Operated for ESA by the French company Novespace, the Zero-G aircraft flies parabolic arcs so that its passengers and cargo experience periods of freefalling weightlessness.
Tag: Astronaut
-
What does a typical working day on the ISS look like?
Frank De Winne is answering a question on the ISS submitted by Thomas Kern from Germany:
What does a typical working day on the ISS look like? -
Can you feel the speed at which the ISS travels?
Frank De Winne is answering a question on the ISS submitted by Paul from Portugal:
When you do your EVA (space walk), can you feel the speed (28.000 Km/h) at which the ISS is travelling? -
The ISS: a work in progress!
Highlights of ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang’s 14-day Alissé mission to the International Space Station between 29 August and 12 September 2009. Fuglesang was part of the seven-strong STS-128 crew launched to the ISS with Space Shuttle Discovery. STS-128 delivered new supplies and equipment to the ISS. The crew also performed three spacewalks to continue Station construction.
-
Space Shuttle Discovery returns to Earth
Space Shuttle Discovery lands at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on 12 September concluding ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang’s 14-day Alissé mission to the the International Space Station.
-
ESA astronauts working on the ISS
ESA astronauts Frank De Winne and Christer Fuglesang met up on the International Space Station in September 2009. Fuglesang was visiting the ISS during his 14-day Alissé mission. De Winne, on his six-month OasISS mission, was already on the ISS as part of the resident ISS Expedition 20 crew.
-
How do you wash your clothes in space?
Frank De Winne is answering a question on the ISS submitted by Herman from Belgium:
– How do you wash your clothes in space?
– Do you use washing powder to wash your clothes in space? -
How does food stay fresh on the ISS?
Frank De Winne is answering a question on the ISS submitted by Cedric from Belgium:
– How do you occupy yourself during the 2-day Soyuz journey to the ISS?
– How does food stay fresh in space, since there is no fridge on the ISS? -
What medical conditions would stop you becoming an astronaut?
Frank De Winne is answering a question on the ISS submitted by Mrs. Shahi from Birmingham (United Kingdom):
What medical conditions would stop you becoming an astronaut? -
NASA ASTRONAUT LEADS TOUR OF SPACE STATION IN HD
Expedition 20 Flight Engineer Michael Barratt provides a 20-minute tour of the International Space Station, documenting the full 167 feet of the space station’s pressurized modules. Barratts commentary describes to Mission Control in Houston how equipment and supplies are arranged and stored, and provides engineers with a detailed assessment of each module-to-module hatchway.
-
Frank De Winne: ESA astronaut
Astronaut Frank De Winne talks about his OasISS mission, being the first European commander of the International Space Station, about living in space… and missing a few home comforts, like a shower or a glass of wine!
-
New ESA Astronaut: Thomas Pesquet
Thomas is French, an aeronautical engineer and commercial arline pilot, born in 1978
-
New ESA Astronaut: Timothy Peake
37-year-old Tim Peake is a helicopter test pilot in the British army.
-
New ESA Astronaut: Luca Parmitano
33-year-old Luca is an experimental test pilot in the Italian air force.
-
New ESA Astronaut: Andreas Mogensen
33-year-old Andreas is from Denmark, a space navigation & control engineer.
-
New ESA Astronaut: Samantha Cristoforetti
32-year-old Samantha is a fighter pilot in the Italian air force.
-
NASA Mission Update: New Horizon
Three billion miles away from Earth, near the farthest reaches of our solar system, is the heavenly body with an extreme orbit known for 76 years as Pluto. Discovered by astronomers in 1930, Pluto was considered the ninth planet in our solar system until 2006 — when, after much debate, it was reclassified by the International Astronomical Union as a “dwarf planet,” officially dropping its name — for a number.
Denis Bogan, New Horizons Program Scientist: “Well, it certainly doesnt affect Pluto. Pluto is the same thing it was before it was discovered, before it was given a name, and before the name was changed.”
Nor does Pluto’s reclassification change the importance of NASA’s first mission to study it.
Launch Announcer: “We have ignition and lift off of NASAs New Horizon spacecraft on a decade-long”
Launched in January 2006, the thousand-pound New Horizons spacecraft will travel through space for 9-1/2 years before meeting up with Pluto in the summer of 2015.
Denis Bogan: “The last time Pluto was in this position in its orbit was during the French and Indian War. It takes 248 Earth years to travel around its orbit and come back to the same place again. At the speed of light, sending a radio signal back from the spacecraft, from Pluto to Earth, will take 4-1/2 hours.”
Operating on less power than a pair of common 100-watt light bulbs, New Horizons will map the highest-interest areas of Pluto to a resolution of 50 meters, less than the length of a football field — three billion miles away. Itll then move on to survey Pluto’s neighborhood: the atmosphere, ancient materials and small bodies of the Kuiper Belt, a chaotic region astrophysicists believe can tell us how Earth, the planets, even our sun were made.
Denis Bogan: “We have primitive material chunks of rock and ice, millions of objects of objects out there in the Kuiper Belt and we know very little about it. We didnt discover it until 1992.”
Traveling 3 billion miles to frozen, rocky Pluto and its environs, New Horizon is, in a way, going back in time to the chemical building blocks of the solar system, and life.
To learn more about the New Horizons mission visit www.nasa.gov
-
NASA Mission Update: ULYSSES
The sun is the source of life-sustaining energy here on Earth. Much of how it works – and affects us — remains a source of scientific mystery. Sunspots were first recorded by humans in the 16-hundreds. Astrophysicists have since linked heightened sunspot activity with the solar wind. It’s a million-mile-an-hour force of magnetically-charged particles emanating from the sun’s upper atmosphere. Ebbing and flowing in minimum and maximum intensities over eleven year cycles, this so-called space weather can seriously affect how things work here on Earth, such as disrupting satellite communications, telephone service and personal electronics.
Arik Posner, Program Scientist: “It would help our technology, to safeguard the technology by knowing when and in what intensity space weather occurs and where these effects might show up”
Launch Announcer : “2 -1 ignition and liftoff of Discovery and the Ulysses spacecraft bound for the polar regions of the sun.”
Until the launch of Ulysses from space shuttle Discovery in 1990, data for understanding and predicting space weather had come from a limited sampling area: the plane extending from the suns equator. Ulysses has since made three orbits above and below the poles of the sun, vastly expanding the territory from where raw space weather data are gathered.
Arik Posner: “So Ulysses was really the first spacecraft that leaped out of this confinement, and it gives us a view of the global heliosphere.”
Ulysses has found that the solar minimum were in right now is producing the lowest levels of solar wind seen since accurate readings became available a half-century ago. But for heliophysicists, these data raise as many questions as they answer.
Arik Posner: “The Space Age is only 50 years now, and the Sun just operates on longer time scales than these 50 years. So we might have just glimpsed just the surface of what is really going on.”
By expanding its reach, both in time and space, Ulysses is helping the discipline of space weather prediction grow beyond its infancy for the betterment of life here on Earth.
For more about Ulysses, the heliosphere, and space weather, log onto: www.nasa.gov/missions and click on ‘Ulysses.’
-
NASA Mission Update: CALIPSO
NASA Mission Update: CALIPSO
Clouds have forever held the imagination of skygazers who are captivated by their endless beauty and seeming randomness. But clouds, and whats in them, also hold fascination for scientists who seek to understand the many effects they have on life here on Earth.
Hal Maring, Program Scientist, CALIPSO: “Low clouds, which are white, can reflect sunlight and cause cooling of the Earth, and high clouds tend to warm the Earth by absorbing and re-radiating warmth back into the atmosphere.”
Launch Announcer: “2-1 We have ignition and we have lift-off of NASAs Calipso/Cloudsat spacecraft.”
Since its launch in April 2006, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation mission, CALIPSO, has provided new insight into the role that clouds play in regulating our climate. As CALIPSO orbits the Earth, its light detection and ranging, or lidar system, emits short pulses of green and infrared light, producing a 300-feet wide snapshot of what’s in the atmosphere from top to bottom — clouds and airborne particles. Snapshots collected along the same orbit are then streamed together to paint a picture of what a vertical slice of our atmosphere looks like.
Hal Maring: “Its basically a large laser range finder, and it shoots light down into the atmosphere. And, its able to detect and measure, clouds in the vertical .Not like a photograph, which tends to be two-dimensional, but gives us vertical curtains of measurements of clouds, i.e., their altitude.”
These critical cloud data from CALIPSO are used with information gathered by other satellites in NASAs A-train constellation of Earth-observing spacecraft to quantify just how much sunlight reaches the planet — and how much gets radiated back into space. This so-called energy budget is a key to documenting and understanding climate change.
Hal Maring: “We have found, it appears as though, the Earth is warming and its warming because of an imbalance or a change in the Earths energy budget.”
To see and learn more about CALIPSOs cloud images, or how CALIPSOs also helping scientists understand how climate may be changed by naturally-occurring and manmade particulates in the atmosphere called aerosols, go to www.nasa.gov/missions and click on “CALIPSO.”
