The return to Earth of three International Space Station crew members and the prelaunch activities, launch and docking of the station’s newest trio of residents will be broadcast on NASA Television during the next several weeks. After almost six months aboard the orbital laboratory, Expedition 24 Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov, NASA Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russian Flight Engineer Mikhail Kornienko are scheduled to land their Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft in southern Kazakhstan on Sept. 23 (Sept. 24 in Kazakhstan). Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri, NASA Flight Engineer Scott Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka will launch aboard the Soyuz TMA-01M on Oct. 7 (Oct. 8 in Kazakhstan) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
They will join NASA astronaut and Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock, NASA Flight Engineer Shannon Walker and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who have been aboard the station since June 18. The coverage begins with a NASA TV Video File feed at 11 a.m. CDT Sept. 17. The footage will include the prelaunch news conference with Kelly, Kaleri and Skripochka at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, and their ceremonial visit to lay flowers at the Kremlin Wall in Red Square in Moscow. A change of command ceremony in which Skvortsov will hand over command of the station to Wheelock will be conducted at 4:05 p.m. Sept. 22. It will be replayed during NASA TV’s International Space Station Update at 10 a.m. Sept. 23 and during landing coverage that evening.
NASA's Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research Program (CRuSR) has awarded a total of approximately $475,000 to Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwall, Texas and Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif. The awards will allow the two companies to perform test flights of their experimental vehicles near the edge of space. The flights will demonstrate the capabilities of new vehicles to provide recoverable launch and testing of small payloads going to "near-space," the region of Earth's atmosphere between 65,000 and 350,000 feet. The CRuSR program fosters the development of commercial reusable transportation to near space. The overall goal of the program is regular, frequent and predictable access to near-space at a reasonable cost with easy recovery of intact payloads.
"These two awards are just the beginning of an innovative teaming relationship with industry to provide affordable access to the edge of space while evaluating the microgravity environment for future science and technology experiments," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "CRuSR represents the sort of government-commercial partnership that will facilitate near-space access at affordable costs." The CRuSR awards will fund two flights this fall and one this winter of Armadillo's Super-Mod vehicle from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The first two flights will be to an altitude of approximately nine miles and the third to approximately 25 miles.
The Masten Space Systems' Xaero vehicle will make four flights this winter from the Mojave Spaceport in California. Two flights will reach an altitude of approximately three miles and two others will be to approximately 18 miles, with an engine shutdown during flight. Both launch vehicles will be modified to mount three antennas for the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) payload. ADS-B-equipped vehicles can determine their position using global navigation satellite systems. The vehicles can periodically broadcast position data and other relevant information to ground stations and other similarly equipped aircraft. In NASA's fiscal 2011 Space Technology Program, CRuSR will become an integral part of the Flight Opportunities Program within the Office of the Chief Technologist.
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NASA and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK) will conduct a full-scale test of a five-segment, first-stage solid rocket motor at 11:05 a.m. EDT, Tuesday, Aug. 31. The test at the ATK Aerospace Systems test facility in Promontory, Utah will assess motor performance at low temperatures. The static firing of the solid motor, designated Development Motor-2, will last two minutes. This is the most heavily instrumented solid rocket motor in NASA history, with 53 test objectives that will be measured using more than 760 instruments. The motor was built as an element of NASA's Constellation Program.
It is the largest and most powerful solid rocket motor designed for flight and is highly transferable to future heavy-lift vehicle designs. To attend the test, U.S. journalists must register with ATK by Aug. 27. For information and to request credentials, contact ATK's Trina Patterson at 801-699-0943. NASA Television's live coverage of the test will begin at 11 a.m. and will broadcast a news conference at 12 p.m. with representatives from NASA and ATK. To participate by teleconference, reporters should e-mail Michael Braukus, michael.j.braukus@nasa.gov for dial-in information.
Lightning's connection to hurricane intensification has eluded researchers for decades, and for a riveting 40 days this summer, NASA lightning researchers will peer inside storms in a way they never have before. Earth scientists and engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will soon fly the Lightning Instrument Package, or LIP, a flight instrument designed to track and document lightning as hurricanes develop and intensify. In August and September, LIP will fly on a remotely piloted Global Hawk airplane over the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of 60,000 feet. LIP will be part of a NASA hurricane study called Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes, or GRIP for short.
The study involves three storm chaser planes mounted with 15 instruments. LIP and the other instruments will work together to create the most complete view of hurricanes to date. "We're now putting LIP on an aircraft that can stay in the air for 30 hours," said Richard Blakeslee LIP principal investigator and Earth scientist at the the Marshall Center. "That’s unprecedented. We typically fly on airplanes that fly over a storm for a period of 10-15 minutes. But this plane can stay with a storm for hours." "We'll be able to see a storm in a way we’ve never seen it before," he added. "We'll see how the storm develops over the long term, and how lightning varies with all the other things going on inside a hurricane.
It's the difference between a single photograph and a full-length movie. That’s quite a paradigm shift." While scientists know an increase in lightning means the storm is changing, it remains a mystery as to whether that increase signifies strengthening or weakening. Though scientists have quite a few ideas, they lack the data to firmly establish a concrete relationship. Researchers hope LIP's upcoming flights will change that. If scientists can figure out the ties between lightning and hurricane severity, meteorologists may be able to greatly improve their short-term forecasts. Researchers have connected lightning to everything from strong winds to flooding to tornadoes, and a few extra minutes of warning time can save lives each year.
Gray Creech of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center can remember August 2, 1985, as if it was yesterday. On that day 25 years ago the public affairs specialist was a young U.S. Air Force airman heading home on leave to North Carolina, flying out of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. "I was just minding my own business, sitting at the end of the runway aboard the second airplane lined up to take off," said Creech. "I had a window seat and was looking out the window when I noticed some really, really black thunder clouds at our end of the runway. Then I saw orange, extremely bright orange, light. My brain didn't register what I was seeing."
What Creech saw was Delta Flight 191 as it crashed on landing. "It was like a slow motion thing. There was the initial fireball, but then as the airplane rolled over, breaking apart and slowing down, the fire caught up with it and enveloped it," added Creech. "It all came to a halt directly even with my window, across the other side of the runway in the grass. As soon as the movement stopped, the rain hit. It was like a wall of rain and the fire quickly became a smoke ball, black and white smoke mixed."
"I remember our pilot coming over the intercom and saying something to the effect ladies and gentlemen, there has been a tragedy and I'm sorry, but we can't return to the terminal and let anyone deplane," said Creech. "Of course that was the last thing any of us wanted to hear, because anybody who saw that wasn't wanting to stay on their plane and go flying. I know I didn't." One hundred and thirty four people of the 163 on board the Delta Lockheed L-1011 and one person on the ground died that day, in part because of a powerful thunderstorm microburst-induced wind shear, a rare but potentially deadly downdraft.
NASA Television will broadcast live the repositioning of a Soyuz spacecraft docked to the International Space Station on Monday, June 28. The capsule’s half-hour journey from the Zvezda Service Module to the Rassvet Module will begin at 12:58 p.m. CDT.
Expedition 24 Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker will board the Soyuz TMA-19 vehicle that docked to Zvezda on June 18. They will fly the Soyuz vehicle a short distance to Rassvet. NASA TV coverage of the event will begin at 12:30 p.m.The change of location will free the Zvezda port for the docking of a new Progress resupply vehicle on Friday, July 2.
That port is the preferred location for the Progress, so it can help reboost the station and adjust its altitude. The Progress will carry 2.5 tons of food, fuel and supplies. The resupply vehicle will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 30. NASA TV will not broadcast the launch, but will show the live coverage of Progress’ docking at 11:55 a.m. on July 2. Live coverage will begin at 11:30 a.m.
