Astro Command Centre Download

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The Expedition 22/23 backup crew member Astronaut Furukawa participated in a training session relating to ESA's Columbus module at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Germany.

During the training, Astronaut Furukawa acquired knowledge on the Columbus laboratory's Communication System, Thermal Control System, and other subsystems including the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS). He also participated in a training session on malfunction procedures in cases of anomaly in such subsystems.

During the training session on the Biolab, Astronaut Furukawa received training on the outline of the rack systems, command and control, initial activation of the temperature control unit (TCU), outline and activation procedures of the incubator used for incubation of experiment samples, and procedures to replace equipment in the Biolab Glovebox.

Astronaut Furukawa also participated in a training session on the experiments sponsored by ESA. He reviewed outlines and procedures of ESA's experiment "Long Term Microgravity: A Model for Investigating Mechanisms of Heart Disease with New Portable Equipment (CARD)," which aims to examine increases in cardiac output and lowering blood pressure in microgravity. He also learned to operate the equipment for the 3D-Space experiment, which aims to investigate the effects of microgravity on the mental representation of spatial cues.

JAXA astronaut candidates Yui, Onishi, and Kanai continue with NASA's astronaut candidate (ASCAN) training course in the United States. In October, they participated in training sessions according to the schedules assigned to each candidate.

Astronaut Candidate Yui participated in training sessions at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) on robotics operations. Using a simulator, he learned the operations procedures of robotics systems and practiced operating the remote manipulator systems.

Astronaut Candidate Onishi participated in training sessions at JSC on the International Space Station (ISS) systems. He attended lectures on various ISS systems, and reviewed the storage locations of supplies in the full-scale ISS mock-up.

Astronaut Candidate Kanai participated in aircraft flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. He attended lectures on the cockpit and emergency procedures, and after practicing maneuvering of the aircraft using the flight simulator, he piloted the actual training aircraft.

Astronauts Noguchi and Yamazaki participated in Space Day 2009 TKSC Open Day at JAXA's Tsukuba Space Center (TKSC) from JSC in Houston, via a videoconference.

The two astronauts introduced the missions they will participate in, their current feelings and determination, and the things they are looking forward to during the mission.

A questions and answers session with the audience was held and various questions were asked, such as, what had been the hardest training so far, what made them become astronauts, and what they would miss the most during the mission.

At the end of the session, Astronaut Noguchi said, "I hope, through my activities as an ISS expedition crew member, everyone can realize the value and wonderfulness of the Japanese Experiment Module, Kibo." Astronaut Yamazaki said, "We are breathing life into Kibo. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues in space."

The mission's general debriefing by Astronaut Wakata was held at Shibuya C. C. Lemon Hall (Shibuya, Tokyo) on October 28, 2009.

Astronaut Wakata explained his mission from the launch of the STS-119 (15A) mission followed by a long-duration stay in the ISS, to returning aboard the STS-127 (2J/A) mission. He also introduced the newly completed Kibo, the interior of the ISS, and described life in space as well as how he felt staying in space.

Astronaut Hoshide served as a CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) at NASA's Mission Control Center (MCC) in Houston during undocking of the H-II Transfer Vehicle "Technical Demonstration Vehicle" (HTV-1). From the MCC, he monitored the HTV-1 departing from the ISS. The HTV-1 reentered Earth's atmosphere on November 2 and successfully completed the mission.

The Rubin Observatorywill provide unprecedented temporal resolution, depth and uniform photometry over an entire hemisphere, along with a real-time stream of alerts from the ever changing sky. To extract the scientific potential from that stream, the community needs brokers that offer the ability to filter, query, and manipulate the alerts, and combine them with external data sources. The LSST:UK consortiumhas been building just such a broker Lasair, alongside an International Data Access Centre (IDAC), building on its strengths and heritage in leading astronomical surveys, data processing and analysis. The hopeis that Lasair will be of value to the worldwide community, not just to the the UK consortium.

Lasair is a platform for scientists to make science; it does not try to make the science itself.Every LSST broker aims to filter the stream, but Lasair does this differently. Rather than scientists making python code that needs to be vetted, Lasair offers direct access with a staged approach: scientists can start with a simple, immediate mechanism using familiar SQL-like languages. These SQL-like queries can be custom made or users can choose and modify one of our pre-built and tested queries. These queries return an initial selection of objects, based on our rich value-added data content, and users can then run their own local code on the results. Users can build up to running their own code on both the stream and the database with high-throughput resources in the UK science collaboration called IRIS. The SQL filters and code can be made public, shared with a group of colleagues, copied, and edited.SQL filters can be escalated from static (run on command) to streaming filters, that run whenever new alerts arrive. A broad overview of the Lasair design is given in Figure 1.

Lasair ingests data with a pipeline of clusters: each cluster does a different job, some more compute/data intensive than others, so it is difficult to know a priori how much resource should be allocated to each. Our design gives flexibility: each cluster can be grown or reduced according to need. Also, there are various persistent data stores, again, each is driven by a resilient cluster that can be grown or reduced according to need. Figure 1 shows the concept: data enters the Kafka system on the left and progresses to the right. The green cluster reads, processes, and puts different data into the Kafka bus; as soon as that starts the yellow cluster pulls and pushes; eventually the whole pipeline is working. The clusters may also be reading and writing the data stores.We also include the web and annotator nodes in this picture (bottom and right), as well as the mining nodes, although they are not part of the data ingestion pipeline. The web server nodes support users by delivering web pages and responding to API requests. The annotator nodes may be far from the Lasair computing centre and not controlled by us, but they are in this picture because just like the others, they push data into the data storage and may read from Kafka.

The Kafka system is represented by the green nodes in Figure 2 as well as the grey arrow at the top. It is responsible for reading and caching the alert packets from the USA, as well as sending it to the compute nodes and receiving their resulting packets.

The Lasair webserver and API server allow users to control their interactions with the alert database and the stream. They can create a watchlist of their interesting sources, and Lasair will report crossmatches with members of the watchlist. They can define regions of the sky, and Lasair will report when alerts fall inside a region. They can define and save SQL queries that can run in real time as filters on the alert stream.

The Lasair API supports annotation: a structured external packet of extra information about a given object, that is stored in the annotations table in the SQL database. This could be, the result of running a machine-learning algorithm on the lightcurve, the classification created by another broker, or data from a follow-up observation on the object, for example a link to a spectrum. Users that put annotations into the Lasair database are vetted, and administrators then make it possible. That user will run a method in the Lasair API that pushes the annotation: all this can be automated, meaning the annotation may arrive within minutes of the observation that triggers it.

The Lasair project splits into two: the existing working version, Lasair-ZTF, that has been ingesting and exposing alerts from the ZTF survey for two years; and the future version Lasair-LSST, which is being developed based on the lessons learned from Lasair-ZTF. We are keeping the essentials of the user interface of Lasair-ZTF (static and streaming SQL queries, full database access, watchlists, classification and annotation), but are rebuilding the backend architecture for LSST event rates, using parallel services and scalable software.

We aim to facilitate all four science themes of LSST within the Lasair platform: Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the Solar System, the Changing Sky, and the Milky Way. We will do this by providing combined access to the alerts, to the annual data releases, and to external data sources, and by providing a flexible platform which creative users can adapt to their own ends. Design of Lasair is driven by a detailed Science Requirements Document which is available on request. We will have a review with broader international input if we are selected. Below we explore the issues arising from key science topics.

Similar to the above, we will allow users to select known AGN, upload their own AGN catalogues, and select flaring events in both active and passive galaxies. This will support the science of tidal disruption events, changing look quasars, AGN flares, microlensing of background QSOs by foreground galaxies, and unusual long lived nuclear transients. Lasair will match radio and X-ray archival data with optical spectra, and the LSST lightcurves. Users will be able to select on these criteria or upload their own watch list to Lasair to combine with lightcurve parameters.

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