posted 07-19-2007 09:47 AM               

On July 23, Expedition 15 crewmember Clayton Anderson will journey outside of the space station to throw two large hunks of unneeded equipment towards Earth, officials said during a press conference today at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

"This is the first time we've ever done a jettison quite like this on the space station," said Bob Dempsey, NASA's lead flight director for Expedition 15, adding that smaller jettisons have been performed on past ISS and Hubble Space Telescope missions.

During the upcoming spacewalk, Anderson will jettison a 1,400-pound (635-kilograms) refrigerator-sized container of ammonia, or Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS), away from the station at a gentle pace of one mile per hour (1.6 kph). He'll also toss a 212-pound (96-kilogram) stanchion used to attach a camera to the space laboratory toward the Earth.

NASA says it has little choice but to jettison two pieces of junk hardware — including a 1,400-pound container filled with ammonia coolant — from the international space station early next week.

Some fragments will likely survive a fiery re-entry through the atmosphere and strike the ground, the space agency said Wednesday. The six- to seven-hour spacewalk by NASA's Clay Anderson and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, in which the container and a 218-pound brace for a communications antenna will be discarded, is scheduled to start at 5:30 a.m. CDT Monday.

The ammonia container will probably circle Earth for at least 300 days before it plummets through the atmosphere. The container is massive enough that some fragments will likely hit the ground or the ocean rather than burn up. The brace should disintegrate.

posted 07-19-2007 09:28 PM               

The priority to their release is that they do not collide with other spacecraft (including the International Space Station).

They will both hit the Earth, though only one (the EAS) is large enough to possibly have pieces hit the ground (or ocean). The stanchion will simply burn up.

posted 07-31-2007 10:50 PM               

Apparently the naming policy for objects in the night sky includes rechristening massive chunks of drifting space trash.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have renamed two hefty pieces of defunct hardware that were tossed out from the orbital laboratory during a July 23 spacewalk in honor of the man that cut them loose.

“Good news for us, two new satellites…Nebraska 1 and Nebraska 2,” ISS Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin christened the space junk last week.

He named them in honor of Nebraska-native Clayton Anderson, a NASA astronaut and Expedition 15 flight engineer who created the new orbital debris.

posted 07-22-2008 10:35 AM               

A huge piece of space debris, weighing 1400 lb (635 kg) and the size of two refrigerators, is gradually falling to Earth, giving observers on the ground a great opportunity to see it. The junk was jettisoned from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2007 and it is expected to re-enter the atmosphere later this year or early 2009. The Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) was dropped from the ISS after a seven hour spacewalk and pushed in the opposite direction of the space station's orbit shortly before a re-boost by a Soyuz resupply vehicle. This ensured the EAS would pose no danger to the ISS or crew on future orbits. Now the container is beginning its final few months in space and the bets are on as to where it will crash to Earth...

When the EAS was jettisoned, it was barely visible to the naked eye as it sped overhead with a magnitude of +4 to +4.5. Two days ago on July 20th, veteran satellite observer Marco Langbroek of Leiden, the Netherlands reported observing the EAS at an observable magnitude of +2.0. But it is moving very fast due to its decreased altitude.

Watch the EAS pass Altair in this high quality piece of video astronomy by Kevin Fetter (July 15th, 2008)

Currently, the EAS can be seen over Europe, and next week North America will be able to spot it.

posted 07-22-2008 11:01 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by gliderpilotuk:
Why can't they be reloaded into the shuttle and brought back (for recycling)?

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posted 07-22-2008 11:15 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by lm5eagle:
Surely shuttles must be returning with sufficient space in their payload bays to accommodate items of this size.

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posted 07-22-2008 12:58 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ejectr:
Why not just leave it attached to the station where it was?

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posted 10-30-2008 11:28 AM               

According to the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, which issued its first official forecast today, the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) will reenter the Earth's atmosphere around midnight on Sunday with an impact point in the Southern Ocean, between Australia and Antarctica.

posted 11-02-2008 08:14 PM               

"Our estimates say that something on the order of about 15 objects would survive, ranging in size from about 40 grams [1.4 ounces] to about 17.5 kilograms [38.6 pounds]," explained International Space Station (ISS) program manager Mike Suffredini in an interview with collectSPACE.com on Friday. "It's possible that our GN2 [gaseous nitrogen] tanks would survive the entry, at least partially, and that's the piece we consider the heaviest piece to reenter and perhaps survive."

"More importantly, there is an ammonia tank and of course the ammonia tank is full of ammonia, it is expected it would rupture. Whether or not the rupture would be such that it would then burn up or whether or not it would survive intact enough that when you saw it, you'd go 'That possibly was a tank, too', I don't know. I wouldn't expect it to be a full tank of ammonia. It won't survive that."

"It is possible that a piece of the ammonia tank would be on the ground, so if anybody found any parts on the ground and didn't know what they were, I wouldn't handle them," cautioned Suffredini.

NASA does not have a stated desire for the return of the pieces, though Suffredini did say there may be interest by the agency to study the recovered parts in order to gain a better understanding of the reentry behavior of the hardware.

posted 11-03-2008 08:16 AM               

Jettisoned from the International Space Station (ISS) by astronaut Clay Anderson in July 2007, the ammonia-filled container was part of the outpost's coolant system. It was discarded because it had exceeded its on-orbit lifespan, potentially posing a risk if returned on the shuttle, and to allow the reconfiguration of the station's truss structure.

posted 11-04-2008 11:23 AM               

"Missed it by THAT much."