ISS Loses Communication with Houston Mission Control

On Sunday, July 1, the International Space Station temporarily lost command and voice link with Houston, the primary ISS mission control center.

The issue was resolved within a few hours during which time Houston was unable to communicate with ISS.

The problem occurred when the Flight Control Room in Houston suffered a primary and backup failure of its Front-End Processor.

It is hypothesized that the failure was related to Sunday’s leap second and the programming updates pertaining thereto.

Following the contingency protocol, Mission Control personnel moved to the Training or “Red” Flight Control Room for the duration of the failure after immediate troubleshooting efforts proved unsuccessful. They were able to return early Monday.

Although the three crewmembers aboard the station were in a scheduled sleep cycle, Commander Padalka did attempt to call Houston during the issue.

When unable to get through, he followed procedure and called Moscow Mission Control. Had he been unable to reach Moscow, the next contigency called for a switch to the ISS IP phone, orchestrated via netmeeting between Houston and NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba.

The IP phone is commonly used on the station for more private family communications.

Due to the issue, an altitude adjustment was delayed by three orbits. The adjustment was planned in advance, taking the station back to its nominal orbit after the Soyuz TMA-03M undocking and the delay had no negative impact.

The communications system is one station component that is scheduled for an update in the near future, although the planned increase in bandwidth likely would have no effect on Sunday’s issue.

The ISS crew is currently awaiting the other half of its complement. The remainder of Expedition 32 – JAXA’s Akihiko Hoshide, NASA’s Sunita Williams, and Roscosmos’ Yuri Malenchenko – are currently in Baikonur preparing for a July 14 launch.

NEEMO 16 – ESA In search of an asteroid

Earlier this year, ESA Astronaut Samantha was fortunate enough to be assigned to NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 16th mission to an underwater habitat called ‘Aquarius’, which lies about 20m under the ocean and nearly 8 miles off Florida’s Key Largo coast.

Over the years, NEEMO missions have been used by NASA to provide vital research and development data to support future exploration missions.

Living underwater is an excellent space analogue, the crew can practice EVA (‘spacewalk’) techniques using neutral buoyancy in water, whilst Aquarius offers an environment similar to a spacecraft: confined living space, total reliance on life support systems and no option for a quick return.

The crew can only surface safely after 12 hours of decompression – to do otherwise would risk severe decompression illness or ‘the bends’.

The NEEMO 16 crew comprises NASA astronaut and mission commander Dorothy (Dottie) Metcalf-Lindenburger, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui, Professor of Astronomy Steve Squyres and Astronaut Samantha herself.

In addition, they will be supported by two habitat technicians who are also diving experts. The crew will spend 12 days living in Aquarius, conducting two EVAs each day.

Like any space mission, there will be an experienced ground support team who will manage operations, communications and logistics from their Mission Control Centre (MCC) on dry land.

To read the full ESA blog entry click on this link.

Inside NASA Shuttle Endeavour: A bond between technology and humanity

Endeavour's flight deck on Wednesday. Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

See a photo tour of Endeavour's cockpit.

Put aside the nagging worry of bumping into one of those switches. No need to don clean room suits. This ship isn't flying in space anymore.

After getting over the visceral thrill of being inside a spaceship - the real thing - the compactness of the shuttle's crew cabin is quickly evident. Up to seven crew members lived aboard these ships for more than two weeks.

On most shuttle flights, four people rode to and from space on the orbiter's flight deck. Even after removing the cockpit's two rear seats, only three or four people can comfortably fit on the flight deck.

Now stripped of its kitchen, toilet, storage lockers and seats, the shuttle Endeavour's lower deck is spacious compared to the cramped flight deck. It's still not much bigger than a moving truck, but the shuttle's living space eclipses the volume of capsules like Apollo, Soyuz and NASA's new Orion spacecraft.

ESA ATV-3 Edoardo Amaldi: ATV-CC last (nominal) successful simulation

Last (nominal) successful simulation for all Mission Control Centre (MCC) for ATV-3, Edoardo Amaldi. Lots of telemetry yfrog.com/h0pfoigj

ATV-3 Edoardo Amaldi, all fuelled up and ready for launch

NASA ISS Mission Control: Mission Badges

Working Capcom. This decorative panel, returned from ISS, sits in NASA mission control. A Tribute to the missions that built the station.

Space Pumpkin artist: NASA Worker's Halloween Tradition

STS-114 Halloween pumpkin carved by Liz Warren.

CREDIT: Liz Warren

Houston, we have a space pumpkin.

Each year NASA worker Liz Warren carves a unique jack-o-lantern to mark a very space-y Halloween for flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center and this year is no different.

Warren describes the motivation behind her gourd-gouging Halloween tradition.

"This year, I carved a Halloween pumpkin of the mission patch for the International Space Station's Expedition 29. I’m proud to report that it’s sitting in Mission Control on the flight director's desk this week."

"The satisfaction I get from transforming a pumpkin into a space mission emblem pumpkin is tremendous. Space exploration is an extremely challenging and stressful endeavour."

"I like to think that my pumpkins bring a moment of levity and a smile to the astronaut crews and the teams that support them."

Drone mission control hit by self-cloning computer virus

How did a persistent computer virus come to haunt the pilots of the Predator drones attacking Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Yemen?

No-one yet knows, and most likely we will never be told.

What we do know is that the top military technology of the age has proven vulnerable to a persistent keylogger, a virus that stores every keystroke made on a computer and which resists deletion.

It was found two weeks ago on the systems that ground pilots use to fly the Reaper and Predator drones at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, and deleting the virus reportedly has no effect: it simply clones itself if deleted. "It keeps coming back," a Creech AFB operative complained to Wired.

It is most likely that the recent use of removable hard drives to update mission maps was the source of the malware, which appears to be hiding somewhere within the network at Creech. But since that network is not on the internet, the keylogged data should not be reaching any malefactor.

It is possible that top brass at the Pentagon, National Security Agency or the CIA are monitoring their own drone control staff using logging software - but given the mild panic its discovery has caused, that is unlikely.

Experts have also been warning for some time that counterfeit electronics could lead to such problems - and that will doubtless be investigated.

This episode shouldn't affect drone missions, however. They will still be as accurate or inaccurate as intelligence allows.

General Atomics, maker of the Predator, claims on its website that the aircraft has "a fault tolerant flight control system" that allows the plane to continue in safe flight even when contact with the remote control pilot is lost.

NASA ISS EVA: Astronauts encounter bolt trouble

A spacewalking astronaut ran into trouble Sunday while trying to lubricate a joint in the life-sustaining solar power system of the International Space Station, losing one bolt and getting a washer stuck in a crevice.

Mission Control told veteran spaceflier Mike Fincke that he'd have to settle for a partial lube job, after the bolts holding down covers on the joint started popping off unexpectedly.

The spacewalk — the second of four scheduled duringt the shuttle Endeavour's final space station visit — started out well, with Fincke and partner Andrew Feustel topping off a leaky radiator line.

They successfully added ammonia to the space station's coolant system, after rerouting jumper cables and opening valves. One line leaks slightly, and the astronauts needed to recharge it.

Ammonia is extremely hazardous, and the two did their best to avoid contaminating their spacesuits while replenishing the system with about 5 pounds of the substance.

Some frozen ammonia flakes floated toward Feustel as well as a small icy chunk, but he didn't think any of it got him.

Fincke moved on to preventive maintenance on the massive joint that rotates the space station's solar wings on the left side. He was removing his first cover when a bolt popped out and got away from him.

He caught it, but another bolt ended up floating away, and a washer got stuck between the cover and an attachment.

Mission Control worried that the washer might get into the gear mechanisms of the joint and damage them.

Fincke was advised to use "gentle backhand sweeping motions" to get the washer away from the gears, and the astronaut replied he could try to coax it out.

All this came as a surprise, and Mission Control later told the astronauts that the washers might be bent and flimsy from previous repair efforts.

"Sorry you're having such a hard time with those bolts, buddy," Feustel called out to Fincke.

"Yeah, man, I was being really careful, too," replied Fincke, one of NASA's most experienced spacemen.

ESA Cryosat-2 Handover to Mission Controller

CryoSat-2 is Europe's first mission dedicated to monitoring Earth's ice fields.

The satellite carries a sophisticated radar altimeter that can measure the thickness of sea ice down to centimetres and also monitor changes in ice sheets, particularly around the edges where icebergs are calved from the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica.

This milestone is not only achievement for the CryoSat mission, but also for ESA's programme for Earth observation. After the GOCE gravity mission and the SMOS water mission, CryoSat is the third Earth Explorer mission to begin operational life in orbit.

Looking to the future, a host of missions, including the Swarm magnetic field Earth Explorer and the family of Sentinel satellites for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme are in various stages of development and will be launched over the next few years.

These satellite missions will significantly contribute to advancing our understanding of how Earth works as a system and provide much-needed information to assess how climate change is affecting our environment.

Shuttle Atlantis Returnd Safely

Shuttle Atlantis Lands Safely After Hubble Success

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Space shuttle Atlantis landed safely in California on Sunday, bringing home seven triumphant astronauts after their successful service call on the beloved Hubble Space Telescope.

After two days of delay due to storms, the third time was the charm for Atlantis as it touched down on the dry lakebed runway at Edwards Air Force Base at 11:40 a.m. EDT (1540 GMT) to end a 13-day mission to the 19-year-old Hubble. Rainy weather thwarted the shuttle's attempts to land in Florida earlier today and on Friday and Saturday.

"Welcome home, Atlantis!" radioed Mission Control. "Congratulations on a very successful mission giving Hubble a new set of eyes that will continue to expand our knowledge of the universe."

"Thank you, Houston, it was a thrill from start to finish," Atlantis commander Scott Altman replied. "We've had a great ride. It took a whole team across the country to pull it off, our hats off to you all."