4/27/11

GoodMan

Russian space freighter on its way to ISS

Packed with supplies has become a Russian spacecraft made the trip to the International Space Station. If he has parked safely, and a scientific emphasis there is sent there.
Korolyov - A Russian cargo spaceship with over 2.6 tons of supplies on board is on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). "Progress M-10M" launched on Wednesday morning from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This was announced by the flight control center in Korolev near Moscow. 
The cargo ship will arrive Friday at the ISS. He has, inter alia, 877 kg of fuel, 420 gallons of water, 194 kilogram of food and 51 kilograms of oxygen and scientific equipment, supplies and mail for the six-member crew on board. His predecessor, Progress M-09M "on Tuesday had been specifically brought to the South Pacific to crash.

After the launch of "Progress M-10M" gets the ISS crew yet another visit. On weekdays, according to current planning, the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour from. The shuttle is to make security reasons only on the way, if the Russian cargo ship has been docked.

The "Endeavour" brings the nearly seven-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the space station. This is a measuring system for cosmic rays. Of the device to be placed outside the ISS, researchers expect revolutionary insights into unresolved issues like the nature of dark matter. This great unknown of modern physics makes together with the dark energy from about 96 percent of the universe. Even the mystery of antimatter hopes the basic science with the experiment in space to get on the track.

The Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen, according to coordinate the German contribution to AMS, more than 500 researchers and engineers from 16 countries have worked ten years at the 1.5 billion euros more expensive models. "With AMS, we will learn much about the composition of cosmic rays and thus also about how our galaxy and our universe came into being constructed," said the scientists of the RWTH. The observation of cosmic rays in the coming years have the potential to "our world to change radically."