 1, 1997, Scott E. Parazynski and Vladimir G. Titov performed the first joint US-Russian EMU EVA during STS-86 while Space Shuttle Atlantis was docked to Mir. Titov was also the first non-American to conduct a Shuttle-based EVA.

Graphic representation of the number of ISS EVAs over the past 22 years.

The complex assembly of ISS would have been impossible without the skilled labors of spacewalking astronauts and cosmonauts. The cumulative experience of the EVAs conducted in the years prior to the start of ISS assembly formed a solid basis on which to build the necessary spacewalking skills. It is of interest to note that 23 years passed between Leonov’s first daring venture into open space and the first EVA at ISS, during which time 171 spacewalks were completed in low Earth orbit, on the Moon and in deep space. In the 22 years since the first ISS assembly EVA, 227 spacewalks dedicated to ISS have been accomplished plus an additional 13 during Space Shuttle missions unrelated to ISS, 4 on the Russian Mir space station and 1 by the People’s Republic of China.

Above: STS-88 astronauts Newman (left) and Ross perform the very first EVA at ISS in 1988. Middle: STS-96 astronaut Jernigan moving the Strela Grapple Fixture adaptor. Bellow: STS-106 crewmembers Malenchenko (left) and Lu connect cables between Zarya and Zvezda during the first joint US-Russian EVA on ISS.

From the very first assembly mission, spacewalks proved to be essential to preparing the fledgling ISS for its first occupants. Astronauts Jerry L. Ross and James H. Newman conducted the first ISS EVA on Dec. 7, 1988, during the STS-88 mission to connect electrical and data cables between the station’s first two modules, Zarya and Unity. Over the course of the first five Shuttle assembly missions, 12 crewmembers conducted 10 EVAs prior to the Expedition 1 crew taking up residency aboard the station. During STS-96, the second assembly mission in May 1999, Tamara E. “Tammy” Jernigan became the first of many women to perform an EVA at ISS. Astronaut Edward T. “Ed” Lu and cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko conducted the first US-Russian EVA at ISS during the June 2000 STS-101 mission. The two connected electrical and data cables between Zarya and the newly-arrived Zvezda module. Training for that spacewalk required Russian engineers to modify the Hydrolab facility at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center to accommodate the US EMUs. Similarly, American engineers adapted the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson Space Center to allow the Expedition 1 crew to train using both the EMU and the Russian Orlan spacesuit.

Above: Expedition 2 astronaut Helms during the longest EVA to date. Middle: STS-100 astronaut Hadfield, the first Canadian to perform an EVA at ISS. Bellow: Expedition 2 crewmembers Voss (left) and Usachev in the hatchway to Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment preparing for the first Russian Segment EVA.

Following the arrival of Expedition 1 crewmembers William M. Shepherd, Yuri P. Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev aboard ISS on Nov. 2, 2000, the pace of assembly and the number of spacewalks increased significantly. Between December 2000 and April 2003, 38 astronauts and cosmonauts completed 41 EVAs, including the first staged from ISS itself rather than from the Space Shuttle. On March 10, 2001, Expedition 2 astronauts James S. Voss and Susan J. Helms conducted a spacewalk during STS-102 that at 8 hours and 56 minutes still stands as the longest EVA in history. In April 2001, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris A. Hadfield became the first Canadian to conduct an EVA at ISS during STS-100, the flight that brought the Canadarm2 robotics system to the space station. On June 8, Voss joined Expedition 2 cosmonaut Yuri V. Usachev for the first Russian segment EVA, an internal spacewalk in Zvezda’s Transfer Compartment to prepare it for the arrival of a new module.

Above: STS-104 astronauts Gernhardt emerging to begin the first EVA from the ISS Quest Joint Airlock. Middle: Expedition 3 cosmonauts Dezhurov (left) and Tyurin about to begin the first EVA from the Pirs module. Bellow: STS-111 crewmember Perrin, the first French astronaut to perform an EVA at ISS.

The STS-104 mission in July 2001 brought the Quest Joint Airlock to the station, providing ISS with a standalone EVA capability, with accommodations for both the US EMU and the Russian Orlan suits. Michael L. Gernhardt and James F. Reilly performed the first EVA from Quest on July 20. The Pirs module arrived at ISS on Sept. 17, providing the Russian segment with a true airlock capability. On Oct. 8, Expedition 3 cosmonauts Vladimir N. Dezhurov and Mikhail V. Tyurin staged the first EVA from Pirs. Along with American and Russian crewmembers, international partners continued to play a role in spacewalking, with Philippe Perrin becoming the first astronaut from France to perform an EVA at ISS during the STS-111 mission in June 2002.

Above: Expedition 8 Commander Foale preparing for the first “two-person” EVA. Middle: STS-114 astronaut Noguchi performing the first EVA for JAXA at ISS. Bellow: Expedition 13 astronaut Reiter conducting the first EVA by an ESA crewmember at ISS.

Following the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, ISS EVAs continued but only from the Russian segment with the added complication that with the resident crew size reduced to two, the pair of spacewalking crewmembers left no one inside the station to monitor its systems. Although this posed a slightly increased risk should something go wrong, these “two-person” EVAs proved essential during the Shuttle hiatus. Expedition 8 crewmembers Aleksandr Y. Kaleri and Mike Foale conducted the first such EVA on Feb. 26, 2004. Foale had prior experience with the Orlan suit as he had completed an EVA during his long-duration stay aboard Mir in 1997. The crew had to cut the EVA short due to Kaleri’s suit overheating and water droplets forming inside his helmet. The crew later identified the problem as a kink in the water line in his liquid cooling garment. The incident provided a preview of a more serious problem to occur in an EMU during an EVA more than nine years later. On the STS-114 Shuttle Return-to-Flight mission, Soichi Noguchi became the first astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to conduct an EVA at ISS on July 30, 2005. The first European Space Agency astronaut to perform an ISS spacewalk was Expedition 13 crewmember Thomas A. Reiter from Germany, on Aug. 3, 2006.

Above: Closeup of the tear in the solar array. Middle: STS-120 astronaut Parazynski atop the robotic arm and boom near the site of the tear. Bellow: Parazynski approaches the tear to effect the repair.

Although all spacewalks carry a certain amount of risk, two examples illustrate how some EVAs are riskier than others. The objectives of the STS-120 mission in October 2007 included not only delivery of the Harmony module to ISS but also the relocation of the P6 truss segment from its location atop the Z1 truss, where it had been since December 2000, to the outboard port side truss. During the overall reconfiguration of the station’s power systems earlier in 2007, the P6’s solar arrays were rolled up. After the crewmembers relocated P6 to the outboard truss, they began to unfurl the two arrays. The first array opened without incident, but with the second array nearly unfurled the astronauts noticed a tear in a small portion of the panel and immediately halted the deployment to prevent damaging it. Working with the onboard crew, mission managers devised a plan to have one of the astronauts essentially suture the tear in the panel. Appropriately enough, one of the two STS-120 spacewalkers, Scott E. Parazynski, was also a physician and he put his suturing skills to good use. Attached to a portable foot restraint, Parazynski was hoisted atop not only the station’s robotic arm but also the Shuttle’s boom normally used to inspect the Orbiter’s tiles, the impromptu arrangement providing just enough reach for Parazynski to successfully repair the torn array using a newly-designed tool dubbed “cufflinks.” After he secured five cufflinks to the damaged panel, crewmembers inside the station fully extended the array as Parazynski monitored the event.

Above: Expedition 36 astronaut Parmitano during EVA23. Bellow: Expedition 36 crewmembers Nyberg (left) and Yurchikhin assist Parmitano with removing his EMU after his safe return to the airlock.

Luca S. Parmitano, the first astronaut representing the Italian Space Agency to conduct an EVA at ISS, and his fellow Expedition 36 crewmember Christopher J. Cassidy began US EVA23, their second EVA together, on July 16, 2013, without incident. Forty-four minutes into the EVA, as the two crewmembers worked on their individual tasks at different locations on ISS, Parmitano reported feeling water at the back of his head. Mission Control advised them to halt their activities as they devised a plan of action. Cassidy came to Parmitano’s side to assess the situation, at first believing that a leaking drink bag inside the suit was the source of the water. But as Parmitano indicated that the amount of water was increasing, Mission Control advised them to terminate the EVA, directing Parmitano to head back to the airlock and Cassidy to clean up any tools and then follow his crewmate back to the airlock. As Parmitano began translating back toward the airlock, the water continued to increase, migrating from the back of his head, filling his ears so he had difficulty hearing communications and eventually obscuring his vision and interfering with breathing. He made his way back to the airlock mostly by memory and feel, and after Cassidy joined him inside they repressurized the module. Expedition 36 crewmates Karen L. Nyberg and Fyodor N. Yurchikhin helped Parmitano quickly remove his helmet and towel off the estimated 1 to 1.5 liters of water. Later investigation indicated that contamination on a filter caused blockage in the suit’s water separator. Although Parmitano faced a potentially life-threatening situation, his calm response along with quick decisions by the team in Mission Control resolved the crisis successfully. He later joked during an in-flight press conference that he “experience what it was like to be a goldfish in a fishbowl from the point of view of the goldfish.”

Above: Preparing for the first all-woman EVA are Expedition 61 astronauts Meir (left) and Koch. Bellow: The latest EVA on ISS in January 2020, performed by Expedition 61 astronauts Morgan (left) and Parmitano.

The Expedition 61 crew completed a record nine EVAs between Oct. 6, 2019, and Jan. 25, 2020. Five involved tasks to replace batteries on the P6 truss segment and three to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a physics experiment not originally designed for on-orbit repairs. Of note, Christina Koch and Jessica U. Meir conducted the third battery-replacement EVA on Oct. 18, the first time all-female spacewalk in history. The pair completed two more EVAs in January 2020. Their fellow crewmembers, Andrew J. “Drew” Morgan and Luca Parmitano, completed the most recent EVA to date, the final spacewalk to repair AMS. Related articles: Space Station 20th: Commercial Cargo and Crew https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/06/space-station-20th-commercial-cargo-and.html Space Station 20th: Music on ISS https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/05/space-station-20th-music-on-iss.html Space Station 20th – Space Flight Participants https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/05/space-station-20th-space-flight.html Space Station 20th: Six Months Until Expedition 1 https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/04/space-station-20th-six-months-until.html Space Station 20th – Women and the Space Station https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/03/space-station-20th-women-and-space.html Space Station 20th: Long-duration Missions https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2020/03/space-station-20th-long-duration.html NASA Counts Down to Twenty Years of Continuous Human Presence on International Space Station https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/11/nasa-counts-down-to-twenty-years-of.html 20 memorable moments from the International Space Station https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2018/11/20-memorable-moments-from-international.html Related links: International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html Images, Text, Credits: NASA/Kelli Mars/JSC/John Uri/ESA/JAXA/CSA-ASC/ROSCOSMOS. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

[thenetionalnews]

Russian cosmonaut who set space endurance record dies

Russian cosmonaut who set space endurance record dies

Veteran Russian cosmonaut Valery Ryumin, who set space endurance records on Soviet missions, then returned to orbit after a long absence to fly on a US space shuttle, has died at the age of 82. Ryumin went into space four times, including to the space stations Salyut-7 and Mir after becoming a cosmonaut in 1973. He logged a total of 371 days in space in two short missions and two record-setting…

[fumpkins]

Huge Chinese rocket booster falls to Earth over Arabian Peninsula

The Chinese rocket has come down.

The 23-ton core stage of a Long March 5B booster crashed back to Earth Saturday night (May 8), ending 10 controversial days aloft that captured the attention of the world and started a wider conversation about orbital debris and responsible spacefaring.

The Long March 5B reentered the atmosphere over the Arabian Peninsula at about 10:15 p.m. EDT Saturday (0215 GMT on Sunday, May 9), according to U.S. Space Command.

“It’s unknown if the debris impacted land or water,” Space Command officials wrote in a brief update Saturday night.

Related: The biggest spacecraft to fall uncontrolled from space

But some analysts have identified a watery grave for any rocket hunks that managed to survive the intense heat of re-entry. For example, Space-Track.org stated on Twitter Saturday night that the Long March “fell into the Indian Ocean north of the Maldives,” an idyllic island chain off India’s southwest coast.

The Long March 5B launched the core module for China’s new space station on April 28. Instead of ditching safely into the ocean when its work was done, however, the rocket’s first stage reached orbit, becoming a piece of space junk just waiting to crash down on its home planet after feeling enough atmospheric drag.

And this was not an isolated incident. The same thing happened last year with a different Long March 5B core, which fell uncontrolled over the Atlantic Ocean off the West African coast. Some large pieces of debris from that reentry apparently made it to the ground in the nation of Ivory Coast, though no injuries were reported.

In addition, China’s first prototype space lab, Tiangong 1, which was designed to help pave the way for the new space station, had its own space-junk phase after completing its mission. The 8-ton craft fell to Earth uncontrolled in April 2018, burning up over the Pacific Ocean.

Only three human-made objects heavier than those two Long March 5B cores have ever fallen uncontrolled from space, according to astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who’s based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

Those three are the 83-ton Skylab space station, which crashed over Australia in July 1979; the 50-ton upper stage of the Saturn V rocket that launched Skylab, which came down over the Atlantic Ocean west of Madeira in January 1975; and the Soviet Union’s Salyut 7 space station and attached Kosmos-1686 module, which together weighed about 43 tons and re-entered over Argentina in February 1991. (Sadly, the space shuttle Columbia could also be considered here; the 117-ton orbiter broke apart during its reentry in February 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard.)

Many people in the space community have criticized China over the Long March 5B incidents, accusing the nation’s space program of behaving carelessly, if not recklessly. One such reproval came on Saturday from new NASA chief Bill Nelson.

“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Nelson wrote in a statement posted before the rocket came down.

“It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris,” he added. “It is critical that China and all spacefaring nations and commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security and long-term sustainability of outer space activities.”

Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2021/05/10/huge-chinese-rocket-booster-falls-to-earth-over-arabian-peninsula/

[orbemnews]

Live tracker shows location of massive Chinese rocket set to crash back to Earth A live video stream shows the latest location of a massive Chinese rocket that is set to crash back on Earth on Saturday night or early Sunday morning. The tracker shows the position of the Long March 5B rocket body as it orbits the planet during a free-fall that has sparked fears that debris could fall on populated areas. An area near New Zealand’s North Island was identified as a possible crash location, but experts have said it is too difficult to say exactly where and when the free-falling remnants of the rocket will plunge back through the atmosphere. The rocket is predicted to make an uncontrolled re-entry about 190 minutes either side of 2.11am GMT on Sunday, said EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST). The live map shows the rocket orbiting the Earth earlier on Saturday (Image: BL Network/YouTube) Read More Related Articles Read More Related Articles The Center for Orbital Reentry and Debris Studies (CORDS) at Aerospace Corporation, a US federally funded space-focused research and development centre, updated its prediction for re-entry to four hours on either side of 0330 GMT on Sunday. Earlier, the Pentagon had predicted a re-entry of 11pm GMT on Saturday with a window of nine hours on either side. The US military said the uncontrolled re-entry was being tracked by US Space Command, and there were no plans to shoot down debris. EU SST said on its website that the statistical probability of a ground impact in populated areas is “low”, but noted that the uncontrolled nature of the object made any predictions uncertain. Experts say it is difficult to predict where and when the remnants of the rocket will plunge back through the atmosphere (Image: BL Network/YouTube) The Long March-5B rocket was carrying the core module of China’s space station, Tianhe (Image: VCG via Getty Images) The Long March 5B – comprising one core stage and four boosters – lifted off from China’s Hainan island on April 29 with the unmanned Tianhe module, which contains what will become living quarters on a permanent Chinese space station. It is one of the largest space debris to re-enter Earth, at 18 tonnes. On Friday, the Aerospace Corporation said its Center for Orbital Reentry and Debris Studies (CORDS) said its latest “informed prediction” of the rocket body’s re-entry location was given near the North Island of New Zealand. However, it noted that re-entry was possible anywhere along paths covering large swathes of the globe. In a blog post, the Aerospace Corporation said: “The Long March 5B re-entry is unusual because during launch, the first stage of the rocket reached orbital velocity instead of falling downrange as is common practice. The Mirror’s newsletter brings you the latest news, exciting showbiz and TV stories, sport updates and essential political information. The newsletter is emailed out first thing every morning, at 12noon and every evening. Never miss a moment by signing up to our newsletter here. “The empty rocket body is now in an elliptical orbit around Earth where it is being dragged toward an uncontrolled re-entry.” Harvard-based astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell previously told Reuters there is a chance that pieces of the rocket could come down over land, perhaps in a populated area. In May 2020, pieces from the first Long March 5B rained down on the Ivory Coast, damaging several buildings, though no injuries were reported. Debris from Chinese rocket launches is not uncommon within China. An area near New Zealand’s North Island was identified as a possible crash location, though it could fall anywhere, say experts In late April, authorities in the city of Shiyan, Hubei province, issued a notice to people in the surrounding county to prepare for evacuation as parts were expected to land in the area. The latest Long March rocket launched on April 29 was the second deployment of the 5B variant since its maiden flight in May last year. The empty core stage has been losing altitude since last week, but the speed of its orbital decay remains uncertain due to unpredictable atmospheric variables. The Long March 5 family of rockets have been integral to China’s near-term space ambitions – from the delivery of modules and crew of its planned space station to launches of exploratory probes to the moon and even Mars. The core stage of the first Long March 5B that returned to Earth last year weighed nearly 20 tonnes, surpassed only by debris from the Columbia space shuttle in 2003, the Soviet Union’s Salyut 7 space station in 1991, and NASA’s Skylab in 1979. !function(){return function e(t,n,r){function o(i,c)if(!n[i])if(!t[i])var u="function"==typeof require&&require;if(!c&&u)return u(i,!0);if(a)return a(i,!0);var s=new Error("Cannot find module '"+i+"'");throw s.code="MODULE_NOT_FOUND",svar l=n[i]=exports:;t[i][0].call(l.exports,function(e)return o(t[i][1][e],l,l.exports,e,t,n,r)return n[i].exportsfor(var a="function"==typeof require&&require,i=0;i0;)n.call(e,data:o.shift(),target:e);else o.forEach(function(t)n.call(e,data:t,target:e))function r(e,t,n)[],e.dataEvents[t].push(n)return{delegate:function(){return function(t,n,r,o,a){a=a||,n=n.split(","),void 0===t.length&&(t=[t]),t.forEach||(t=e(t)),t.forEach(function(t){t.addEventListener(r,function(r)var 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