Exciting developments on the space front

2nd October 2015

By: Kelvin Kemm

  

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Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has just returned to earth from the International Space Station (ISS). He returned with two other crew members of the ISS. By the way, Russian space travellers are called cosmonauts, but Americans and other Westerners are called astronauts.

What made Padalka’s return particularly noteworthy is that he has just broken the record for the longest total time spent in space. Padalka has been in space five times and his total number of earth days in space is 879, which breaks the previous record, held by fellow Russian Sergei Kirkalev by about two months.

Padalka’s last mission lasted 168 days. He has commanded the ISS four times – the only person to do so. Previously, he was a colonel in the Russian Air Force and went into space for the first time in 1998 – to Russia’s Mir space station – which was later abandoned when its useful life was over. He also participated in ten spacewalks.

Come to think of it, the term ‘spacewalk’ is a bit silly. When a person is outside in space, the last thing he or she does is ‘walk’. Perhaps a space swim, or space float, or even a space tumble would be a better description.

The point is that Padalka has ‘been around the block’ in space – or maybe a better term: he has been around the cylinder a few times. The ISS is a cylinder, not a block. Hey, let us get back to reality here; come down to earth, so to speak.

When Padalka returned, he came back with two complete novices, by comparison. They had spent only ten days in space. They were Kazakh Aidya Aimbetov and Andreas Mogensen. Mogensen is from Denmark, so he created a bit of a sensation back home by being the first Viking descendant to go into space.
Imagine a Viking lying in his longboat at night way out in the ocean. “Hey Thor, look at the stars tonight. Do you think we could sail between the stars?” “Don’t be stupid, Sven, nobody would do that; besides, the stars are just holes in the black roof and the light of Valhalla, the Viking heaven, is shining through.”

Six crew now remain on the ISS, including Scott Kelly of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, who now becomes commander.

One of the cosmonauts still on the ISS is Mikhail Kornienko, who is now undergoing a mission to spend 12 continuous months in space. He will achieve that milestone next March, which will become the longest continuous stay in space.

These long-stay records are not just for fun. What is happening is that researchers are getting ready to send humans to Mars. Depending on how much fuel a Mars craft is prepared to use, a trip to Mars can take about nine months. If a decision is taken to lift more fuel into space, which is expensive, then the ‘Mars bus’ can keep its rocket engine on for a longer period and so cut the travel time.

Whichever way you look at it, a round trip to Mars is going to be at least a year long, so it is necessary to find out how humans respond to a year in space.

Spending a year in space on the ISS is a bit of a challenge. There will be psychological traumas, such as not being able to watch the Rugby World Cup on a wide-screen TV and not being able to braai when the Boks win. But the ISS crew have to overcome setbacks like these. They also have to exist in the ISS, which is exposed to potential large blasts of nuclear radiation, if there is a large nuclear explosion on the sun.

So, they have radiation detectors on board. The ISS radiation detectors were all calibrated in Stellenbosch. The radiation detectors on the Mars ground exploration rover, Curiosity, were also calibrated in Stellenbosch.

At the end of May this year, the Dragon cargo capsule, launched by SpaceX, a company owned by the fellow from Pretoria, became the first privately produced spacecraft to visit the ISS. It delivered half a ton of supplies.

Meanwhile, in August, the ISS crew, for the first time, ate fresh lettuce, which they had grown themselves. Apparently, they enjoyed the lettuce, but did not even think of telling the Nasa guys about vague ideas to distil mampoer to make the Rugby World Cup a bit more fun up there.

On a serious note, to me, this is all really exciting. You can see that the various elements are being brought together to supply and design a long-range trip. Wow, a trip to Mars, and, hopefully, more to the moon. We need some long- distance human travel to excite the world.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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