During Expedition 40 in the summer of 2014, NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman, along with European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst, explored the phenomenon of water surface tension in microgravity on the International Space Station.
The crew "submerged" a sealed GoPro camera into a floating ball of water the size of a softball and recorded the activity with a 3-D camera. (Video: NASA)
Expedition 40/41 astronauts on the International Space Station. Clockwise from 12:00: Maxim Suraev, Reid Wiseman, Oleg Artemyev, Steve Swanson, Alexander Skvortsov and Alexander Gerst. Shortly after this picture was taken Oleg, Steve and Alexander Skvortsov left the Station in their Soyuz spacecraft for Earth, leaving the others on their own in space for two weeks. ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst is spending six months in space for his Blue Dot mission.
NASA astronaut Steve Swanson poses with the robot Robonaut 2 on the International Space Station after completing an upgrade that gave the robot legs. Credit: NASA/Steve Swanson
Look out, astronauts, your companion robot on the International Space Station is now mobile!
NASA's Robonaut 2 has received a set of legs that will help it move around the station, and will eventually enable the bot to work on repairs both inside and outside the orbiting outpost.
NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, who commanded the station's Expedition 40 crew, helped attach the appendages to the humanoid robot in late August before returning to Earth last week.
The legs will help the robot move around the space station to complete simple tasks.
Later this year, after a few changes to its upper body, later this year, Robonaut 2 will use its new legs to venture outside for its first spacewalk as well.
"You can only do so much if you're fixed on a stanchion, which is what we've been on for the past couple of years," Ron Diftler, principal investigator for the Robonaut project, said in a televised interview on NASA Television. "With the addition of legs, we'll be able to go mobile."
While the upper half of Robonaut looks a lot like a human, the legs don't resemble a person's legs very much.
Instead of feet, the robot has clamps that allow it to latch onto and climb up on objects.
The legs are also longer than human legs, a span of 9 feet (2.7 meters), and are more flexible, giving the robot more ways to cling to things inside or outside the station.
"In space, you don't use your human legs in the way you use them on the ground," Diftler said. "We didn't adhere to the human form because it didn't make any sense."
"NASA researchers did not even have legs in mind when they sent Robonaut 2 to the space station in 2011, but it was possible to add the appendages with some upgrades to the robot's wiring and computer systems."
The legs were flown to the space station aboard a cargo ship in April.Yet, even while it was fixed in place, Robonaut 2 was occasionally used by space station crews.
In February 2012, Robonaut shook hands with Expedition 30 commander Dan Burbank, and earlier this year, the bot used a "task board" to test its ability to manipulate knobs, switches and buttons.
More recently, Robonaut has been put to work moving "soft goods," such as covers that provide thermal protection for space station components.
Last year, astronaut Tom Marshburn tested teleoperating Robonaut, using virtual reality gear to control the robot and have it catch a free-floating object.
Russian doctors help US NASA astronaut Steven Swanson after he returned with two Russian cosmonauts from the International Space Station, near the Kazakhstan city of Zhezkazgan on September 11, 2014
Credit: ROCOSMOS
Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut returned to Earth on Thursday after spending more than six months working together aboard the International Space Station, as tensions between their countries soared over the Ukraine crisis.
American Steven Swanson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, who left on March 26, landed in the Kazakh steppe at 0223 GMT aboard a Soyuz capsule, the Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA said in joint statements.
The trio, who worked together in cramped quarters aboard the ISS, smiled broadly, gave thumbs up signs and waved in the sunshine as they spent their first minutes back on the planet.
The three spent a total of "169 days of science and technology research in space, including a record 82 hours of research in a single week" in July, NASA said in a statement.
The crew orbited the Earth more than 2,700 times and travelled more than 71.7 million miles, NASA said.
"One of several key research focus areas during Expedition 40 was human health management for long duration space travel as NASA and Roscosmos prepare for two crew members to spend one year aboard the orbiting laboratory in 2015," it said.
The ISS is now being commanded by Russian Cosmonaut Max Suraev, with crewmates Reid Wiseman of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency.
Elena Serova is the first Russian female cosmonaut to serve as an ISS crew member.
Amid the political tensions in Ukraine, NASA announced, in April, that it was cutting space cooperation with Russia over Moscow's Ukraine policies, but that work at the space station would not be affected.
Use of the space station depends very much on Russia, which is the only country with the capability of reliably transporting astronauts and cosmonauts to and from the facility.
The ISS was launched in 1998 as an international effort and has been a symbol of cooperation, particularly between the US (NASA), Russia (ROCOSMOS), Europe (ESA) and Japan (JAXA).
Aerial shot of the Expedition 40 Soyuz TMA-12M landing site.
Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov (center), Soyuz commander; NASA astronaut Steve Swanson (left), Expedition 40 commander; and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, flight engineer, conduct a suit leak check in their Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft ahead of a return home from the International Space Station set for Sept. 10, 2014. Credit: NASA
A trio of space travelers will return to Earth tonight (Sept. 10) to end a months-long expedition to the International Space Station, and you can watch the landing live online.
American astronaut Steve Swanson and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev are due to land their Russian-built Soyuz space capsule on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:23 p.m. EDT (0243 Sept. 11 GMT), after more than five months in orbit.
You can watch the space crew's landing on Space.com in a live webcast provided by NASA. The webcast will include a series of broadcasts for each stage of the landing.
The landing webcast begins at 3:15 p.m. EDT (1915 GMT) with a farewell ceremony, then resumes at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) for live views of undocking. The landing coverage will begin at 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT).
Swanson and his crewmates launched to the International Space Station on March 25, with Swanson commanding the outpost's Expedition 40 mission. Three other station crewmembers — NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, cosmonaut Maxim Suarev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst — arrived at the station in late May.
"We've accomplished a lot. We've had a lot of fun," Swanson said Tuesday (Sept. 9) as he handed control of the space station over to Suarev. "This was a team effort. We got together and did it as a team.
During the Expedition 40 mission, the station astronauts and cosmonauts watched over a flurry of robotic cargo ship arrivals and departures by Russian, European and commercial American spacecraft. Skvortsov and Artemyev performed two spacewalks, and tossed a tiny Peruvian satellite into space on their second excursion.
Swanson made a bit of space history by becoming the first astronaut to post Instagram photos from space. And then there were the science experiments. Many, many experiments.
"We actually set the record for the number of hours of science in a week," Swanson said.
The return of Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev tonight will mark the official start of Expedition 41 on the International Space Station. Suarev will command that mission.
European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst posted this photograph taken from the International Space Station to social media on Aug. 29, 2014, writing, "words can't describe how it feels flying through an #aurora. I wouldn't even know where to begin…."
Crew members on the space station photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface.
Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions.
Crew members have been photographing Earth from space since the early Mercury missions beginning in 1961.
The continuous images taken from the space station ensure this record remains unbroken.
On Tuesday, Sept. 9 aboard the space station, cosmonaut Max Suraev of Roscosmos takes the helm when Expedition 40 Commander Steve Swanson hands over control during a Change of Command Ceremony at 5:15 p.m. EDT.
Suraev will lead Expedition 41 and stay in orbit until November with Gerst and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman.
A still image taken June 13, 2014 from a NASA video shows US astronauts Reid Wiseman (L) and Steve Swanson (R) and German astronaut Alexander Gerst at the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
A cargo craft successfully docked with the International Space Station, the Russian space agency Roskosmos said Thursday.
Meanwhile controllers encountered problems with a separate research satellite when its engines failed to fire, Russian news agencies reported.
The Russian Progress M-24M cargo craft automatically docked with the International Space Station at 0331 GMT with more than 2.3 tonnes of supplies after having lifted off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan six hours previously.
The ISS currently hosts a crew of three Russian cosmonauts, two US astronauts, and one German.
The Foton-M satellite was launched on July 19 on a two-month mission to study the effect of weightlessness on plants and insects.
The satellite carries containers with living organisms, including five geckos, fruit flies and fungi, which are supposed to be jettisoned after two months in orbit and land in Russia.
There is no update on the status of the living cargo, since the containers are not designed to broadcast any telemetry while in space.
The mishap is the latest in series of setbacks that has plagued Russia's once-famed space programme.
Containers with biological experiment equipment being loaded into the Foton-M satellite. Photo by the Institute for Biomedical Problems.
President Barack Obama and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi hear a message from International Space Station Commander Koichi Wakata, flanked by NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Rick Mastracchio, while visiting Miraikan, national museum for emerging science and innovation on April 24, 2014 in Tokyo, Japan. President Obama is on an Asian tour where he is due to visit Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Philippines. Credit: The Asahi Shimbun
This April 23, 2014 NASA TV image shows International Space Station(ISS) astronauts Rick Mastracchio (L) and Steve Swanson (R) preparing for a spacewalk. Credit: NASA Spacewalking astronauts easily replaced a dead computer outside the International Space Station on Wednesday and got their orbiting home back up to full strength.
The two Americans on board, Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson, hustled through the urgent repair job, swapping out the computers well within an hour. The new one tested fine.
"Excellent work, gentlemen," Mission Control radioed.
The removed computer, a critical backup, failed nearly two weeks ago. The prime computer has been working perfectly, but NASA wanted to install a fresh spare as soon as possible.
Mission Control waited until after the arrival of a capsule full of fresh supplies Sunday.
Replacing the computer—a compact 50-pound (22-kilogram) box—involved just three bolts, hardly anything for a spacewalking chore.
Engineers do not know why the original failed. Mission Control asked the spacewalkers to keep an eye out for any damage that might explain the breakdown. Nothing jumped out.
Flight controllers were trying to load software into the spare computer on April 11, but it failed to activate.
That set into motion a frenzy of ground meetings and tests to fix the problem.
NASA feared that if the primary computer went down as well, the entire space station would be in jeopardy.
These two computers—the primary and backup—control the pointing of the solar wings and radiators, as well as the movement of the robot-arm rail cart.
It was the first failure of one of dozens of so-called MDMs, or multiplexer-demultiplexers, in and outside the space station.
Mission Control kept the spacewalk short and straight-to-the-point; it lasted a mere one hour and 36 minutes.
All routine spacewalks by U.S. station crew have been on hold since last summer's near-drowning by a spacewalking astronaut.
His helmet filled with water from the cooling system of the suit, and NASA is continuing to investigate the problem.
NASA hopes to reuse the bad computer, once it's inspected indoors by the astronauts and updated.
Their mission accomplished, Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson exchanged a few jokes and laughs as they got ready to go back inside.
"My arms are too short for a selfie," Mastracchio said with a chuckle, his camera pointed at himself.
On Sunday, April 20, 2014, the Expedition 39 crew aboard the International Space Station welcomed nearly two-and-a-half tons of supplies and scientific payloads to the station with the arrival of the third SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo spacecraft.
With SpaceX Dragon securely in the grasp of Canadarm2 , the robotics officer at Mission Control remotely operated the arm to install the capsule to its port on the Earth-facing side of the Harmony (ESA built Node 2) module.
Once SpaceX Dragon was in place, Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio monitored the Common Berthing Mechanism operations for first and second stage capture of the cargo ship, assuring that the vehicle was securely attached to the station with a hard mate.
Second stage capture was completed at 10:06 a.m. EDT as the station flew 260 miles above Brazil.
This Instagram image from the International Space Station was posted on April 9 with the caption: "Blood, sweat, but hopefully no tears." Credit: International Space Station consortium
An astronaut on the International Space Station recently made a giant leap into the social media world with the first Instagram photo beamed down from space.
NASA astronaut Steve Swanson posted a selfie taken in the station's cupola, a large, multi-sided window that faces Earth, as the first Instagram photo sent from space.
The photo posted to the station's Instagram account (ISS) on April 7, and since then, it has garnered nearly 4,000 "likes."
"Back on the ISS, life is good," Swanson wrote in an image caption. The veteran astronaut flew to space before during two previous space shuttle missions.
In the photo, Swanson is wearing a shirt featuring a spaceship from one of his favorite TV shows, "Firefly," a short-lived show about a crew of space cowboys that traverse the universe looking for smuggling work where they can get it.
Swanson brought a box set of "Firefly" DVDs up to the station during one of his previous space shuttle missions.
Image from video shows the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft just a few meters away from docking with the International Space Station (ISS) on March 27, 2014 A Russian cargo ship has successfully docked with the International Space Station Thursday, bringing the crew crucial supplies and water, Russia's space agency said.
The unmanned Progress M-23M ship, which was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, docked with the ISS at 2114 GMT, two minutes later than scheduled, the Roscosmos agency said.
The station was flying over the west coast of Peru at the time, NASA said.
The ship is packed with some 2.4 tonnes of supplies for the station's six-member international crew, including fuel, water, oxygen, and parcels from friends and family.
The ISS is currently under the command of Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to hold the post.
Earlier this month NASA announced that it was cutting space cooperation with Russia, except over the ISS, due to Moscow's policies in Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea last month.
Roscosmos deputy Denis Lyskov said this week that Roscosmos was not planning any retaliatory measures.
NASA has been wholly reliant on Russia for delivering astronauts to the space station since the US retired its space shuttles in 2011.
Expedition 39, now a six-member crew, talks to family and mission officials moments after entering the space station for the first time on March 27, 2014. Credit: NASA TV
Three new crew members have finally made it to the International Space Station, two days later than originally planned.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev docked with the orbiting lab at 7:53 p.m. EDT (2353 GMT) Thursday (March 27), as the two spacecraft cruised over southern Brazil.
The hatch linking the two vehicles opened at 10:35 p.m. EDT Thursday, NASA officials said.
The three spaceflyers blasted off Tuesday afternoon EDT (March 25) and were slated to arrive at the station just six hours later, but the Soyuz failed to complete one of the automated burns required to pull off this "fast track" trip, forcing mission controllers to revert to a more traditional two-day chase and rendezvous.
All systems on the Soyuz now appear to be functioning normally, NASA officials said in an update Wednesday (March 26).
The arrival of Swanson, Skvortsov and Artemyev brings the space station back up to its full complement of six crew members.
The newcomers join NASA's Rick Mastracchio, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata (ISS Commander) and cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, rounding out the current Expedition 39 aboard the orbiting lab.
Mastracchio, Expedition 39 commander Wakata and Tyurin had had the $100 billion station all to themselves since March 10, when another Soyuz capsule ferried the previous Russian-U.S. crew back down to Earth.
A crew of two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut blasted off Tuesday from Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz rocket for the International Space Station, with US-Russia space cooperation continuing amicably, despite the diplomatic standoff over Ukraine.
Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev along with Steve Swanson of NASA took off in a spectacular night-time launch at the start of a fast-track six-hour journey to the orbiting laboratory, where they will spend half a year.
All the stages of the launch went without a hitch and the Soyuz capsule successfully went into the correct orbit.
Docking with the ISS was expected at 03:04 GMT Wednesday but this has been delayed until 07:58 Thursday.
After the retirement of the US shuttle, NASA is for now wholly reliant on Russia for delivering astronauts to the space station on its tried-and-trusted Soyuz launch and capsule system.
Space officials have made clear that space cooperation, one of the few areas of genuine mutual work between Russia and the United States, will continue unaffected by the mounting diplomatic strains that have seen the US impose sanctions on Russian officials over Moscow's seizure of Crimea.
A yellow toy duck nicknamed "quack" given to Swanson by his daughter hung in the cockpit and started floating a few minutes into launch as the crew started to experience weightlessness.
-'We'll live together peacefully'-
Arrival Delayed The next trio of crew members destined for the International Space Station is now looking forward to a Thursday arrival at the orbiting laboratory after their Soyuz spacecraft was unable to complete its third thruster burn to fine-tune its approach. Flight controllers in the Mission Control Center outside Moscow are now reverting to a backup 34-orbit rendezvous, which would result in an arrival and docking at 7:58 p.m. EDT Thursday, March 27.
A new Expedition 39 trio waits at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for its launch tonight to the International Space Station. New Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov, Steve Swanson and Oleg Artemyev will launch aboard a Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft at 5:17 p.m. EDT for a six-hour ride to the orbital laboratory. Credit: Nasa
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