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Astronauts on the International Space Station have discovered a leak of ammonia coolant on their orbiting habitat, and NASA is looking into the problem, though it poses no immediate danger to the crew, officials said today (May 9). The space station uses chilled liquid ammonia to cool down the power systems on its eight giant solar array panels. A minor leak of this ammonia was first noticed in 2007, and NASA has been studying the issue ever since. In November 2012 two astronauts took a spacewalk to fix the problem, rewiring some coolant lines and installing a spare radiator due...

During his evening ritual of sharing images taken from the International Space Station, Commander Chris Hadfield posted this gem: a gorgeous night-time view of the southeastern United States, with the Moon hovering over Earth’s limb and the terminator separating night from day. Dawn is just beginning to break to the east, as the ISS flies overhead. This image reflects the ‘wistful’ feelings Hadfield is having as his time in space in coming to a close. He and his two crewmates Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko will head back to Earth on May 13. During a recent linkup with students, Hadfield...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space, and the agency's leader is blaming Congress for the extra expense. NASA announced its latest contract with the Russian Space Agency on Tuesday. The $424 million represents flights to and from the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, as well as training, for six astronauts in 2016 and the first half of 2017. That's $70.6 million per seat -- well above the previous price tag of about $65 million. Russia currently provides the only means of getting people to and from...

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Friday to send an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule on its quickest trip yet to the International Space Station, but the company had to work through a problem with the Dragon in orbit. The Falcon 9 made a problem-free ascent from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:10 a.m. ET. A half-hour after launch, SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, said in a Twitter update that controllers were looking into a technical issue involving the capsule's thrusters. "Issue with Dragon thruster pods," Musk wrote. "System inhibiting three of four [pods]...

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016. By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

A huge, unmanned European cargo ship will launch to the International Space Station in the wee hours of Friday (March 23) on a mission to deliver a load of food and supplies to the orbiting outpost. The European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle 3 (ATV-3) is scheduled to lift off from a launch pad in South America at 12:34 a.m. EDT (0434 GMT) on Friday. The spacecraft will launch atop Europe's workhorse Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. The 20-ton cargo freighter, which is nicknamed "Edoardo Amaldi" after the Italian physicist and spaceflight pioneer,...

It would cost $852 quadrillion dollars to build a real Death Star That's 852 with 15 zeros following it. I know, that figure is insane. You know what that means. It means Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were rolling in the money like filthy rich rappers. I guess ruling the Galactic Empire isn't so terrible when you're ballin'. Finally putting some questions to rest, the smart folk over at Centives calculated how much iron it would take to build the planet-destroying space station and even figured out how long it would take to build. Here's the reality-check breakdown: • Based...

MOSCOW — A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts returning from the International Space Station touched down safely in the snow-covered steppes of Kazakhstan early Tuesday morning. NASA astronaut Michael Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan’s JAXA space agency landed at the break of dawn some 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the town of Arkalyk at 8:26 a.m. (0226 GMT) after spending 165 days in space. The landing at steppe was close to its target point. NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said in the NASA television broadcast that the recovery operation was swift despite the freezing...

A solar power station in space measuring several kilometres in length may sound like something from a science fiction film, but the reality is that this idea could well be operational and supplying much of the worlds energy requirements within less than 20 years. Space based solar power stations are not a new idea, in fact they have been researched since the 1970’s. Back in 2009 the Californian state regulators granted approval to the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Solaren Corp. to start creating a solar based power plant in space. Solaren, founded by veterans of Hughes Aircraft, Boeing...

Astronaut and blogger Ron Garan is coming home after nearly six months in space. Reflecting on his preparation for his trip, he writes: “As I prepared to leave for final launch preparations, I experienced an interesting phenomenon. Realizing that leaving Houston starts me on a journey that will take me off the planet for six months, I started to take note of things that I will not experience for half a year. Whether it’s a flock of birds against the sunset or early morning mist on the water of Clear Lake, or a million other things that define the beauty...

A special commission investigating the causes of the August 24 failed launch of Russia's Soyuz carrier rocket has recommended enhancing the control of the production of engines for Soyuz rockets, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. A Soyuz rocket engine failure resulted in the loss of the Progress M-12M space freighter on August 24, the first loss of a Progress freighter in the history of Russia's space industry. The freighter failed to separate from the rocket and fell in South Siberia's Altai Republic. A clogged fuel supply pipe caused the engine failure, the commission discovered, describing the defect as "accidental," Roscosmos...

A Russian space official said this week that once the mammoth International Space Station is no longer needed it will be sent into the Pacific Ocean. [the article is linked to a FL Today article which cannot be posted on FR)

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia plans to de-orbit the mammoth International Space Station in a controlled descent into the Pacific in 2020, a top space official said Wednesday. Deputy head of Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos Vitaly Davydov said that the station "cannot be left in orbit" after it stops operation. He said in a web-posted statement that the station will have to be de-orbited in a "planned crash so that there is no space junk left behind."

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station got a very long-distance call Friday from US President Barack Obama, who joked that he thought he was dialing out for pizza. Hot from giving a press conference at which he pushed Republicans to reach a deal on raising the US debt ceiling, the American president took time out to chat with the 10 astronauts currently aboard the ISS. "I was just dialing out for pizza, and I didn't expect to end up in space," Obama quipped, raising a laugh from the gathered crew. But turning serious, he told the astronauts how proud he...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The six space station astronauts took shelter in lifeboats Tuesday when a piece of orbiting junk came dangerously close. The unidentified object came within 1,100 feet of the space station — closer than any piece of space junk ever, said NASA's space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier. Mission Control ordered the astronauts into the two Russian Soyuz capsules parked at the space station Tuesday morning. NASA got just 14 hours' notice of the close approach, not nearly enough time to move the space station out of harm's way. The call to seek shelter came around 7:30 a.m....

These stunning images capture the final stage of the construction of the International Space Station. But as they marked the beginning of a new era in space exploration, the spacewalk undertaken by Gregory Chamitoff and Mike Fincke also represented an end - of Nasa's 30-year shuttle programme. All future spacewalks - including one during the final shuttle voyage this summer - will be performed by full-time space station residents.

When the movie Star Wars came out in 1977, remember how many jokes were made about Luke and Han blazing away at Imperial fighters with the ack-ack guns on the Millennium Falcon? In the July 1998 issue of Spaceflight (the popular publication of the British Interplanetary Society), there's an article1 about the military version of the Soviet Salyut space station, which flew as Salyuts 3 and 5 between 1974 and 1977. (The name “Salyut” was applied to two entirely different space station programs, one military and the other civilian, which used completely different hardware built by different design bureaux.2 The...

SNIPPET: "The probe plans to test technology in preparation for an unmanned moon landing in 2012, with a possible manned lunar mission to follow in 2017. China’s other space plans include the launch of the first module of a future space station next year followed by the dispatch of manned spacecraft to dock with it."

An unmanned Russian cargo ship veered out of control near the International Space Station on Friday, sailing clear past the orbiting lab instead of docking on autopilot, as engineers on Earth struggle to determine what went wrong. The robotic cargo ship Progress 38 was slated to dock at the space station at 12:58 p.m. EDT (1658 GMT) but lost its navigational lock on the orbiting lab about 28 minutes before the rendezvous. "The Progress literally flew past the station, but at a safe distance from the outpost," NASA commentator Rob Navias said. "The station crew reported seeing the Progress drift...

The ISS [International Space Station] continues to orbit Earth in almost constant sunlight, setting the stage for multiple bright flybys in the night sky. Some observers are seeing the space station as often as five times a night! There are three easy ways to prepare. First, you can check our online Simple Satellite Tracker for viewing times. Second, if you have an iPhone, download the Simple Flybys app and your iPhone will guide you to the space station. Third, and finally, our flybys app is now available for Android phones, too!