Robonaut 2 went into space on shuttle Discovery’s STS-133 to show that humanoid robots can work there. A Robonaut hand and arm unit is going up on the following shuttle flight, Endeavour’s STS-134 mission to commemorate the work done on Earth for the project.

The robotic appendage is one of dozens of commemorative items the crew of Endeavour’s mission are taking with them to mark their own achievements and that of NASA’s youngest shuttle on its final flight.

After Endeavour returns from its two-week stay aboard the International Space Station, the commemorative items will be displayed in museums and collections around the world.

The Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England, loaned a 3-inch wooden ball from the 16th century ship “Mary Rose” so it could sail in the vast ocean of space. The “Mary Rose” was one of the first purpose-built warships and was raised in 1982 after more than 400 years underwater. The ball, called a “parrel,” was part of the mechanism used to raise sails up the masts.

The “Mary Rose” has one more connection to NASA: astronaut Michael Foale worked as a volunteer diver on the ship’s excavation in 1981. The astronaut would later fly the space shuttle, to the Russian space station Mir and to the International Space Station.

Another museum-sponsored piece will go into orbit, the 5-star insignia worn by General Henry “Hap” Arnold, an architect of the modern Air Force. The insignia belongs to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, which holds numerous items from Arnold in its collection.

A number of the items on Endeavour’s Official Flight Kit manifest, such as pins, flags and patches, will be given as awards after returning to Earth.

Some of the items will be awarded to Boy Scouts who earn the new robotics merit badge. There are 100 of the merit badges going along with Endeavour.

The astronauts are allowed to pick personal items to take into orbit, too. Sometimes they choose mementos of their accomplishments or things associated with their hometowns or other locations.

A small gold bar from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy will make the trip inside Endeavour. STS-134 Commander Mark Kelly graduated from the academy in 1986.

A poem from the Tucson Poetry Center in Arizona also is making the trip, along with an Archie Comics comic book cover.

Objects ranging from a metal disk from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Rome to a pennant from Tuscany are representing Italy on STS-134, the home nation of European Space Agency Mission Specialist Roberto Vittori.

The objects continue a tradition of taking items into space that began with NASA’s first astronauts. During the 50 years of astronauts launching into space, commemorative objects have flown to the moon’s surface and made repeated orbits of Earth, returning later to inspire those who could not make the trip themselves and remind astronauts of their accomplishments.

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On October 18, 2010, Typhoon Megi approached and made landfall in the northeastern Isabela Province of the Philippines. Spanning more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) across, Megi was the 15th tropical storm and 7th typhoon of the season in the western Pacific Ocean. It was the most intense tropical cyclone of the year to date.

News reports indicated at least one death and an unknown number of injuries, as power and communications was cut off to more than 90 percent of Isabela and Cagayan provinces. In addition to the immediate damage, officials were concerned about the long-term damage to the rice crop, a staple of the national diet.

This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite at 10:35 a.m. Philippine Time (02:35 UTC) on October 18, 2010. Megi was bearing down on Palanan Bay as a “super typhoon” with category 5 strength on the Saffir Simpson scale. As of 8:00 a.m. local time, the storm had sustained winds of 268 kilometers (167 miles) per hour, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

The storm had grown to “super” typhoon status on October 16, and wind speeds peaked at an estimated 287 kilometers (178 miles) per hour while the storm was still over the Pacific Ocean on October 17. Megi began to downgrade as it moved onshore around 11:30 a.m. on October 18 and then crossed over the Sierra Madre mountain range (average elevation 1,800 meters, or 5,900 feet).

The official international name of the storm is Megi, which means “catfish” in Korean. But the storm is known locally as Juan, as the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration has its own naming system.

Forecasters were predicting that the storm would continue moving west and north, entering the South China Sea and re-intensifying before a potential landfall in China or Vietnam later this week. China’s National Meteorological Centre urged local governments to make preparations for extreme weather.

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Community college students in a pilot program will take the first steps toward potential technology careers as they develop robotic explorers at NASA field centers. Ninety students from community colleges in 23 states have been selected to travel to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston or the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for hands on experience with technology development and direct interaction with NASA experts.

This week, the White House Summit on Community Colleges explored how these institutions can support a highly educated and skilled workforce. Concurrently, NASA is preparing for the culmination of the National Community College Aerospace Scholars pilot program. The agency will bring young scholars to join agency professionals Oct. 20-22 to develop rovers to explore the surfaces of other worlds and learn more about actual careers in science and engineering.

During the summer, students enrolled in the program completed four Web-based assignments that explored topics in engineering and technology. Those whose grades on the projects averaged at least 94 percent qualified to participate in the NASA field center experience, with the agency paying students’ travel expenses. Students will apply what they have learned during the year to technology and design problems in consultation with NASA engineers.

“Community colleges are an important part of the academic landscape, and NASA is proud to be working with these students to continue their interest and skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “This innovative project gets students engaged in actual engineering design and production — from concept to build-out — that simulates the processes NASA uses in designing robotic explorers for solar system destinations. By letting them experience first-hand the challenges and excitement inherent in space exploration, we may be cultivating NASA’s workforce of tomorrow.”

While at the NASA centers, participants will form teams to establish Mars exploration “companies.” Each team will develop a prototype rover, design a line drawing of their vehicle, and form a company infrastructure, including a budget and communications plan. The students also will tour center facilities and attend presentations by astronauts and other NASA technology experts about their work and careers.

Participating students come from colleges in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

“NASA is very proud of the outstanding work these students already have completed, and we look forward to seeing their rover designs,” said Deborah Hutchings, the program manager at Johnson. “These students have a unique opportunity to preview how a career in science, technology, engineering or math can lead them on a journey of space exploration.”

The National Community College Aerospace Scholars pilot program is based on the Texas Aerospace Scholars program. Both programs are designed to encourage community and junior college students to enter careers in science and engineering and join the nation’s high technology workforce.

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A full-scale mock-up of the Orion launch abort system (LAS) is heading back across the country. The nearly 45-foot-long mock-up, known as the LAS pathfinder, is hitting the road on a large flatbed trailer to travel from the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

At White Sands, the LAS pathfinder was used to help prepare for the successful Pad Abort 1 (PA-1) flight test, which occurred May 6, 2010.

Ground crews used the pathfinder to practice lifting and stacking the launch abort system on the launch pad, to help ready the crew in handling the actual flight test hardware that launched. It will be used similarly at Kennedy to prepare for other Orion spacecraft operations.

On its journey to Florida, the spacecraft hardware will make stops at various museums and science centers so the public can learn more about Orion and the launch abort system.

The planned stops included:
Sept. 28-29: Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver
Oct. 4-7: Adler Planetarium, Chicago
Oct. 9-14: Great Lakes Science Center, Cleveland
Oct. 16-17: The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia

Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Langley Research Center designed and fabricated the hardware, which represents the size, outer shape and specific mass characteristics of the Orion crew exploration vehicle’s abort system.

The Orion LAS is an innovative design that will significantly improve astronaut safety for future human space exploration. It is designed to immediately pull the Orion crew module away from the launch vehicle during an emergency on the pad or during the climb to orbit.

The Orion Project Office, located at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, is leading development of the Orion spacecraft. Development of the LAS is being led by Langley in Hampton, Va. in partnership with the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin leads a nationwide industry team as the prime contractor to NASA for the Orion spacecraft.

The LAS pathfinder toured several other states during its cross-country trek from Langley to White Sands last year.

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Expedition 24 Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko landed their Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft in Kazakhstan on Saturday, Sept. 25, wrapping up a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

Skvortsov was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 10:02 p.m. EDT Friday from the Poisk docking port on the station’s Zvezda module, a day later than planned because of a Poisk-side hatch sensor problem Thursday night. That problem prevented hooks on the Poisk side of the docking interface from opening, resulting in a one-day landing delay.

Following undocking and a normal descent, the crew landed at 1:23 a.m. near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, as the station orbited 220 miles above over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan.

Russian recovery teams were on hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and adjust to gravity after 176 days in space. Skvortsov and Kornienko will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside of Moscow. Caldwell Dyson will return to Houston aboard a NASA plane.

The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in April. As members of the Expedition 23 and 24 crews, they spent 174 days on the station. Caldwell Dyson and Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock conducted three spacewalks to replace a faulty cooling pump module on the station’s truss structure. Kornienko conducted one spacewalk to perform assembly work on the Russian segment of the complex.

The station is now occupied by Wheelock, who assumed command of the station Wednesday, NASA Flight Engineer Shannon Walker and Russian Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin, who arrived in mid-June.

A new trio of Expedition 25 crew members, NASA’s Scott Kelly, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Oct. 7, U.S. time and will arrive on the station about 48 hours later.

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The Italian-built multi-purpose logistics module (MPLM) called Leonardo was built to serve the same purpose as its two brothers, Rafaello and Donatello: to ferry supplies, equipment, experiments and other cargo to and from the International Space Station via the space shuttle’s payload bay. Now the module formerly known as Leonardo is on its way to a permanent assignment in space.

An MPLM is designed to be carried to the space station by a shuttle, be temporarily attached to the station to allow astronauts to float inside and remove cargo and fill it back up with items, and then be detached and returned to Earth by the shuttle.

“For many years, NASA and the Italian Space Agency have been looking at the potential of turning one of the multi-purpose logistics modules into a permanent module to fly and attach to the station and leave behind,” says Scott Higginbotham, the payload mission manager for space shuttle Discovery’s STS-133 flight. “Efforts to actually conduct the conversion got serious in the summer of 2009 when we started studies to understand specifically what modifications would be necessary to make the conversion from a temporary visiting vehicle to a permanent vehicle.”

Once the conversion plan was approved, the Italian Space Agency contracted with Thales Alenia Space, the European company that originally built the module, to perform the majority of the modifications.

There are three basic types of modifications that were performed to make the conversion from the MPLM to the PMM (Permanent Multipurpose Module),” explains Higginbotham. “The first has to do with weight. We tried to reduce the weight of the module as much as possible by eliminating hardware that we didn’t need for the long-duration stay on orbit to allow us to carry more useful cargo up to space on STS-133.”

The second set of modifications was aimed at making the module’s interior more user-friendly to the station crew members. “For example, we have modified some of the panels inside the vehicle so that they are much easier for the astronauts to open and close during a flight,” says Higginbotham.

But by far the biggest change was preparing the PMM to spend 10 years exposed to the rigors of space instead of the 10 days it might previously have been outside the protection of the shuttle during a mission.

“Probably most significantly we had to armor the exterior of the module so that it can withstand the micrometeoroid and hypervelocity debris impacts over the 10 years that it’ll be on the station,” says Higginbotham, “Rather than modify the external shields, which are made of metal, which was going to be heavy and expensive, the clever idea that both we and the Italians came up with was to install a micrometeoroid mattress, which is basically a bullet-proof vest for the station that lies underneath the metallic shield and on top of the pressure vessel.”

When the modifications are completed, the module will be loaded with the STS-133 payload and fly aboard Discovery, remaining at the station at the end of the mission. The extra space it provides will give the station’s resident crew what amounts to a giant new float-in closet to help store supplies, equipment and potentially experiments aboard the orbiting laboratory, helping the station continue its mission through the decade.

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The work of the next International Space Station residents will be previewed in a briefing broadcast on NASA Television at 1 p.m. CDT Thursday, Sept. 25, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Reporters at participating NASA centers may ask questions.

Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Yuri Lonchakov and U.S. spaceflight participant Richard Garriott are scheduled to launch in a Soyuz spacecraft Oct. 12 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They will arrive at the station Oct. 14. Garriott will return home with the two Russian members of the Expedition 17 crew on Oct. 24. Fincke and Lonchakov will join NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who has been on board the orbiting complex since June.

The briefers who will preview Expedition 18 are:

– Michael Suffredini, International Space Station Program manager
– Susan Brand, Expedition 18 increment manager
– Ron Spencer, Expedition 18 lead flight director
– Julie Robinson, International Space Station Program scientist