→ Don’t panic

I remember clearly the long discussions we had when I worked as a lifeguard many years ago: should we give heart patients in need “nitroglycerine spray”? On the one hand, the nitro spray can provide fast relief to people suffering from heart conditions – on the other hand it can quickly drop a patient’s blood pressure, which should be avoided at all costs in an emergency. We decided against it – and we took the right decision.

A nitroglycerin spray acts on nitric oxide which is produced by the human body itself and is a good indicator of airway inflammation: a higher amount of nitric oxide in exhaled air indicates an inflammation. How this works exactly and how air pressure and gravity-influenced blood flow can affect readings were researched in the complex “Airway Monitoring” experiment last Friday on the Space Station.

The results are important for basic medical research and for future manned missions to other celestial bodies. Moon and Mars dust is very aggressive so not only do mechanical parts that are exposed need to be prepared, experts are also having headaches about how to protect the human respiratory tract. Inevitably dust will collect in air locks and spacesuits in the air of lunar or Mars stations. In these cases it will be important to get early signs of airway inflammation…

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronaut Terry Virts had begun preparations for the experiment on Thursday. They brought the equipment into the Quest airlock, which is usually used as a door to the outside of the International Space Station. Barry Wilmore as Crew Medical Officer was also briefed to standby his colleagues during the experiment.

On Friday, the experiment started with Samantha and Terry started to reduce the pressure in the American airlock. The complicated procedures for this were developed through international teamwork. The expertise of the Danish DAMEC Center worked with flight surgeons, the team in Houston that controls the airlock, and us at Oberpfaffenhofen. At the Columbus Control Centre Katja Leuoth and Marius Bach supported the astronauts from the control room. This support was important as the astronauts needed support for such a complex experiment. The ground team found solutions in real-time for some questions, others needed more in-depth study and analysis. Now it is over to the scientists: the data must be processed and evaluated – and a decision must be made to continue with more experiment runs. The Columbus Control Centre will be ready to put the astronauts back in the airlock to answer their questions and pave the way for future missions landing in “thin air”…

Col-CC

More information here: https://plus.google.com/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/MtNoDoiRMfZ https://plus.google.com/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/boWGMq3mPgX https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/03/Samantha_working_on_Airway_Monitoring

Three International Space Station crew members are scheduled to leave the orbiting laboratory on Wednesday 11 March after almost six months in space performing scientific research and technology demonstrations. Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore of NASA handed over command of the International Space Station to NASA astronaut Terry Virts early this  afternoon, marking the start of Expedition 43. Wilmore will return to Earth 11 March in the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, wrapping up almost six months in orbit. Here is the schedule to follow their return to Earth.

Watch the replay of the handing over here:

[youtube bsd3oOKIBLM]

After 91 days of living in their new home in space they finally went outside Not to catch some fresh air of course…that would be quit dangerous!

US astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts commenced the first of three spacewalks  last Saturday. It was Barry’s second spacewalk after his first one last October and Terry’s first.

The two astronauts, already nicknamed the ‘cable guys’  have to rig cables on the International Space Station for new docking ports for commercial and international spacecraft called International Docking Adapters or IDA. They will be delivered on two Space-X  Dragon spacecraft in the near future.

The adapters are built by Boeing and will arrive separately as Dragon cargo that will dock to the Harmony Module or Node 2. Node 2 already has two Pressurized Mating Adapter (PMA) which are used to connect spacecraft and modules with different docking mechanisms. They resemble tunnels that connect to spacecraft.

The goal will then be to link each International Docking Adapters to a Pressurized Mating Adapter … imagine doing it with Lego, more or less!

But like with Lego there is a possibility that one piece, in this case the Pressurized Mating Adapter could be better used elsewhere. That is the case with PMA-3. The first International Docking Adapter is relatively easy to install: it is connected to PMA-2, which is installed on the Harmony Module facing the direction the Space Station moves.

The second International Docking Adapter requires more work.  The international adapter will be connected to PMA-3 but it first has to be moved from Node 3 Harmony to Node 2 Unity to face towards space.

Why all this work? The new docking adapters will be used to welcome the new commercial cargos from Space-X and Boeing , starting most likely from the last part of 2017. In the long run the two new Adapters will allow the Space Station to host one more crew from the present six.

In the meantime new cargo arrived at the Space Station bringing food, supplies and new hardware for the experiments.

It has been a busy period  for the astronauts living on the ISS that in a very short period has seen the arrival of Dragon and the depart of both Dragon and the last ever European cargo spaceship ATV-5. Progress 58, the Russian cargo just arrived at the Station, will stay docked to the Station until next August.

The astronauts have a lot of work to do in any case: two more spacewalks are expected this week and a new crew will soon arrive to start Expedition 43.

Stefano Sandrelli

Cover image: Terry Virts as seen from the Cupola of the ISS and photographed by Samantha Cristoforetti on Feb.21, 2015. Credits: ESA/NASA

For more pics of the U.S. spacewalk #29: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition42/gallery.html#.VOtMxvmG-So

Time for farewells!! The Dragon spacecraft left the International Space Station earlier this week and today ESA’s ATV spaceship with the catchy name Georges Lemaître detached from the Station and will plunge after several orbits into Earth’s atmosphere. Due to the enormous heat from friction caused by its deceleration through the upper layers of air layers the spacecraft will turn into a huge fireball –  a fitting end to the spacecraft that is named after one of the founding fathers of the Big Bang theory!

Unfortunately, this will be the last ATV – after five very successful missions, the project is now complete. At the Columbus Control Center (Col-CC) we provided for each flight the ground infrastructure and supplied our colleagues at ATV Control Centre in Toulouse, France, with data, video and voice connections to the International Space Station network. After ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev closed the hatches of ATV yesterday, the Space Station was prepared for the last hours of undocking of ATVs. We turned off our little amateur radio station [https://www.ariss.org/] in Columbus as well as the external Rapidscat experiment [https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/iss-rapidscat/], any radio interference with ATV’s navigation from the International Space Station should be avoided.

Slowly the Space Station turned to an appropriate orientation for undocking. When the moment arrived the Space Station’s active position control was turned off completely: Georges Lemaître needs to push away from the Space Station without the mothership trying to compensate for this force.

Afterwards all that remained was for the astronauts to wave good-bye … ATVs are part of a large space fleet that supplies the International Space Station. When the American Space Shuttle withdrew from service the Russian Soyuz spacecraft became the only way to get people to the Space Station and back on Earth. Three astronauts share a small space – and so there is little room for other supplies.

Despite this there is enough transport capacity to supply the International Space Station with vital cargo: The Russian unmanned Progress cargo has been flying for years as well as the Japanese HTV and the European ATV. Relatively new in the family of cargo ferries are two unmanned American commercial vehicles: SpaceX’s Dragon and Orbital Science’s Cygnus. While the ATV and Progress ships fly to the International Space Station and dock on their own accord, the others need assistance from the Station’s robotic arm. They approach the Station and fly in formation together – not so easy with complex orbital mechanics to calculate – before being gently captured by the robotic arm and moved securely to a docking port. Only then can the astronauts enter and start unloading cargo. It is much more complicated to bring something from the International Space Station back to Earth. The ATV, HTV, Progress and Cygnus spacecraft have no heat shield or other systems that are needed to survive a reentry into Earth’s atmosphere: they are designed to burn up in the upper layers of the atmosphere of Earth. Because of this the astronauts load them full of trash from the International Space Station and they serve as cosmic garbage disposal. Aside from the manned Soyuz only the Dragon is designed to withstand the tremendous energy from decelerating at speeds of 23 faster than the speed of sound. Paradoxically it is more difficult to get things from the Space Station to Earth than vice versa.

Tom Uhlig, Columbus Flight Director at the DLR center in Oberpfaffenhofen/Germany

Cover image by ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti: https://www.flickr.com/photos/astrosamantha/16546104212/ .

After my bad experience interviewing fruit-flies, today my boss came to me saying I should interview someone who has been referred to as “elegant”… “And transparent,” she added with a smile. She’s a good boss, my boss is. I know she trusts me and that she values my work. The fruit-fly experience is now in the past. So I dutifully phoned the number the boss gave me and transcribed. Good morning professor, thanks for agreeing to this interview with Outpost 42! My pleasure, for my colleagues and myself it is a duty and a pleasure to make a small contribution to science and its outreach. You are very kind, professor. I know you will take care of an experiment to improve the health of astronauts on long-duration missions. What is it? Together with other colleagues, I work on the EPIGENETICS experiment: we try to understand how living in weightlessness can induce inheritable genetic modifications without changes  in the DNA sequence. But DNA is genetic register is it not? If it does not change, it cannot transmit differences from past mutations. Am I wrong? Well, some changes that do not correspond to a changed DNA can be inherited. The DNA remains the same, but the way it is expressed changes. A simple comparison would be when different actors perform the same play. The script will remain the same, but its interpretation is different. The science that studies these kind of changes is called epigenetics. Aside from this example, where do you see such a mechanism in everyday life? A classic example is cell differentiation: some cells specialise, but do not change their basic DNA structure. Some recent studies suggest that epigenetic changes may also have an impact on aging and on tumors. Let’s go back to the astronauts and space. Why do you want to do this experiment in reduced gravity? We want to understand how a cell that has adapted to space can transmit its adaptation to the next generation of cells. Bones and muscles of astronauts undergo changes in long-duration missions: our experiment is aimed to better understand if there are changes at the level of each cell and what the link is between adaptation and mutation epigenetics. I’m curious to see how you conduct the experiment. In her blog Samantha Cristoforetti seems to be having a lot of fun with Epigenetics. It is because we are involved. Understandably so Professor, you and your colleagues are certainly charismatic people. What I meant to ask was with which organisms are you conducting the experiment? Please do not tell me that it is those arrogant fruit-flies! [laughs]. We do not need fruit flies, our involvement is enough. You and Samantha of course. I imagine that you follow our astronaut step by step from Earth as she deals with the organisms of study, are they bacteria? Look [he keeps laughing], there is a misunderstanding here. We are on the station together with Samantha. In what sense? In the only way possible. We are there with her: when we launched we were larvae. Then we awakened with a good bacterial nourishment: some of us were put in a centrifuge that simulates gravity while others were left free to float in zero-gravity. Once mature, we reproduced: the adults were taken away and put in the refrigerator (called MELFI) to be analysed on ground while the larvae continued eating and growing happily for five days. This process is repeated: adults are popped in the fridge and the second-generation larvae allowed to grow. And so on, for four generations… Why are you not saying anything? Have you lost interest? Professor … who you are you? I am a worm, of course. What? Worms? I’m talking on the phone with a worm? I am a Caenorhabditis elegans, in fact. I have the honour of being able to enjoy a certain elegance. Is it a problem? Think about it: we are just a millimetre long, and we are totally transparent, allowing researchers to observe our internal organs under a microscope easily. And we are almost all hermaphrodites. Hello? Hello? Anyone on the line? Mr. interviewer … we have to go, the MELFI awaits us: goodbye, then, we’ll tell Samantha you said “hi”!

Stefano Sandrelli

  To learn more about the Epigenetics experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1075.html Cover image: Caenorhabditis elegans — a millimeter-long roundworm with a genetic makeup scientists understand — will be central to a pair of Japan Aerospace Agency investigations into muscle and bone loss of astronauts on the International Space Station in the first few months of 2015. Image Credit: NASA

When my Boss told me a few months ago to “Go and interview them,” I could not believe it. “Are you serious?” I replied. “You want me to interview those…” But she had already looked away, bored. Go and interview them: that is all I had to do. Who was I supposed to interview? The umpteenth interview with an astronaut? Samantha Cristoforetti? A flight controller at Columbus-Control Centre? An interview with Stefano Polato or Filippo Ongaro? Nah. No, the Boss had asked me to interview those tiny, pretentious, horrible fruit flies. “Soon they will be the real stars of space,” she said as I left. She was right. Perhaps that is why she is the Boss. As I am a serious reporter and I deliver to the Boss and here is the full transcript our interview: Houston, 07/01/2014 Why the silence and the sceptical look? Dear fruit flies, the interviewer should be the one to ask the first question, not you. Don’t you think? Yes but you have been staring at us for the last fifteen minutes. Don’t you think we do have something better to do seeing as we only live for a couple of weeks? With all due respect, I expected to interview someone a bit more … A bit more…? A bit more … with all due respect …. a little more important, more intellectually stimulating.… Look, let’s start with the questions please, we only have five minutes before our interview with the BBC, CNN and Rai news. We do hope they sent someone a bit brighter. Listen … the first question I prepared, I do not know if you will like it … So here goes …  my question is the following… Go, come on, hurry up! So: you are just fruit flies, little limp creatures, and as your name implies, rather insignificant. You buzz around fruit, you leave larvae behind, and you ruin the fruit for the rest of us. As far as I know only mosquitoes are worse than you. So I ask myself: why would anyone want you on the Space Station? We definitely set off on the wrong foot here! For a start, we have already participated in various missions on NASA’s Space Shuttles and our scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster. What’s your name? Stefano Sandrelli … There you go, just appreciate the difference! Drosophila melanogaster: sounds a bit better, right? A tad more noble, n’est-ce pas?. And if you were not so ignorant, you would know that for years we provide invaluable knowledge to the humans that study us. In fact, we are very renowned fruit flies in research and considered a “model organism”. And what does a “model organism” mean? It means that we are easy to breed, we reproduce in larger quantities than rabbits, our DNA has been known for over 20 years, we have only four pairs of chromosomes and, as if that is not enough, our genetic code is similar to human’s, especially with regard to the transmission of diseases. Approximately 77% of the genes carrying diseases in humans have an analogue in our genome: Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and so on. Then it means you are useless since we already know about these diseases in humans, what is your purpose? Look, try switching on your brain, please. Scientists know about the genetic diseases of humans, but it is difficult to study the genetic transmission of a disease as it spans the lifetime of a human being, around 70-80 years. We  reproduce very fast: our life spans a couple of your weeks and each female lays around 600 eggs. Get where we are going? Our genome is transmitted in real-time, “live” in front of scientists eyes, to many descendants. From your reaction it seems as though you still do not get it, do you? But how many are going to space? We start with a little more than 100. It is the mechanism of genetic transmission that interests scientists, understand? And we show it to them, generation after generation. But why on the International Space Station? Because there is no gravity up there. And gravity could be an important part of genetic transmission. Our scientists have created a beautiful experiment! Tell me more … how does it work? The Fruit Lab System has three components: a small housing compartment in which we launch. A second compartment is where we live and get fed and where our larvae are extracted. What do the astronauts do with your larvae? Do they eat them? Are you fresh food? What??? Where do you come from? The larvae are stored in a refrigerator called MELFI where our offspring are preserved and brought back to Earth for further study. There is a third housing compartment, where we can fly freely, assuming we are not affected by weightlessness too much. Here scientists mounted a camera to watch us 24 hours a day. A sort of Big Brother for fruit flies. A number of us live in weightlessness while others live in a small centrifuge to simulate Earth’s gravity. The larvae we produce are frozen, brought back to earth and studied. Are you really convinced that something interesting for mankind may come out of this? Of course, this is what we aim for and the scientists whom we are trying to help. We have been helping humans to understand how their bodies function for over a century!   If you want to educate yourself, we have a dedicated blog on this experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/research/space-biosciences/fruit-fly-lab-ffl-01-engineers-blog/#.VMDVsCzhino And Samantha Cristoforetti talked about it in her blog entry: https://plus.google.com/+SamanthaCristoforetti/posts/PGvbX97yTee Featuring in the cover image: The habitat for astro fruit flies created especially for studies in microgravity. Credits: NASA-Dominic Hart

Stefano Sandrelli

In the photo: astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti during an emergency simulation.

---

Don’t panic is written in large letters across the Hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy in Douglas Adam’s novel of the same name. Don’t panic was also our motto yesterday in the Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany as well as in the International Space Station control centres in Houston, Moscow and Tsukuba, Japan.

At 9:44 CET an emergency alarm was triggered on the International Space Station that implied ammonia from the external cooling circuit could have leaked into its interior. Following emergency protocol the astronauts quickly went to the Russian part of the Station as no ammonia is used for the cooling circuits in those modules. The astronauts could see from air measurements that they were perfectly safe in the Russian segment.

From the start there was some doubt as to whether ammonia really was leaked but for safety the crew was told to stay in the Russian segment while the situation was analyzed in detail. The astronauts were fast to inform us that they were fine: Samantha tweeted to the world: “Thanks for your concern, we are all doing well!” In this type of emergency the external ammonia cooling circuit is quickly shut down and working pressure is reduced to prevent further inflow of toxic gas to the modules. Yesterday the ammonia loop B was shut down meaning half the cooling performance of the Space Station was no longer available. The Columbus Control Centre had to partially shut down the Columbus space laboratory to reduce heat production. While the astronauts waited for the call to reopen the hatch, the control centers were busy trying to get a first idea of what was happening and adapt the Station’s configuration to the new situation. While we were doing this experts were called in to find out why the emergency alarm sounded. In the afternoon we came to the conclusion that the reported measurements that triggered the alarm could not be trusted. Detailed analysis based on other measurements indicated a computer problem and not a real emergency scenario. In the evening the crew was given a “Go” to enter the American part of the Space Station wearing gas masks and take measurements – no ammonia was detected. At around 21:00 CET the astronauts opened the hatch and could sleep in the American part of the station. Although the danger was a false alarm the B Loop is still shut down – we do not want to rush things but bring the Station slowly back to full operations from its present configuration. The emergency has evolved into a scheduling problem for us as we try to readjust the schedule to make up for the lost time.

In a way the situation happened at the best possible time. The astronauts were just about to set up experiments with living fruit flies and other biological experiments. These experiments would have failed if they had left them alone during their time in the Russian segment. ‘Luckily’ the alarm was triggered just before they started so the experiments will be able to run safely in the near future.

The experiments and hardware in the Columbus laboratory seems to have survived the emergency power down as well. Tomorrow we think Samantha and Terry will be able to conduct the first session of the Airway Monitoring experiment as planned despite yesterday’s problems.

In conclusion: if there really had been an ammonia leak, the astronauts and control centres had the situation fully under control. But this is a reminder to us all of the importance of training for emergencies over and over again and to play them out in our minds, so when they happen we don’t panic…

Thomas Uhlig, Columbus Flight Director

Original blog post (in German): https://www.dlr.de/blogs/de/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-9260/15960_read-791/

After a short glance on my telemetry displays I can see indications, that the power outlet, which feeds the Columbus lights, draws some power: “COL-FLIGHT, STRATOS, Columbus lights are ON!”

The answer comes immediately: “Copy that, STRATOS, so the crew is awake!”

The astronauts are ready to kick off their day!

A standard crew day onboard ISS starts with around 1 hour of post-sleep time. Crew can have breakfast, prepare for the day and read the “Daily Summary”, a sort of newspaper, which we put together with the other control centers and which is used to provide the crew with the ISS big-picture status, comments to the daily plan, the Flight Control Teams roster, as well as a Q&A section and (sometimes) jokes and cartoons

It does not sound that different from the morning routine of any other human being preparing for work on planet Earth, does it?

The first official interaction with the Control Centers around the world is during the mDPC (“morning Daily Planning Conference”): Crew and the Flight Controllers tag-up on the daily operations, discuss deltas to the plan and address any crew question that might arise.

The termination of the mDPC marks the start of the actual work-day for the crew. 6.5 hours of their day will be divided between conducting experiments, installing new payloads, executing repairs and “housekeeping”!

In addition to the work time, 1 hour is always allocated for a midday meal, and 2.5 hours are strictly scheduled for physical exercise: crewmembers use a cycle ergometer (i.e. an exercise bike) for cardiovascular exercise, a treadmill for cardiovascular exercise – loading the skeletal system and maintaining the neuromuscular patterns for locomotion, and a Resistance Exercise Device for maintaining muscles and bones.

Once the daily activities are completed, it is time for the eDPC (“evening Daily Planning Conference”). This is “goodnight” time: interactions with the crew on the Space-to-Ground voice channels are interrupted to allow them some well-deserved rest time, we also switch off any camera inside the space station! Only in case of contingency scenarios the Ground Teams would make contact again.

After a round call to all control centers for any input, crew is off-duty: they can have dinner, check social media and watch TV or movies, or spend some “quality-time” sightseeing from Cupola.

Then it’s bed time: 8.5 hours of good sleep in micro-gravity

One last thing! A dedicated electronic tool is available to both Crew and Ground Teams, called OSTPV (“Onboard Short Term Plan Viewer”): it shows the so-called timeline, the schedule of the ISS and is divided in several bands for Crew and Ground, and each activity is represented by a “bar” It is driving the crew day – and it can drive astronauts crazy, as you can convince yourself …

[youtube s2gUOV3KK2k nolink]

Should you be interested in the current OSTPV: We give you a little bit of insight here.

Alessandro Rovera

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as it is known, is the most successful book ever published by the publishing houses of Ursa Minor. A worthy competitor is 53 other things to do in zero gravity. Of the latter work, however, neither the author nor the content are known. At least they were not known until today.

A group of researchers from Outpost 42, in collaboration with the Antiques Academy of the Near and Remote Future argue, in fact, that they have found excerpts of the original 53 Other Things to do in zero gravity. What makes the originality of this discovery very questionable is that the name of the authors appear next to each sentence. Rather suspicious names: take a look at the section of Outpost 42 crew.

In any case, here are the 23 fragments that were discovered.

Samantha Cristoforetti

Never put your feet on the ground.

Never ask yourself: what shoes should I wear today?

Play around with a strawberry trying to catch it with your mouth without fear of dropping it on the floor.

Enjoy feeling the skin under your feet as soft as the skin of a baby

Move around just by breathing

Storing things in the highest cabinet without the help of a stick to reach it.

Never worry about using a hammer and nails: just a little velcro will do fine!

See who travels furthest without touching the walls (if you touch the air-flow sensors on Russians hatches you are disqualified!)

Never make your bed in the morning.

Rotate your home so that friends can easily find the entrance.

Use a bicycle without a saddle.

Throw the scales away: they always show zero!

Hold things with your legs while you walk with your hands.

Antonio Pilello

Practice yoga upside-down.

Swim without water.

Eat a lot without gaining weight.

Chiara Forin

Read a book in bed without holding it up

Wear a Superman costume on Halloween (even if Luca Parmitano already did this)

Cook without fear of making the floor dirty … nothing falls on the ground!

Stefano Polato

Break an egg and separate the egg white from the yolk

Stefano Sandrelli

Spend life with you head above the clouds and feel it is OK

Freefall and laugh about it.

Be heavy and fly all the same.

Stefano Sandrelli

Anton Shkaplerov and Terry Virts: do you recognize them? They are Samantha Cristoforetti’ s fellow mission members.  They were assigned the Soyuz TMA-15M mission that, in late November, will take them to the International Space Station.

Imagine them designing the mission patch for the Soyuz that will take them to space. What do you think they will desing? Here’s a clue: Samantha, Terry and Anton are not just astronauts, but also pilots. Do you have an idea? Here’s another hint: they all wanted to focus on the concept of balance.

At this point, if you are a fan of flight simulators, you might have guessed what it might look like. Here is a third clue. imagine three tennis players inspired by their tennis racket.. Or three cyclists had taken the handlebar as a suggestion. Is it clear? No? Okay, will  tell you: do you know the instrument on an aircraft’s dashboard showing the vehicle’s  attitude during the flight? Yes, the one that tells the pilot the aircraft is pointing in the right direction? It is one of the most important tools for a pilot: the attitude indicator or artificial horizon.

Samantha, Terry and Anton were inspired by just that. As if they are telling us:  we go to space, but we need balance and technology.

Thanks to graphic design of Riccardo Rossi, the horizontal reference lines in the indicator are represented by the Soyuz itself and its solar panels, while the angular scales represent the angles of pitch and roll. The Soyuz corresponds to a roll angle of 15° and 15 is the serial number of this Soyuz TMA and a pitch angle of 51° which corresponds to the inclination of the orbit with respect to the equator.

But that’s not all. As in a medieval bestiary, there are countless other references and symbols. For example, the Sunrise depicts awareness and renewal, while the three stars more evident near the constellations of Auriga and Cassiopeia, represent the spaceflight dreams of the astronauts. As if their dreams had become stars.

Finally, the total number of stars corresponds to the last two digits of the launch year (2014), and – if we include the Sun – the last two digits of the year during which they will return (2015).

Finally, one last significant note. Look at the shadow of the Soyuz. It is not in the form of the Russian capsule but it has the shape of an airplane. In particular, it combines elements of a Russian MiG-29, a US F-16 and an Italian AMX, to underline the inextricable link between aviation and spaceflight.

Stefano Sandrelli