NASA Pool Prepares Astronauts for Upcoming Space Station Spacewalks

HOUSTON -- Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are scheduled to perform three consecutive spacewalks in October to upgrade and repair critical equipment outside the orbiting laboratory.

NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hei will venture outside through the Quest airlock on Thursday for the first spacewalk beginning at 8:10 a.m. EDT. The duo will to remove and replace a defective latching end-effector on the Canadarm 2 robotic arm.

On October 10, Bresnik and Vande Hei will egress the airlock at about 8:10 a.m. to rotate a pump flow control assembly to prepare it for venting and its relocation in the near future. The astronauts will also replace a station video camera which has a pink discoloration on the lens.

One week later, on October 18, Bresnik and NASA astronaut Joe Acaba will perform a third orbital walk to add a high definition camera, replace another video camera on the Destiny Laboratory, and the two will lube select areas on the station.

Spacewalking preparations began several months ago by Bresnik, Vande Hei, and Acaba, both in the NASA mock-ups, and below the waters of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory located next to the Johnson Space Center near Houston.

Take a massive swimming pool, fill it with 6.2 million gallons of water, and throw in a large mock up of the space station into that pool. That's the NBL -- a special training pool which allows selected astronauts to suit up in their spacesuit and work submerged with a near feeling of weightlessness.

The NBL is located inside the Sonny Carter Training Facility, and is a critical training tool for many departments within NASA. Flight directors use the pool to refine spacewalk procedures and develop flight procedures. Teams can also verify hardware compatibility first before launching the equipment into space.

"It's a great way to train, and it's an amazing team sport," said NASA astronaut Victor Glover, a Navy commander and F/A-18 pilot, explained to this aerospace reporter. "What you see requires 30 or 40 people just to put two people into a space suit to train. You have a test director, a camera diver, two safety divers per every space suit, and you have a whole team of folks to make sure you're doing these things safely."

An astronaut will spend seven hours of training in the NBL pool for every hour they are scheduled to spend spacewalking.

Glover added that risks are involved with every spacewalk related to time and physics. One example, he discussed, is when astronauts work on the electrical side of the orbital outpost it is performed while the station is over the night side of the planet. Much like replacing a wall socket at home, the Sun is not generating power to the solar arrays for nearly 40 minutes.

Measuring 202-feet long by 102-feet wide, the NBL pool is loaded with strong filters. The pool's water is recycled every 19 hours, according to Glover, and it is chemically treated to stop bacteria growth. The water's temperature remains between 82° to 88° Fahrenheit to keep NASA support divers, who assist the submerged astronauts for long periods of time, warm and comfortable.

NASA-TV will provide live coverage of each spacewalk beginning at 6:30 a.m. each day.

(Charles Atkeison reports on aerospace and technology. Follow his updates via social media @Military_Flight.)

NASA science satellite to plunge back to earth Friday

ATLANTA, Ga. -- A NASA science satellite will plunge back to earth on Friday raining over twenty pieces of debris over an unknown region of our planet.

NASA said on Thursday the satellite will not fall toward North America due to it's orbital track.

The satellite known as UARS for Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is expected to re-enter the earth's atmosphere on Friday afternoon EDT, and moments later, NASA states sections of the spacecraft will crash to the planet.

"The satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period," NASA's Brian Dunbar stated on Thursday. "It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any more certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 24 hours."

NASA and astronomers world wide will be following the craft's decent on Friday.

One leading astronomer at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia has been following UARS's return for several weeks.

"UARS is a satellite which has accomplished it's scientific mission," Tellus' astronomy program manager David Dundee said. "It's a piece of space history."

The spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center aboard the space shuttle Discovery in September 1991, to begin a multi year mission to study earth's ever changing atmosphere.

In 2005, NASA scientists began to fire the spacecraft's thrusters to begin it's slow decent back to earth.

"Once you get to 100 miles up, the craft will begin to encounter different density's of the upper atmosphere which will begin to cause it to fall more rapidly," Mr. Dundee explained.

UARS was circling earth in a 115 by 120 mile high orbit as of Thursday, making one complete revolution every 89 minutes.

Dundee estimates between 24 to 36 pieces will make it to the ground, with around six of those weighing between 200 to 300 pounds.

A high resolution NASA camera located a top Tellus records in bound objects, as many as eight a night, and was ready to track the seven ton UARS had the craft's orbital track brought it over the southeastern United States.

Dundee expects pieces of the spacecraft to tumble into an ocean.
NASA stated today that there has not been any recorded injury to a human from a falling spacecraft to date.

Labor strike delays today's Ariane 5 launch

A labor strike has delayed Today's launch of an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, South America, and Arianespace cannot confirm a possible new launch date.

Countdown clocks stopped around 11:00 a.m. EDT today, nearly two hours before the loading of super cold fuels into the rocket's main stage.

"The Trade Union of French Guiana Workers has just started a strike action within the Telespazio company," Arianespace announced today. "This action will make unavailable means of measurement in the Space Center which are absolutely necessary for (Ariane's) launch planned for Tuesday."

A delay of several days is expected following a teleconference by this aerospace reporter.

Once launched, the Ariane rocket will deliver two communications satellites into geostationary orbit, one for Arabsat and a second for SES North America.

The French Space Agency and Arianespace are working today to have the strikers and Telespazio management return to the bargaining table to end the walkoff.

Based in Rome, Italy, Telespazio handle's the space systems division of Ariane, including the rocket's prelaunch processing.

Space station astronaut calls iPhone 4 from 240 miles up

(HOUSTON) -- Orbiting 240 miles high above earth, astronauts aboard the International Space Station use huge satellites in orbit to talk with controllers back at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

On July 19, one astronaut aboard the orbiting complex called an iPhone 4 located in Mission Control to chat.

NASA astronaut Ronald Garan called an employee of the space center's iPhone to chat with a group of thirty visiting space tweeps -- those who use Twitter to chat and discuss space and science interests.

Garan, who is known as @Astro_Ron on the social network site, spoke for nearly two minutes to the group who threw questions at comments his way.

This aerospace reporter (@AbsolutSpaceGuy) was among those who spoke with the astronaut who commented at one point that it was past his bedtime.

This space tweep also recorded the conversation via his own iPhone 4, and is attached to this article.