“The Russian Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft, with Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, NASA Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano aboard, changed parking spaces at the International Space Station November 1. The crew undocked the vehicle from the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing side of the Russian segment of the complex and redocked it 20 minutes later at the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module. The maneuver opened the Rassvet port for the November 7 arrival of three new crew members for station operations. Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano will depart the station in the Soyuz TMA-09M on November 10, for a landing on November 11 on the steppe of Kazakhstan.”
On October 25, 2013, a Proton-M/Breeze-M launch vehicle lifted off from Launch Complex Area 200, Baikonur, with the telecommunications satellite Sirius FM-6.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a NASA mission which will observe the Sun for over five years. Launched on February 11, 2010, the observatory is part of the Living With a Star (LWS) program. The goal of the LWS program is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to effectively address those aspects of the connected Sun–Earth system directly affecting life and society. The goal of the SDO is to understand the influence of the Sun on the Earth and near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously. SDO has been investigating how the Sun\’s magnetic field is generated and structured, how this stored magnetic energy is converted and released into the heliosphere and geospace in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance.
“After launching earlier in the day in their Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 37/38 Soyuz Commander
Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), NASA Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins arrived at the International Space Station Sept. 26 after a six-hour rendezvous, docking their craft to the Poisk module on the Russian segment of the complex.”
Orbital Sciences Corporation, one of the world’s leading space technology companies, today announced that it successfully launched its Antares rocket carrying the company’s Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft into its intended orbit. The successful launch marked the beginning of a four-day in-orbit capabilities demonstration mission that will culminate in rendezvous and berthing with the International Space Station (ISS) on September 22. Cygnus will deliver approximately 1,500 lbs. of cargo and remain attached to the ISS for 30 days before departing with up to 1,750 lbs. of disposal cargo.
Lift-off of Orbital’s Antares rocket occurred at approximately 10:58 a.m. EDT from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) located at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia. Following a 10-minute ascent, the Cygnus spacecraft was successfully deployed by the Antares upper stage and placed into its intended orbit of about 180 x 160 miles above the Earth, inclined at 51.6 degrees to the equator. Approximately 20 minutes later, Orbital’s Cygnus engineers confirmed that reliable communications had been established and that the solar arrays were fully deployed, providing the necessary electrical power to command the spacecraft.
“We are very pleased with the early operations of the COTS demonstration mission, beginning with another on-the-mark launch by Antares. The Cygnus
spacecraft appears to be fully healthy and operating as expected during this early phase of its mission,” said Mr. David W. Thompson, Orbital’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Over the next few days, our Cygnus team, together with our NASA partners, will conduct an extensive series of in-orbit tests to verify the performance of the spacecraft before attempting the rendezvous and berthing operations with the space station. There is clearly still a lot of work in front of us, but the mission looks like it is off to a great start.”
This demonstration flight is the final milestone in Orbital’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) joint research and development initiative with NASA. Under COTS, NASA and Orbital developed Cygnus, which meets the stringent human-rated safety requirements for ISS operations. Orbital privately developed the Antares launch vehicle to provide low-cost, reliable access to space for medium-class payloads. Together, these elements are being used for the demonstration flight of Orbital’s commercial resupply capability to the ISS.
Pending the successful completion of the COTS program, Orbital will begin regularly scheduled cargo delivery missions to the ISS under the $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. Under the CRS contract, Orbital will deliver approximately 20,000 kilograms of cargo to the ISS over eight missions through 2016. For these missions, NASA will manifest a variety of essential items based on ISS program needs, including food, clothing, crew supplies, spare parts and equipment, and scientific experiments.
Soyuz TMA-08M, identified as Soyuz 34 or 34S by NASA, is a 2013 flight to the International Space Station. It transported three members of the Expedition 35 crew to the International Space Station. TMA-08M is the 117th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft, the first flight launching in 1967. The Russian Soyuz TMA-08M utilized the new 6-hour fast rendezvous flight profile developed by the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA) and previously tested on Progress M-16M and M-17M, instead of the usual two-day rendezvous, making it possible for crew members to leave ground facilities and board the International Space Station in less time than a typical transatlantic flight.
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