October Virtual Meeting | The ISS @ 20

The Space Association of Australia has cancelled its regular face-to-face public meetings until at least November 2020. However, the space news never stops and so we are conducting our eighth virtual monthly meeting,

To participate, simply register via the button below and you will be sent details about how to join the meeting. You can watch either via a web browser or by downloading the Zoom Meeting app to your computer or mobile device before the meeting starts. Have some headphones or speakers ready to go, and a microphone if you'd like to join in the conversation. You can also choose to have your video camera active or off.

 

Date: Monday, 26 October 2020
Time: 19:30-21:30 AEDT (UTC+11)

Draft agenda:

7:30 - Association business - 15 minutes

7:45 - Space News Update | Peter Aylward - 15 minutes

8:00 - Touch-And-Go: OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Mission at Asteroid Bennu | Clemens Unger, Australian OSIRIS-REx Ambassador for NASA Public Engagement - 30 minutes (including Q&A)

8:30 - The International Space Station at Twenty | Peter Aylward - 45 minutes (including Q&A)

9:30 - End

Q&A: If you have questions you would like to ask our speakers before or during the meeting, you can do so on the Slido platform here: https://app.sli.do/event/xrwsemnl

Please register in advance to join this meeting:

The International Space Station

Expedition 1 was the first long-duration stay on the International Space Station (ISS). The three-person crew stayed aboard the station for 136 days, from November 2000 to March 2001. It was the beginning of an uninterrupted human presence on the station which continues as of August 2020. Expedition 2, which also had three crew members, immediately followed Expedition 1.

The official start of the expedition occurred when the crew docked to the station on 2 November 2000, aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-31, which had launched two days earlier. During their mission, the Expedition 1 crew activated various systems onboard the station, unpacked equipment that had been delivered, and hosted three visiting Space Shuttle crews and two uncrewed Russian Progress resupply vehicles. The crew was very busy throughout the mission, which was declared a success.

The three visiting Space Shuttles brought equipment, supplies, and key components of the space station. The first of these, STS-97, docked in early December 2000 and brought the first pair of large U.S. photovoltaic arrays, which increased the station's power capabilities fivefold. The second visiting shuttle mission was STS-98, which was docked in mid-February 2001 and delivered the US$1.4 billion research module Destiny, which increased the mass of the station beyond that of Mir for the first time. Mid-March 2001 saw the final shuttle visit of the expedition, STS-102, whose main purpose was to exchange the Expedition 1 crew with the next three-person long-duration crew, Expedition 2. The expedition ended when Discovery undocked from the station on 18 March 2001.

The Expedition 1 crew consisted of an American commander and two Russians. The commander, Bill Shepherd, had been in space three times before, all on shuttle missions which lasted at most a week. The Russians, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei K. Krikalev, both had previous long-duration spaceflights on Mir, with Krikalev having spent over a full year in space.