After 2010, the United States will likely be unable to deliver its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on its own. For several years Russia’s Soyuz craft will remain the only vehicle available to do that, and the U.S. may find it hard to do without Russian cooperation.

On Tuesday, September 23, the U.S. Congress considered an amendment, supported by President George W. Bush, allowing NASA to buy Russian Soyuz spacecraft and launch services.

The Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 had banned the purchase of Russian space technologies. The act said the ban would be in effect as long as Russia cooperated with Iran in nuclear technologies.

The International Space Station’s orbit has been adjusted to avoid a cluster of space garbage, Russia’s Mission Control Center (MCC) said on Thursday.

“Information on a possible collision was received from Russian and American services and was used by the MCC specialists to perform calculations for an ISS orbit adjustment,” mission control said.

It said that the engines of the Jules Verne Automated Transport Vehicle (ATV) docked to the ISS were activated to lower the station’s orbit by 1.7 km to 353.7 km over Earth’s surface.

“A column of bluish light as bright as the Sun streaked through cloudless skies above the Taiga forest. Minutes later, local herdsmen and recent settlers saw a brilliant flash followed by the sound of explosions, like an artillery barrage from a great battle raging over the horizon. An ashen cloud rose in the distance, and could be seen from hundreds of miles away. And then – silence.
The place: the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in central Siberia, northeast of Lake Baikal; the time: 7:14 a.m. on the morning of June 30, 1908.

Within minutes the “Tunguska Event,” the largest asteroid impact in modern recorded history, was over.

What Hit Siberia 100 Years Ago? Tunguska Event Still Puzzles Scientists

“The Great Debate was an influential debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis which concerned the nature of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe.

The basic issue under debate was whether distant nebulae were relatively small and lay within our own galaxy or whether they were large independent galaxies.

The debate took place on 26 April 1920 in the Baird auditorium of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.”

“The final launch of a Saturn rocket came on July 15, 1975 as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Earlier that day, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft lifted off its launch pad at a Soviet launch site carrying three cosmonauts. Seven and one-half hours later, the U.S. Apollo spacecraft was launched with its crew of American astronauts. Rendezvous and docking of the two ships were accomplished on July 17. The two ships remained docked for two days, conducting joint experiments and exchanging national mementos. Apollo Soyuz@Wikipedia

“A ballistic reentry is a re-entry of an atmosphere that relies solely on drag within the atmosphere to slow the vehicle. The U.S. Mercury and Soviet Vostok spacecraft used a ballistic reentry. The U.S. Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and Russian Soyuz spacecraft use a lifting reentry, where aerodynamic lift makes for a gentler and aimable reentry, but have a backup ballistic reentry mode.”

“Lately ballistic re-entries have accidentally occurred on the Soyuz TMA-10 and Soyuz TMA-11 missions.”

A rocket or rocket vehicle is a missile, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust by the reaction of the rocket to the ejection of fast moving fluid from a rocket engine.

Chemical rockets work by the action of hot gas produced by the combustion of the propellant against the inside of combustion chambers and expansion nozzles. This generates forces that accelerate the gas to extremely high speed and exerts a large thrust on the rocket (since every action has an equal and opposite reaction).

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (USSR, 1857 – 1935)

Robert H. Goddard (USA, 1882 – 1945)

Herman Oberth (Germany, 1894 – 1989)

Wernher Von Braun (Germany, 1912 – 1977)

Sergei Korolyov (USSR, 1907 – 1966)

“Iran on Monday fired a rocket into space to mark the opening of its first space centre, triggering swift condemnation from the United States amid continued tensions over the Iranian nuclear drive.

“The space centre, located in the remote desert of western Iran, will be used to launch Iran’s first home-produced satellite “Omid” (Hope) in May or June this year,” officials said.

“We witness today that Iran has taken its first step in space very firmly, precisely and with awareness,” declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he gave the order for the rocket’s launch.”

“In the vacuum of space, with neither gravity nor air friction to deal with, a craft can be affected by even the smallest force. That’s exactly what solar pressure does: it provides a vanishingly small—yet utterly relentless—force against the enormous mirrorlike sails designed to harness this energy just as canvas sails do on oceangoing ships.”

“Eventually, over sufficient time and distance, solar pressure can drive a spacecraft to enormous speeds—fast enough to cross the inconceivably vast and frigid gulfs between stars.”

“That’s right: solar sailing is the only practical technology capable of interstellar flight. With it, the closest stars to our own become targets for our vessels.”

Cosmos 1@Wikipedia
Let’s get Cosmos 2 into Space!

“Scientists have known for decades that some science works better in space — but it hasn’t been easy to get experiments up there. Now, with NASA planning to reduce its $2.6 billion annual investment beginning in 2015, the agency is throwing the space station open for private enterprise. And the Texas financial scion and multimillionaire is ready to transform space science with an injection of capitalism.” Link@wired.com

ISS@Nasa.gov
Humans In Space@CalSciCenter

“Oct. 4, 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of Russia’s launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. The “traveling companion’s” legacy was far-reaching.”

Sputnik@Wikipedia
NYTime Special
Sputnik: A History of the Beginning of the Space Age@NASA
International Sputnik Day

LONDON (Reuters) – Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a “virtual telescope” that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.

Google, which created Google Earth to give Internet users an astronaut’s view that can zoom to street level, said the service would be a playground for learning about space. “Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available,” said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute’s Sky team.

Visions of Mars is a message from our world to future human inhabitants of Mars. It will launch on its way to the Red Planet in the summer of 2007 aboard the spacecraft Phoenix. Along with personal messages from leading space visionaries of our time, Visions of Mars includes a priceless collection of Mars literature and art, and a list of hundreds of thousands of names of space enthusiasts from around the world. The entire collection will be encoded on a mini-DVD provided by The Planetary Society, which will be affixed to the spacecraft.

The Phoenix mission to Mars.

“Galaxy Zoo, the project which harnesses the power of the internet – and your brain – to classify a million galaxies.By taking part, you’ll not only be contributing to scientific research, but you’ll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before and get a sense of the glorious diversity of galaxies that pepper the sky”

Galaxy Zoo.org