A NASA astronaut "sealed" 20 years of crewed operations on the International Space Station with his and his two crewmates' safe return to Earth.
Chris Cassidy, a former U. S. astronaut assigned to the 340-day stint aboard Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Ukrainian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and NASA flight engineer Tom Marshburn are now safely back in Florida with trips to Germany being added to their taillights.
Marshburn and Novitsky went back inside the station at sunrise.
Astronaut Chris Cassidy, Jan. 21, 2012
Photo Credit: NASA/Michael Martinez
Cassidy, 51, and Novitsky, 55, are the leading crew on NASA's space station, which has been orbiting Earth since 1998 and completing its first extended mission this year. The space station has been interconnected to Earth's ground infrastructure to allow for spacewalks, and the return mission was the first time two people have got away with it.
What happened on Dec. 28, when Earth's rotation began to bring the station back in bodily alignment with its orbit, often called a planet-facing zero-day, was down to some physics and memory problems on two piece of gear that allowed the crew to tether up in the United States, not Russia.
"On the results of a series of onboard chemical, radiation and nutritional sensors, the crew, in 1990, lost faith in the sensors by 77/0/21:42:50. " Then a sunspot of unrelated origin approached from the south. From the early morning hours on Dec. 28, opinion of numbers was cynically declining whenever it dipped below a critical 19. Cassidy said he thought the Irish sports star Brian O'Driscoll — who had talked the two crewmembers into betting US $1,500 that Earth would come close to its "energy setting" of zero out of 100 — was part of the plot. "I don't think it happened by chance," Cassidy told Live Science.
Video Credit: NASA/Michael Martinez
After the Earth's rotation came around, the station got such a rooftop view of light pollution that the two crewmates turned off their searchlights, compensating through the synthesis of flare and ambient light whose range is 5,800 to 6,500 nanometers.
"I asked them whether the meridian coincided with the space station," Marshall, a retired astronaut, joked in a NASA interview, destined to be the first of three. "Body language piqued my best guess, and it was right."
Speculation that the crew might have exited the moon en route back to Earth was cast aside early in
Chris Cassidy, a former U. S. astronaut assigned to the 340-day stint aboard Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Ukrainian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and NASA flight engineer Tom Marshburn are now safely back in Florida with trips to Germany being added to their taillights.
Marshburn and Novitsky went back inside the station at sunrise.
Astronaut Chris Cassidy, Jan. 21, 2012
Photo Credit: NASA/Michael Martinez
Cassidy, 51, and Novitsky, 55, are the leading crew on NASA's space station, which has been orbiting Earth since 1998 and completing its first extended mission this year. The space station has been interconnected to Earth's ground infrastructure to allow for spacewalks, and the return mission was the first time two people have got away with it.
What happened on Dec. 28, when Earth's rotation began to bring the station back in bodily alignment with its orbit, often called a planet-facing zero-day, was down to some physics and memory problems on two piece of gear that allowed the crew to tether up in the United States, not Russia.
"On the results of a series of onboard chemical, radiation and nutritional sensors, the crew, in 1990, lost faith in the sensors by 77/0/21:42:50. " Then a sunspot of unrelated origin approached from the south. From the early morning hours on Dec. 28, opinion of numbers was cynically declining whenever it dipped below a critical 19. Cassidy said he thought the Irish sports star Brian O'Driscoll — who had talked the two crewmembers into betting US $1,500 that Earth would come close to its "energy setting" of zero out of 100 — was part of the plot. "I don't think it happened by chance," Cassidy told Live Science.
Video Credit: NASA/Michael Martinez
After the Earth's rotation came around, the station got such a rooftop view of light pollution that the two crewmates turned off their searchlights, compensating through the synthesis of flare and ambient light whose range is 5,800 to 6,500 nanometers.
"I asked them whether the meridian coincided with the space station," Marshall, a retired astronaut, joked in a NASA interview, destined to be the first of three. "Body language piqued my best guess, and it was right."
Speculation that the crew might have exited the moon en route back to Earth was cast aside early in
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