| August, 2007 |  |
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NASA buys $19 million toilet system
NASA has agreed to pay $19 million for a Russian-built toilet system for the international space station. The figure may sound astronomical for a toilet in space, but NASA officials said it was cheaper than building their own.
"It's akin to building a municipal treatment center on Earth," NASA spokeswoman Lynnette Madison said Thursday, explaining the cost of the new toilet system.
Also, astronauts are familiar with how it works since it's similar to one already in use at the space station. The new system will be able to transfer urine to a device that can produce drinking water.
The new system is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. side of the space station in 2008. It will offer more privacy than the old toilet system, which will definitely be needed: The space station crew is expected to grow from three to six people by 2009.
The system will be installed on the American side, and the current toilet system on the Russian side will remain in place.
The space station toilet physically resembles those used on Earth, except it has leg restraints and thigh bars to keep astronauts and cosmonauts in place. Fans suck waste into the commode. Crewmembers also have individual urine funnels which are attached to hoses, and the urine is deposited into a wastewater tank.
Crewmembers using the current toilet system on the Russian side must transfer tanks of their urine to a cargo ship, which burns up in Earth's atmosphere once undocked from the station.
The $19 million toilet system was part of a larger contract valued at $46 million that NASA signed this week with RSC Energia, a Russian aerospace company. The extra equipment includes software updates for the station's inventory management system, a spare air pump and engineering support for a mechanism which allows space shuttles to dock with the space station.
Satellite Shorts from All Over
Clive G3CWV's OSCAR-11 report for the week of 16 June 2007 summarizes operations as, "No signals have
been received from the satellite's 145.826 MHz beacon because it remains in eclipse. Listen for signals starting
around August 20."
F.Costa, CT1EAT, has a QSL for auction from Owen K. Garriott (W5LFL), the first radio amateur who operated
from space, during the STS-9 mission in 1983. Please see photos at http://ct1eatsale.no.sapo.pt/. He will accept
bids, in EURO currency, until 00.00 UTC 25 June 2007. The highest bidder will donate the amount for an
AMSAT/ARISS project of their choice. He will send the card to the winner for free via registered airmail. Please
send your bids to ct1eat@amsat.org.
Peter Guelzow, DB2OS reported the AMSAT-DL/IUZ team received congratulations from the Voyager Flight
Team on their successful reception of the furthest manmade object in space. The message read,
"Congratulations on your successful downlink acquisition of Voyager 1 at your 20 meter tracking station.
Acquiring such a distant object is a remarkable achievement, especially for an amateur team. Thank you very
much for your interest in Voyager." Peter summarizes, "It also demonstrates now officially that the 20m dish is
good enough to support the AMSAT P5-A Mission to Mars." [AMSAT]
Solar Flux to Bottom Out in July as Cycle 24 Gets Closer
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Environment Center (SEC) released their monthly forecasts of sunspot number and 10.7 cm radio flux, including high and low bounds to their forecasts. The SEC forecasts that the smoothed sunspot number reached its low value of 11.7 in March 2007, and predicts that the solar flux will reach its low of 75.4 this month. This is the fourth month in a row that the SEC predicts the solar flux will bottom out in July. Based on the SEC predictions, this is probably at the bottom of Cycle 23 and extremely close to the beginning of Cycle 24. Two events will mark the beginning of the next sunspot cycle: The observation of the first opposite magnetic polarity sunspots compared to Cycle 23 sunspot polarity, and the observation high solar latitude sunspots — the Cycle 23 sunspots are now very near the solar equator. The SEC predictions table and sunspot number and solar flux prediction graphs are available on the SEC’s Web site — The Daily DX
August, 2007
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