International Space Station (ISS)

Sandhi Yudha

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There wasn't yet a thread about the International Space Station, but the largest and heaviest man-made structure orbiting the World deserves an own thread.

Construction of the ISS is almost finished, with only a small amount of components/modules still to be installed, including the Nauka with the European Robotic Arm, the Prichal module, and two power modules called NEM-1 and NEM-2.

The Nauka module was just launched two days ago on 21 July 2021 and will dock at Zvezda's nadir port, replacing the Pirs module that will be undocking on 24 July 2021 together with the Progress cargo spacecraft, and deorbiting four hours later with it.

The bus-sized Nauka research module — also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, or MLM — has been in development for more than 20 years, originally as a backup for Russia’s Zarya module, the first element of the space station to launch in 1998. Russia said in 2004 that the backup to Zarya would be converted into a lab module for launch in 2007.

Designed to support scientific experiments, the module measures about 13 meters long and weighs about 20,2 metric tons fully fueled for launch. The Nauka module carries the European Robotic Arm, which was completed 15 years ago to await an opportunity to fly to the space station.

So the original plan was actually to send the Nauka module to the ISS in 2007, but technical and financial problems caused the delay of 14 years.

The Nauka module will dock to the ISS at the nadir (Earth facing) port of the Zvezda module. As we can see on the Wikipedia image below, that place is now occupied by the Pirs docking module. To make place for the Nauka module, Pirs will undock on 24 July 2021 from the ISS together with the Progress MS-16 cargo spacecraft attached to it. Progress MS-16 will then deorbit four hours later with Pirs to finally re-entry Earth atmosphere.

The docking of Nauka on the ISS is planned for 29 July 2021.
 

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Sandhi Yudha

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There were some unexpected challenges on the way from Earth to ISS, and there were also some technical problems after docking, but eventually everything is alright now.

 

Sandhi Yudha

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With the docking of the Prichal module to the Nauka multi-purpose lab module, the final planned piece of the Russian segment of the ISS has been placed.



The Russian NEM-1 and NEM-2 are modules that were originally planned to arrive at the ISS no earlier than 2024, and dock to the Prichal module, which is now attached to the Nauka module. In April 2021, Roscosmos announced that NEM-1 would be repurposed to function as the core module of the proposed Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS).

So NEM-1, also known as Science Power Module 1 (SPM-1), will undergo 1.5–2 years of redesign to prepare the module for its new role as part of ROSS. As of April 2021, NEM-1 is scheduled to launch in 2025 on an Angara A5 launch vehicle.
 
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Sandhi Yudha

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Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has safely returned to Earth today with Soyuz MS-20 after a 12- day journey into space, ending a practice run for his planned trip around the moon with founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2023.

If im not wrong this is the first time that two space tourists in one flight are sent to the ISS.

Shipenko and Peresild were also sent to space together on the Soyuz MS-19 and spent about twelve days on the ISS before returning to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-18, but they were filming a movie in space, and are because of that officially not tourists.

It seems that Maezawa Yusaku has paid $70 million for both tickets.
 
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ngatimozart

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Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has safely returned to Earth today with Soyuz MS-20 after a 12- day journey into space, ending a practice run for his planned trip around the moon with founder Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2023.

If im not wrong this is the first time that two space tourists in one flight are sent to the ISS.

Shipenko and Peresild were also sent to space together on the Soyuz MS-19 and spent about twelve days on the ISS before returning to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-18, but they were filming a movie in space, and are because of that officially not tourists.

It seems that Maezawa Yusaku has paid $70 million for both tickets.
Jealous I am. extremely jealous. I too would like to soar into the cosmos and visit the ISS, but I don't think that they've built a rocket large enough to lift my arse into space yet, let alone squeeze me into the ISS. Bugger.
 

Sandhi Yudha

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Jealous I am. extremely jealous. I too would like to soar into the cosmos and visit the ISS, but I don't think that they've built a rocket large enough to lift my arse into space yet, let alone squeeze me into the ISS. Bugger.
Than we have to wait for the SpaceX Starship, which has a diameter of around 9 meters, while the Soyuz has a diameter of 2,72 m. Starship is expected to have 1,100 m3 (39,000 cu ft) of storage volume, also that is a little bit more than the 10,5 cubic meters of the Soyuz MS-20.

That has to be big enough to store both our arses.
 

Sandhi Yudha

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The Russian Roscosmos state space agency and NASA are in talks on extending the operation of the International Space Station (ISS) until 2030 and engineering support for the Zarya module carried out by Russia will be done until at least 2024.

 

Sandhi Yudha

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NASA plans to keep the ISS in orbit until 2031, when it will crash in a controlled way into the south part of the Pacific Ocean.

 
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Ananda

The Bunker Group

Some nice video on Earth, from Chinese Space Station. This thread for ISS however the present situation can raise problem on cooperation between NASA and Russian Space Agency, as both provide biggest traffics supporting ISS.


China Space Station could become the only one manned platform in near future, if no settlement between West and Russia can be achieved.
 

Sandhi Yudha

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Some nice video on Earth, from Chinese Space Station. This thread for ISS however the present situation can raise problem on cooperation between NASA and Russian Space Agency, as both provide biggest traffics supporting ISS.


China Space Station could become the only one manned platform in near future, if no settlement between West and Russia can be achieved.
Its sad that because of the conflict even the ISS and space exploration have become victims of politicization.

Even Russian athletes in real sport or electronic sports/video game tournaments are discriminated and banned.
 

Ananda

The Bunker Group
There's talk rumours on China and Russia will work on next gen Space Station. However whatever the result on this war will be, there's already bad blood between Russia and West. So I do see bleak future for ISS to be maintain after 2024.
 

Terran

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ISS had a ticking clock already.
It’s modules are rapidly moving to the second decade. The Russian segment ironically has both the oldest and most broken of the ISS and the newest. However the Russian “plans” to separate and build a Mir 2 doesn’t seem realistic at this point. The International segments similarly can’t operate on their own. Not without a massive amount of reconstruction including new modules. Ever seen 2010: The year we make Contact? That’s the situation. ISS can’t separate without dooming it’s crews and faces a huge political headache to remain together.
“But wait there is more…”
That’s right act now and we also have Potential resupply problems in the future. The ISS is supported by cargo launches a number of different types. The Russian Progress, American Dragon/Cygnus, Japanese HTX and European ATV. The Cygnus freighters are the large supply ships of the ISS. They are launched on NG Antares and ULA Atlas V. Atlas uses Russian engines. Antares is worse off it’s not just Russian engines but large parts of the first stage is built in Ukraine at a former Soviet ICBM factory.
The Atlas V is in its death spiral as ULA is aiming to get the Vulcan rocket into service as soon as Blue Origin gets the BE4 issues straight. ULA isn’t selling any more launches on it. So the problem there is basically controlled. ULA should have everything it needs to burn up it’s stock.
Antares though is a stake in the heart and beheading. They have two contracts for launches right now, they hopefully have at least one of the rockets near complete state side the other??
In theory at least Cygnus might be launch able on a Falcon.
 

Sandhi Yudha

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A retired NASA astronaut and three wealthy paying passengers rocketed into orbit Friday from the Kennedy Space Center on the first fully commercial mission to the International Space Station.

The commercial crew mission is planned to last 10 or 11 days. The flight is the first mission to travel to the space station as part of a purely commercial venture. All previous space station missions have been government-led or contracted by a government space agency.

Michael López-Alegría, commander of the mission, launched on his fifth flight to space. The other crew members for the Axiom mission, known as Ax-1, are pilot Larry Connor and mission specialists Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy, three investors and entrepreneurs who paid for their tickets to space. So these three are not just paying passengers, but really part of the crew.

 

ngatimozart

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A retired NASA astronaut and three wealthy paying passengers rocketed into orbit Friday from the Kennedy Space Center on the first fully commercial mission to the International Space Station.

The commercial crew mission is planned to last 10 or 11 days. The flight is the first mission to travel to the space station as part of a purely commercial venture. All previous space station missions have been government-led or contracted by a government space agency.

Michael López-Alegría, commander of the mission, launched on his fifth flight to space. The other crew members for the Axiom mission, known as Ax-1, are pilot Larry Connor and mission specialists Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy, three investors and entrepreneurs who paid for their tickets to space. So these three are not just paying passengers, but really part of the crew.

Jealous much. It must be nice to be rich and able to buy your way on to the ISS.
 

Sandhi Yudha

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So this 2600 kg accupack with the size of a car is just dumped in the ocean. This is not really environmental friendly, but perhaps there was not another (cost-effective) solution.

 
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