There are 2 messages totalling 80 lines in this issue

Topics of the day:

1. NASA TV to Air Russian Spacewalk Featuring the Olympic Torch
2. NASA's Orion Sees Flawless Fairing Separation in Second Test

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 13:21:54 -0600 From: info@JSC NASA GOV Subject: NASA TV to Air Russian Spacewalk Featuring the Olympic Torch

November 7, 2013

Josh Byerly Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111

Rachel Kraft Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1100

Report #M13-176

NASA TV to Air Russian Spacewalk Featuring the Olympic Torch

Two Russian cosmonauts will carry the Olympic torch when they venture outside the International Space Station Saturday, Nov 9, for a six-hour spacewalk to perform maintenance work on the orbiting laboratory NASA Television will provide live coverage of the spacewalk beginning at 9 a m EST Expedition 37 Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will open the hatch to the Pirs docking compartment airlock at 9:30 a m and float outside for a brief photo opportunity with the unlit torch They then will stow it back inside the airlock before they begin their chores 260 miles above Earth The torch, an icon of international cooperation through sports competition, arrived at the space station Thursday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three crew members Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, Rick Mastracchio of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency It will return to Earth on Sunday, Nov 10, aboard another Soyuz spacecraft vehicle along with crew members Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Karen Nyberg of NASA, and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency The spacewalk is a high-flying extension of a relay that began in Olympia, Greece, in October The relay will culminate with the torch being used to light the Olympic flame at the Feb 7 opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia After the photo opportunity, Kotov and Ryazanskiy will prepare a pointing platform on the hull of the station's Zvezda service module for the installation of a high resolution camera system in December, relocate of a foot restraint for use on future spacewalks and deactivate an experiment package The spacewalk will be the 174th in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the fourth in Kotov's career and the first for Ryazanskiy This will be the eighth spacewalk conducted at the station this year In December, Tyurin will accompany Kotov on his fifth spacewalk All the times of International Space Station programming, key Soyuz event coverage and other NASA Television programming can be found at: http://www nasa gov/stationnews For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www nasa gov/station

#

NASA Johnson Space Center Mission Status Reports and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to listserv@listserver jsc nasa gov In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type "subscribe hsfnews" (no quotes) This will add the e-mail address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list The system will reply with a confirmation via e-mail of each subscription Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@listserver jsc nasa gov with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: "unsubscribe hsfnews" (no quotes) or from another account, besides the account used to subscribe: "unsubscribe hsfnews youremail@yourdomain com" (no quotes)

Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2013 13:22:51 -0600 From: info@JSC NASA GOV Subject: NASA's Orion Sees Flawless Fairing Separation in Second Test

November 7, 2013

Brandi Dean Johnson Space Center, Houston 281-483-5111

Rachel Kraft Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1100

Report #13-328

NASA's Orion Sees Flawless Fairing Separation in Second Test

The three panel or fairings encapsulating a stand-in for Orion�s service module successfully detach during a test Nov 6, 2013 at Lockheed Martin�s facility in Sunnyvale, Calif Image Credit: Lockheed Martin The three massive panels protecting a test version of NASA's Orion multipurpose crew vehicle successfully fell away from the spacecraft Wednesday in a test of a system that will protect Orion during its first trip to space next year The panels, called fairings, encase Orion's service module and shield it from the heat, wind and acoustics it will experience during the spacecraft's climb into space The service module, located directly below the crew capsule, will contain the in-space propulsion capability for orbital transfer, attitude control and high-altitude ascent aborts when Orion begins carrying humans in 2021 It also will generate and store power and provide thermal control, water and air for the astronauts The service module will remain connected to the crew module until just before the capsule returns to Earth During Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), the spacecraft's flight test next year, a test service module will be attached to the capsule "Hardware separation events like this are absolutely critical to the mission and some of the more complicated things we do," said Mark Geyer, Orion program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston "We want to know we've got the design exactly right and that it can be counted on in space before we ever launch " Unlike conventional rocket fairings, these panels are designed to support half of the weight of Orion's crew module and launch abort system during launch and ascent, which improves performance, saves weight and maximizes the size and capability of the spacecraft Each panel is 14 feet high and 13 feet wide The fairings' work is done soon after launch They must be jettisoned when Orion has reached an altitude of about 560,000 feet To make that possible, six breakable joints and six explosive separation bolts are used to connect the fairing panels to the rocket and each other In a carefully timed sequence, the joints are fired apart, followed shortly by the bolts Once all of the pyrotechnics have detonated, six spring assemblies will push the three panels away, leaving the service and crew module exposed to space as they travel onward This test, conducted by Orion's primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, at the company's Sunnyvale, Calif , facility, was the second test of the fairing separation system The first occurred in June, when one of the three fairing panels did not completely detach Engineers determined the issue was caused when the top edge of the fairing came into contact with the adapter ring and kept it from rotating away and releasing from the spacecraft Because of the engineers' confidence in successfully eliminating the interference, they maintained plans to increase this week's test fidelity by emulating the thermal loads experienced by the fairings during ascent They used strip heaters to heat one of the fairings to 200 degrees Fahrenheit and simulate the temperatures the panels will experience Exploration Flight Test-1 is scheduled for September 2014 During that flight, an uncrewed Orion will launch to an altitude of 3,600 miles, more than 15 times farther into space than the International Space Station It will orbit Earth twice before re-entering the atmosphere as fast as 20,000 mph The data gathered during the flight will influence design decisions, authenticate existing computer models, and innovative new approaches to space systems development It also will reduce overall mission risks and costs for subsequent Orion missions to an asteroid and eventually Mars For information about Orion and EFT-1, visit: http://www nasa gov/orion

#

NASA Johnson Space Center Mission Status Reports and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to listserv@listserver jsc nasa gov In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type "subscribe hsfnews" (no quotes) This will add the e-mail address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list The system will reply with a confirmation via e-mail of each subscription Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to listserv@listserver jsc nasa gov with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: "unsubscribe hsfnews" (no quotes) or from another account, besides the account used to subscribe: "unsubscribe hsfnews youremail@yourdomain com" (no quotes)

End of HSFNEWS Digest - 8 Nov 2013 to 9 Nov 2013 (#2013-96)