International Space Station Crew Member Discusses Life in Space with Japanese Students

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 38 Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) conducted a question
and answer session during an in-flight event Jan. 14 with students belonging to the agency's Young Astronaut Club who gathered at the Japanese flight control center in Tsukuba, Japan. Wakata, who has been aboard the station since early November, will become the first Japanese commander of the station in March. He is scheduled to return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in May.

Working Together to Build Tomorrow's STEM Workforce

On January 13, NASA and the U.S. Department of Education marked the successful completion of a pilot program designed to engage more students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.
Attendees at the half-day event, held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, included senior officials from both agencies as well as invited guests. The group reviewed the pilot activity and associated evaluation approach, identified best practices, and discussed potential follow-on efforts. The highlight of the event was the presentation of successful student entries from the design competition.
In July 2013, the two agencies signed a Space Act Agreement to launch the collaborative pilot education initiative, which began in the fall. It infused NASA content into the Department of Education’s 21^st Century Community Learning Centers. The 21CCLCs provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours or expanded learning time for students and their families, particularly students who attend schools in under-resourced communities.
In support of the pilot initiative, NASA provided online STEM challenges and associated curriculum materials to 21CCLCs in three states: Colorado, Michigan and Virginia. The pilot leveraged resources between NASA and the Department of Education to address the national need for a STEM-educated workforce and to create and evaluate STEM resources for 21CCLC grantees' future use.
The pilot featured three NASA student design challenges: a simulated parachute drop onto the surface of Mars, a radiation protection system for astronauts and flight hardware, and a recreational activity that astronauts could perform in the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station.
Student teams worked with mentors to develop their products. They then submitted 3- to 5-minute videos of their design entries for evaluation. A team of NASA education professionals and technical staff reviewed the submissions and selected four submissions to showcase based upon creativity, use of the engineering design process, and student data collection and analysis. The highlight of Monday's event was the video presentation from each of these teams:

NASA Space Launch System Could Make ‘Outside the Box’ Science Missions Possible

When it comes to scientific probes exploring the far reaches of our solar system, the rules could be changing.
The human spaceflight community joined the space science community Jan. 13-14 at the Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG) meeting in Tucson, Ariz. There, scientists heard from the Space Launch System (SLS) Program about the capabilities and progress being made on the rocket, and discussed the potential benefits it also could bring to robotic exploration of the outer solar system.
“The potential use of SLS for science will further enhance the synergy between scientific exploration and human exploration,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “SLS has the promise of enabling transformational science in our exploration of the solar system and cosmos.”
Currently under construction, NASA’s Space Launch System will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle. Designed to enable human exploration missions to deep space destinations, including an asteroid and Mars, SLS is working toward a first launch in 2017. For that first flight test, the rocket will be able to launch 70 metric tons (77 tons) of payload into low-Earth orbit, almost three times what the space shuttle could carry. From there, SLS will be evolved to a configuration that will be able to carry 130 metric tons (143 tons), more weight than any rocket ever has been able to carry.
“While many people think of the Space Launch System in terms of human exploration, SLS could have a wide application in a lot of other areas, including space science,” said Steve Creech, assistant program manager for strategy and partnerships for SLS. “For missions to the outer planets, for example, SLS could make it possible to do things that are currently impossible, such as sending larger scientific spacecraft with more instruments to far off destinations with reduced transit times.”
Agency scientific and engineering teams have been evaluating whether there would be potential benefits from launching deep space robotic spacecraft, such as the Europa Clipper, a proposed mission to one of Jupiter's icy moons, on the SLS rocket, and determined the rocket would enable the spacecraft to fly direct trajectories to our solar system’s outer planets, rather than using planetary gravities to gain speed, reducing transit time compared to current launch vehicles. In the case of the Europa Clipper, for example, the transit time would be reduced to less than half of what it would be using other launch vehicles.
“For as long as people have been launching rockets into space, mission designers have had to work within certain limitations – a spacecraft can only be so heavy and it has to fit within a certain width,” Creech said. “Depending on how large you make it, it can only go so fast, which in some cases limits where you can go. Today, if you want to send a mission to the outer planets, you have to be able to make it fit within that box. With SLS, we’re about to make that box much larger.
“With the space shuttle, for example, we were able to launch missions like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope that were about the size of a school bus. With SLS, you can design a spacecraft even larger than the space shuttle that carried Hubble. It’s going to open up an entirely new way of thinking about how we plan and design planetary science missions.”
NASA’s OPAG works to identify scientific priorities and pathways for exploration in the outer solar system past the asteroid belt, including the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and their moons, and other destinations like comets and the distant Kuiper Belt Objects, including Pluto. The group actively solicits input from the scientific community and reports its findings to NASA Headquarters in Washington. OPAG provides input to NASA, is open to all interested scientists and regularly evaluates outer solar system exploration goals, objectives, investigations and required measurements on the basis of the widest possible community outreach. Current, NASA outer planets missions include the Cassini orbiter at Saturn and the New Horizons probe en route to Pluto.
The Advanced Concepts Office (ACO), at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the SLS program also is managed, has been working to identify potential uses for the rocket that take advantage of its unique capabilities.
“The Space Launch System could be really game-changing for space science,” said ACO manager Reggie Alexander. “For some missions, it makes it much easier and quicker to carry them out. A Mars sample return mission, for example, could be flown using only one rocket instead of three. But for other destinations, SLS lets you do things we could only dream of before – like collecting samples from the geysers of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.”
Collaborative discussions such as the one at OPAG are part of NASA’s increased efforts to create synergies between its diverse programs.
“SLS is one piece in a much larger picture,” Creech said. “Human exploration missions will be drawing on the knowledge gained from programs like the International Space Station and the Curiosity rover on Mars, and, in turn, SLS could make it possible for other programs to do things they couldn’t do otherwise.”
NASA's Space Launch System will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond Earth orbit using NASA’s Orion spacecraft. Designed to be flexible for crew or cargo missions, the SLS will be safe, affordable and sustainable to continue America's journey of discovery from the unique vantage point of space.

The ISS SPHERES Facility

Alvar Saenz Otero, Ph.D., associate director and SPHERES lead scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Space Systems Laboratory, presents an overview of the Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) used for multiple robotics research investigations aboard the International Space Station. The SPHERES help researchers learn how to control bowling-ball sized satellites in a microgravity environment. Specifically, the research team is looking at how to control multiple satellites so that they work together. Planned uses for SPHERES include in space robotic assembly and refurbishing and repairing existing satellites in orbit.

Space Station Live: Science Aboard Cygnus

Associate International Space Station Program Scientist Tara Ruttley talks with NASA Public Affairs Officer Josh Byerly about the science being carried to the station aboard Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft.

Space Station Live: Student Science Heading to Space Aboard Cygnus

Dr. Jeff Goldstein, Director of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, discusses the student experiments being flown to the International Space Station aboard the Orbital Sciences Cygnus vehicle.

Cygnus Heads to Space for First Station Resupply Mission

NASA commercial partner Orbital Sciences Corporation launched its Cygnus cargo spacecraft aboard the Antares rocket at  1:07 p.m. EST Thursday from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia for the Orbital-1 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.

At the time of launch the station was flying about 260 miles over the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Brazil.
Over the next two and a half days, Cygnus will perform a series of engine firings to put it on track for a Sunday morning rendezvous with the station.  When the vehicle reaches the capture point about 30 feet from the complex, Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Mike Hopkins and Koichi Wakata will use Canadarm2, the station’s 57-foot robotic arm, to reach out and grapple Cygnus at 6:02 a.m. The crew then will use the robotic arm to guide Cygnus to its berthing port on the Earth-facing side of the Harmony node for installation beginning around 6:20 a.m.
NASA television coverage of the rendezvous and berthing begins at 5 a.m. Sunday, followed at 7 a.m. with coverage of the installation.
For its first official commercial resupply mission, designated Orbital-1, Cygnus is delivering 2,780 pounds of supplies to the space station, including vital science experiments for the Expedition 38 crew members aboard the orbiting laboratory. Orbital Sciences successfully proved the capability of the Cygnus spacecraft during its first and only demonstration flight to the station back in September 2013.
Cygnus will remain at the station until mid-February when it will be unberthed from the station for a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. That departure will clear the way for the arrival of Space Exploration Technologies’ SpaceX-3 commercial cargo mission aboard the Dragon spacecraft. These two back-to-back resupply missions by U.S. companies will mark a milestone in NASA’s ability to deliver critical new science payloads to the only laboratory in space.
The launch of Antares was scheduled for Thursday after a launch attempt on Wednesday was scrubbed due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded constraints imposed on Antares. Orbital conducted a comprehensive review of data related to the radiation environment in space, further reviews and modeling of the rocket’s avionics systems, and the forecast for favorable terrestrial weather conditions at Wallops. Upon a deeper examination of the space weather environment, Orbital’s engineering team, in consultation with NASA, determined that the risk to launch success was within acceptable limits established at the outset of the Antares program.
With a busy weekend of Cygnus capture activities ahead of them, Hopkins, Wakata and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio enjoyed a mostly off-duty day Thursday aboard the station to relax and recharge.

 Hopkins and Wakata began their day with a series of eye exams for the Ocular Health study. Vision changes have been observed in some astronauts returning from long-duration spaceflight, and researchers want to learn more about its root causes and develop countermeasures to minimize this risk.

Wakata also downloaded data from sensors he wore for a 36-hour data collection period of the Circadian Rhythms study. The knowledge gleaned from this experiment will not only provide important insights into the adaptations of the human autonomic nervous system in space over time, but also has significant practical implications by helping to improve physical exercise, rest- and work shifts as well as fostering adequate workplace illumination.
In the afternoon, Hopkins, Mastracchio and Wakata participated in a debrief with support personnel on the ground to review the two U.S. spacewalks conducted in late December to remove and replace a faulty ammonia pump module. That pair of spacewalks conducted by Hopkins and Mastracchio with robotic assistance from Wakata at the controls of Canadarm2 successfully restored an external cooling loop that uses ammonia to prevent station systems from overheating.
Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy spent much of their day replacing lights in the Russian segment of the station.
Ryazanskiy also performed the Uragan Earth-observation experiment, which seeks to document and predict the development of natural and man-made disasters on Earth.
Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin began the day conducting routine daily maintenance on the life-support system in the Zvezda service module. Afterward he joined Kotov for a familiarization session for the KAPLYA-2 experiment, which is studying the hydrodynamics and heat transfer of monodisperse drop flows in space.