PromISSe mission logo
It's official... ESA astronaut André Kuipers will stay on ISS for a few weeks longer than originally planned. Following the delay to the launch of the next Soyuz spacecraft, the Station partners have agreed that Don Pettit, Oleg Kononenko and André will return to Earth on 1 July.
Read more on the ESA Portal:
André’s PromISSe mission extended on Space Station
ESA space food
André has recently been following a special diet on the ISS - find out why in his latest blog post...
"The last few weeks I was on a diet. Not that I am too fat, but for some experiments I need to follow a strict diet, such as for the European SOLO experiment. Twice Dan Burbank and I ate a special diet for five days. The experiment is about salt and is called SOLO (SOdium LOad in microgravity). Dan and I eat a diet with normal salt content for a week (11.5 grams a day), and a diet with low salt the other week (2,9 grams a day)."
Read more in André's blog: On a diet for international science.
International Space Station
Earlier today students from three international schools based in the Netherlands used amateur radio to talk with ESA astronaut André Kuipers on the International Space Station (ISS).
The radio contact with André lasted long enough for the students from the American school of the Hague, the International School of Amsterdam and the British School in the Netherlands to hear answers to 18 questions.
Click the link below to listen to the ARISS contact:
ARISS contact with André Kuipers, 27 February 2012
The 18 questions answered were:
1. Eoin (14): Can you light a candle or magnesium in zero gravity?
2. Rachel (11): Do you get homesick?
3. Phoebe (14): After all the time and money invested into space travel what will be the main benefit to mankind?
4. Isaac (14): How long does it take to get to the ISS?
5. Lauren (11): Do you believe in aliens or life out there?
6. Ross (14): Do astronauts feel a temperature increase when re entering the Earth’s atmosphere due to the heat increase on the outside of the aircraft?
7. Wout (14): Can you see houses and man-made things from the space station?
8. Joep (11): How does it feel to be launched into space? Is it painful?
9. Saul-Patrick (14): On Earth we use north, south, east and west. How do you determine directions in space?
10. Ellie (11): When you push against the wall of the space station to move around does it change the orbit of the space station?
11. Sarah (11): Do you get to wear your own clothes or are you given special clothes?
12. Jonathan (14): Are there any similarities between space technology at the space station and Star Trek movies?
13. Michelle (14): What is the longest time you have been in space? And how do you communicate with your family?
14. Liam (11): Have you been out of the station and floated around in space?
15. Shaunnak (14): What are your views on commercial space travel?
16. Aidan (11): When did you become interested in space?
17. Igor (13): How does being in space affect your health and thinking processes?
18 Jella (12): After being in space so long and seeing earth from so far away, do you still see mankind in the same way?
The contact was operated by the ARISS telebridge station IK1SLD located at Casale Monferrato, Italy. This call is made possible by the Amateur Radio in the International Space Station project (ARISS), an international working group, consisting of delegations from nine countries including several countries in Europe as well as Japan, Russia, Canada, and the USA. The organisation is run by volunteers from the national amateur radio organisations and the international AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) organisations from each country. The volunteers work closely with the national space agencies, including ESA.
With special thanks to Gaston Bertels from ARISS-Europe for providing the audio recording.
André Kuipers on board ISS
Most of the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS have an amateur radio license. They use the station’s ham radio to contact amateur radio stations on ground mostly in their free time, and the radio is used to contact pre-selected schools. During the ten minutes that the ISS is typically above horizon and radio contact is possible, astronauts answer the questions prepared by the students.
Students from the American school of the Hague, the International School of Amsterdam and the British School in the Netherlands will gather at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, for their radio contact with the André on the ISS.
The contact will be operated by the ARISS telebridge station IK1SLD located at Casale Monferrato, Italy. The contact should be audible over most of Europe on the 145.800 MHz FM downlink. The contact will be conducted in English.
The students will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:
1. Eoin (14): Can you light a candle or magnesium in zero gravity?
2. Rachel (11): Do you get homesick?
3. Phoebe (14): After all the time and money invested into space travel what will be the main benefit to mankind?
4. Isaac (14): How long does it take to get to the ISS?
5. Lauren (11): Do you believe in aliens or life out there?
6. Ross (14): Do astronauts feel a temperature increase when re entering the Earth's atmosphere due to the heat increase on the outside of the aircraft?
7. Wout (14): Can you see houses and man-made things from the space station?
8. Joep (11): How does it feel to be launched into space? Is it painful?
9. Saul-Patrick (14): On Earth we use north, south, east and west. How do you determine directions in space?
10. Ellie (11): When you push against the wall of the space station to move around does it change the orbit of the space station?
11. Sarah (11): Do you get to wear your own clothes or are you given special clothes?
12. Jonathan (14): Are there any similarities between space technology at the space station and Star Trek movies?
13. Michelle (14): What is the longest time you have been in space? And how do you communicate with your family?
14. Liam (11): Have you been out of the station and floated around in space?
15. Shaunnak (14): What are your views on commercial space travel?
16. Aidan (11): When did you become interested in space?
17. Igor (13): How does being in space affect your health and thinking processes?
18 Jella (12): After being in space so long and seeing earth from so far away, do you still see mankind in the same way?
19. Alma (12): Are there experiments happening on the ISS that can lead to knowledge about life on Mars? If so, what are they?
20. Miyu (13): Is there jet lag in space?
21. Natalia (12): How does day and night look like in space?
This call is made possible by the Amateur Radio in the International Space Station project (ARISS), an international working group, consisting of delegations from nine countries including several countries in Europe as well as Japan, Russia, Canada, and the USA. The organisation is run by volunteers from the national amateur radio organisations and the international AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) organisations from each country. The volunteers work closely with the national space agencies, including ESA.
During a week so far dominated by routine inspection and maintenance tasks for the International Space Station crew, ISS Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer André Kuipers took time out to answer questions put to them by students in New Jersey, USA.
embedded by Embedded Video
Armed with two educational experiments during his PromISSe mission, ESA astronaut André Kuipers is inviting students aged 10--14 to share his scientific adventure. André is inviting schools across Europe to learn what is behind seemingly simple phenomena such as convection and foams.
Children have the chance to follow the 'Take Your Classroom into Space' experiments with André as part of the 'Spaceship Earth' educational programme.
Teachers can order the school kits with the 'Take Your Classroom into Space' experiments from the PromISSe website: www.esa.int/PromISSe.
More about this activity on the ESA website: Space oddities - to teach science
embedded by Embedded Video
In 1996, Fluitsma & Van Tijn had a massive Number 1 hit in The Netherlands with the song 15 Miljoen Mensen, which is one of André's favourite songs and on his playlist on the International Space Station.
Fluitsma & Van Tijn are a famous Dutch songwriting and producing duo made up of Jochem Fluitsma and Eric van Tijn. Over the years, they have worked with many Dutch and international artists, including Alain Clark, Mai Tai, René Froger, Montserrat Caballe, Mathilde Santing, André Hazes, Engelbert Humperdinck, Gerard Joling, Guus Meeuwis, Paul de Leeuw, Status Quo and De Kast.
When they heard that their song was included in André's playlist, to be listened to in space, they felt very honoured and sent André this video greeting for his mission blog (video greeting is in Dutch). Their song 15 Miljoen Mensen will be André's 'song of the day' for a very special date in the Dutch calendar, 30 April, Queen's Day 2012.
embedded by Embedded Video
Training with Canadarm2
Read more in André's blog:
'My bedroom is cosily chaotic'
Expedition 30 Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov are currently preparing to start a six-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Wearing the Russian Orlan spacesuits, Oleg and Anton are scheduled to exit the Pirs airlock at 15:15 CET (14:15 GMT). Their tasks are to attach five debris shields on the exterior of the Zvezda service module and to relocate one of two Strela telescoping cranes from the Pirs module to the Poisk module.
Expedition 17 crewmembers with Orlan spacesuit (left) and US spacesuit (right)
The Russian ISS crewmembers have been preparing for today's spacewalk for a number of days, even performing a dry run inside the ISS on Tuesday.
Today's spacewalk is the 162nd in support of ISS assembly and maintainence and is the only spacewalk scheduled during Expedition 30. The last ISS spacewalk took place on 3 August 2011. The spacewalk is scheduled to end at 21:15 CET (20:15 GMT) when the cosmonauts reenter the ISS.
Follow the Russian spacewalk on NASA TV from 14:45 CET (13:45 GMT): http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
André with Robonaut
The International Space Station's seventh crewmember, a dextrous humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, was powered up for testing yesterday.
ESA astronaut André Kuipers assisted ISS Commander Dan Burbank with the assembly and power up of Robonaut. Together with ground controllers, Burbank tested Robonaut’s joints and force sensors before stowing the robot for more testing today.
NASA's Robonaut is in a demonstration phase, but eventually robots could relieve crew of tasks which are fairly repetitive and can be automated. Crew time on the ISS is an extremely scare resource, freeing up some of their time spent on simple tasks would mean more time for those tasks that require human skills and reasoning.
Robonaut is activated
Another advantage of robots is that they can move with extremely low acceleration - crew activity within a Station laboratory can disrupt the environment when an experiment is being conducted. Robots could one day venture outside the Station to help spacewalkers make repairs or additions to the Station or perform scientific work.
Within ESA there are also several robotics projects lead by the Automation and Robotics group. They are working on projects such as the EUROBOT testbed for use in low Earth orbit - for the building and operating the International Space Station, and other technologies for the exploration of the Solar System, such as rovers for the Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets.
More on the ESA Automation and Robotics group website
Find out more about Robonaut in this clip from NASA TV:
embedded by Embedded Video
