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Russia's next space station trip will take days, not hours
It's not a great time to be a Russian cosmonaut. Thanks to the International Space Station making a maneuver to avoid space junk, the next Soyuz spacecraft's flight (due September 2nd) will take two days to reach the station instead of the relatively brisk six hours of recent trips. That's more than a little unpleasant if you're stuck in a cramped capsule, and negates a lot of the planning work that has saved so much time from 2013 onward. There's no indication as to when (or if) launches will speed up, so crews may have little choice but to tough it out in the near future. [Image credit: NASA, Flickr]
Watch Russia launch crucial Space Station cargo at 12:55AM ET
The International Space Station has had a tough time getting supplies lately between two rocket explosions and an orbital failure, but it's going to get an important lifeline in the near future... hopefully. Russia is about to launch Progress 60, a cargo ship that will ferry over 3 tons of much-needed food, fuel and other equipment to the ISS. You won't have to wait until its expected Sunday arrival to find out how it fares, though. NASA is streaming the launch at 12:55AM ET -- tune in below and you'll have a sense of whether or not Progress 60 fares any better than its ill-fated predecessor. Update: After a successful launch, Progress 60 is on its way to the ISS. It's scheduled to dock with the station at 2:30AM ET Sunday, which will also be covered live on NASA TV.
Russia grounds Proton-M rockets following an accident
Russia's space program just can't catch a break, it seems. A spokesperson tells RIA that the country has suspended all Proton-M rocket launches following an accident that destroyed one model carrying a Mexican satellite. Officials reportedly want to know why this vehicle failed before they let any others take off -- all they've determined so far is that the third stage's engine booster suffered a glitch. The move is understandable (both Russia and private launch services lean heavily on the Proton-M), but it also suggests that the nation's rocket problems are boiling to a head. Unless it finds a permanent solution, there may well be more incidents in the future. [Image credit: Roscosmos via AP]
Russia's latest ISS supply ship is spinning out of control
The International Space Station has yet another problem on its hands. Russia's Progress 59 supply ship (you're looking at Progress 47 above) appears to have suffered a communications breakdown shortly after entering orbit, and it's been spinning out of control ever since. As you can see in the dizzying video below, it's not about to dock with the ISS any time soon. Ground control had originally hoped that it could get things in order for an April 30th rendezvous, but it's scuttling those plans unless it can rein in this wayward spacecraft. It's safe to say that the station crew would like a recovery as soon as possible. When Progress 59 is carrying 6,000 pounds of food, fuel and other essentials, a significant delay could cause more than a few headaches. [Image credit: NASA]
Russia will keep its pieces of the International Space Station in orbit
The International Space Station isn't expected to maintain funding past 2024, but that doesn't mean that everything will come crashing down when the money runs out. Russia's Federal Space Agency has decided that it will keep its station modules in orbit after the ISS goes out of service, using these leftovers to create its own base -- its first since Mir was decommissioned in 2001. Besides serving as a symbol of national pride, the ad hoc station should help with future missions that should include a manned Moon landing around 2030. Of course, this all assumes that the ISS doesn't get another lease on life -- if it does, Russia may have to go back to the drawing board. [Image credit: NASA]
NASA, Roscosmos pick seasoned astronauts for year-long ISS trip
We now know which two astronauts will have to pack their bags very, very well in the next three years: NASA's Scott Kelly and Roscosmos' Mikhail Kornienko have been picked for the year-long stay aboard the International Space Station in 2015. Both voyagers are old hands at space travel, having each spent a total of six months in orbit and at least some time on the ISS crew. There's no great shock in the choices when the mission will track the long-term effects of near-zero gravity on the human body -- after all, most of us would want a crew comfortable in its spacesuit boots for such an ambitious (though not record-setting) trip. Kelly and Kornienko will start a two-year training program shortly into 2013 that should have them in shape by the expedition's launch... and hopefully remind them to bring a good toothbrush.
Visualized: 121-megapixel satellite photos show Earth in glorious, psychedelic detail (video)
We're starting to think the Russians have an inside track on high-resolution space photos. When Nokia's 41-megapixel photo of Earth's horizon was just a twinkle in the 808 PureView designers' eyes, the Russian Federal Space Agency had long since finished taking 121-megapixel photos of the whole planet that we're just now seeing in earnest. Unlike NASA photos, which are usually composites of multiple shots, the Elektro-L weather satellite's images display the entire planet in one ridiculously detailed take from 22,369 miles away. Why the trippy colors? Instead of just displaying Earth as-is -- real colors are so passé, dahling -- the satellite layers on near-infrared imagery that paints vegetation in wide swaths of rust-like orange. You can get a peep of what a day-night cycle looks like for Elektro-L in the video below, and hop over to the sources to get an inkling of just how insanely detailed the images can be. You can also be slightly jealous of the satellite's network connection: at a minimum 2.6Mbps and maximum 16.4Mbps for bandwidth, odds are that it has faster broadband than you do.
