NASA astronauts install new docking ports at ISS

Commercial crews visiting the International Space Station will soon be a regular activity for astronauts.

Last month, the agency said in a blog post that commercial companies are always approaching NASA to use the ISS in new ways never imagined. The docking port will be used by future commercial crew capsules. “It’s a gateway to a new era in commercial space”, he added. It does not have a budget to help spur any proposed projects, or plans to release them for public perusal. Nasa received 11 submissions “from a broad range of respondents including individuals, small companies and large companies”, Sam Scimemi, division director for the ISS programme, said in an email.

Of course, the fate of the ISS isn’t only up to NASA.

Can Nasa and China work together in space?

It was the latest in a series of spacesuit issues, but was not as severe as an emergency in 2013 when Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano’s helmet flooded, forcing him to end his spacewalk early, Todd said. He spent four months aboard the ISS in 2001.

Companies like SpaceX and Boeing already run the commercial missions to resupply the station, and they’ll start carrying crew in 2017. “As an astronaut who lived aboard the ISS myself, I am particularly interested in human research beyond low earth orbit and the use of the space station as a test-bed for technology demonstrations that will eventually support Nasa’s increasingly ambitious missions to deep space”.

Instead of deorbiting the ISS to sink it into the ocean or sell it piece by piece, the space agency is now open to ideas from private enterprise on how the orbiting laboratory should continue to work. It contracted with Boeing and SpaceX in 2014, as The Two-Way has reported. NASA is now fixated on performing and evaluating human space travel, to find out how going from out of space for extended periods could affect people. The space station was originally scheduled to shut down in 2020.

Two NASA astronauts completed a six-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday to install a parking spot for upcoming commercial space taxis, which will end U.S. reliance on Russian Federation for rides to the orbiting outpost.

During a spacewalk of 5 hours and 58 minutes on Friday, astronauts Jeff Williams, Commander of the 48th expedition and flight engineer Kate Rubins, fixed the first two points of the International Docking Adapter (IDA), EFE news reported.

The space station is now home to two Americans, one Japanese and three Russians. During the rest of the spacewalk, they connected power and data cables for the adaptor.

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At a recent press conference, Bill Hill, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, noted that the agency is looking to turn over the International Space Station to a privately held-company in the next decade. In terms of the current United States space program and NASA’s program ‘Orion, ‘ researchers forecast that human spaceflight to Mars will be possible by 2035.