With the 2016 election now over, Donald Trump has been elected to be the 45th president of the United States. Now the long process of creating a transition team and appointing some 4,000 people to various positions begins. But what does that mean for NASA, specifically, the International Space Station?
Read MoreIn late October, NASA published a fly-through video of the International Space Station in ultrahigh-definition. It was filmed by one of the crew members during the scheduled sleep period in order to see a unique view of the outpost: night-time on the ISS.
The video was produced by Harmonic exclusively for NASA TV. Starting with the cupola window, the video flies throughout most of the outpost.
Read MoreThe second half of 2016 has been rough for International Space Station mission planning. All of the visiting vehicles that service the outpost have had some delay or another.
First, in early August the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced their Kounotori 6 spacecraft would be postponed from its Sept. 30, 2016 launch date due to a "slight leak" found in the pluming of the cargo ship.
Read MoreOn Nov. 2, 2000, the first three people to inhabit the International Space Station arrived in their Soyuz TM-31 spacecraft.
The trio – NASA astronaut William Sheperd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev – docked to the aft port of the Zvezda service module. At the time, the ISS consisted of only three pressurized modules.
Read MoreThree space-flyers boarded their Soyuz spacecraft, undocked, deorbited and landed back on Earth early Monday morning local Kazakh time.
Soyuz MS-01 landed on the Step of Kazakhstan at 9:58 a.m. Oct. 30 (03:58 GMT / 11:58 p.m. EDT Oct. 29). Returning to Earth after 115 days in space were Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins.
Read MoreWith the Oct. 21 docking of Soyuz MS-02 to the International Space Station's Poisk module, the crew size for the football field-sized orbiting outpost returned to six, albeit for only about two weeks.
Launched Oct. 19 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, three members of Expedition 49 took a 34-orbit route to catch up with the ISS and test new equipment on the upgraded Soyuz-MS variant.
Read MoreTwo Chinese astronauts launched Oct. 17 China Standard Time in their Shenzhou 11 spacecraft. Two days later, Oct. 19, the duo rendezvoused and docked with the one-month-old Tiangong 2 space laboratory.
Docking took place at 3:31 a.m. China Standard Time (19:31 GMT Oct. 18). A few hours later, after leak checks, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong opened hatches between the two vehicles and entered the one-room laboratory.
Read MoreNASA recently released a quick rapid-fire video about some of the basics of living in the International Space Station. Astronaut Reid Wiseman answers questions about orbital life while walking around the full scale mock-up of the station at the Johnson Space Center.
Wiseman was selected to be an astronaut in 2009. At the time, he was a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy. He developed a desire to become an astronaut after seeing a space shuttle soar into space in 2001.
Read MoreOrbital ATK launched their OA-5 Cygnus cargo ship, named the S.S. Alan Poindexter, on the return-to-flight of the company's Antares rocket. The vehicle lifted off at 7:45 p.m. EDT (11:45 GMT) Oct. 18 out of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Launch Pad 0A in Virginia.
This was the seventh planned launch of a Cygnus spacecraft and, once it arrives at the International Space Station, will be the sixth to dock with the outpost. Two years ago, the Orb-3 Cygnus was lost when the Antares rocket carrying it into orbit failed seconds after liftoff.
Read MoreAfter six months docked to the aft port of the Zvezda module of the International Space Station, the unpiloted Russian Progress MS-02 cargo ship left the outpost. A couple hours later, it was commanded to burn up over the Pacific Ocean.
Undocking occurred at 5:37 a.m. EDT (09:37 GMT) Oct. 14. Loaded springs initially pushed Progress away from ISS. The two passively separated for about 3 minutes. Once the craft was about 20 meters away from the orbiting outpost, a departure burn was initiated to increase the distance from ISS ahead of the deorbit burn.
Read MoreOrbital Velocity is designed to be "living time capsule" about the International Space Station.
This project is an attempt to bridge an information gap between space agencies and companies, as well as a public that supports space endeavors with their tax dollars. Despite the importance of the space station, the general public doesn't always know what is happening aboard this amazing complex on a regular basis. Research being conducted isn't always readily available and what information is out there can sometimes be difficult to understand. Some people aren't even aware there is an active space program, let alone a space station.
Orbital Velocity hopes to change that by building a database of information through blogs, a website, small videos and longer documentary-like series'.
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