Yearlong crew returns to Earth

Scott Kelly gives a "thumbs up" just minutes after being extracted from the Soyuz 
capsule. Photo Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA

Blazing through the atmosphere and landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko returned to Earth on the morning of March 2, 2016, after spending nearly a year at the International Space Station. 

Kelly and Korniyenko returned in the Soyuz TMA-18M with Sergey Volkov, who launched to the orbiting laboratory back in September and spent 181 days in space. The one-year duo were launched to the ISS on March 27, 2015 in Soyuz TMA-16M and subsequently spent 340 days in space—the longest single flight for an American and longest mission in the history of the ISS program. 

Over the course of their stay, they orbited Earth over 5,440 times and traveled more than 143 million miles (230 million kilometers). Additionally, nearly 400 experiments were performed in areas ranging from life sciences, robotics, biology and more. 

Kelly, who had been the commander of the space station since Sept. 5, 2015, relinquished his post to fellow NASA astronaut Tim Kopra on Feb. 29. 

“It’s kind of hard to believe that we’ve been here for two and a half months and it’s only a portion of Scott and [Mikhail’s] time here,” Kopra said after Kelly handed over command. “Special thank you to Scott. Thank you for your leadership. You’ve been such a great role model to us in every aspect—as a crew member and as a space station commander—so we’re very, very grateful.” 

Expedition 46 officially ended and Expedition 47 began when the Soyuz undocked at 7:02 p.m. CST on March 1 (00:10 GMT on March 2) from the Poisk module. Hatches between the spacecraft had been closed a few hours prior at 3:43 p.m. CST (21:43 GMT). 

Remaining on board the space station are Commander Kopra and Flight Engineers Tim Peake, from the European Space Agency (ESA), and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko. All three have been in space for more than 77 days. 

“We are very grateful to this crew, to you [Mikhail] and to you Scott,” Malenchenko said before hatch closure. “Thank you to the mission control centers in Moscow and Houston. Good luck guys and we’ll see you soon on the ground.” 

Photo Credit: Scott Kelly / NASA

After pulling away from the station, the first separation burn occurred when the Soyuz was 66 feet (20 meters) away. The spacecraft fired its thrusters again for a second burn just 90 seconds later. 

About two and a half hours after undocking at 9:32 p.m. CST (3:32 GMT), while 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from the ISS, the crew commanded the Soyuz’s SKD engine to fire for four minutes and 49 seconds, slowing the spacecraft down by about 420 feet (128 meters) per second. With that, the vehicle and crew were on an intercept course with the upper atmosphere. 

Shortly before Entry Interface, 27 minutes after the de-orbit burn, the three modules of the Soyuz—the Orbital Module, Descent Module and the Service Module—separated. Only the Descent Module with crew is intended to return to Earth safely. 

The Soyuz began to skirt the atmosphere just after 10 p.m. CST (4:00 GMT) going 4.73 miles (7.62 kilometers) per second. They were about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the Arabian peninsula. 

Just under seven minutes later, slowing down to 1.41 miles (2.28 kilometers) per second while still 20.7 miles (33.4 kilometers) high, the crew experienced their maximum gravity load of about 4.57 times the force of Earth’s gravity. 

“Doing OK, feeling the pressure, feeling the G’s,” Volkov said during descent. 

The spacecraft soared through the atmosphere, creating a trail of super-heated plasma around the capsule for nearly 10 minutes before slowing down enough for the first set of parachutes to deploy. 

That deployment came with the release of pilot chutes to pull the drogue chute out. The spacecraft and crew were just over 6 miles (10 kilometers) in altitude at this point, still going 695 feet (212 meters) per second. 

The drogue slowed the capsule to only 262 feet (80 meters) per second before the main parachute deployed. It’s surface area of 10,764 square feet (1,000 square meters) slowed the vehicle to about 21 feet (6.5 meters) per second. 

This slow descent lasted for about 10 minutes while the spacecraft and crew began to prepare for touchdown. 

First, the heat shield was jettisoned, which revealed the Soft Landing engines. Next, the cabin pressure was equalized with the outside. Finally, the crew seats, called Kazbek, were moved slightly upward relative to the horizon in order to absorb the shock of landing. 

As the spacecraft descended, the recovery team began to locate and track the capsule. Once the main parachute deployed, helicopters began a wide circle around the landing area. 

About one second before touchdown, the Soft Landing engines ignited in a momentary burst to cushion the final three feet (about one meter) of the crew’s journey. The official landing time was 10:26 p.m. CST (10:26 a.m. local Kazakh time, 4:26 GMT). 

The spacecraft landed upright. To prevent the parachute from dragging the capsule around, the line connecting the two was automatically cut, as planned. 

Once confirmation of touchdown occurred, the helicopters landed, and nearby all-terrain vehicles rushed to the capsule to begin the careful extraction of the crew. The first thing the search and rescue teams did was erect a ladder around the module. Then they opened the hatch at the top of the vehicle. 

Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Korniyenko, left, Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos, center,
and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly rest in chairs outside of the Soyuz
TMA-18M spacecraft just minutes after they landed in a romote area near the town
of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, March 2, 2016.
Photo Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA

The first to be extracted was Volkov, then Kelly and Korniyenko. They were individually lowered and moved to lawn-chair like couches nearby and given a blanket. Temperatures at the landing area were around 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). 

“The air feels great out here,” Kelly said, “I don’t know why you guys are all bundled up.” 

Kelly, who last flew in space five years ago as part of the Expedition 25/26 increment in 2010 and 2011, told a medical officer that he didn’t feel much different than he did when he landed then. 

After the medical evaluations were complete, the crew was flown to nearby city Dzhezkazgan, where Kelly parted ways with Korniyenko and Volkov, before flying to their corresponding space agency's headquarters.

Video courtesy of NASA TV

Read more work by Derek Richardson at Spaceflight Insider.

Welcome to 2016

The view of the main pressurized modules of ISS from

 the astronauts during US EVA-35. Credit: NASA

Welcome to 2016. I know it is already February. It has been a busy last couple of months. I plan to expand the website this year, and get into better posting habits. But for now, here is my outlook on what to expect at our favorite palace in space.

This year, the International Space Station turns 16 years old—at least some of the pieces. This was the year that ISS program was originally supposed to end. In 2010, all five space station partner agencies decided to delay that to 2020. Even now, talks are underway to continue the life of the outpost to 2024.

Had the decision held to end the program, it is arguable that the burgeoning commercial cargo and crew industries would still be a decade or more away. Instead, today, active private cargo ships are routinely delivering supplies to the station. Next year, commercial crews will begin visiting the outpost. This year, Bigelow Aerospace, a company that develops expandable space habitats, will have it's first module attached to the ISS, and there are talks of a private airlock being added to ISS by 2018.

Instead of planning for the disposal the 400 ton satellite into the Pacific Ocean this year, mission planners are busy working on "traffic jams" of visiting vehicles constantly coming and going to and from the station. They do this all while working on training for more than a half-dozen spacewalks.

This year promises to be one of the busiest at the outpost. Starting in March, the first of up to five SpaceX Dragon cargo ships will be launched to resupply the orbiting lab. Commercial Resupply Service 8 will be a return to flight for SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship after a launch mishap in June of last year during the CRS-7 mission. The company already returned the Falcon 9 booster to flight in December.

BEAM seen attached to Tranquility's aft port.
Photo Credit: NASA

CRS-8 will haul with it the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM). Once the capsule berths to the Harmony node, the BEAM will then be pulled out of the "trunk" of Dragon by the space station's robotic arm and be attached to the aft port of the Tranquility module.

BEAM is a small test module that will study the structural integrity, leakage, radiation exposure and more, during its two year stay on the outpost. Afterwords, it will be removed and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere. Bigelow Aerospace intends to use a similar design for an airlock on it's eventual private space stations sometime in the 2020s.

SpaceX will launch International Docking Adapter 2 in March on CRS-9. This will be attached to Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 on forward end of Harmony. IDA-1 was originally supposed to be attached there, however, it was lost during CRS-7.

A replacement, IDA-3, will be launched on a future SpaceX Dragon flight. It will be attached to PMA-3. To prepare for that, it will be moved from it's current location (port side of Tranquility) to the zenith port of Harmony.

Cygnus OA-4 as seen from the ISS crew below
the station moments before being captured by the
space stations robotic arm.
Photo Credit NASA

The other company delivering cargo, Orbital ATK, recently returned it's Cygnus cargo ship to flight. This year, the company plans to launch three times. As early as late May, the OA-5 Cygnus mission should see the return to flight of the Antares rocket, which exploded shortly after liftoff in October 2014.

If the schedule holds, SpaceX and Orbital ATK should both have cargo ships berthed to the space station at the same time in late spring or early summer.

While commercial resupply is poised to have it's biggest year yet, the Russian's plan to continue their steady supply of Progress spacecraft. Three are scheduled to launch this year - all of which are of the new modernized MS variant. Additionally, Japan will launch it's HTV-6 cargo ship in October. In all, up to 12 resupply ships could reach the station in 2016.

In March, the first one-year crew members on the ISS are scheduled to return to Earth. Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko launched in late March 2015 and are scheduled to return to Earth on March 3, 2016. Also leaving with them will be Sergey Volkov, who launched in September 2015.

Launching a couple of weeks later, Soyuz TMA-20M will take Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka as well as NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams. They will stay aboard as part of Expedition 47 and 48 and return to Earth in September. This will put Williams about 14 days ahead of Kelly as the most experienced U.S. astronaut with a cumulative 534 days over four missions.

A new Soyuz model, called MS, will replace the
TMA-M series currently serving the space station.
Photo Credit: NASA

Following the departure of TMA-19M in June with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and astronauts Timothy Peake and Timothy Kopra of ESA and NASA respectively, Expedition 48 will begin. Joining the expedition a couple weeks later will be the crew of a brand new Soyuz: Soyuz MS-1. Aboard will be NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoli Ivanishin and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi. They will stay in space till November.

Launching on Soyuz MS-2 in September to be part of Expedition 49 will be NASA astronaut Robert Kimbrough and Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov. They will land in March 2017.

Finally, in November, the 50th expedition to the orbiting outpost will launch. Soyuz MS-3 will carry NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and French astronaut Tomas Pesquet. They will stay in space till May 2017.

So far in 2016, the ISS has seen one extravehicular activity. US EVA-35 saw astronauts Tim Kopra and Tim Peake step outside to fix a failed power regulator. The Sequential Shunt Unit, as it is called, failed in November and needed to be replaced at the earliest convenience.

The SSU was fixed, and other tasks completed as well, however, only a few hours into the spacewalk, water was discovered in Kopra's helmet forcing a "termination" of the EVA. The suit will be evaluated before used further.

This month, the ISS should see a Russian EVA, as well as the departure of the Cygnus currently berthed at the Earth facing port of Node 1.

A highlight video of EVA-35, which occurred on Jan. 15.

Video courtesy of NASA.

Soyuz TMA-16M launches Scott Kelly to space station

TMA-16M launches! - Credit: NASA

And it begins. Scott Kelly, Mikhail Korniyenko and Gennady Padalka are on their way to the International Space Station. Launch was at 2:42 p.m. CDT, but it was 1:42 a.m. in Kazakhstan. 

The night sky was clear with the only light, besides the stars, was coming from the launchpad lights. As soon as the rocket engines ignited, night was no more. The Soyuz rocket began to rise, and soon, it was well on its way to orbit.

The crew is on a "fast track" to the station and will arrive in about six hours after four orbits, as opposed to a two day trek to the station.

How exactly does the Soyuz get to the station? The YouTube channel SmarterEveryday did a great interview with Scott Kelly, and Reid Wiseman to find out exactly that. You can watch the video below.

Docking is scheduled for 8:36 p.m. CDT tonight. They will dock to the space facing Poisk module.

Over the course of the yearlong mission, two major anniversaries will pass. The first is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz test project, the first joint mission between American and Russia (then the USSR). The second is the 15th anniversary of continuous crew operations at ISS.

To follow the research being done on ISS while Kelly is on orbit visit https://twitter.com/iss_research.

To see what Kelly is tweeting, follow @stationCDRKelly.

Launch today, kelly patch history

Kelly, left, Padalka, middle, and Korniyenko looking
at their launch vehicle. - Credit: NASA

Today is the day! Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenko will be launching to space for one year. Actually, to be more precise, it will be 342 days. Watch on NASA TV (coverage begins at 1:30 p.m. CDT) or follow #YearInSpace on twitter to keep up to date. 

The launch is scheduled at 2:42 p.m. with docking at the International Space Station scheduled for 8:36 p.m.

In the hours before the launch of Kelly, Korniyenko and Gennady Padalka on Soyuz TMA-16M, it might be worth to note that Kelly is the NASA astronaut with the most patches with his name on it for a mission. 

Kelly with his one year patch.
- Credit: NASA

In fact, in a story by Robert Pearlman of CollectSpace, Pearlman writes about a particular name patch that was supposed to launch to orbit back in late October 2014 aboard the Cygnus cargo capsule. The rocket carrying it exploded seconds after liftoff.

Apparently those patches survived unscathed, and Kelly will be taking them on his launch today as a memento of good luck.

Kelly has a number of other patches associated with him. In total, he has 11 patches with his name on it. This doesn't include honorary patches and patches that had to be changed. The person with the most space mission patches is Gennady Padalka, with 13 patches.

Read the CollectSpace article here.

Kelly launches soon, SpaceX too

Kelly and Korniyenko's one year mission patch.
- Credit: NASA

It is T minus 5 days till Scott Kelly, along with Mikhail Korniyenko and Gennady Padalka launch to the ISS. Kelly and Korniyenko will be staying aboard for a whole year before returning to earth in March of 2016.

Liftoff is scheduled for 27 March 2015 at 2:42 p.m. CDT in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard Soyuz TMA-16M. 

Kelly has been tweeting regularly about his preparations to launch, and he plans to continue tweeting regularly in space, something that has become common of most American astronauts.

"I'm thinking this is about to get real. #YearInSpace"
- Credit: @StationCDRKelly

The 51 year old Kelly has spent more than 180 days in space to date on two space shuttle missions and aboard the ISS on the expedition 25/26 crew increment. 

On this mission, NASA has the opportunity to compare how his body reacts to being in space for a year with his identical twin brother, Mark, who will stay on Earth.

Mark was also an astronaut and spent over 54 days in space on four shuttle missions. He is currently retired. 

The purpose of the year long mission is to better understand how the human body reacts to longer missions, such as a mission to mars, which will be on the order of 30 or more months long. One of the main focuses will be on the human eye. It has been found that microgravity effects astronauts' vision. It is believed to be caused by the swelling of tissue at the back of the eye due to fluid flow. This distorts the eye's shape. It can cause near sightedness and farsightedness.

A photo of a CRS-3 at the launch pad in April 2014.
- Credit: NASA

Two weeks after Kelly and crew launch to the station, SpaceX will be in the spotlight launching its next Dragon capsule to ISS.

SpX-6 or CRS-6 will launch on April 10 at 4:42 p.m. CDT. This comes after a delay with another Falcon 9 rocket that was to launch a European-built communications satellite for the government of Turkmenistan. SpaceX decided to flip the order of launches as to keep the flow going, and not cause large delays with the overall manifest.

This Falcon 9 rocket will have landing legs affixed to it's first stage and will attempt to land on the company's Automated Spaceport Drone Ship known as "Just Read The Instructions."

If the landing is successful, it will be the first time SpaceX has recovered a booster stage, and the first time a flown orbital class rocket has landed on an ocean going platform.

SpaceX intends to use the first recovered stage as a test article in New Mexico to determine hardware limits, such as how many times the stage can be reused.