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The American astronaut and the Russian cosmonaut who are on the space station released a mini-satellite from the station into orbit around the Earth.
The Russian mini-satellite called Nano Sputnik is 30 centimeters long and weighs 5 kg. He was thrown into space by Sharipov like a basketball.
Russian cosmonaut Shalizan Shapiro and American astronaut Leroy Chiao left for a spacewalk on Monday this week, leaving the space station unmanned for six hours. In this period of time they prepared the docking mechanism for the visit of a European automatic ferry (ATV) named Jules Verne (on the centenary of the writer's death).
The ATV is larger than the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft and will begin launching to the space station in 2006.
As mentioned, the European Space Agency is expected to launch its first space vehicle, "Jules Verne", next year. In doing so, it will help Russia, which alone faces the burden of flying all the aircraft to the space station since the shutdown of the American shuttles. The European space vehicles can carry a much larger supply of food, equipment and fuel than the Russian vehicles can carry. As mentioned, the only vehicles that can reach the space station and operate it.
For over two years, since the United States grounded its launch fleet after the Columbia shuttle disaster, Russia has launched all manned vehicles and payloads into space. NASA, for its part, said that it plans to return the shuttles to operation from May or June of this year.
NASA and the Russian Space Agency tightened the safety procedures at the station after problems that happened to the station's stabilizers about two weeks ago.
One of the station's gyroscopes, needed for its location, lost power during the last spacewalk, leaving only two active gyroscopes - the minimum necessary to operate the station.
The astronauts of the shuttle Discovery, when it arrives at the station, are prepared to repair the electrical circuits of the gyroscopes.
For news at the BBC
Yadan International Space Station
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