Hasta La Gadget!

If you thought that year out around Europe was an eye opener, how about 12 months on the International Space Station? That’s what’s in store for two unnamed astronauts. Currently, the maximum stay on the ISS is six months, but in 2015, one Russian, and one American will work their way through the whole calendar, in a trip that could help pave the way for deep space travel. Plenty of data has already been collected about the effect microgravity has on the body, but less is known of the longer-term implications. NASA is already considering sending manned expeditions to near-Earth asteroids and Mars in the coming decades — but the results from this excursion could prove invaluable. The names of the chosen two haven’t been revealed, and the Soyuz capsule‘s (currently unaccounted for) third-seat has also sparked talk of another person possibly coming along for the ride. Time to re-plan that gap year?

Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt

US and Russian space agencies to launch first year-long mission on the ISS originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Oct 2012 06:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

Normally we try to encourage you to join us around the warm alt-week campfire by teasing you about what diverse and exotic internet nuggets we have for you inside. Sadly, this week that’s not the case. There’s nothing for you here we’re afraid. Not unless you like totally mind-blowing space videos, singing planets and AI / sports commentary-flavored cocktails, that is. Oh, you do? Well what do you know! Come on in… this is alt-week.

Continue reading Alt-week 10.6.12: supercomputers on the moon, hear the Earth sing and the future of sports commentary

Filed under: Misc, Science, Alt

Alt-week 10.6.12: supercomputers on the moon, hear the Earth sing and the future of sports commentary originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you thought cloud writing was cool, then how about a message from space burnt into the night sky? A group of unassuming cubesats recently left the comfort of the ISS and joined Earth’s orbit — among them was FITSAT-1 (aka Niwaka), a four-inch-cubed Japanese satellite covered in high-powered LEDs. Its mission is to broadcast the message “Hi this is Niwaka Japan” in Morse code, using bursts of intense light to draw dots and dashes across the heavens. FITSAT-1 was originally planned to appear only over Japan, but a flurry of interest means it’ll be touring the globe, starting next month. It’ll also find time for its studies, beaming VGA images snapped with an onboard camera back to Earth, to test a high-speed data transmitter.

While its creator, Professor Takushi Tanaka, has said the Morse broadcast has “no practical aim,” we think it would make a good emergency beacon for natural disasters (or, more worryingly, alien invasions). FITSAT-1 will try and fulfill all requests for appearances, but it can’t control the weather, so you’d better hope for a clear night if it visits your part of the world. If you’re as excited as we are to see it in action, bookmark the source links below, which should be updated with its orbit schedule in the near future. And, even if you don’t speak Japanese, the video after the break will give you an idea of what to expect.

Continue reading Japan’s LED-stacked cubesat will burn Morse code into the heavens

Filed under: Science, Alt

Japan’s LED-stacked cubesat will burn Morse code into the heavens originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA recently announced that it intended to change the orbit of the International Space Station slightly in an effort to avoid any potential contact with orbiting debris. Yesterday, NASA announced that the planned orbit change had been canceled because the debris that had caused the concern had been deemed to pose no risk to the space station. The debris that caused the alarm included remnants of an old Russian Cosmos satellite.

The worrisome debris also contained fragments of an Indian rocket. NASA issued the alert, continued to track the orbit of the debris, and determined with “a high degree of confidence” that neither piece of orbiting space junk posed a threat to the space station. Flight controllers in Russia agreed with NASA on the decision to cancel the orbital change.

Even tiny pieces of space debris orbiting the planet at massive velocities pose a significant threat to the space station and the crew onboard. Tiny pieces of debris moving at high speeds could puncture space station modules and potentially kill crew members. NASA planned to use the engines on the docked European cargo ship to alter the space station’s orbit.

This is the same automated cargo ship that was unable to detach earlier this week due to a computer malfunction. Russian engineers have determined the reason the cargo ship was unable to detach from the space station and are prepared to make a second attempt to undock the unmanned ATV. The undocking attempt could possibly be made today.

[via MSNBC]

NASA cancels space station maneuver to clear orbital debris is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A few weeks back I was replacing a valve cover gasket on a race car and accidentally rounded off a bolt that was in a hard-to-reach spot. I was working on that bolt in the garage and it took me hours of cursing and trips to the hardware store to get the damaged bolt out and a new one in. I have a deep appreciation for what astronauts aboard the ISS have been going through as they struggled with a damaged bolt on the outside of the orbiting space station.

In the weightlessness of space, and with no Home Depot nearby, I can only imagine the ISS astronauts wanted to curse and throw tools, just as I did. They had to remain calm, and thankfully had a team of engineers to help work on a fix. The problem was that a bolt that held a replacement power unit to the main truss of the space station was cross-threaded and wouldn’t tighten properly.

The astronauts conducted a spacewalk this week and successfully repaired the damage bolt and attached the replacement power unit to the outside of the space station. Since the hardware store was hundreds of miles below, the astronauts had to create improvised tools. The tools were made from spare parts aboard the station and a toothbrush. The astronauts also used a pressurized can of nitrogen gas the blow metal shavings out of the bolt receptacles. It’s like an episode of MacGyver in space.

[via Space.com]