Saturday, August 23, 2008

Cosmonaut Photographed South Ossetia From ISS | AVIATION WEEK



Woof woof! Have you ever heard the story of Laika, the Soviet Space Dog? In 1957, Laika became the first living creature to orbit the Earth, when Soviet scientists launched the 13 lb. canine into orbit aboard a hastily built Sputnik 2 space capsule. A former stray found on the streets of Moscow, Laika perished when the thermal control systems failed and the capsule overheated, killing the dog in orbit.
Let's not forget that USa Space Shuttle flights end in 2010.


FD: That's right Folks. The USa leaves Space in 2010 with only Russians flying around up there. Does that make you feel safer? Ben Bova's Privateers works with this theme a bit.
What we need to do is get back in the Space Race, get back in the Game.




Russia has claimed humanitarian motives in its use of the International Space Station (ISS) to collect overhead imagery of South Ossetia shortly after it invaded the breakaway Georgian province.



On Aug. 9 Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko used a digital camera equipped with an 800mm telephoto lens and a video camera to photograph "after-effects of border conflict operations in the Caucasus," according to the ISS status report for that day published by NASA on its website.



Use of the space station for military purposes would violate the Jan. 29, 1998, ISS cooperation agreement between NASA and the Russian Space Agency, which makes repeated references to the civil nature of the orbiting facility. "The Space Station together with its additions of evolutionary capability will remain a civil station, and its operation and utilization will be for peaceful purposes, in accordance with international law," reads Article 14 of the agreement.



Apparently with that language in mind, Russia's space agency Roscosmos informed the U.S. space agency that Kononenko's actions two days after Russian forces moved into South Ossetia were not military in nature.



"Roscosmos informed us that the pictures were requested to support potential humanitarian activities in the area, including serious water resource management issues," said a spokesman for NASA's Office of External Relations, who added that NASA was not pursuing the matter.



Kononenko's photography was conducted as part of the long-running Russian "Uragan" (hurricane) Earth-imaging program on the ISS, according to the NASA status report. On Aug. 9, in addition to the war zone, the civilian cosmonaut photographed glaciers on the north slope of the Caucasus, the Kalmyk steppe, the Volga River from Astrakhan to the Caspian Sea, and other surface features as the space station moved eastward.



In the runup to hostilities, Russian news media reported that water was scarce in Tskhinvali, the main city in South Ossetia, because of diversions by Georgian villagers to the south. And once fighting broke out, international aid organizations struggled to get water to the population in Tskhinvali. "We're hearing reports that the entire water supply to Tskhinvali has been shut off," the aid group World Vision said in an Aug. 8 press release. "Potable water is the number-one humanitarian need right now for the city and surrounding areas."



While the fighting in South Ossetia has severely strained U.S./Russian relations, the nature of the two nations' cooperation on the ISS makes it extremely difficult for either side to withdraw from the 1998 agreement.



The U.S. depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles docked to the station for crew rescue in case of an emergency in orbit, and will rely on them at least temporarily for crew access to the station once the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.



But NASA provides essential utilities on the station, including most electrical power, and Russia needs those systems and the U.S. astronauts who are trained to operate them to conduct on-board operations.








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