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After a summer of rehab and debriefs (and yes, 2 weeks of vacation), time to wrap up the story of my mission to ISS. This is the first entry in a final series of logbooks looking back at departure, landing and re-adaptation! 11 June 2015 Looks like this time they mean it: after a delay of one month, this time they really want us to go home. It was an early wake-up for our very last day on ISS: the morning Daily Planning Conference, our tagup with the control centers to start the day, was scheduled for 1 am! But we did go to sleep in the early afternoon yesterday, in fact we have been sleep shifting for a couple of days. Undocking is not until 10:18 am, but there’s a lot to do before we can send that command to open the hooks that keep our Soyuz attached to the Space Station. And if you’re imagining us taking our time to say our mental farewell, leisurely savoring our last few hours in space…well, of course you’re not, you know better than that! In fact, the morning was busy as ever. Scott and I were in Columbus even before DPC, assisting each other with our blood draws. This was a so-called “ambient blood draw”, meaning that the tubes don’t go into the MELFI freezers, but return to Earth on the Soyuz instead. They will be retrieved from the descent modules right after we are extracted. The blood draw in itself was no different than any other we’ve done, but the packing instructions did look daunting, especially regarding some particular tubes that Scott uses for his Twin Study. I will be forever grateful to him for offering to taking care of all the packing on his own, so I could save some time for a final tour of the Space Station. Thanks Scott! However, I did get my share of packing as well. Remember the Stem Cells Differentiation experiment from the L+141/144 Logbook? Well, those samples need to go home today as well, so I got to retrieve them from MELFI and pack them in insulated pouches for return. There isn’t much space in the Soyuz descent module, as you can imagine, so we try to pack things as compact as possible. In case of early-retrieval items, we put the number of the package on a green label and we also take a picture, that will be made available to the retrieval team at the landing site, so they know exactly what to look for. Of course, Anton is loading the Soyuz exactly according to the cargo plan: having the center of mass in the right place is important in a space vehicle, especially if it’s your ride back to Earth! By the way, it’s not only blood that I have been donating to science today. First thing after waking up for the last time in my floating sleeping bag, I took three different saliva samples – a 10-min routine that I have performed many times by now for the experiments Microbiome and Salivary markers. Oh, and don’t forget urine collection! I will be filling out urine tubes and putting them into the MELFI freezer at every void until hatch closure. The glamour of spaceflight… Picture: retrieving the Stem Cell Differentiation samples from the MELFI freezer. #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int RICORDATE DI VOTARE PER AVAMPOSTO42 AI MACCHIANERA ITALIAN AWARDS! (Trad IT) Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsche Übersetzung von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad RUS) Русский перевод +Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Safe journey back, Samantha! This time it seems to be true: the mission of Samantha and her colleagues Terry Virts and Anton Shkaplerov will end 11 June after 199,7 days. Only 8 hours short of 200 days. Wednesday at 16:40, with almost a day in advance, Terry handed over the command of the Space Station to Gennady Padalka. Thursday is the day of return. It is an early start before they close the hatch behind them once in the Soyuz capsule. This will be at around 8:55 CEST. At this point a series of checks and tests of their return vehicle will last for a few orbits. Around 12:20 CEST, the three astronauts leave Space Station: it is time for the so-called undocking. The Soyuz  “drops its moorings” and starts to fall, moving to a different orbit from the International Space Station. The return journey is effectively nothing more than a fall to the Earth in a controlled manner. After a few orbits, the most important moment comes: the Soyuz turns the engines on and gives the final push to start its deorbit at around 14:51. It then dives into the atmosphere. Soon after, two of the three modules that make up the Soyuz are discarded: the orbital module and the propulsion module have finished their task and are no longer needed. Only the landing module remains, protected by a heat shield. When it enters the more dense layers of the atmosphere, the module will be akin to a comet on fire, surrounded by glowing plasma. About 20 minutes from landing, scheduled for 15:43, the spacecraft manoeuvres to reduce its speed. Inside eight minutes it will slow to 800 km/h. 15 minutes before landing, four parachutes open: first two followed by two more in quick succession slowing the capsule to about 30 km / h. Just a second before landing, four small engines light up, like spaceships in science fiction movies, and slow the speed to impact to about 5 km/h. Despite being a bumpy ride, the astronaut’s is important: to make the reentry softer their seats are moulded to fit them perfectly, like protective nests. Despite this, there is no point in denying it: the return is no stroll in the park. Shocks, tears, decelerations: astronauts spend the last moments of their mission subjected to violent deceleration, rediscovering the meaning of weight. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recounted how he was surprised to feel the weight of his tongue and lips, and that even talking felt different after his months in space. Knowing Samantha, and her communication skills, we are not panicking: she will be able to continue to talk as she did before! Safe journey home! Timeline Times in Central European Summer Time:

• 8:55 Expedition 43 hatch closing
• 12:18 Undocking command to open hooks and latches
• 12:20 Undocking – Hooks open and physical separation of Soyuz TMA-15M
• 12:23 Separation burn 1, an 8-second burn of the Soyuz engines, .60 m/s
• 12:24 Separation burn 2, a 30-second burn of the Soyuz engines, 1.45 m/s
• 14:51 Deorbit burn lasting 4:35, 128 m/s. Soyuz is now around 12 km from the International Space Station at 401.8 km altitude
• 15:18 Separation of Modules at 140 km altitude
• 

  Landing site. Credits: NASA

  15:26 Maximum loads on the astronauts up to five times normal gravity at 36.5 km altitude
• 15:28 Command to open parachutes at 10.7 km. Two Pilot Parachutes are first deployed, the second of which extracts the drogue chute, slowing the Soyuz down from a descent rate of 230 m/s to 80 m/s. The Main Parachute is then released, slowing the Soyuz to a 7.2 m/s. The Soyuz descends at an angle of 30 degrees to expel heat, then shifts to a straight vertical descent.
• 15:43 Touchdown after engine firing to slow the Soyuz down to 1.5 m/s around 80 cm above ground.

Landing site: about 145 km southeast of Dzhezkazgan. Landing will occur approximately 1 hour, 34 minutes before sunset at the landing site in Kazakhstan.    

Today at around 17:27 CET ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will break the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight of an ESA astronaut. She was originally planned to return to Earth on 12 May but her Futura mission was extended after a problem with a Progress supply ferry.

The record was held until now by ESA astronaut André Kuipers who spent 193 days in space in 2012 for his PromISSe mission. His mission was also extended after a spacecraft problem. From his blog:

“A leak was found on the Soyuz capsule that was supposed to ferry the Expedition 31 crew up here. So the next Soyuz in line is being prepared quickly. It will not be ready before mid-march so the launch has been delayed by two months. This will delay landing for Dan, Anton and Anatoly. This also has consequences for myself, Don and Oleg. The delay is now six weeks and the official landing date is set for 1 July.”

Neither Samantha or André have the record for the most time an ESA astronaut has spent in space, that record goes to ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter with 350 days spent in space over two missions, 179 on space station Mir in 1995 and 171 on the International Space Station as part of Expedition 2 in 2006.

Have you heard the news? Today,  Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, has officially announced that our landing is delayed until early June, which means that… Terry, Anton and I get to stay a few extra weeks in space! As I’m writing this I just can’t believe that our original landing date was tomorrow and I would now be about to jump in my ISS sleeping bag for the very last time. I suppose I wasn’t mentally ready to leave quite yet, partly due for sure to the fact that this change of plans has been in the air for quite some time. After the loss of Progress 59P two weeks ago, we all immediately realized that the next Soyuz launch would likely be delayed to buy time for a full investigation, implementation of any corrective actions deemed necessary and possibly the launch of another unmanned vehicle first. Whether our return would be postponed as well was less clear: on the one hand there are obvious advantages in having a full crew complement onboard, on the other hand we had just lost a cargo resupply ship and consumables might have been an issue (turned out they aren’t). As we waited for the ISS partner agencies to make a decision, we were scheduled last week for all the activities required to keep us on track for a nominal landing: we performed a leak check of our Sokol pressure suits (leak check passed!); we fit checked our Kentavr compression shorts; we continued to pre-gather cargo for our Soyuz, including our personal 1,5 kg allocation and we packed our few other personal items for return to Earth on Dragon. Anton and I refreshed our manual reentry skills.  Since a final decision about delaying our landing had not been made, we had to be ready. However the Soyuz thrusters’ test, which was scheduled early on Friday morning, was canceled and at that point it was clear that we weren’t going home on May 13th. Ready and happy to stay! And no worries: I still have underwear, socks and even one of my bonus food containers left. I’m really glad that I saved some of those basic supplies, just in case! I was also able to recover a couple of brand new T-shirts that I had already used to wrap some Dragon return items: they might have some glue residue from the gray tape on them, but they’ll do the trick if I need them! Talking about Dragon, looks like Terry and I will unexpectedly be around for the full SpaceX-6 mission: we’re diligently packing and loading bags clearing space on ISS, which is always welcome. We’re also doing more preparatory work to move PMM to the Node 3 forward location and… who knows?  The actual move might actually happen soon, instead of next summer. Since we’re not going anywhere for a while, the planners will find ways to make good use of our time onboard. And I would be thrilled about enjoying, even for a few days, a 360 degrees unrestricted view from the Cupola! #SamLogbook #Futura42 Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa  ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo)+Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Another week has gone by on ISS, one of my last on board. Time sure flies when you’re having fun! Well, the biggest news of this past week, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is that the Russian resupply vehicle Progress 59P didn’t make it to ISS. On Tuesday morning we received a call from Houston saying that Mission Control – Moscow had downmoded the mission profile to a two-day rendezvous, as opposed to the standard 6-hour profile that would have had Progress dock to ISS by early afternoon. Of course, there’s a lot of minor issues that can force a transition to a 2-day profile, so at that point we still expected to see Progress pull up in its parking spot by Thursday. We know now that 59P will never make it to ISS. Mission controllers in Moscow have valiantly tried all they could with the available telemetry and commanding capability, but unfortunately all efforts to recover the resupply mission have been unsuccessful. The focus of the community has now shifted from the recovery attempts to analyzing the mishap and finding the cause. We’ll know more once our Russian colleagues will have concluded the investigation which, inevitably, will take a while. In the meantime, teams are assessing the impacts to the ISS program: what is the consumable situation? How about trash removal capability that has been lost? What are the implications for the next Soyuz launch and, consequently, the impacts on ISS activities? As you can imagine, it’s a complicated problem and, as is often the case, I’m happy that I’m just an astronaut and I’m only responsible for carrying out my tasks up here. People on the ground have a much tougher job, especially these days! The good news is that we’re not going to run out of food, water, oxygen or any other vital consumables any time soon – we have plenty on margin. On humanity’s outpost in space no astronaut is going to bed hungry! And we’re busy as usual keeping the Space Station in shape, transferring cargo and, of course, doing science. On Tuesday, in particular, as the Progress story unfolded, I spent most of the day working on the final session of the Italian Space Agency experiment Drain Brain: ultrasound session in the morning, plus breathing sessions with the pletismographs morning and afternoon. If this doesn’t ring a bell, you might have missed my L+57, L+58 Logbook, where I talked about Drain Brain! Congratulations to the team on the completion of the experiment! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE) Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de (Trad Russo)+Dmitry Meshkov https://samlogbook-ru.livejournal.com

Practicing emergencies is necessary so I accept that the volunteer fire department near our home at Hochstadt runs their siren in the evening, even though it excites our 3-year-old daughter just before bedtime. We also need to practice emergencies on the International Space Station in space you cannot phone highly-trained rescue workers to come to the rescue. Astronauts must be able to fend for themselves, extinguish a fire and protect themselves from any fumes. Even radio contact with experts in control centers cannot be assumed to work in a worst-case scenario.

In today’s emergency exercise the control centres and astronauts worked together on a so-called On-Board Training or simply OBT. We had “stage directions” that defined for example that a leak would appear in the Japanese Kibo module through which air would escape.

The alarm sounded on the Space Station with its penetrating noise and the computer screens of our Flight Controller filled up with numerous error messages, proving that the International Space Station had configured itself in emergency mode. The astronauts onboard reported shortly afterwards to Mission Control Houston with the news that they had a pressure drop on the Space Station to contend with. All radio communication between crew and flight controllers began with the words “For the workout exercise:” to ensure that everybody knew it was not a real emergency, but an exercise.

The flight director in Houston declared a “Space Craft Emergency” – of preceded by “for the training exercise”. Sinje Steffen of the STRATOS team at the Columbus Control Centre checked whether Columbus was automatically reconfigured for this Rapid Depress scenario.

The astronauts convened in the meantime 350 km above close to their Soyuz spacecraft. Since the Russian capsules are the Station’s lifeboats, each astronaut has a well-defined place there. They are usually the first assembly point of crew in an emergency. Once there, they decide together on how to proceed based on the scheme “Warning – Gather – Fight”. In our emergency script scenario, the astronauts had about five hours until critical low pressure (designated as T.Res) would be reached – time enough to try to find the leaking module and possibly stop the International Space Station from ‘bleeding out’.

The astronauts followed the well-defined sequence to close various hatches to measure on which side the pressure dropped further. Slowly they were able to find their way closer and closer to the actual leak.

Columbus Flight Director Katja Leuoth and her team was busy keeping up with the falling pressure values: a long list of minimum air pressure certification values exist for all Columbus components – each of these elements had to be switched off before their critical pressure was reached. Today’s commands were “for the training exercise”, so actual commands were not issued and power was not actually switched-off…

The rapid pressure-drop (rapid depress) is one of three major emergency scenarios that are defined for the International Space Station.

Depending on the size of the leak, there are various ways to “clog the hole”: from an oversized bicycle-patch to a plasticine-like material. All sealing is done of course from inside the space station – and is easy: Compared to the vacuum of space the pressure inside the ISS is considerable higher and pushes any seal onto the leak – a clear advantage compared to repairing a bicycle inner tube…

Thomas Uhlig, Columbus Control Centre

As  you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t been writing much this past month – my evenings have been just flying away, divided between the irresistible pull of the Cupola, other outreach projects and many little personal things that need to be taken care of.

During the day the Space Station keeps us really busy with science, maintenance, housekeeping, logistics and maintaining our proficiency in emergency responses, robotics, Soyuz flying…you name it. The variety of things we do up here is mind blowing, if I stop to think about it. Oh, and by the way, we also had a Soyuz undock earlier this month, taking home half of our Space Station population. Well, at least in terms of human presence – I’m sure the microorganisms living up here, who outnumber us by orders of magnitude, would claim that it’s “their” Space Station and don’t care much if three biped mammals are replaced by three different ones. We, on the other, do care. It was hard to see Sasha, Butch and Elena leave after being so close for four months and we did become just a little bit apprehensive when communication with their Soyuz was lost during the engine burn, which was somewhat unexpected. So we were happy to hear from Moscow that the search & rescue teams had made contact with the capsule and even happier to see our friends’ smiling faces as they got their first breaths of fresh air in Kazakhstan. In case you’re wondering, we saw them on NASA TV,  like many of you, I reckon. Not sure I mentioned before, but we can get a TV station transmitted live on one of our laptops when we have satellite coverage for the Ku-Band antennas. For a couple of weeks the Space Station felt even bigger than usual, with Terry, Anton and I as the only (human) inhabitants. Not only were there fewer people around, but of course we were only getting half of the work done, so there was less com on space-to-ground. Overall, if felt a lot quieter. And now we’re back to six! Scott, Gennady and Misha have joined us last week and have added their personalities to the mix to create the new dynamic of Expedition 43. It’s such an invaluable opportunity to be part of two different crews: in the end, it’s the human interactions that determine our experience up here, so in a way it’s like having two space missions instead of one. And if you have such awesome crewmates as I have had on Expedition 42 and have now on Expedition 43… well, life is good! Also, Terry and I have it really easy in terms of handover: Scott has already been up here for six months just 4 years ago, so he really doesn’t need the amount of guidance and coaching (and patience!) that we required at the beginning from Butch. Scott is basically already autonomous and has already given some inputs that have improved our life and work. Always good to add a new perspective to the equation! So, here we are, it’s April 1st already and, barring changes, my Soyuz will undock on May 14th. With me onboard, unless I hide really well. I have only 42 days left on ISS, which is of course a cool number, but it’s also not much. If I sound a little sad saying this, it’s because I am. Anyway, with so  little time left I am committed to resume regular logbooks: there is so much still that I have to share with you! I thought I’d start by sharing some picture of life and work from the past four months: check out the captions for some insight.  Talk to you soon!

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]

The Logbook is back! Sorry for the very long Loss of Signal, it’s been a busy time: three spacewalks in 8 days can really fill your days and I felt that I needed to focus on my task 100%. Having to run several hours of airlock ops and get two crewmates “out the door” safely and as quickly as possible is something that commands attention: by far the most demanding thing I have done on orbit and, the first time, definitely somewhat stressful. Spacewalks are usually covered quite in detail on the internet, so I’m sure you guys already know more than I could possibly tell you. And as far as my job as IV is concerned, if you’re curious you can take a look at some training logbooks about Prep-and-Post classes, where we train airlock ops and pre-breath protocols. Check out for example Logbook L-70. Of course, some things are hard to practice on the ground. Take the SAFERs, for example, the jetpacks that are attached to the EMU suits for an emergency self-rescue in case of detachment from structure: on the ground we learn how to operate the latches that keep them secured to the suit, but it’s a whole different story to actually handle suit and SAFER in space. Heavy, bulky things don’t have weight up here, but they sure still have mass, hence inertia! Anyway, everything went well, Butch and Terry did a stellar job outside, Anton was a precious help in the airlock and now we’re all catching our breaths as we settle into a less hectic work pace. Also, we’re approaching fast the end of Expedition 42, which means that Butch, Sasha and Elena are getting ready for their fiery ride back to planet Earth next week. Terry, Anton and I will be on our own up here for a couple of weeks, before Scott, Misha and Gennady join us towards the end of March. Yesterday our soon-to-depart crewmates actually put on their Sokol suits for their pre-reentry leak checks and I have spotted Elena and Sasha practicing the Soyuz manual reentry on a simulator in the Service Module. And we’re getting return cargo ready: today, for example, I took water samples from all our potable water delivery stations and stowed them for return on Soyuz. Preparations for the next crew’s arrival have also begun. Yesterday I worked on stowing some cargo delivered on the Russian Progress resupply vehicle, which included Scott’s clothes and hygiene items. We have our little space wardrobe in Node 2, close to our sleeping cabins: each one of us has a big rigid bag with our personal clothing supplies, mostly organized in Ziplocs that cover two weeks each (we call those “bricks”). Butch, efficient as always, had already cleared his bag, so Scott… if you happen to be reading… your clothes are already nicely organized in Node 2 overhead! Not sure that they are enough for a year, though: I bet you’ll have more coming along the way. Hey, by the way, yesterday was our 100th day in space! Well, technically that’s true only for me, since Terry and Anton had been in space before, but for sure it was our 100th day in space together. A bit scary, isn’t it? Compared to the time behind us, the time we have left already looks little, only a couple of months left. Of course there are things from my Earthling life that I miss – a shower being pretty high on the list – but it will be really hard to leave the Space Station. In the past 100 days I have gone from uncontainable excitement and constant discovery to familiarity and a sense of quiet affection for the Station itself, our crew and the teams on the ground spread all over the world with whom we interact every day. It feels like home and, by the way, a home in which you can float and that offers an unbeatable view out of the window! Futura mission website (Italian): Avamposto42 avamposto42.esa.int #SamLogbook #Futura42 (Trad IT)  Traduzione in italiano a cura di +AstronautiNEWS qui: https://www.astronautinews.it/tag/logbook (Trad FR) Traduction en français par +Anne Cpamoa ici: https://spacetux.org/cpamoa/category/traductions/logbook-samantha (Trad ES) Tradducción en español por +Carlos Lallana Borobio  aqui: https://laesteladegagarin.blogspot.com.es/search/label/SamLogBook (Trad DE)  Deutsch von https://www.logbuch-iss.de

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/ .