Space

668 Articles

ISS Medical Emergency: An Orbital Ambulance Ride

January 15, 2026 by 21 Comments

Over the course of its nearly 30 years in orbit, the International Space Station has played host to more “firsts” than can possibly be counted. When you’re zipping around Earth at five miles per second, even the most mundane of events takes on a novel element. Arguably, that’s the point of a crewed orbital research complex in the first place — to study how humans can live and work in an environment that’s so unimaginably hostile that something as simple as eating lunch requires special equipment and training.

Today marks another unique milestone for the ISS program, albeit a bittersweet one. Just a few hours ago, NASA successfully completed the first medical evacuation from the Station, cutting the Crew-11 mission short by at least a month. By the time this article is released, the patient will be back on terra firma and having their condition assessed in California.  This leaves just three crew members on the ISS until NASA’s Crew-12 mission can launch in early February, though it’s possible that mission’s timeline will be moved up.

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A photo of the thrust meter from the Apollo lunar module

Apollo Lunar Module Thrust Meter Lives Again

January 3, 2026 by 8 Comments

[Mike Stewart] powers up a thrust meter from an Apollo lunar module. This bit of kit passed inspection on September 25, 1969. Fortunately [Mike] was able to dig up some old documentation which included the pin numbers. Score! It’s fun to see the various revisions this humble meter went through. Some of the latest revisions are there to address an issue where there was no indication upon failure, so they wired in a relay which could flip a lamp indicator if the device lost power.

This particular examination of this lunar thrust module is a good example of how a system’s complexity can quickly get out of hand. Rather than one pin there are two pins to indicate auto or manual thrust, each working with different voltage levels; the manual thrust is as given but the auto thrust is only the part of the thrust that gets added to a baseline thrust, so they need to be handled differently, requiring extra logic and wiring for biasing the thrust meter when appropriate. The video goes into further detail. Toward the end of the video [Mike] shows us what the meter’s backlights look like when powered.

If you’re interested in Apollo mission technology be sure to check out Don Eyles Walks Us Through The Lunar Module Source Code.

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