Htv - Blog Posts

Watch JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)'s HTV-6 cargo ship depart from the international space station 9amCT Friday Jan 27. HTV-6 is scheduled to deorbit in early February and burn up harmlessly while entering earths atmosphere over the ocean. During the decemt JAXA will be gathering data on electromagnetic forces around Earth: http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

NASA Co-Op Week 6: Sayonara Little Spacecraft

Mission control got so quiet you could hear the flight controllers sweat. Wait, wasn't the HTV supposed to be released?

Weeks ago HTV5, a Japanese cargo spacecraft, arrived at the International Space Station delivering fresh foods, experiments and other supplies. HTV5 was lovingly named Kounotori by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) meaning white stork. The arrival of these cargo ships are essential to ensure scientific exploration can continue on the Space Station. After the cargo ship is unloaded and reloaded with garbage. If you ever wondered how astronauts take out the trash...

Astronauts carefully fill up the empty cargo ship with garbage calling down to ground to double triple check if they can throw things out. At times it takes three astronauts strapping the trash bags to the inner walls of the cargo ship to finish the job. Why bother doing that, it is just trash?  By carefully calculating its trajectory, center of gravity and controlling its course the cargo ship plummets through Earth's atmosphere and burns up before hitting the surface. If the center of gravity was not constant the cargo ship we would lose control of the cargo ships trajectory. The cargo ship is released from the Space Station. Up until now the Canadarm2 has a hold of the cargo ship but then releases its grasp. Now you see the importance of HTV5's release, we don't want anyone getting hit by astronaut trash.

Flash forward to HTV5's release day I am sitting console with ISE (Integration Systems Engineer) console, the console that is in charge of visiting vehicles. Timing of the HTV5 release is key - it needs to occur when we have full communications, quickly as steps to release need to execute one after another, and ideally when the Space Station is illuminated by the sun for our monitoring. The countdown for the release began. The flight director focused our thoughts, "stop unnecessary chatter" the release sequence was about to begin. Flight controllers called "ADCO Go", "PLUTO Go", "ISE Go" and so on. Release protocol began but the Canadarm2 did not budge and the window for release was quickly closing.

"ROBO, you have 20 minutes to tell me what happened." instructed the flight director. In mission control there is no time to freeze up when an issue occurs but time to get to work and solve the problem. ROBO is in charge of the Canadarm2 operations. After determining a new release window, re-configuring Canadarm2 the HTV5 was successfully released! JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui worked controls on-board the international space station. Later on Twitter Kimiya remarked, "Sayonara Kounotori- kun. You are so beautiful I really miss you...".

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED Watch these silly astronauts float, eat and exercise on the Space Station.

Achievements this week at NASA.

Video from the HTV5 release.

Astronaut Kimiya speaks with his hometown about life on the Space Station.

I was in mission control when the discovery of water on Mars was announced! See what the NASA scientists have to say about Martian waters.

Start your career with NASA and tune into a Virtual Career Fair and hear about internship, fellowships and scholarships October 8th 12pm-3:30pmCT

Photos by NASA