July 11-17, 2016 / Vol 35, No 28 / Hawai`i Island, USA

ISS Expedition 48 Working on 250+ Experiments, Preparing for 2 Cargo Ships

International Space Station Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams, Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin with the newly arrived Anatoli Ivanishin, Takuya Onishi and Kathleen Rubins are hard at work 400-km above the Earth. Each with a 4-month mission will contribute to experiments including 3D printing, rodent research, protein crystal growth, gecko gripper, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and seedling growth while maintaining ISS machines and exercising 2 hours a day. Russia Progress 64P is scheduled to arrive on July 19 with SpaceX Dragon CRS 9 arriving July 20. The 7.23-meter tall Progress ship can hold up to 2,350 kg of cargo and remain docked for up to 6 months before being released with waste for Earth atmospheric disintegration. Dragon is 6.1-meters tall, can carry 3,310 kg to ISS, return the same amount to Earth (of which 2,500 kg can be pressurized) and is able to remain docked up to 2 years. Following the Falcon 9 launch on July 18 SpaceX will make its second attempt at landing the first stage on land. CRS 9 will be carrying the IDA-2 docking adapter which will be installed on ISS during U.S. EVA-36 planned this month. Bigelow BEAM is testing inflatable habitat technologies; start up Axiom Space LLC is hoping to add a commercial module to ISS in 2020; China Tiangong-1 is in process of deorbiting as Tiangong-2 is being readied for September 15 launch potentially followed by a crewed mission in October. (Image Credit: NASA, Tomo News, CXC, UCL, W. Dunn, STScI, et al)

MONDAY

Jul 11 — ISS, LEO: Expedition 48 six-member crew spending time on Station orientation, reviewing emergency operations & cargo ship arrival procedures, troubleshooting Water Processing Assembly, taking air samples in every module; ISS has been in orbit more than 6,443 days, crewed more than 5,730 days.

Jul 11 — Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Moon Polar Orbit: Craft studying ancient polar ice, gravity fields, mapping impact sites; NASA approves mission extension until at least Mar 2018, will hopefully observe planned 2017 missions including Chang’e-5 sample return, Chandrayaan-2 and GLXP team landings.

Jul 11 — Juno, Highly Elliptical Jupiter Orbit: NASA craft should now have all instruments powered on & gathering initial science data while calibrating instruments, will remain in Capture Orbit Phase until October 14 when it will perform Period Reduction Maneuver; communication delay to Earth is 48.3 minutes.

Jul 11 — Flexure Engineering LLC, Seattle WA: NewSpace company preparing for 7-day LunarScene 2016 starting Sep 26, providing thermal-vacuum mobile chamber and insulation systems capable of -269° C to 357° C swing; supported James Webb Space Telescope & Hubble missions; CEO Russell Cox, Co-Founder Gregory Scharfstein.

Jul 11 — Firefly Space Systems, Cedar Park TX: Testing aerospike engine, developing reusable Alpha rocket capable of lofting 400 kg to 400-km equatorial orbit or 200 kg to 500-km Sun-Synchronous Orbit; company with over 140 engineers, joins Commercial Spaceflight Federation; CEO Thomas Markusic.

Jul 11 — Uwingu, Boulder CO: Collecting funds from public naming of 500,000 Mars craters for grants to space researcher and education programs as well as Mars One and commercial entrepreneurs (potential to be raised estimated at ~US$10M); has over 20,343 publicly-named craters.

Jul 11-14 — Keck Institute for Space Studies, Caltech, Pasadena CA: Workshop: Optical Communication on SmallSats, Enabling the Next Era in Space Science.

Jul 11-15 — Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Observatory of Lyon, National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Lyon, France: 2nd Indo-French Astronomy School: Galaxies Formation and Evolution – Models to Interpret Observations.

ISU Summer Studies Program Opening at Technion Institute in Israel

The International Space University and host Technion Institute, under the leadership of Presidents Walter Peeters and Peretz Lavie, are launching the 29th Summer Studies Program (SSP 2016) July 12 – September 1 in Haifa. Third-largest city in the State of Israel with a metropolitan area now home to ~600,000 residents Haifa is a major seaport on the Mediterranean coastline buttressed by Mount Carmel (525.4 meters). It is home to the Matam high-tech park as well as respected academic institutions University of Haifa and SSP 2016 host Technion (est. April 11, 1912), which is a leading science and technology research university with 557 faculty and almost 14,000 students, across 18 departments, 60 research centers and 82 graduate programs. The rigorous broad-spectrum SSP academic syllabus is highlighted and enhanced by major events that are also open to the public, including the International Astronaut Panel, The Human Side of the Columbia Mission panel, the Arthur C. Clarke Panel – “Where Space meets Popular Culture” and the Gerald A. Soffen Memorial Lecture by Dr. Buzz Aldrin. ISU is headquartered in Strasbourg, France and is one of the world’s premier space education institutions, offering graduate level programs dedicated to promoting international, interdisciplinary and intercultural cooperation in space. It has graduated over 3,700 students from over 100 countries. (Image Credit: ISU, Technion)

Jul 11-17 — Farnborough International Airshow, Farnborough, United Kingdom: 49th Farnborough International Air Show; International Space Pavilion offers 1,100 square meters of exhibit space dedicated to space industry products, projects, professionals.

Jul 11 — Moon: At first quarter, 14:52; 5.3° NNE of Spica, 22:00.

Jul 11 — Comet 9P Tempel 1: 0.65° NNE of Moon, 02:00.

Jul 11 — Apollo Asteroid 2010 WT8: Near-Earth flyby (0.093 AU).

Continued from…

May 23 – Jul 29 — The Lunar and Planetary Institute, Johnson Space Center, NASA, Houston TX: Exploration Science Summer Intern Program.

Jun 17 – Aug 15 — Canadian Space Agency, Longueuil, Quebec, Canada: 4th Astronaut recruitment campaign for CSA; expects to announce selected candidates in Summer 2017.

Jun 27 – Aug 5 — Mavericks Lab, NASA, SETI, Moffett Field CA: Mavericks Lab Applied Research Accelerator: Asteroid Grand Challenge.

Jul 4-16 — Nordic Network of Astrobiology, European Astrobiology Campus, Reykjavik, Iceland: Biosignatures and the Search for Life on Mars; summer school covering search for life on early Earth, below Earth surface & on Mars.

Jul 10-12 — Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Curtin University, Perth, Australia: 2016 Australasian Astrobiology Meeting.

Jul 10-16 — International Center of Interdisciplinary Science Education, Rencontres du Vietnam, Quy Nhon, Vietnam: 22nd International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology (PASCOS 2016) / 12th Rencontres du Vietnam.