Dodgy rocket's blast shoves International Space Station from orbit

Things that can happen in space.

Hmmm.. where is that button for?  

DONT  PUT THAT .... oh, too late

CRISIS IN SPACE: Dodgy rocket's blast shoves International Space Station from orbit

'Nauts spring into action after Soyuz capsule goes haywire4915

9 Jun 2015 at 23:20

A malfunction on a Russian spacecraft caused the International Space Station to temporarily shift from its normal orbital orientation, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday.

NASA confirmed that the engines of Soyuz TMA-15M – one of two Soyuz spacecraft currently docked at the ISS – unexpectedly fired at 10:27am Central time on Tuesday, pushing the station slightly out of its expected position.

The unplanned incident occurred during testing of a radio system that controls the docking procedure, the Associated Press reports.

"Actions were immediately taken to reorient the ISS," NASA said in a statement. "There was no threat to the crew or the station itself, and the issue will have no impact to a nominal return to Earth of the Soyuz TMA-15M on Thursday."

When the TMA-15M does reenter the atmosphere, it will be carrying with it three of the six crew members currently aboard the ISS, including the European Space Agency's Samantha Cristoforetti, Russia's Anton Shkaplerov, and US astronaut Terry Virts.

All three were originally expected to return to Earth on May 14, but those plans were put on holdfollowing the catastrophic loss of the Progress M-27M supply pod, which spun out of control during a resupply mission to the ISS on April 28.

That delay means Cristoforetti will have spent 200 days in space by the time she touches down on terra firma, breaking American Sunita Williams' previous record for a woman on a single space voyage by five days.

Roscosmos specialists are still trying to determine the reason for the accidental engine ignition and NASA says it will provide more information once it knows more.

A slight change in orbit isn't really a crisis for the ISS, however, which has undergone such adjustments intentionally in the past. The last time was on May 18, when Roscosmos fired the engines of the TMV Progress M-26M for 1,922 seconds, increasing the ISS's orbital height by 2.8km (1.74 miles). ®

NASA: We're gonna rip up an ASTEROID and make it ORBIT the MOON

Asteroid Redirection Mission plans to use microgravity to deflect flying rocks

NASA has decided that putting a lump of rock from an asteroid into orbit around the Moon is better than trying to hook a whole asteroid.
The ARM – Asteroid Redirection Mission – has settled on what the space agency called “Option B”, sending a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid big enough to have boulders on the surface and using robotic grapples to retrieve a rock and put it in a stable orbit around the moon.
“Option A” would have been to find a suitable asteroid less than 10 metres in diameter for redirection.
Reporting from the NASA press conference, Spacenews quotes associate administrator Ross Lightfoot as saying that settling on a boulder rather than grabbing a whole asteroid will give the agency more options.
“I'm going to have multiple targets when I get there”, Lightfoot said. “That's what it boils down to.”
So far, NASA says it's identified three possible candidates for the mission, known as Itokawa, Bennu, and 2008 EV5.
It expects to identify more candidates as the years go by, noting that in the three years of its asteroid initiative, it's increased the detection of near-Earth asteroids by 65 per cent.
The ARM target will be finalised by 2019, NASA says, based on size, rotation, shape and orbit.
As part of the preparation for an eventual mission to Mars, the ARM spacecraft will be the test-bed for a number of technologies, including an advanced Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) ion drive.
While SEP will be slower than lighting a fire under a bloody big rocketTM, it needs a lot less propellant.
The ARM project will also offer a test-bed for “planetary defense techniques”, including using the small gravity of a nearby spacecraft to disturb an asteroid's orbit enough that something on a potential Earth-impact path would pass us by.
As NASA notes, “effectiveness of this manoeuvre is increased, moreover, if mass is moved from the asteroid to the spacecraft by the capture of a boulder”.
NASA plans to send a 24-25 day crewed mission to the captured lump of rock in the mid-2020s, launching an Orion spacecraft on the Space Launch System.
The agency hopes to get $US50 million for the ARM project in its 2016 budget.
NASA's 2014 video explaining the ARM is below. ®

 

Tips and corrections

Curiosity rover rendered armless by short circuit

Mars nuclear space tank parks after trouble strikes while retrieving sample

04 March

Humanity's Mars-resident nuclear-powered, laser-packing space tank Curiosity has a broken arm.

NASA says the problem emerged on February 27th when "the rover was conducting an early step in the transfer of rock powder collected by the drill on the arm to laboratory instruments inside the rover."

During that operation "Telemetry received from the rover indicated that a transient short circuit occurred and the vehicle followed its programmed response, stopping the arm activity underway at the time of the irregularity in the electric current."

NASA has therefore parked Curiosity while it figures out what went wrong, and the status of the arm and the motors that power it.

"We are running tests on the vehicle in its present configuration before we move the arm or drive," said Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson.

The wounded arm has worked five times previously, transferring Martian soil samples to Curiosity's innards for detailed examinations.

It's not yet known what happened, or why, or if the rover can be remotely repaired.

NASA says "A transient short in some systems on the rover would have little effect on rover operations. In others, it could prompt the rover team to restrict use of a mechanism."

Here's hoping the former scenario is the outcome of this incident. ®

Forget 1,000 lashes for Facebook posts, Saudis now want to behead blogger Raif Badawi

Family's fears for outspoken atheist dad

Saudi blogger Raif Badawi – sentenced to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for announcing he is an atheist on Facebook – may now be beheaded by his government.

"We have received information from reliable sources that there are attempts within the Penal Court to retry ‪‎Raif Badawi‬ on apostasy charges again," his wife said in a Facebook posting.

"Apostasy charge is punishable under Saudi law with the death penalty by beheading. We also received confirmed information that the Supreme Court has referred Raif case to the same judge, who sentenced Raif with flogging and 10 years imprisonment."

The family accuses the judge presiding over the case of bias, saying in an earlier legal judgment that “he has proof and is confident that Raif is an apostate,” and that he had wanted to bring apostasy charges earlier but wasn't able to under existing Saudi law.

Badawi was arrested in 2012 for running the Liberal Saudi Network message board and making statements on Facebook that broke religious and state laws; specifically expressing support for women’s rights, democratic reform, and stating that he is an atheist.

In 2013 he was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes by the courts, and last year on appeal that was raised to ten years inside, 1,000 lashes, a one million Saudi Arabian riyal (US$266,663) fine, plus a ten year travel ban when he gets out.

The lashes are administered at a rate of 50 a week and Badawi got his first allotment in January at a public ceremony after evening prayers. Four days later Saudi embassy officials joined world leaders in Paris for the Je Suis Charlie march photopp.

Je Suis Hypocrite

The sentence brought condemnation, but little else, from governments around the world. Since the first flogging Badawi has been judged medically unfit for further sessions under the cane, and the Saudi government has come under increasing pressure to relent on the matter.

Prince Charles is reported to have raised the matter, one royal to another, at a recent state visit. It has been hoped that the new Saudi king would see fit to mark his accession with a move on the matter, but the new trial, and the potential outcome, wasn't expected.

Apostasy, under extreme versions of Islamic religious law, is the rejection of faith and is a crime in many Muslim countries, although the penalties vary hugely. The Quran recommends "grievous chastisement," for the crime and in Saudi Arabia that often means execution, usually by public beheading.

However, before the sentence is carried out the convicted apostate is given three days to recant. Poet Hamza Kashgari fled the country in 2012 after being accused of the crime due to some Twitter posts as part of an ongoing crackdown on social media. He was extradited, sentenced, before recanting with a public apology, and released after a couple of years in prison.

It could be that the Saudi authorities are hoping Badawi will do the same and bring the internationally embarrassing saga to an end, but that’s by no means certain.

"We call on the world citizens and governments not to leave Raif dragged by such bigots to death," his wife said. "And we renew our calls to his Majesty King Salman to pardon Raif Badawi and allow him to leave [for] Canada to be united with his family there." ®

You're outta here! Baseball star strikes out sleazy trolls who targeted teen daughter

Life lesson: don't be a web loudmouth unless you want to be banned IRL

4 Mar 2015 

A former star of Major League Baseball hit a pair of alleged Twitter trolls out of the ballpark this week – by naming and shaming them on his blog, causing one to be fired and the other suspended from school.

Former Arizona Diamondbacks Boston Red Sox Curt star Schilling published screengrabs of obscene tweets about his 17-year-old daughter along with the names of two men alleged to have sent the messages. Schilling also listed where the guys study and work – one is a recent graduate and the other a student.

It's reported that one of the twits was axed from his part-time job, and the other suspended from classes, as a result of the online shaming. Both appear to have closed their Twitter accounts and deleted their tweets.

Don't feel bad for them: what they tweeted is beyond the bounds of what The Reg considers acceptable, never mind tasteful.

According to Schilling, of Medfield, Massachusetts, the harassment began after he congratulated his daughter Gabby on being accepted to university. Having 112,000 followers, his public tweet spread, and both Schilling and his daughter received replies ranging from sexually suggestive quips to overtly obscene threats.

"I know clubhouses. I lived in a dorm. I get it. Guys will be guys. Guys will say dumb crap, often," Schilling, a former star pitcher, wrote on his blog.

"But I can't ever remember, drunk, in a clubhouse, with best friends, with anyone, ever speaking like this to someone."

Schilling, who has a background in tech, did a bit of amateur sleuthing into the trolls, and posted snippets about two of the alleged culprits – such as that one is a DJ while studying at community college.

A six-time all-star and three-time World Series winner who played in the major leagues for 20 years, Schilling has a sizeable readership on his blog, and it wasn't long before his shaming post went viral.

After word of the post got out, the two New Jersey men were outed to their respective employers and universities. One was named as a ticket-seller for the New York Yankees, and a second was found to be a baseball player at a community college.

The Yankees fired the first alleged troll, while the second was suspended by his college and faces further discipline according a news report in New Jersey.

Schilling has little remorse for the pair, adding: "The real world has consequences when you do and say things about others." ®

Facebook slammed for blocking protest event page at Russia's request

the power of FaceBook. We all are guilty in this censorship.

Facebook slammed for blocking protest event page at Russia's request

That's a big NYET to you, with love from Zuck

Russian political dissidents voiced their displeasure with Facebook on Monday after the social network blocked an event page promoting a demonstration on behalf of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

The page in question was reportedly blocked at the request of Roskomnadzor, Russia's state internet policing body.

"We were very surprised and very disappointed because of the speed with which Facebook has satisfied an ordinary request of Roskomnadzor without even contacting the organizers of the event," a spokesman for Navalny, who is barred from using either phones or the internet, told the New York Times.

A spokesman for Roskomnadzor told the paper that Facebook had blocked the page because it promoted an "unsanctioned mass event," a term that under Russian law can apply to any gathering of three or more people.

Past opposition demonstrations have been considerably larger than that. At the height of anti-Putin activism in 2011, some rallies drew crowds as large as 100,000 people, with much of the organizing taking place via Facebook.

The Putin administration's reaction has been to pass a series of laws restricting online speech, including requiring any blogger with an audience of more than 3,000 to register with the government.

Putin himself has even gone as far as to claim that the entire internet is a "CIA-controlled project."

Russian bigwigs have reportedly also taken a heavy hand in running the nation's internet companies. In April, Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte, Russia's largest social network, claimed that he had beenpushed out of his own company by oligarchs who now control the site – which may explain why dissidents prefer to use US-run Facebook to do their organizing.

On Monday, Durov slammed Facebook to the NYT, saying Mark Zuckerberg's firm had "no guts and no principles."

Organizers of the pro-Navalny rally have apparently started a second Facebook page promoting the January 15 event, which so far has not been blocked.

Facebook has yet to respond to The Register's request for comment on the matter. ®