I watched a fair amount of the recent space walk by Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock on NASA TV last night. It was a pretty amazing and difficult walk involving the entire ISS and Discovery crew. Parazynski spent a few hours repairing a solar array which hard torn during deployment. This was part of the recent STS-120 shuttle mission to the space station.

It was a dangerous walk because of risk of electrocution (they couldn’t turn off the solar array) and the fact that Scott would be one hour away from the safety of the station. He needed to ride on the end of a robotic arm which was outstretched as far as it could possibly be in order to reach the array.

This video on the NASA site will show you the movement the arm had to undertake to get Scott to the damage site.

During the telecast, I noticed how amazingly the team worked together. There were no egos, not frights and plenty of great banter. Everyone (including those back on Earth) were happy to defer decisions to those people with the most reliable information at the time. It was quite a pleasure to watch a team work so well together.

I took a heap of screen shots of the cast so here they are each with a brief description:

• Start of the ride
• Discovery docked to the ISS.
• Parazynski attached to the end of the OBSS.
• At the solar array.
• Putting the first cufflink in place.
• View from Doug Wheelock’s wireless camera.
• View from an ISS cameras.
• About to cut the damaged ropes.
• The five cufflinks in place.
• Taking a photograph of himself.

“See, this guy did something most of us could only dream of doing. He walked into a dingy antique mall in Kansas one day, and walked out with a real honest-to-gosh piece of American history.”

What a find. Walk into a second hand store, and come out with a genuine Gemini program space suit.

“It is most definitely the real deal, a suit that never went into space, but was used for high-altitude pressure tests during the Gemini program. There were around thirty of these suits made, and this is the only one that wasn’t destroyed or put in a museum somewhere.”

The full adventure and more photos can be found on the Positive Ape Index. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever score a find like that in an Aussie second hand store.

“In Event of Moon Disaster” is a speech (Page 1, Page 2) written by William Safire that President Nixon would have read if Apollo 11 moon landing astronauts were stranded on the moon. After making the speech, a clergyman was to commend their souls to “the deepest of the deep” and then close down communications with them.

What I find difficult to come to terms with is the shutdown of communications. These men have families back home who would have (hopefully) been given a chance to say a last goodbye to them. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult that would be for them.
Also found in the USA National Archives, a second memo (Page 1, Page 2) prepared by NASA provides suggested statement for the president and vice president in the event of Apollo “crew fatalities.”

Source: The Smoking Gun

“We’re back, baby,” shuttle pilot Mike Kelly said quoting his brother Scott, during Tuesday’s interview from the International Space Station.

For those who have keep up to date with space travel news this week, what a wonderful week it has been. I always wished I was born 25 years earlier so I could be there to witness the first moon landing in 1969. There was no World Wide Web until 1990 so people had to crowd around televisions to watch the event.

The other night whilst browsing through the NASA site, I discovered that the crew of STS-121 were about to embark on the first spacewalk of their mission. I launched NASA TV and watched the first hour or so of the walk - LIVE! I was hooked. I felt like a child again. A child who wanted to be an astronaut.

It felt quite incredible to witness the event, listen to their conversation and watch them slowly move across the ISS. Whilst they moved about on my screen, I realised they were just outside my window, 354kms away.

Whilst not completely out of the clear, it looks like NASA is beginning to recover from the Columbia tragedy in 2003. NASA has spent $US1.3 billion making the shuttle safer. Once complete, the IIS is expected to have cost more than $US100 billion. What benefit does this investment provide to our life here on earth?

With water being such a scarce resource, pushing the boundaries of space travel has forced us to come up with new ways to recycle and develop self-sufficient living in an environment where nothing naturally grows.

The Marshall Space Flight Center is currently developing a Water Processor Assembly (WPA) as part of the US Enhanced Crew Life Support System. This system will reclaim waste waters from fuel cells, from urine, from oral hygiene and hand washing, and by condensing humidity from the air. It will produce recycled water that will be cleaner than what we drink presently on Earth.

It’s still a very long way away, but hopefully we will see some good come out of this in our lifetime. Until then, I’ll continue to watch those lucky few as they experience what must be one of the most amazing views you could see.