Latest Kibo Stories

NASA Typically satellites launch from Earth, requiring dedicated launch vehicles to propel them into the proper orbit. The cost for this launch scenario could be reduced considerably if there was another way to get the satellites into their optimal orbit. The Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) found a way to cut the costs of this activity by designing a small satellite launcher, installed recently on the International Space Station. The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Small...

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online It can get cold and lonely up there in the dark, vast expanses of outer space. It’s bad enough feeling utterly alone, but to know it, to see just how far away you are physically separated from any other human being, can make spending 6 months in the International Space Station a little unbearable. Therefore, some researchers from the University of Tokyo, in conjunction with robot maker Tomotaka Takahashi and ad agency Dentsu,...

The International Space Station has a new "engawa""”and it's open for business.Engawa is Japanese for "porch," and while that might seem like a strange thing for a space station to have, researchers have been looking forward to the addition for a long time. Space shuttle Endeavour delivered the Japanese-built platform to the ISS on July 22nd and astronauts attached it to Japan's Kibo1 science lab a day later. Now, when a science experiment requires a dose of hard vacuum...

This story was updated at 1:39 p.m. EDT. HOUSTON -- Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) appeared to solve the orbiting lab's toilet troubles Wednesday as they prepared to open a new Japanese laboratory for business. Space station flight engineer Oleg Kononenko replaced a failed pump in the station's Russian-built commode in a fix that restored the space toilet's ability to collect liquid waste. "I see airflow right away," Kononenko said after activating...