ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti enjoying ISS Zero Gravity

After a textbook Russian launch and precise docking on Sunday night, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and Roscosmos commander Anton Shkaplerov boarded the International Space Station.

This image taken by Terry of Samantha was Samantha’s first Tweet from space, with the comment: “Amazing being in space, better than anything I ever imagined. Saw my first sunrise from the Cupola today!”

The three astronauts have about a week to get used to floating around their new surroundings before taking on a full schedule of science and maintenance for the rest of their six-month mission.

Credit: ESA

Lunar explorers will walk at higher speeds

This is a composite image of the lunar nearside taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in June 2009, note the presence of dark areas of maria on this side of the moon. 

Credit: NASA

Anyone who has seen the movies of Neil Armstrong's first bounding steps on the moon couldn't fail to be intrigued by his unusual walking style, but, contrary to popular belief, the astronaut's peculiar walk was not the result of low gravity.

John De Witt

Wyle Science, Engineering and Technology scientist John De Witt explains that the early space suits were not designed for walking, so the astronauts adapted their movements to the restrictions of the suit.

Michael Gernhardt, the head of NASA's Extravehicular Activity Physiology, Systems and Performance Project, wants to learn more about how humans move in low gravity, including the speed at which we break from a walk into a run, to design a modern space suit that permits freer movement.

However, the only way to test the effects of true lunar gravity on our movements while based on earth is to hop aboard NASA's adapted DC-9 aircraft, which reduces the gravity on board by performing swooping parabolic flights, and get running.

EVA Physiology, Systems, & Performance (EPSP) Project 

Credit: NASA HACD

De Witt and his colleagues publish their discovery that astronauts will remain walking at higher speeds on the moon than had been previously thought in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

To make this discovery, De Witt and colleagues Brent Edwards, Melissa Scott-Pandorf and Jason Norcross recruited three astronauts and five other registered test subjects that could tolerate the discomfort of the aircraft's bucking flight to test their running.

'There is some unpleasantness,' recalls De Witt, adding, 'if you get sick you're done…. We wanted to be sure we had people that were used to flying.'

An astronaut performs a 10 km "Walk back" to test his ability to return to a habitat in the event of a rover vehicle failure on the Moon.

Credit: NASA HACD

Once the subjects were airborne, the team only had 20s during each roller-coaster cycle, when the gravity on-board fell to one-sixth of that on Earth, when they could test the runner's walking and running styles on a treadmill as the volunteers shifted over a range of speeds from 0.67 to 2m/s.

However, De Witt recalls that the experiments ran smoothly once the team had settled into a routine after the first few parabolas.

Back on the ground, De Witt and colleagues analysed the speed at which the walkers gently transitioned into a run.

'Running is defined as a period of time with both feet off the ground', explains De Witt, adding that the walk to run transition was expected to occur at 0.8m/s in lunar gravity, based on theoretical calculations.

However, when the team calculated the transition speed from their experiments, they were in for a surprise: 'The average was 1.4m/s', recalls De Witt.

A NEEMO crewmember wearing a mock-up of the EVA portable life support system (PLSS) walks up and down a ladder outside the underwater Aquarius habitat. 

The PLSS mock-up was placed in different configurations to test astronauts' ability to perform EVA tasks when their center of gravity is moved up, down, forward, and/or backward. 

Credit: NASA HACD

'This difference is, to me, the most interesting part of the experiment; to try to figure out why we got these numbers', says De Witt, who suggests that the acceleration forces generated by the counter-swinging arms and legs could account for the shift in transition speed.

'What I think ends up happening is that even though the atmosphere is lunar gravity, the effective gravity on our system is lunar gravity plus the forces generated by our swinging arms and legs', says De Witt.

He explains that this arm-and-leg swinging effect probably happens here on Earth too, but the forces generated by the swinging limbs are negligible relative to our gravity.

However, he suspects that they are more significant in weaker lunar gravity, saying, 'They contribute more to the gravity keeping you attached to the ground.'

De Witt also adds that the higher transition value is not without precedent. He explains that scientists on Earth have simulated lunar gravity by supporting five-sixths of a runner's weight in a sling, and the athletes also transitioned from a walk to a run at speeds of around 1.4m/s1.

'This tells researchers [that] what they have in the lab, which is a fraction of the cost of the airplane, is probably adequate at giving you the information you need', he says.

More information: De Witt, J. K. , Edwards, W. B. , Scott-Pandorf, M. M., Norcross, J. R. and Gernhardt, M. L. (2014). The preferred walk to run transition speed in actual lunar gravity. J. Exp. Biol. 217, 3200-3203. jeb.biologists.org/content/217/18/3200.abstract

NASA FLEX-2: Jellyfish flames on the ISS

Fire is inanimate, yet anyone staring into a flame could be excused for thinking otherwise: Fire dances and swirls. 

It reproduces, consumes matter, and produces waste. It adapts to its environment. It needs oxygen to survive.

In short, fire is uncannily lifelike.

Nowhere is this more true than onboard a spaceship.

Unlike flames on Earth, which have a tear-drop shape caused by buoyant air rising in a gravitational field, flames in space curl themselves into tiny balls.

Untethered by gravity, they flit around as if they have minds of their own.

More than one astronaut conducting experiments for researchers on Earth below has been struck by the way flameballs roam their test chambers in a lifelike search for oxygen and fuel.

Biologists confirm that fire is not alive. Nevertheless, on August 21st, astronaut Reid Wiseman on the ISS witnessed some of the best mimicry yet.

"It was a jellyfish of fire," he tweeted to Earth along with a video. Wiseman was running an experiment called Flame Extinguishment Experiment 2 (FLEX-2).

The goal of the research is to learn how fires burn in microgravity and, moreover, how to put them out.

It's a basic safety issue: If fire ever breaks out onboard a spacecraft, astronauts need to be able to control it. Understanding the physics of flameballs is crucial to zero-G firefighting.

"Combustion in microgravity is both strange and wonderful," says Forman Williams, the PI of FLEX-2 from UC San Diego.

"The 'jellyfish' phenomenon Wiseman witnessed is a great example."



A new NASA ScienceCast video looks at the lifelike behaviour and underlying physics of jellyfish flames on the ISS.

He points out some of the key elements of the video:

• "Near the beginning we see two needles dispensing a droplet mixture of heptane and iso-octane between two igniters. The fuel is ignited … then the lights go out so we can see what happens next."

• "The flame forms a blue spherical shell 15 to 20 mm in diameter around the fuel. Inside that spherical flame we see some bright yellow hot spots. Those are made of soot."

• Heptane produces a lot of soot as it burns, he explains. Consisting mainly of carbon with a sprinkling of hydrogen, soot burns hot, around 2000 degrees K, and glows brightly as a result.

• "Several globules of burning soot can be seen inside the sphere," he continues. "At one point, a blob of soot punctures the flame-sphere and exits. The soot that exits fades away as it burns out."

There is also an S-shaped object inside the sphere. "That is another soot structure," he says.

The 'jellyfish phase' is closely linked to the production of soot. Combustion products from the spherical flame drift back down onto the fuel droplet.

Because sooty material deposited on the droplet is not perfectly homogeneous, "we can get a disruptive burning event," says Forman.

In other words, soot on the surface of the fuel droplet catches fire, resulting in a lopsided explosion.

Remarkably, none of this is new to Forman, who has been researching combustion physics since the beginning of the Space Age.

"We first saw these disruptive burning events in labs and microgravity drop towers more than 40 years ago," he says.

"The space station is great because the orbiting lab allows us to study them in great detail."

"Tom Avedisian at Cornell is leading this particular study," Forman says. "We're learning about droplet burning rates, the soot production process, and how soot agglomerates inside the flame."

At the end of Wiseman's video, the soot ignites in a final explosion. That's how the fire put itself out.

"It was a warp-drive finish," says Wiseman.

ISS Image: Water Bubble in Zero Gravity

NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, Expedition 34 commander, watches a water bubble float freely between him and the camera, showing his image refracted, in the Unity node of the International Space Station. 

Image Credit: NASA

NASA ESA ISS Research Backlog

With major construction complete on the International Space Station, member states have been touting the benefits to be gleaned from the experiments aboard the fully operational orbiting laboratory.

However, there have been recent hints that expectations may be just too high – and experiments are piling up.

The major issue with conducting research on ISS is the limited availability of crew to execute and monitor experiments.

Although ISS is officially in operation mode, there are still many maintenance activities that take up crew time.

“Currently crewmembers are working 13 or 14 hours a day, and out of that we can get about 6.5 hours of mission programmatic work done,” returned ISS astronaut Don Pettit told the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on July 25.

“That’s because we’re in a harsh frontier, and we spend 13 or 14 hours a day just to keep the machinery going and keep it possible for human beings to be there. You’ll find this is commensurate with other frontiers that are harsh on the surface of Earth.”

With the extended work days on top of dealing with the physiological and psychological strain of being in space and the extra effort needed just to peform daily tasks such as hygiene, exercise, and food preparation, there are signs that the pressure is taking its toll.

For instance, a recent mishap resulted in a set of student experiments being returned to Earth unactivated. An astronaut was supposed to flex the MixStix vials to mix their contents while they were aboard.

Although Nanoracks has taken responsibility for the mistake, citing inadequate training of the astronauts, clearly the crew have mastered much more complex technologies.

With space agencies, particularly NASA, pushing to justify increased – or at least not reduced – domestic space program spending, there is increasing pressure to produce results from ISS research.

NASA is currently pursuing two avenues to increase experiment capacity on the station. For the near term, the agency is in talks with Russia to borrow cosmonauts’ time to help out with research on the US side of the station and is working to use robotics such as Dextre to replace crew activities whenever possible.

More long term, NASA hopes to increase the station’s crew complement from six to seven. Although there is plenty of space aboard ISS to house another person, the Soyuz capsule is only able to carry three crew members at a time – and at this time is the only transportation option for getting crew to and from ISS.

Exceeding six crew members could impede the ability to evacuate in event of emergency. However, the development of commercial crew capabilities may alleviate this constraint, with capsules being designed to hold four or more crew.

The question, of course, is when such capability will be ready and available for use. In the meantime, the six ISS crew members must do the best they can.

ESA Astronaut Samantha Preparing for EVA Simulation in NBL Tank

ESA Astronaut Samantha Christoforetti getting help from 3 burley men to don the waterproof underwater test suit, needed to complete her second Zero-gravity style workout and EVA Simulation in the NBL tank.

Scottish Whisky distiller of Ardbeg, sends malt into space

A Scottish island distillery, who's whisky has reached 'cult' status with Scottish whisky experts, is carrying out experiments in space to find out how its product matures without gravity.

The Ardbeg Distillery on Islay blasted compounds of unmatured malt - known as new make spirit - to the International Space Station (ISS) in an unmanned cargo spacecraft on October 30 last year.

Ardbeg Whisky Flavour Notes

It also sent up particles of charred oak and, once the spacecraft docked at the ISS, the two sets of molecules were mixed.

Scientists want to understand how the two sets of compounds interact at close-to-zero gravity.

The molecules are tiny parts of the two substances known as terpenes - a set of chemicals which are often aromatic and flavour-active.

It is believed the experiment is the first time anyone has ever studied terpenes and other molecules in near-zero gravity.

The team are also measuring the molecules' interaction at normal gravity on Earth so they can compare the way the particles mature.

The molecules will stay on the ISS for at least two years so scientists can understand how they change in a near-zero gravity environment.

The experiment, unveiled at the Edinburgh International Science Festival today, is led by US-based space research company NanoRacks LLC.

The results could be used for different industries, including future generations of Ardbeg whisky.

Michael Johnson, chief technical officer of NanoRacks LLC, said: "By doing this microgravity experiment on the interaction of terpenes and other molecules with the wood samples provided by Ardbeg, we will learn much about flavours, even extending to applications like food and perfume.

"At the same time it should help Ardbeg find new chemical building blocks in their own flavour spectrum."

Dr Bill Lumsden, head of distilling and whisky creation at Ardbeg, who unveiled the experiment, said: "This experiment will throw new light on the effect of gravity on the maturation process. We are all tremendously excited by this experiment - who knows where it will lead?"

Below is a short video of Bill Lumsden describing his introduction to Ardbeg whilst hosting a tasting event.

ESA Astronaut Samantha stars in "A day in the life of a Cyborg"

On March 5th ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti had her first suited EVA training event in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. Here are some of her impressions from that special day.

 
Days like today do not happen often.

Days when you experience something radically new.

Days where unusual stresses force you to rethink your interaction with the environment.

When your brain learns to give a new meaning to sensory information, when your muscles acquire new patterns of movement to overcome obstacles hitherto unknown.

Days when you learn to be a cyborg.

These days, even your eyes can betray you for a moment. While the crane I was in the water of NASA's NBL, it takes a few seconds for me to adjust and make the focus.

The effect of the shield is such that objects appear to be farther than they actually are. Consequently, the enormous size of the giant pool of 12 meters appears even greater.

At the bottom is a metal creature dormant: a faithful replica of the International Space Station, set in its outer contours. The shells of pressurized modules, the truss segments, antennae, cables.

This and many other details are reproduced in this underwater world to provide astronauts a realistic environment in which they train for extravehicular activity (EVA).

I was widely informed about all aspects of work today and I explored the station under water several times during dives underwater. Yet this seems different, almost surreal to watch it from inside the suit.

Before the end of my training I will become the EVA very familiar with the station, with paths of travel, the workplace, hazards but three hours today to get used primarily with the EMU, the pressure suit which allows astronauts to make spacewalks.

In orbit, the combination is a life support system provides closed-circuit oxygen, ventilating, cooling and removal of CO2.

In the basin, the backpack life support is inactive and survival under water is guaranteed by an umbilical cord that connects us to the surface and provides us with nitrox breathing.

To prevent overheating, water flows through tubes 80 meters woven into our clothing full liquid cooling and ventilation (LCVG: Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment).

When we talk about the speech circuit, the entire building we mean: the other astronauts in combination in the water, divers support, the test director and course instructor in the control room.

The latter is typically the one who speaks with us, because following our every move broadcast on four cameras: two cameras mounted on our helmets, the two cameras for divers who are assigned to each of us.

"We", in fact, it's me and the veteran astronaut Tracy Caldwell, who is determined to make this both an enjoyable and effective for the first time for me. I would not have asked for a better coach.

For the next three hours, my main task is to explore the limits of the combination, to identify areas of my movements in it, to get used to its size and limited field of view, to practice moving and reorienting of my body, to identify areas of possible improvement to the fit of the suit.

There is no rotation of the arms outside the limited space allowed by the shoulder joints. There is no rotation of the neck to look up or down on the side: the whole body must rotate.

There are no quick movements: an application to change its orientation deliberate effort and patience. "Do not fight the combination!" Is the common currency. If you do, you will only exhaust you.

Read More at ESA Portal

ESA ATV Edoardo Amaldi Boosts Space Station: The Inside Story - YouTube

Caption from ReelNASA: As the International Space Station is boosted into a higher orbit, Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov float freely to demonstrate the acceleration of the orbiting complex.

ISS Reboost
One of the crucial tasks of all ATVs is Station reboosting. This interesting and partly-scientific video shows what it’s like to be inside the ISS when it’s being accelerated.

The Station accelerates forward while the astronauts, who are in free-flight orbit around Earth (albeit in side the station)  drift backwards, relative to the Station. Thus providing further proof that Newton was indeed correct!

GRAIL Doing Science on This Week @ NASA - YouTube video

Ebb and Flow, NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL spacecraft, have officially begun collecting science data as they orbit the moon.

Scientists will use the information gathered by the twin spacecraft to produce a high-resolution map of the lunar gravitational field.

That should provide unprecedented detail about the moon's internal structure and composition, and lead to a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

Science activities are expected to conclude on May 29. Also, Station Science on Fire, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden joins The White House to encourage engineering students to "Stay With It", "G.E.M.S." at Stennis Space Center, an honour for the late NACA test pilot Scott Crossfield and more!

NASA Commander Chris Hadfield: Floating on the Air-Bearing Floor

NASA Commander, Chris Hadfield ‏playing human air hockey - floating on the Air-Bearing Floor to get a feel for weightless inertia of a spacewalking crane.

Space Fit: ESA Astronaut on ISS Treadmill

ESA Human Spaceflight and Exploration - New Zero Gravity training

A new way to fly experiments takes off tomorrow with the first campaign dedicated to research in ‘partial’ gravity. Scientists on Europe’s ‘Zero-G’ Airbus will experiment with gravity conditions like those on the Moon and Mars.

The Joint European Partial-g Parabolic Flight campaign is an unprecedented research mission organised jointly by ESA and the French and German space agencies, CNES and DLR.

The pilots will follow special parabolic paths to create Moon and Mars gravity conditions for at least 25 seconds each time. The final parabola will provide full weightlessness for the experiments.

Each flight can provide a total of up to 12 minutes of partial gravity inside the aircraft. The Airbus A300, owned by Novespace, will perform consecutive flights on the three days starting tomorrow from Mérignac-Bordeaux airport, France.

Thirteen European experiments selected by the three agencies will test the effects of partial gravity.

The scientists’ response to this new partial gravity opportunity has been enormous. “This is a unique campaign in the world, and we have received outstanding scientific proposals from all over Europe,” say the agencies’ project managers.

The science behind the flights
The experiments cover a wide range of research, such as biology, human physiology and physics, as well as technology demonstrations.

The goal is improve our knowledge about how systems react to different accelerations and where the level of sensitivity is.

“Lunar and martian reduced-gravity environments will provide scientists with additional data at different gravity levels,” explain the campaign’s managers.

The physical behaviour of bubbles, dust and granular packing will be closely monitored. Engineers will test technologies for the ExoMars robotic mission in martian gravity.

Plants and rats are also among the passengers, together with a video game console to be tested as a training device for balance control under reduced-gravity conditions.

Video: Zero Gravity - Balls Rolling Uphill

To construct the deceptive contraption, Kokichi Sugihara contravened a deeply held intuition: gravity works.

Sugihara, a mathematical engineer at Meiji University in Japan, built a set of four ramps, arranged in a cross, on which wooden balls appear to roll uphill, as if pulled by a magnet toward the centre.

More illusions here

Sir Isaac Newton's Tree to fly in zero-gravity space

A piece of Sir Isaac Newton's apple tree is set to defy gravity, the theory it is alleged to have inspired, by being carried into space on the next Nasa shuttle mission.

The wood sample is from the original tree from which an apple is said to have fallen, leading Newton to devise his theory of gravity.

The sample, which is normally held in the Royal Society's archives, was lent to British-born astronaut Dr Piers Sellers, who will take it into orbit.

The Atlantis shuttle will lift off for on 14 May carrying six crew members. The 12-day mission is expected to be the Nasa shuttle's last.

The move is part of the Royal Society's 350th anniversary celebrations. The tree sample will be accompanied on its trip into space by an image of Sir Isaac, which was also donated by the Royal Society.

Dr Sellers, who was selected as an astronaut candidate by Nasa in 1996, said he and the other team members were "delighted" to be taking a piece of the historic tree into orbit.

"While it's up there, it will be experiencing no gravity, so if it had an apple on it, the apple wouldn't fall," he said.

Dr Sellers went on to quip: "I'm pretty sure that Sir Isaac would have loved to see this, assuming he wasn't spacesick, as it would have proved his first law of motion to be correct."

Sir Isaac Newton, a physicist and mathematician, is widely regarded as being one of the greatest scientists of his era.

NASA's Zero Gravity Worms: Nemetodes in Space

The worms were on board when the Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched from Cape Canaveral on Monday. The unexpected astronauts will help experts in human physiology at the University of Nottingham understand more about what triggers the body to build and lose muscle.

The worms are bound for the Japanese Experiment Module ''Kibo'' on the International Space Station (ISS) where they will experience the same weightless conditions which can cause dramatic muscle loss in astronauts. The Kibo lab makes use of the weightless conditions in orbit for the study of biomedicine and material sciences.

The worms are used by Dr Nathaniel Szewczyk, from the university's Institute of Clinical Research in Derby, to study the signals that control muscle protein degradation. He uses the microscopic worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), because they are the perfect substitute for studying long term changes in human physiology – suffering from muscle loss under many of the same conditions that people do.

Muscle loss, or muscle atrophy, is one of the major health concerns for astronauts. The research is also hoped to help scientists understand more about the condition which also affects the bedridden, people with muscular dystrophy and diabetes, people immobilised by casts and the elderly.

The worms, traced back to a rubbish dump in Bristol, often feed on bacteria that develop on decaying vegetable matter. Their predecessors made news in 2003 when they survived the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, including re-entry and impact, and were recovered weeks after the disaster.

Dr Szewczyk, who has carried out three previous space worm missions, is working with Professor Atsushi Higashitani from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. Professor Higashitani is the Principal Investigator of the CERISE (C. Elegans RNAi In Space Experiment) payload and will be based in Florida during the flight to co-ordinate the payload's experiments.

Dr Szewczyk said: ''We can learn things in space that we would not be able to learn on earth. ''If we can identify what causes the body to react in certain ways in space we establish new pathways for research back on earth.''

C. elegans was the first multicellular organism to have its genetic structure completely mapped and many of its 20,000 genes perform the same functions as those in humans. Dr Szewczyk's researcher Dr Tim Etheridge has been given the task of preparing the worms for their journey to the International Space Station, roughly 200 miles from the Earth.

They have been carefully selected and brought to a dormant state for the journey, travelling in special cell culture bags. They will be brought back from their dormant state with the release of food, exposed to conditions in space for four days and then frozen in preparation for the return journey.

The effect of this journey on their muscle mass will be investigated once the worms are returned to the university's laboratories in Derby. Dr Szewczyk said: ''The CERISE payload is an important space medicine experiment as it will establish if RNAi, which was the subject of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Medicine, is a viable technique for altering the biological response to space flight.

''For example, some of our worms will be treated with RNAi against specific proteases to see if we can stop muscle protein degradation in space.'' The worms will be on board Space Shuttle Atlantis when it takes off from the Kennedy Space Centre today at 2.28pm local time (7.28pm GMT). Both Dr Szewczyk and Dr Etheridge have travelled to Florida to see the worms safely on-board the space shuttle.

ESA: First ‘Fly Your Thesis!’ campaign gives students a taste of space

First ‘Fly Your Thesis!’ campaign gives students a taste of space

ESA’s ‘Fly Your Thesis!’ programme made its successful debut during ESA’s 51st Parabolic Flight Campaign, held 25 October to 5 November. Four student teams from five European countries took advantage of this new educational initiative to conduct microgravity experiments on the Airbus A300 ‘Zero G’ aircraft.

‘Fly Your Thesis!’ was introduced by ESA’s Education Office in close coordination with ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight in 2008. It provides students with a unique opportunity to perform scientific experiments in microgravity as part of their Masters or PhD theses. The first participants were chosen in January 2009, after a rigorous selection process.

The 2009 campaign students and the 'Fly Your Thesis!' team

A group from the University of Münster, Germany, studied the behaviour of tiny particles under different illumination conditions in order to improve understanding of dust storms on Mars. Students from the Open University in the UK and the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, simulated the loose surface material on asteroids as a precursor to sample-return missions.

A group from the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, investigated the flow birefringence of clay nanoparticles in water, research with potential applications such as the prevention of catastrophic landslides.

Another team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain, recorded the behaviour of enzymes that modify assimilation of drugs by the human body.

The ABC team, from Spain

After months of assembling and testing their experiments, the 15 university students arrived in Bordeaux, France, on 25 October. Over the next few days, they completed the assembly of their experiment racks and, on 28 October, these were loaded onto the Airbus.

With all safety checks completed, the first flight took off from Bordeaux on 3 November. After heading out over the Atlantic Ocean, the students were cleared to switch on their experiments and prepare for the first of 31 parabolas, each providing about 20 seconds of microgravity.

A boomerang in Zero Gravity

A more convenient space