October 30 – November 5, 2017 / Vol 36, No 44 / Hawai`i Island, USA

Beginning 18th Year of Continuous, Peaceful International Human Presence at ISS

On November 2 ISS will celebrate 17 full years of Humans living and working in LEO. With the 53rd Expedition on board, 228 individuals from 18 different nations have made 396 spaceflights to ISS, 7 being tourists and only 34 being women. Crew members have conducted 205 EVAs and spent a total of 53 days, 6 hours and 25 minutes working outside the station. Michael López-Alegría holds the record for most ISS EVAs (10 for 67 hours 40 minutes) with Peggy Whitson in second (10 at 60 hours 21 minutes). Both Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko spent the most consecutive time, 340 days, at ISS. NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour delivered 7 people to ISS in 2009 which made a total of 13 people – the most at one time. Advancing human research, space medicine, life sciences, physical sciences, astronomy, meteorology and technology, there are ~200 experiments ongoing at any given time, with an estimated 2,000 experiments from researchers in more than 95 countries being hosted so far. The US$100B, 16-country project weighs 419,600 kg, is 109-meters long, has 15 pressurized modules and travels 7.7 km per second at ~400 km altitude. The distance ISS covers in 24 hours is about the same as traveling from Earth to the Moon and back. The station makes between 15.5 to 15.9 revolutions per day depending on its altitude, and it surpassed 4.25B km and 100,000 orbits May 16, 2016. (Image Credit: NASA, Roscosmos, ESA)

MONDAY

Oct 30 — SpaceX, Launch Falcon 9 / Koreasat 5A, Cape Canaveral AFS CA: Falcon 9 rocket to launch Koreasat 5A communications satellite for KTsat based in South Korea.

SpaceX to Launch Falcon Heavy on Demo Flight in November

The world’s most powerful rocket is expected to roar on to the world stage this coming month. A specific date is yet to be announced, but all indications are go from Kennedy Space Center launch pad 39A. Falcon Heavy offers the potential for human mission to the Moon and Mars with the capability of lifting over 54 tons into orbit, which doubles the payload of the next closest operational vehicle Delta IV Heavy at less than one-quarter the cost, or US$90M. The in-house fabricated composite fairing is 13.1 meters high and 5.2 meters wide. Generating 22,819 kilonewtons of thrust at liftoff the first stage is composed of 27 Merlin engines arranged in 3 cores. Elon Musk tweeted earlier this year that considerations were being made to perform a powered return and landing of the upper stage during the demo flight. Another demonstration flight is scheduled for 2018 carrying a USAF payload. The first commercial GTO mission is Arabsat, also scheduled for 2018. The 70-m tall rocket with mass of over 1.4M kg is rated to carry a 3,500 kg payload to Pluto. (Image Credit: SpaceX)

Oct 30 – Nov 2 — United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, Samara University, Samara, Russia: UN/Russian Federation Workshop on Capacity-Building in Space Science and Technology for Sustainable Social and Economic Development.

Oct 30 — Moon: 0.84° SSE of Neptune, 11:00.

Continued from…

Oct 3-31 — National Geographic, Multiple Locations USA: NASA Astronaut Terry Virts tours from NY to CA for book signing “View from Above” featuring foreword by Buzz Aldrin and 300 photographs.

Oct 21 – Dec 4 — Johnson Space Center, NASA, Houston TX: Campaign 4: Mission 3 – Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA 2017); 45 day analog spaceflight / Moon / Mars mission.

TUESDAY

Oct 31 — Orbital ATK, Launch Minotaur-C / SkySat, Vandenberg AFB CA: Orbital ATK Minotaur-C rocket to launch 6 SkySat Earth observation satellites for Planet and several CubeSat secondary payloads for university and corporate customers.

Oct 31 — Dark Matter Day 2017, Global: On and around this date local events planned by institutions and individuals will engage the public in discussions about dark matter, current and future experiments that seek to solve its mysteries.

Oct 31 — American Astronautical Society, Online: Due date for submissions for AAS Awards to recognize accomplishments by individuals or teams in the space community.