Russian Cosmonauts Taking 7-Hour Spacewalk Outside Station

Two Russian cosmonauts are tackling a seven-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Dec. 27) to install commercial high-resolution cameras and other new experiments on the orbiting lab's hull. You can watch the spacewalk live here in the window above.

Kotov

Today's spacewalk began at about 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) and is being performed by Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy.

The two spacewalkers will install two high-fidelity cameras on the Earth-facing side of the station's Russian-built Zvezda service module for the commercial Earth imagery company Urthecast (pronounced Earthcast), which seeks to offer live HD webcasts of Earth from space via an online service.

Today's spacewalk is unrelated to two earlier spacewalks by American astronauts to replace a coolant pump on the space station.

Ryazanskiy

Kotov and Ryazanskiy will also install hardware for a new earthquake-monitoring experiment, called Seismoprognoz, and remove and older experiment that tracked the seismic effects of high-energy particles in the near-Earth environment, NASA officials said.

That older experiment, called Vsplesk, will be tossed into space in a direction that won't endanger the space station so it can burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

The spacewalkers will also dispose of a frame to an old material exposure experiment and retrieve a case of samples from a materials space exposure experiment during their work outside the International Space Station.

Russia To Track Glonass Satellites From Antarctic Station

The Academician Fyodorov scientific research vessel has arrived at the Russian Antarctic outpost of Bellingshausen on a mission to set up a station for tracking the GLONASS navigation satellites, the Voice of Russia reported.

Glonass - the Global Navigation Satellite System - is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, and is designed for both military and civilian use. Both systems allow users to determine their positions to within a few meters.

Russia currently has a total of 22 Glonass satellites in orbit, but only 16 of them are operational.

Three satellites have been temporarily withdrawn from the grouping over technical problems, one satellite will be decommissioned and two new satellites are expected to enter service in the near future.

The Glonass system requires a constellation of 18 operational satellites for continuous navigation services covering the entire territory of Russia and at least 24 satellites to provide navigation services worldwide.

A total of 9.9 billion rubles ($360 million) was allocated for the Glonass project from the federal budget in 2007, and 4.7 billion rubles ($170 million) in 2006.

An additional $2.6 billion was allocated to develop the system in September 2008.

Galileo
ESA and the Europeans are also entering the global GPS market with their Galileo constellation.

In January 2010, Mr René Oosterlinck, ESA’s Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities, signed the first three contracts for the Galileo full operational capability phase. This event marks the start of building the Galileo operational infrastructure

China readies it military space station

The first public appearance of China's military space station concept. The space station design was unveiled on a live broadcast to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Credit: CCTV

China is aggressively accelerating the pace of its manned space program by developing a 17,000 lb. man-tended military space laboratory planned for launch by late 2010. The mission will coincide with a halt in U.S. manned flight with phase-out of the shuttle.

The project is being led by the General Armaments Department of the People's Liberation Army, and gives the Chinese two separate station development programs.

Shenzhou 8, the first mission to the outpost in early 2011 will be flown unmanned to test robotic docking systems. Subsequent missions will be manned to utilize the new pressurized module capabilities of the Tiangong outpost.

Importantly, China is openly acknowledging that the new Tiangong outpost will involve military space operations and technology development.

Also the fact it has been given a No. 1 numerical designation indicates that China may build more than one such military space laboratory in the coming years.

"The People's Liberation Army's General Armament Department aims to finish systems for the Tiangong-1 mission this year," says an official Chinese government statement on the new project. Work on a ground prototype is nearly finished.