Hey all,

I had a curious thought given the news this week of Russian computer failures and NASA's inability to fully control the station's attitude using only their control momentum gyroscopes. There seems to be some well-versed ISS fans here, so maybe someone knows the answer!

So, with the Russian attitude control thrusters offline earlier in the week due to the computer failure, it was reported that NASA's control momentum gyroscopes are fully saturated and cannot keep up with the massive angular momentum of the current station. As a result, Russian thrusters are required to maintain proper attitude, kicking in whenever NASA's gyros reach capacity. (For the time being, the Space Shuttle's thrusters took over that job giving Russia time to work out their computer glitches.)

Being a bit "ignorant" of the details regarding my question, I thought that I
would post it here, and hope that someone might be able to answer, or help
me out with this!

Is it possible to use a Satellite TV-type dish to receive unscrambled Shuttle/ISS
audio from any geostationary satellites?

Also, does anyone have the locations of said geostationary satellites used for
Shuttle/ISS audio purposes?

Thanks in advance!

Mike
heymoe1@ameritech.net

NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams set a new record this morning at 12:47 CDT for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman. At that time, Williams surpassed Shannon Lucid's mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996.

Williams began her record-setting flight when she launched with the crew of STS-116 in December 2006. The Massachusetts native remained onboard the station as a member of the Expedition 14 crew and then joined the Expedition 15 crew in April. Her spaceflight will come to a close when she returns to Earth aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis with the STS-117 crew.

http://ftp.amsat.org/a

NASA is ready and willing to share the international space station (ISS) with other U.S. government agencies and commercial firms once construction of the $100 billion orbital outpost is finished in 2010.

That is the main thrust of a 14-page report NASA sent to Congress in late May outlining a plan for operating the U.S. segment of ISS as a "national laboratory" supported and used by entities other than NASA.

http://www.space.com/spacenews/070611_iss_businessmonday.html

NASA's shuttle Atlantis will spend two extra days in orbit to allow its astronaut crew to repair minor heat shield damage and perform an extra spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS), mission managers said late Monday.

The extra time will allow engineers on Earth to draw up plans to repair a damaged heat-resistant blanket on the aft exterior of Atlantis, John Shannon, head of NASA's STS-117 Mission Management Team, told reporters during mission briefing here at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"The right answer here, the better part of valor, was to go ahead and put it down and secure it," Shannon said of the damaged blanket.

Does anybody know if the crew has internet up there? If so, how's their connection speed.