Astronauts that traveled to the International Space Station back in April will be coming back to Earth this week.
The three-person crew will return to Earth in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and land in Kazakhstan. In the aftermath, the team will have a few days to do some necessary research before going back to a Russian spaceport — one specific to the Soyuz, perhaps. Kraft recently announced his company had entered into a contract with French space agency CNES to send the crew "to study effects of reusability on the space station."
ESA
Just how much documentation will the crew need to complete in the weeks prior to landing? The International Space Station's orbital position renders it a little odd, which makes it very difficult for the public to understand. (That and the fact that the space station is going under a lot of load and g-forces.)
As the space station orbits Earth we're at the point, because of speed and the distance and position, that we are observing the clock in real-time. It's really hard to precisely pin down a real-time communication clock. You need something free, which is shuttle time. Then you also have the more general clock, which says five hours and 15 minutes. About the time it's five hours and 15 minutes on the U.S. side is unclear. Managers we've done communication with do we think it is the same time all the time, the Russian side says maybe five hours and 40 minutes right now. Then one side says it's 13 hours and 15 minutes wrong here, and one side says it's two hours and 15 minutes wrong here. Everyone is wording turns down just how much it's growing cloudy, but I could see spots within that other two to four hours it is wrong.
The ISS isn't just broadcasting time and space station information whenever possible, but it's also transmitting stuff like thermal tubes and ground control facilities. The whole tableau is a complete mess.
Avi Lewis, whose parents are from Ghana, has been working for a month trying to figure out the Soyuz's system. He found that astronauts have what are called interactive reentry plans, which contain some very specific information. These use tables about the law of gravity and what it looks like from earth, about how the reentry heat and forces work. The specific things that the team needs to record are taken from the table he found on the Soyuz website.
Avi Lewis, orbital data geologist and position planner for the International Space Station.
Avi Lewis works with better understanding of orbital concepts through data analysis.
Hanging out at Gravitude in Los Angeles on a tarpit bar, eating up a little U
The three-person crew will return to Earth in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and land in Kazakhstan. In the aftermath, the team will have a few days to do some necessary research before going back to a Russian spaceport — one specific to the Soyuz, perhaps. Kraft recently announced his company had entered into a contract with French space agency CNES to send the crew "to study effects of reusability on the space station."
ESA
Just how much documentation will the crew need to complete in the weeks prior to landing? The International Space Station's orbital position renders it a little odd, which makes it very difficult for the public to understand. (That and the fact that the space station is going under a lot of load and g-forces.)
As the space station orbits Earth we're at the point, because of speed and the distance and position, that we are observing the clock in real-time. It's really hard to precisely pin down a real-time communication clock. You need something free, which is shuttle time. Then you also have the more general clock, which says five hours and 15 minutes. About the time it's five hours and 15 minutes on the U.S. side is unclear. Managers we've done communication with do we think it is the same time all the time, the Russian side says maybe five hours and 40 minutes right now. Then one side says it's 13 hours and 15 minutes wrong here, and one side says it's two hours and 15 minutes wrong here. Everyone is wording turns down just how much it's growing cloudy, but I could see spots within that other two to four hours it is wrong.
The ISS isn't just broadcasting time and space station information whenever possible, but it's also transmitting stuff like thermal tubes and ground control facilities. The whole tableau is a complete mess.
Avi Lewis, whose parents are from Ghana, has been working for a month trying to figure out the Soyuz's system. He found that astronauts have what are called interactive reentry plans, which contain some very specific information. These use tables about the law of gravity and what it looks like from earth, about how the reentry heat and forces work. The specific things that the team needs to record are taken from the table he found on the Soyuz website.
Avi Lewis, orbital data geologist and position planner for the International Space Station.
Avi Lewis works with better understanding of orbital concepts through data analysis.
Hanging out at Gravitude in Los Angeles on a tarpit bar, eating up a little U
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