NASA

1. NASA • International Space Station • Why Explore Space? • Michael GriffinAdministratorNational Aeronautics and Space Administration • As NASA resumes flights of the space shuttle to finish building the International Space Station, many are questioning whether the project – the most complex construction feat ever undertaken – is worth the risk and expense.

2. I have been asked, and asked myself, this question many times during my career, particularly when the United States lacked a plan to go beyond the space station to other destinations in the solar system. The issue was addressed eloquently in the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which examined the 2003 loss of the shuttle and its crew. That report pointed out that for the foreseeable future, space travel is going to be expensive, difficult and dangerous. But, for the United States, it is strategic. It is part of what makes us a great nation. And the report declared that if we are going to send humans into space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost, the risk and the difficulty. A human spaceflight program with no plan to send people anywhere beyond the orbiting space station certainly did not meet that standard. President Bush responded to the Columbia report. The administration looked at where we had been in space and concluded that we needed to do more, to go further. The result was the Vision for Space Exploration, announced nearly three years ago, which commits the United States to using the shuttle to complete the space station, then retiring the shuttle and building a new generation of spacecraft to venture out into the solar system. Congress has ratified that position with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, making the Vision for Space Exploration the law of the land.

3. I have been asked, and asked myself, this question many times during my career, particularly when the United States lacked a plan to go beyond the space station to other destinations in the solar system. The issue was addressed eloquently in the report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which examined the 2003 loss of the shuttle and its crew. That report pointed out that for the foreseeable future, space travel is going to be expensive, difficult and dangerous. But, for the United States, it is strategic. It is part of what makes us a great nation. And the report declared that if we are going to send humans into space, the goals ought to be worthy of the cost, the risk and the difficulty. A human spaceflight program with no plan to send people anywhere beyond the orbiting space station certainly did not meet that standard. President Bush responded to the Columbia report. The administration looked at where we had been in space and concluded that we needed to do more, to go further. The result was the Vision for Space Exploration, announced nearly three years ago, which commits the United States to using the shuttle to complete the space station, then retiring the shuttle and building a new generation of spacecraft to venture out into the solar system. Congress has ratified that position with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, making the Vision for Space Exploration the law of the land.

4. Today, NASA is moving forward with a new focus for the manned space program: to go out beyond Earth orbit for purposes of human exploration and scientific discovery. And the International Space Station is now a stepping stone on the way, rather than being the end of the line. On the space station, we will learn how to live and work in space. We will learn how to build hardware that can survive and function for the years required to make the round-trip voyage from Earth to Mars. If humans are indeed going to go to Mars, if we're going to go beyond, we have to learn how to live on other planetary surfaces, to use what we find there and bend it to our will, just as the Pilgrims did when they came to what is now New England – where half of them died during that first frigid winter in 1620. There was a reason their celebration was called "Thanksgiving."

5. The Pilgrims had to learn to survive in a strange new place across a vast ocean. If we are to become a spacefaring nation, the next generation of explorers is going to have to learn how to survive in other forbidding, faraway places across the vastness of space. The moon is a crucially important stepping stone along that path – an alien world, yet one that is only a three-day journey from Earth. Using the space station and building an outpost on the moon to prepare for the trip to Mars are critical milestones in America's quest to become a truly spacefaring nation. I think that we should want that. I want that. I want it for the American people, for my grandchildren, for my great-grandchildren. Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the 17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America's greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the air. For the next generations, the frontier will be space.Other countries will explore the cosmos, whether the United States does or not. And those will be Earth's great nations in the years and centuries to come. I believe America should look to its future – and consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a spacefaring nation.

6. Latest News • Station Recovers From Power Loss • Mission control teams are working to assess systems affected by a power loss aboard the International Space Station early Sunday morning. The station's three crew members were not in any danger, but it did turn an off-duty day into a full work shift. About 1 a.m. EST, one of the power channels of the P4 solar array electrical system went down because of a glitch with a device known as a direct current switching unit. It controls power distribution from the solar array to the battery systems and other hardware. The glitch resulted in a temporary loss of communications, and shut down some equipment, including a few science facilities and heating units and control moment gyroscope #2. The station never lost orientation control, but it operated most of the day with two of four gyros. Control moment gyroscope #3 previously had been powered down. Flight controllers restored power to nearly all affected systems and equipment by Monday morning. They are still investigating what caused the glitch, but they believe it was an isolated event.

7. Record Setting Spacewalks • Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Suni Williams finished a 6-hour, 40-minute spacewalk Thursday. Their completed tasks will allow for the attachment of a cargo platform during the STS-118 mission this summer and relocation of the P6 truss during STS-120 later this year. The crew now begins to review Russian procedures for the next spacewalk on Feb. 22. Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin will work on an antenna on the Progress 23 cargo ship docked at the aft port of the Zvezda service module. The three spacewalks from the Quest airlock in U.S. spacesuits and a Russian spacewalk on Feb. 22 will be the most ever done by station crew members during such a short period and will mark five spacewalks in all for Expedition 14, a record for any expedition.

8. Station Crew Conducts Three Back-to-Back Spacewalks • The third spacewalk in nine days by International Space Station Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Sunita Williams wrapped up on Thursday, Feb. 8. The three spacewalks, from the Quest airlock in U.S. spacesuits, and a Russian spacewalk scheduled for Feb. 22 will be the most ever done by station crew members during an increment, said Mike Suffredini, station program manager. The three spacewalks are termed EVAs 6, 7, and 8 because there were five previous station spacewalks from the U.S. airlock Quest during increments, times when no shuttle was present.

9. Season's Greetings to All Onboard the Space Station, and to All a Good Mission • While stockings were hung by chimneys with care and children were snug in their beds across the globe, Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineers Sunita Williams and Mikhail Tyurin voyaged around the world in space. • Like millions around the world, for the crew of Expedition 14, this holiday season was met with bundles of joy, cheer and a special delivery. The winter festivities brought to the station crew more than 7,000 electronic postcards with warm wishes from those celebrating on Earth below. From Mesa, Ariz. to London, England, here are some of the greetings that reached the trio who celebrated this holiday season orbiting 230 miles above their home on Earth.

10. Progress Docks with Space Station • A new Progress docked to the International Space Station at 9:59 p.m. EST Friday with more than 2.5 tons of fuel, oxygen, other supplies and equipment aboard. The station's 24th Progress unpiloted cargo carrier brings to the orbiting laboratory more than 1,720 pounds of propellant, about 110 pounds of oxygen, and 3,285 pounds of dry cargo – a total of 5,115 pounds. • P24 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday at 9:12 p.m. It reached the station after a flight of just over two days. The spacecraft used the automated Kurs system to dock at the Pirs Docking Compartment. Expedition 14 flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin stood by at the manual Toru docking system controls, should his intervention have become necessary. Expedition 14 crew members, Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria, Tyurin and Flight Engineer Sunita Williams, finished filling P24's sister cargo carrier ISS Progress 22, with trash and other discards for its Jan. 16 undocking from Pirs and subsequent destruction on re-entry. • After its unloading P22 was used as a storage area for a while. Many items brought to the station aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-121 in July eventually found a temporary home there until crew members could put them in more permanent places. ISS Progress 23 remains at the aft compartment of the Zvezda Service Module. It is scheduled to undock in April. The Progress is similar in appearance and some design elements to the Soyuz spacecraft, which brings crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. The aft module, the instrumentation and propulsion module, is nearly identical. But the second of the three Progress sections is a refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where the crew is seated on launch and which returns them to Earth, is the middle module and the third is called the orbital module.

11. Spacewalkers Tee Off on Science, Mechanics • Two International Space Station crew members wrapped up a 5-hour, 38-minute spacewalk from the Pirs docking compartment airlock at 12:55 a.m. EST Thursday. The spacewalk included a golf shot that merited a high-flying birdie rating. • Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin was the lead spacewalker, EV1, and Commander Mike Lopez-Alegria was EV2. They wore Russian Orlan spacesuits. Golf was the first major spacewalk activity. Lopez-Alegria put the tee on the ladder outside Pirs. Tyurin set up a camera and then stepped up and addressed the ball for his one-handed shot. Lopez-Alegria helped secure Tyurin's feet. The golf was a commercial activity sponsored by a Canadian golf company through a contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. The ball left the station toward the right side instead of to the rear, a substantial slice. The ball weighs just 3 grams, a tenth of an ounce or about three times the weight of a dollar bill, compared to 1.62 ounces for a standard golf ball. At that weight it was unlikely to damage any station components if the shot had gone awry. The ball will have a short stay in orbit, perhaps three days. Inspection of a Kurs antenna on the Progress 23 unpiloted cargo carrier that docked at the aft end of the station's Zvezda Service Module Oct. 26 was the next task. Final latching of the spacecraft to the station was delayed by more than three hours because Mission Control Moscow was not sure the antenna was completely retracted. Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria moved to the rear of Zvezda and photographed the antenna. It was still fully extended, so Tyurin used a screwdriver to release a latch and tried to retract the antenna. Russian flight controllers also tried to retract it by activating a drive. Neither succeeded, and the task was abandoned. Next they relocated a WAL antenna, which will guide the unpiloted European cargo carrier to docking with the station. That vehicle, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, is scheduled to make its first flight next year. In its previous position the antenna interfered with a cover for a Zvezda booster engine. • Then the two installed a BTN neutron experiment, which characterizes charged and neutral particles in low Earth orbit. Atop Zvezda, its readings during solar bursts should be of special interest to scientists. Two thermal covers from the BTN were jettisoned before the spacewalkers returned to the Pirs airlock. A final scheduled task, an inspection of bolts on one of two Strela hand-operated cranes on the docking compartment, was postponed. The scheduled 6 p.m. EST start of the spacewalk was delayed because of a cooling issue in Tyurin's suit. Tyurin got out of the suit and straightened a suspect hose which apparently had become kinked. A balky hatch further delayed start of the spacewalk. This was the first spacewalk during Expedition 14, the sixth for Lopez-Alegria and the fourth for Tyurin. • If you've ever burned your dinner, you know how startling a smoke alarm can be. Now, imagine you're 220 miles away from Earth in an orbiting lab when the alarm sounds. Fires are no laughing matter on Earth, but in space they could be even more devastating."If a chair is on fire in your home, you have time to get out. In a spacecraft, you don't," said NASA scientist Dr. David Urban. "You have to detect smoke in an early pre-fire state, so you can stop it before it starts." • Urban and a team of scientists and engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center are developing a space station experiment to help engineers design smoke detectors that are sensitive enough to catch fires early, but not so sensitive that they cause false alarms. • This may not sound like a major challenge. After all, household smoke detectors are mass produced and inexpensive. But detecting smoke in space isn't quite so simple. Smoke detectors work by looking for particles in the air that are about the same size as the particles normally found in smoke. However, a 1996 NASA Glenn study showed that smoke particles in space are bigger than those on Earth. "Smoke particles form differently in microgravity than they do on the ground," said William Sheredy, project manager for the Smoke Aerosol Measurement Experiment (SAME). "When smoke is created in microgravity, the particles have more time to gather together, producing larger particles or particle chains than in normal gravity."So far, nobody knows exactly how big those particles are. That's why the NASA Glenn team created SAME. This space station experiment will burn samples of materials normally found in space -- like Teflon, silicon, cellulose and Kapton -- and then measure the size of the particles in the smoke. Engineers will use this information to design the next generation of spacecraft smoke detectors.As NASA often does, the team used several commercial parts to build the experiment. One of those parts, the P-Trak, was made by Minnesota company TSI. Designed to measure air quality, this small handheld device is capable of counting individual smoke particles. It's also the perfect size and weight for a space station experiment. There's just one catch: It wasn't designed for space. • P-Trak works by passing air through a heated chamber of vaporous alcohol. When the air is cooled, the alcohol condenses around dust particles much like water condenses on a cold glass. This makes the particles large enough that an optical sensor can detect them as they scatter light from a laser beam. "We were concerned because gravity assists in the circulation of the alcohol inside the device," Sheredy said. "We weren't sure it would work properly in the absence of gravity."So the scientists modified the device by carving tiny grooves inside its chambers to improve the flow of alcohol in microgravity. Of course, the scientific method requires every theory to be tested, and this experiment was no exception.Before they could use the device in SAME, the team had to be sure the modification would work. To do so, they created another space station experiment called the Dust and Aerosol Measurement Feasibility Test (DAFT), to test the modified P-Trak.In September, astronaut and Expedition 13 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams operated DAFT on the station. Urban, Sheredy and other DAFT team members watched in real time as Williams called in the recordings to Payload Communications. The results showed that the commercial particle counter works in space."It was really exciting. For people who work on projects like we do, days like this are highlights in our careers," said Sheredy. "From beginning to end, DAFT took about 3.5 years, and it all came down to about six hours of operation."Those crucial six hours brought the team one step closer to understanding the nature of space smoke and improving NASA's detectors. They look forward to another career highlight next summer when their primary experiment, SAME, is scheduled to travel to the station aboard the space shuttle.

12. Hockey Star Ovechkin Receives Tyurin Autographed Photo • Before he was sent to live and work on the International Space Station for six months, Expedition 14 Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin autographed his crew photo for another famous Russian. Now, the photo has reached its intended recipient: National Hockey League star Alexander Ovechkin. • While Tyurin orbited aboard the station some 220 miles above Earth, Ovechkin was presented with the framed photo following practice with his Washington Capitals teammates. Ovechkin was thrilled to receive the photo from a cosmonaut."Very important people for any country," said Ovechkin, "Russia or U.S."Ovechkin was pleased to learn that before Tyurin took up engineering as a career, he had wanted to grow up to be a hockey player.