ISS Fan Club

Arlington, Virginia, March 3, 2010 – The National Aeronautic Association (NAA) announced at their Annual Spring Awards Luncheon that the International Space Station has been selected as the recipient of the 2009 Robert J. Collier Trophy, “For the design, development, and assembly of the of the world’s largest spacecraft, an orbiting laboratory that promises new discoveries for mankind and sets new standards for international cooperation in space.”

The Collier Trophy will be formally presented at the Annual Collier Dinner to be held on Thursday, May 13, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia.

Spaceflight pioneer Aaron Cohen, a former director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, died Thursday, Feb. 25, after a lengthy illness. He was 79.

Cohen had a 33-year career with NASA. He was a steady hand at the helm of Johnson as NASA recovered from the shuttle Challenger tragedy and returned the space shuttle to flight. Cohen left the agency in 1993 to accept an appointment as a professor at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. At the time, he was serving as acting deputy administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"Aaron Cohen was one of my early mentors here in NASA and he was instrumental in the success of numerous pivotal achievements in human space flight." said NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden from Headquarters in Washington. "His engineering expertise and rigor were tremendous assets to our nation and NASA. Aaron provided the critical and calm guidance needed at the Johnson Space Center to successfully recover from the Challenger accident and return the space shuttle to flight. We will miss him as a colleague, mentor, and a friend. Our hearts go out to his wife, Ruth, and the rest of his family."

NASA will shed light on plant investigations aboard the International Space Station in a briefing at noon EST, Friday, Feb. 5. The briefing from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will be broadcast live on NASA Television.

The upcoming shuttle mission, planned to launch Feb. 7, will continue assembling the space station so it can be used for continuous scientific research as a national and multinational laboratory.

Microgravity plant growth experiments conducted aboard the station will help prepare for long-duration spaceflights of the future. The use of miniaturized green fluorescent proteins, that glow in the dark, and associated compact imaging systems, may be used to help monitor crop conditions on Earth.

NASA will launch small research satellites for several universities as part of the agency's Educational Launch of Nanosatellite, or ELaNA, mission. The satellites are manifested as an auxiliary payload on the Taurus XL launch vehicle for NASA's Glory mission, planned for liftoff in late November.

The satellites, called CubeSats because of their shape, come from Montana State University, the University of Colorado and Kentucky Space, a consortium of state universities. The University of Florida was selected as an alternate in case one of the three primary spacecraft cannot fly.

CubeSats are in a class of small research spacecraft called picosatellites. They have a size of approximately four inches, a volume of about one quart and weigh no more than 2.2 pounds.

The crew of the space shuttle Atlantis' STS-129 mission will deliver a specially minted silver medallion to National Football League officials at 10 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 27, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. The medallion will be used for the official coin toss prior to the kickoff of Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday, Feb. 7.

Shuttle commander Charlie Hobaugh, a graduate of North Ridgeville High School near Cleveland, Pilot Barry Wilmore, Mission Specialists Leland Melvin, Randy Bresnik, Bobby Satcher and Mike Foreman, from Wadsworth, Ohio, returned from their 11-day space mission to the International Space Station on Nov. 27.

Astronauts are not the only ones earning wings on the International Space Station. Butterflies emerged aboard the station recently, to the delight of science students across the country. That experiment and studies of bacteria that advance research about food poisoning and infections are the subjects of live NASA TV satellite interview opportunities from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. CST on Friday, Dec. 18.

International Space Station Program Scientist Julie Robinson will be available for interviews along with Dr. Nancy Moreno, a principal investigator of the Painted Lady butterfly education activities. Moreno is a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine who is conducting the butterfly research with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

DQ11APOLLO is a special-event station of the Deutsche Amateuer-Radio-Club (DARC) celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon by NASA.

July 20, 2009 marked the 40th annnivesary of the first manned landing on the moon by the Apollo-11 mission. To celebrate this brilliant technical achievement of NASA, a group of space-flight enthusiast radio amateurs of the Deutsche Amateur-Radio-Club applied for the special-event callsign DQ11APOLLO. It was issued on July 15, 2009 and is valid 365 days. The station will be activated on the mission-dates of the past Apollo flights on all HF, VHF & UHF-bands using SSB, CW, FM and PSK.

The residents of the International Space Station will receive a new shipment of food, fuel and supplies at 8:41 p.m. CDT on Saturday, Oct. 17. NASA Television's coverage of the ship's arrival at the station will begin at 8:15 p.m.

The Russian ISS Progress 35 cargo ship, filled with more than two tons of supplies for the station, is set to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 8:14 p.m. There will be no television coverage of the launch.

Expedition 21 Commander Frank De Winne and Flight Engineers Jeff Williams, Nicole Stott, Roman Romanenko, Max Suraev and Bob Thirsk will observe the event from aboard the station as the unpiloted craft automatically docks to the station's Pirs Docking Compartment.

For the first time, NASA Twitter followers are invited to view a space shuttle launch in person at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA is hosting this unique Tweetup on Nov. 11 and 12. Space shuttle Atlantis is targeted to launch at 4:04 p.m. EST, Nov. 12 on its STS-129 mission to the International Space Station.

"This will be NASA's fifth Tweetup for our Twitter community," said Michael Cabbage, director of the News Services division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Each event has provided our followers with inside access to NASA personnel, including astronauts. The goal of this particular Tweetup is to share the excitement of a shuttle launch with a new audience."

International Space Station Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barratt landed their Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft on the steppes of Kazakhstan Sunday, wrapping up a six-month stay. Joining them was spaceflight participant Guy Laliberte, who spent 11 days in space.

Padalka, the Soyuz commander, guided the spacecraft to a parachute-assisted landing at 12:32 a.m. EDT at a site northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

Russian recovery teams were on hand within minutes of landing to help the crew exit from the Soyuz vehicle and reacclimate to gravity. The crew members will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside of Moscow, for reunions with their families.