William Harwood – Page 51 – Spaceflight Now

Unscheduled spacewalk on tap Monday

December 20, 2015 William Harwood

An unexpected, quickly-planned spacewalk is on tap Monday to troubleshoot a problem preventing the International Space Station’s robot arm transporter from reaching a worksite where it can be locked down, a requirement before a Russian Progress cargo ship can dock later in the week.

Three crew members trek from Earth to space station

December 15, 2015 William Harwood

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft streaked into space and chased down the International Space Station Tuesday, but a problem with the ferry ship’s automated rendezvous system forced commander Yuri Malenchenko to take over manual control at the last minute.

Soyuz, with crew of three, set for launch to station

December 14, 2015 William Harwood

Four days after a Soyuz ferry craft brought three space station fliers down to a frigid landing in Kazakhstan, three fresh crew members are poised for launch early Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to boost the lab’s crew back to six.

Soyuz TMA-19M launch-to-docking timeline

December 14, 2015 William Harwood

Track the progress of the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft and its three-man crew through Tuesday’s countdown, launch and docking with the International Space Station.

Soyuz lands in Kazakhstan, bringing three station crewmen back to Earth

December 11, 2015 William Harwood

Three space station fliers floated into their Soyuz ferry craft, undocked from the lab complex and plunged back to Earth Friday, making a rare nighttime landing in snowy Kazakhstan to close out a 141-day stay in orbit.

Three space station fliers set for landing Friday

December 10, 2015 William Harwood

In a rapid-fire crew exchange, three space station fliers return to Earth Friday morning, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan just four days before their replacements blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome a few hundred miles away, boosting the lab’s crew back to six.

Timeline: Cygnus cargo ship’s trip from launch pad to space station

December 2, 2015 William Harwood

Based upon an on-time launch Thursday, this is the timeline for Cygnus from liftoff through capture by the space station’s robotic arm.

Spacewalkers reconfigure station cooling system

November 6, 2015 William Harwood

Space station commander Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren carried out a busy but mostly trouble-free spacewalk Friday, routing ammonia coolant back to the prime radiator used by one of the lab’s solar arrays and bypassing a secondary radiator that was activated three years ago to help pinpoint a coolant leak.

Kelly, Lindgren set for second spacewalk

November 5, 2015 William Harwood

Space station commander Scott Kelly and flight engineer Kjell Lindgren are gearing up for their second spacewalk in nine days Friday, a planned six-and-a-half-hour excursion to reconfigure the ammonia cooling system used by one of the lab’s sets of solar arrays.

Solar wind blasting away Martian atmosphere

November 5, 2015 William Harwood

The solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles blasted away from the sun, is slowly but surely stripping away Mars’ atmosphere and likely played a major role in turning the red planet from a habitable world in the distant past into the dry, frozen wasteland seen today, scientists said Thursday.