Media are invited to accompany NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at 10 a.m. MDT Friday, Aug. 23, during his visit to the University of Colorado Boulder, where he will tour a newly-completed aerospace engineering complex.
NASA Breaking News
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NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan, assigned as flight engineers for Expedition 60 aboard the International Space Station, will begin a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk from inside the Quest airlock about 8:20 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 21. Live NASA Television coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. The duo will assist in the installation of International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) to Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 on the space-facing side of the station’s Harmony module.
NASA experts provided an overview of the spacewalk activities in a preview briefing Friday, Aug. 16.
IDA-3 will provide a second docking port to the International Space Station to accommodate the future arrivals of Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon commercial crew spacecraft. The docking port was launched to the station last month on a SpaceX Dragon on the company’s 18th commercial cargo resupply services mission to the station. IDA-2 was installed to the forward end of the Harmony module in the summer of 2016.
NASA’s commercial crew partnership with Boeing and SpaceX will restore launches of American astronauts from American soil on American rockets and maximize the time U.S. crews can dedicate to scientific research and technological advances aboard the orbiting laboratory to enable the agency’s ambitious goals for the Artemis lunar exploration program and future missions to the Moon and Mars. Regular human space transportation to the space station is a critical step to opening the space station for commercial business to enable the growth of the U.S. commercial space sector and the development of a robust low-Earth orbit economy.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Mark Garcia
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A new commercial crew docking port is in position on the International Space Station ready for installation during Wednesday’s spacewalk. Russia is also counting down to the launch of an unpiloted Soyuz spacecraft to the orbiting lab just a few hours after tomorrow’s spacewalk.
The Expedition 60 crew was asleep when the Canadarm2 robotic arm grappled and removed the International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) from the rear of the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft. Robotics controllers then remotely guided the IDA-3 to the Harmony module’s space-facing port and inspected it with the Canadarm2.
Spacewalkers Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan will set their spacesuits to battery power Wednesday at 8:20 a.m. EDT and exit the Quest airlock to finish installing the IDA-3. The duo will spend about six and a half hours routing cables and configuring the station’s second Boeing and SpaceX crew vehicle docking port. NASA TV is broadcasting live the spacewalk starting Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. See an animation of their planned activities.
Commander Alexey Ovchinin with Flight Engineers Christina Koch and Luca Parmitano familiarized themselves with tomorrow’s spacewalk procedures. Koch also prepared Hague and Andrew’s installation tools and set up the IDA-3 control panel.
Parmitano moved on and continued researching cell differentiation for the Micro-15 investigation. Afterward, he photographed biofilm samples in the Kubik incubator for the BioRock space mining study that explores how microbes interact with rocks.
The Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft is standing at its launch pad in Kazakhstan preparing for a liftoff just a few hours after Hague and Morgan finish their spacewalk. The unpiloted vehicle will blast off Wednesday at 11:38 p.m. EDT and test its 2.1a booster segment during ascent. The Soyuz spacecraft will automatically dock to the station’s Poisk module on Saturday at 1:30 a.m.
Mark Garcia
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A quick moving storm passes as teams from NASA and SpaceX practice procedures for medical emergency evacuation onboard the GO Searcher ship, Friday, August 15, 2019.
NASA Image of the Day
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Radio amateurs at CITEL WRC Preparatory Meeting Ottawa
CITEL, the telecommunications committee of the Organization of American States, concluded a week of meetings on Friday, August 16 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa.
The Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) report:
These meetings have as their principal purpose to try to establish common positions on agenda items which will be acted upon during the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) which begins on Monday, October 28 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The following Radio Amateurs (from left to right in the above photo) were present at the CITEL meetings and were tasked with looking out for issues of concern to the Amateur Radio Service:
• Bryan Rawlings, VE3QN – on the Canadian Delegation and Radio Amateurs of Canada’s Special Advisor to World Radiocommunication Conferences
• George Gorsline, VE3YV – member of the Executive Committee for the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU-R2)
• Flavio Archangelo, PY2ZX – on the Brazilian Delegation and International Amateur Radio Union Region 2 CITEL Coordinator
• Serge Bertuzzo, VA3SB, Radio Amateurs of Canada’s International Affairs Officer
• Jon Siverling, WB3ERA – on the American Delegation and the Technical Relations Officer for the American Radio Relay League (ARRL)
The following are the principal highlights of the week’s activities for Radio Amateurs:
Six Metres: There are now 14 signatories to an Inter-American Position (IAP) which in effect voices no objection to an allocation in 50 – 54 MHz to the Amateur Service in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Region 1 (Europe, the Mideast and Africa).
Six Metres: Amateurs were successful in adding wording to protect the Amateur primary allocation in 50 – 54 MHz from a US proposal to study implementing space-based Earth Exploration Service radars to operate in or close to 45 MHz.
47 GHz: Amateurs were successful in having Mexico remove the frequency segment 47 – 47.2 GHz from their proposal to study several additional frequency ranges for the Fixed Satellite Service.
47 GHz: An IAP supported by 11 member states supports No Change (NoC) to the existing (Amateur Primary) allocation in 47 – 47.2 GHz. Specifically, not to be considered for sharing with 5G International Mobile Telephony (IMT).
5 GHz WAS/RLAN: An IAP supported by 12 member states supports No Change (NoC) to the existing allocations in 5725 to 5850 MHz and 18 member states support No Change in the range 5850 to 5925 MHz (as opposed to using these frequency ranges for higher-power and outdoor wireless access points). The Amateur secondary allocation in Canada is 5650 to 5925 MHz.
WPT(EV): Wording in a Canadian contribution with additions from the American delegation has been added relative to a WRC-19 agenda item which seeks to identify frequencies for medium and high-power wireless charging of electric vehicles. The wording emphasizes the requirement to properly set standards to avoid harmful interference to radio services from WPT(EV) systems.
Note: The French proposal to consider 144 – 146 MHz for sharing with the aeronautical mobile service was not on the CITEL agenda. It will be considered next in a CEPT meeting in Ankara in late August. For more information please visit:
https://www.rac.ca/2-metre-sharing-proposal-is-on-cept-conference-preparatory-group-agenda/
This was the last CITEL meeting before the upcoming WRC-19 Conference; therefore, the above is a fair representation of the status of the various Amateur issues going into that meeting.
Stay tuned to the WRC-19 webpage on the RAC website for more updates https://www.rac.ca/wrc/
Bryan Rawlings, VE3QN
Special Advisor to World Radiocommunication Conferences
Radio Amateurs of Canada
m5aka
AMSAT-UK
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