I watched the landing on NASA TV, and it was fascinating to watch the Russian space agency in action. Kondratyev and Coleman came out of the Soyuz capsule grinning and in good spirits, but Nespoli looked very unhappy and ill, and I was concerned for him at the time.

Also, in microgravity, the wine will simply stick to anything it touches. And Champagne leaves very sticky patches after it dries. I’m not sure you’d want that in the ISS.

Even if we can’t take out on a spacewalk, and throw it at one of the modules à la Star Trek: Generations, they could at least have some inside.

Thinking of which, did you know the original opening scene :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAZrPMsTL1c

was somewhat different .. and seems to have been re-booted somewhat?

They ought to come up with a proper name for the International Space Station rather than just a statement of its nature acronymn to christen it as though. The space station Harmony, Tranquility or Makepeace perhaps?

Apparently, there are plans to brew a space beer (which is more my poison of choice) but space champers could work nicely too.

As for the “risks” involved I’d think they were very slight given the minute mass and size of the shards involved and the relatively low altitude of the ISS’s orbit. The golf ball drive off the ISS a few years ago (?) was a worse idea and got done so I can’t see why not.

BTW: What would the risks of that be? Since the station is meant to withstand the impacts of micrometeoroids some glass shattering on its exterior shouldn’t be a problem. The champagne itself should immediately vaporize, but what bothers me is all the glass shards – seems like a big satellite collision hazard.

But either way: THEY MUST BRING THE CHAMPAGNE!!! (Make it non-alcoholic if you have to, just bring the stuff!!)

photo 33 intrigued me, being dumb as i am, i thought: isn’t that a solar panel? whats that hole? then photo 16 enlightened me, hehe. great photos

This picture was part of a series of photos specially taken to capture Endeavour at the ISS. Because of the special occasion, the station was rotated 180 degrees to give Soyuz TMA-20 a side view. This was bound to take them out of alignment, since the ISS rotated far faster than the arrays can slew.

There’s also one other factor at play — solar arrays are not always allowed to track the Sun during docking/undocking operations. They may be fixed at whatever position they were in before the process began, even if this is not their optimal position. This may be to prevent propellant contamination, to reduce torque while in free drift mode, or other reasons. The station has batteries to carry it over.

I would guess that in this picture, they’re fixed where they had been right before being commanded to stop moving. The starboard and port arrays do not rotate together, and the two on each side rotate in the other axis independently of one another. Their tracking rate varies depending on where the sun is at the time relative to the station’s orientation; sometimes it only makes sense to move some of them. The two on “top” in this image appear to be describing sort of a V shape, mirroring one another’s orientation. They were probably in the process of slewing to a new angle.

Got a question, to which you might know the answer. This picture shows that the solar panels are not rotated to be perpendicular to the incident sun light. Nor are they all facing in the same direction. It surprised me that they aren’t. Do the solar panels produce too much electricity, so they have to turn them away from the sun?

Thanks,

Bruce

What? Isn’t that the game we usually play with these pictures?