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| New Astronaut Crew Launching to Space Station Tonight | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 14 2012, 09:14 AM (402 Views) | |
| Max | May 14 2012, 09:14 AM Post #1 |
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Pickle barrel, pickle barrel, Kumquat!
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Three astronauts are finally ready to blast off toward the International Space Station tonight (May 14), after weeks of delay caused during testing of their Russian-built space capsule. NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin are slated to lift off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome tonight at 11:01 p.m. EDT (0301 GMT Tuesday). They'll ride a Soyuz spaceship into orbit, ultimately berthing with the station early Thursday morning (May 17), NASA officials said. Acaba, Padalka and Revin were originally scheduled to launch on March 29, but a botched pressure test cracked their Soyuz crew capsule. The flight was pushed back by a month and a half to allow enough time for Russian space contractor RSC Energia to ready a new capsule for service. Once aboard the space station, the three spaceflyers will bring the orbiting lab back to its full complement of six occupants. Their fellow Expedition 31 crewmembers — NASA's Don Pettit, Dutchman Andre Kuipers and cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko — have had the station to themselves since April 27. Acaba, Padalka and Revin will live in orbit for the next four months, eventually returning to Earth in mid-September, NASA officials said. The three newcomers will all serve as flight engineers under the command of Expedition 31 chief Kononenko. `snip` A historic arrival While a stay aboard the space station is doubtless always exciting, the Expedition 31 crewmembers will be treated to a historic event if all goes according to plan. The California-based company SpaceX is planning to launch its Dragon capsule on an unmanned demonstration flight to the orbiting lab on May 19, to see if the vehicle is ready to begin a series of 12 contracted robotic cargo missions for NASA. If the misssion goes well, Dragon will be the first private spacecraft ever to dock with the space station, and the first of those 12 cargo runs could begin later this year. SOURCE:YahooNews "botched pressure test cracked their Soyuz crew capsule" WTF? |
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| LarryOldtimer | May 15 2012, 08:04 AM Post #2 |
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The Man!!!
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Nothing unusal about that, Max. Happens with our own space equipment too. Designing these vehicles is always requireing redesign and testing after redesign and retesting. |
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| Max | Jun 1 2012, 09:29 AM Post #3 |
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Pickle barrel, pickle barrel, Kumquat!
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OK, Larry, that's good to know. I suppose things like that happened during Mercury/Gemini/ Apollo as well? It just sounded scary! |
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| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
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2:22 AM Jul 11