NASA TV to Air U.S. Spacewalk

On Sept. 1, two NASA astronauts will spacewalk outside the International Space Station for the second time in less than two weeks.

NASA Television will provide complete coverage beginning at 6:30 a.m. EDT, with the six-and-a-half hour spacewalk scheduled to begin about 8 a.m.

Working on the port side  truss, Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Kate Rubins will retract a thermal radiator that is part of the station’s cooling system. The radiator is a backup that had been deployed previously as part of an effort to fix an ammonia coolant leak. They’ll also tighten struts on a solar array joint, and install the first of several enhanced high-definition television cameras that will be used to monitor activities outside the station, including the comings and goings of visiting cargo and crew vehicles.

This will be the 195th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the fifth of Williams’ career and the second for Rubins. As was the case for their first spacewalk together Aug. 19, Williams will be designated as extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1), wearing a spacesuit with a red stripe, while Rubins will be EV2, wearing a suit with no stripes.

Apollo 11 Astronauts Wore Bras?!

Well not exactly bras but according to THIS Boing Boing article, the Moon surface going suits of Apollo 11 were engineered by International Latex Corporation in Dover, Delaware.  The specs for the suits were a bit daunting.  They had to maintain an oxygen  pressure of about 3.75 pounds per square inch, and still have enough flexibility to move and carry out the work that they needed to do while on the moon's surface.

ILC it seems was no stranger to rubber garments.  They designed and manufactured Playtex bras and girdles.  Even the joints needed at the shoulders, elbows, knees, hips and ankles were designed with bellows type design that allowed the astronauts to move with relatively little effort.

Also from the article:

•  Steel aircraft cables were used throughout the suit to absorb tension forces and help maintain its shape under pressure.  

All in all, a truly advanced design even by today's standards. Check out the pic of Neil Armstrong's suit.

How would marooned astronauts be rescued

Any fan of science fiction space or maybe the marooned in space genre of movie has seen this situation used more than once: An astronaut working outside a ship or something akin to it, for some reason becomes separated from the craft which all but assures that they will die an agonizing death through aphixia or loss of suit pressure. Every movie I had seen where someone had drifted even just a short distance was considered lost, no way to retreive them.

Well in a recent Gizmodo blog entry, this need not be a foregone conclusion and it seems that NASA has some pretty interesting contingency plan.

Of course we all know any EVA includes a teather. I just think we have never considered how strong the unit is. An astronauts teather is braided steel, which has a tensile strength of 1,100 pounds. Not something that is bound to fail under normal conditions. However if the unthinkable should happen and someone's teather failed then NASA's backup plan is a S.A.F.E.R. Yeah, I never heard if it either. It's a "Simplified Aid for Extra-vehicular activity Rescue," According to the article it's:

• a backpack with built-in nitrogen-jet small joystick to propel (the astronaut) back to the station.

There are a few really out there options but as Michael Curie, a spokesman for NASA's space operations puts it: "we are really happy with the tether-and-Safer approach."

So I would think that one of science fiction's old saws has been made moot by advancements in suit technology. Safer sounds so much like an off shot of something like what was experimented with in earlier projects like Gemini.

Read the complete Gizmodo article here

Astronaut's Fingernails - NASA's "dirty" little secret

According to an article I just read in Boing Boing, NASA has some what of a dirty secret when it come to astronauts in fact and fingernails in particular. There is no question when we consider astronauts to be a cut above. Their job is dangerous to be sure, but it is the little inconveniences that go without saying that would put most of us off.

One astronaut activity is the dream of everyone that has ever considered going into the last big frontier. That activity is extra-vehicular activity the much vaunted E.V.A. Well if diapers and caths don't put you off, it seems there is another casualty - your finger nails. Yep, extended time in a pressure suit doing eva will make your fingernails fall off. The problem is so bad that many astronauts that know that they will be doing extended EVAs will go so far as to pull their own nails off, just to get the pain and discomfort over and done with. It also appears that suit jocks with large hands suffer the most.

From the boing boing article:

• In several cases, sustained pressure on the fingertips during EVAs caused intense pain and led to the astronauts' nails detaching from their nailbeds, a condition called fingernail delamination.

Those of us who have been paying attention remember that a couple of years ago NASA started a competition for the next generation of Suit Gloves. Now we know why!

NASA awards contract for new suits!

NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston, for the design, development and production of a new spacesuit system. The Constellation Program mission requires two spacesuit system configurations to meet the requirements of Orion missions to the space station and to the moon. Configuration One will support dynamic events such as launch and landing operations; contingency intravehicular activity (IVA) during critical mission events; off-nominal events such as loss of pressurization of the Orion crew compartment; and microgravity. Configuration Two will build upon Configuration One and will support lunar surface operations. While preparing to walk on the moon, the astronauts will construct Configuration Two by replacing elements of Configuration One with elements specialized for surface operations.



Image Credits: NASA.

Tips for the gravitationally challenged.

Twenty things you didn't know about living in space. By Corey S. Powell. In Discover Magazine, November 2007.

1. Nearly every astronaut experiences some space sickness, caused by the wildly confusing information reaching their inner ears. In addition to nausea, symptoms include headaches and trouble locating your own limbs. Just like college, really.

2. And those are the least of your worries. In weightlessness, fluids shift upward, causing nasal congestion and a puffy face; bones lose calcium, forming kidney stones; and muscles atrophy, slowing the bowels and shrinking the heart.

3. At least you'll be puffy, constipated, and Tall: the decreased pressure on the spine in zero-g causes most space travelers to grow about two inches.

4. Lab rats sent into space during midpregnancy, while their fetuses' inner ears are developing, spawn some seriously tipsy babies.

5. No humans have yet been conceived in space, so we can only imagine.

6. So that's what it takes: A 2001 study showed that astronauts who snored on Earth snoozed silently in space.

7. But astronauts sleep less soundly; 16 sunrises a day throws a major wrench into their circadian rhythms.

8 And Ziggy played guitar. At the start of the workday on the space shuttle, mission control in Houston broadcasts wake-up music, usually selected with a particular astronaut in mind. On the all-work, no-play International Space Station, crews wake to an alarm clock.

9. If you are ever exposed to the vacuum of space without a suit on. don't hold your breath. Sudden decompression would cause your lungs to rupture.

10 In addition, water on the tongue, in the nose, and in the eyes would boil away. This actually happened in 1965, when a space suit failed during a NASA experiment and the tester was exposed to a near vacuum for 15 seconds.

11. Contrary to Hollywood, though, you wouldn't explode. Lack of oxygen in the blood is what would kill you, but it would take about two minutes.

12. More explosion paranoia: Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space-tourism company, reportedly considered barring women with breast implants due to fears that they might blow up.

13. John Glenn found it hard to choke down his food, but not because of the lack of gravity: Early astronauts relied on aluminum tubes of semiliquid mush, food cubes, and dehydrated meals.

14. Today astronauts can spice up their meals with salt and pepper—in liquid form. Sprinkled grains would float away, tickling noses and clogging vents.

15. Missing something? Those vents on the space shuttle and International Space Station serve as the lost and found, sucking up anything that's floating about unsecured.

16. The shuttle commode requires that astronauts align themselves precisely in the dead center of the seat. A mock-up of the shuttle toilet, complete with built-in camera, is used to train them how to position themselves.

17. NASA tried building a bathroom into its space suits—a fitted condom attached to a bladder for men, a molded gynecological insert for women—but gave up and passed out diapers to all.

18. Returning astronauts report extreme difficulty moving their arms and legs right after touchdown, one reason why they call landing "the second birth. "

19. But some long-duration cosmonauts report that the hardest thing to readjust to about life on Earth is that when you let go of objects, they fall.

20. Better just to stay up there? Eighteen people have died on space missions, but never in space—always on the way up or the way down.

(NASA photo of space shuttle toilet.)
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Top 10 best Spacewalks in History

Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) is work done by an astronaut away from the Earth and outside of a spacecraft. The term most commonly applies to an EVA made outside a craft orbiting Earth (a spacewalk). As of September 13, 2006, 158 astronauts had made spacewalks (out of 448 astronauts ever in space). These are some of the most interesting moments in spacewalks history.

Click on the article title or the photo to go to the blog site which contains some fantastic pictures and videos. Enjoy!

Sleek new spacesuit design

In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility.

Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that.

Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather's spacesuit--think more Spiderman, less John Glenn.

Photo / Donna Coveney

NASA starts competition for better space suit glove

Six teams are getting ready to compete in the first ever Astronaut Glove Challenge, one of NASA's Centennial Challenges. The goal of the $250,000 competition, which will be held on 2 and 3 May, is to spur innovation to design more flexible spacesuit gloves. Gloves are possibly the most important part of the spacesuit from an astronaut's perspective. In addition to cranking levers and handling power drills, astronauts use their hands – rather than their feet – as their primary mode of "walking" around the International Space Station. Current gloves use two inner layers – a rubbery balloon-like layer surrounded by cloth to help keep the glove's shape – and an outer shield that protects against micrometeoroids and orbital debris and insulates the hands against the extreme temperatures of space. The gloves are pressurised, making it difficult for the astronauts to move their fingers. The labour-intensive spacewalks often leave astronauts' hands bruised and pinched and their fingernails bent backwards. So NASA has gone outside the usual big aerospace companies. Up for grabs is $250,000 in prize money. Each competitor's glove will be graded on how it withstands pressure, how flexible it is and most of all, how comfortable the glove is while doing work. The team with the glove that scores highest in the three tests and also beats the existing spacesuit glove will take home the $200,000 prize.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders