Tag: ISS

Kirobo is a 13-inch talking robot that will keep Japanese astronaut Kochi Wakata company on the International Space Station. He is now on his way to the ISS after being launched on an H-2B rocket from Japan.

Robotic sports were bound to involve balls in space at some point. Students from the U.S. and Europe can now sign up for what is described as “the ultimate robot game” in which they will navigate floating spheres through the International Space Station for the Zero Robotics programming competition.

Space exploration. We like to pretend it is about all kinds of noble things having to do with mankind’s place in the universe, blah blah blah. We all know it is really about all the cool things that you can do while in space, right?

A few weeks back I was replacing a valve cover gasket on a race car and accidentally rounded off a bolt that was in a hard-to-reach spot. I was working on that bolt in the garage and it took me hours of cursing and trips to the hardware store to get the damaged bolt out and a new one in.

The International Space Station is set to get a new camera that is specifically designed to image the Earth. The camera is called ISERV and it was launched on board the Japanese Aerospace exploration Agencies HTV-3 transfer vehicle.

After multiple delays, SpaceX is set to hit a major milestone this Saturday, May 19. Saturday is the day set for the launch of the first privately funded cargo mission to the International Space Station. With the Space Shuttle fleet retired, these commercial space missions are one of the only ways to get cargo to and from the ISS.

NASA and General Motors teamed up a while back to create a humanoid robot called Robonaut 2 or R2. R2 is now on the International Space Station where it will be used to conduct repairs and maintenance outside the space station.

Automated cargo vessels head to the ISS regularly to take astronauts new supplies and pick up trash. At times, these cargo ships also return experiments back to Earth. Leave it to the Scottish to send an experiment to the ISS involving whiskey.

A while back, NASA opened up its astronaut program to normal people that didn’t have a military background. Naturally, a bunch of geeks that always wanted to be astronauts applied even though they’ll never get the call.

There’s suprisingly little empty space left in low Earth orbit these days. This is in part due to the ever-growing number of satellites orbiting the planet. Most of the debris orbiting the planet includes defunct satellites or chunks of satellites left from crashes with other satellites.

We have an unnatural fascination with LEGO around here. When those little blocks are used to build geeky and awesome things, we get really excited. ISS astronaut Satoshi Furukawa from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency recently built a LEGO replica of the International Space Station while aboard the International Space Station.

The Sun is right in the middle of one of its most active periods in its 11-year cycle. This means lots of radiation is being spewed towards the Earth during various solar storms. This radiation bounces off the Earth’s atmosphere and creates a phenomenon known as Aurora Borealis.

Space junk is quickly becoming a big hazard in orbit around the Earth. There are untold numbers defunct satellites and other chunks of debris and trash floating around up there that pose a hazard to humans on the ISS and other satellites that are still being used.

Next month is an important month for the NASA space program. It will mark the first visit of a commercial spacecraft to the International Space Station in history. With the Shuttle fleet retired, most of the supplies and visits to the ISS have been performed using Russian spacecraft.

China is getting its own space station ready, since much of the rest of the world is participating on the ISS. The Chinese space station is called the Tiangong, which apparently means “heavenly place.” The Chinese space station will be much, much smaller than the ISS.

Anyone with kids knows that it can be a challenge to teach them to use the toilet. My daughter always got the sequence wrong, wipe, then flush. She finally got it down. I can only imagine how hard it would be to drop a deuce if you live on the ISS.