Bhutan flag back from space

September 30: As Bhutanese students across the country observe this year as the “Year of Science and Technology”, Bhutan’s national flag has travelled to the International Space Station and returned.

The national flag left for the space station, carried by an US-based NASA astronaut Danny Olivas on August 28 and returned 13 days later on September 11.

The initiative to fly the Bhutanese flag to space was taken by His Royal Highness Dasho Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck through Dr Diana Natalico, president of university of Texas, El Paso (UTEP), who was Dasho’s guest at the Coronation 2008, according to officials of the royal media office. Danny Olivas is also a professor at the UTEP. Olivas was assigned as one of the four mission specialists for space shuttle mission STS-128, which was launched at the Kennedy space centre on August 28 at 11.59 pm and was dropped out of orbit on September 11 at 7.47 pm, closing out a successful space station re-supply mission.

Flying with a couple of other flags, including Bhutan’s national flag, Danny Olivas said, “Bhutan and my alma mater, university of Texas at El Paso, share an affiliation. The architecture at UTEP is all Bhutanese architecture and so the country, their government, and UT El Paso have a pretty close relationship. In discussions with the folks at UTEP and with representatives of the country, we were able to get a flag”.

The mission lasted for 13 days 20 hours 53 minutes and 45 seconds for a voyage spanning 5.7 million miles and 219 complete orbits since blastoff from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy space centre on August 28 at 11:59:37 pm, according to NASA’s report.

Olivas flew as a mission specialist and conducted two spacewalks during STS-117 in 2007. He was raised in El Paso, Texas. Olivas has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the UTEP, a master’s in mechanical engineering from the university of Houston and a doctorate in mechanical engineering and materials science from Rice university. He was selected as an astronaut in 1998. Commander Rick Sturckow led the STS-128 mission to the international space station aboard space shuttle Discovery with Kevin Ford serving as pilot.

Also serving aboard Discovery were mission specialists Patrick Forrester, José Hernández, John “Danny” Olivas, Christer Fuglesang, Nicole Stott and Timothy Kopra.

This was Discovery’s 37th mission to space and the 30th mission of a space shuttle dedicated to the assembly and maintenance of the international space station.

Discovery carried the Leonardo multi-purpose logistics module, containing a collection of experiments for studying the physics and chemistry of microgravity. Three space walks were carried out during the mission, which removed and replaced a materials processing experiment outside ESA’s Columbus module, and returned an empty ammonia tank assembly.

source: kuensel