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As announced in a previous post, at the end of September, it was believed that Belgian astronaut Frank De Winne will go 6 months to space.

Today it’s made official, the European Space Agency (ESA) has assigned crews for the next flight opportunities.
And Belgian Frank De Winne was assigned to join mission 19 and stay in the International Space Station for 6 months.

The trip to the ISS itself will go through somewhere in May 2009.
He will make the voyage to the ISS in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft together with Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk.
After 2002, it’s Frank’s second time in space, but now he’ll stay a bit longer than 1 week in the ISS.

It’s believed that Frank De Winne will go to the ISS for 6 months in 2009, althoug this isn’t official confirmed.
He will fly to the ISS with the Russian Sojoez. If this goes trough, it will be his second time in space, after his spaceflight in october/november 2002, also with the Russian Sojoez capsule.

But maybe he’ll go to space even earlier, as he’s french’s Léopold Eyharts backup who’s set to go to space in december this year. The launch is sheduled for 6 december. They will do their trip to space with the spaceshuttle Atlantis. The main job they have to do is to connect the lab-module Columbus to the ISS.

Hopefully this will be covered on NASA tv, so we can watch this.

I do hope nothing will happen with the French astronaut, but deep down my Belgian hearth and voice is saying let Frank go. Who know’s, maybe Léopold will get sick or needs a face lift surgery at the last moment? And then it will be Frank’s turn.

As long as we’re talking about space, I can give you a short update about Q-music’s trip to space give away.
I did the test on their site. They’ve asked 30 space related questions and the 20 best scores and fastest times to awnser of each province, were selected to take part at the elemination rounds. I scored 27 out of 30, but this wasn’t good enough it seems. Too bad for me.  From these 100 candidates, they went to 25, 5 people of each province.
At the moment they are eleminating these 25 to 5 people who still can win the trip to space.

Today Q-music, a belgian radio station announced they’ll give away a prize that’s never been giving away before anywhere in the world.
And what for a prize it is, the winner wins a trip to Space!

You’ll have to be at least 18 years old and in good shape.
They say anybody can participate, but I think only people from Belgium can try and win the trip to space. Lucky me then
As from the September the 7th, we can join the game. Then they will select a few people, how I’m still not sure, but I think it’s going to be something like being the 100th person to send an SMS with a right answer or something like that. (They do other things like this also).

Is this for real?
Yes it is!!!

Who ever wins this, is going to space in a Suborbital spaceflight in 2010.

You will depart from a real Spaceport that’s currently being build less than an hour drive from Dubai (maybe you can see the Burj Dubai, the highest tower in the world)
The Ras Al-Khaimah Spaceport will be in close proximity to one of the world’s leading tourist destinations.

Ras Al-Khaimah is the most northern of the seven emirates that form the United Arab Emirates, which also includes Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, and Fujairah. It borders Oman on its Northern and Eastern limits. It covers 1,684 sq. km, has 64 km of pristine natural coastline, and beautiful mountains on the northern boarder. Ras Al-Khaimah has witnessed massive development in recent years and now boasts one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the region, a world-leading ceramics industry, and a burgeoning tourist sector with world-class hotels and resorts. Ras Al-Khaimah has embarked on an ambitious development program including investments in infrastructure improvement, tourism, shopping, and efforts to attract industrial and commercial enterprises. Among the most important of these endeavors is the establishment of the Ras Al-Khaimah Free Trade Zone. The Ras Al-Khaimah International Airport is rapidly expanding, and offers excellent services and facilities for all types of flight operations.

A space shuttle brings you up to 100km above the earth, shuts down the rocket engine and you can enjoy being the 3th belgian (After Dirk Frimout and Frank De Winne) in space and the scenery for a couple of minutes.
This 100km above the earth is outside the earth’s atmosphere and known as the “astronauts altitude”. If you’ve been there you are officially an astronaut.

All of this will cost the radio-station $102,000 (including $4,000 cancellation insurance)

Well I’m certainly going to test my luck a few times to win this, wish me luck!

Michel Fournier, the man who’s trying to go faster then sound in FREE FALL.
He’s born on May 4th, 1944, and a 62 year old Frenchman and a former colonel of the French army reserve and parachute officer.
With more than 8,500 jumps, and over a hundred from very high altitudes, he was named an officer of France’s National Order of Merit
with the aeronautics medal and holds the French record with his free-fall jump of 12,000 meters

He wants to try to set this record this month above the forests of Canada at an altitude of 40 Km.
For example, a fighter jet flies at 20km high and passenger airplanes flies at 12km.
With a Helium-balloon he’ll get to the Stratosphere and hopefully land alive about 10.5 minutes later on the ground.
On this decent he’ll also will brake 4 records.
1. The highest free fall ever (until now 31,333 meters)
2. The longest free fall (He’s hoping to free fall 6 minutes and 25 seconds)
3. The highest manned balloonflight (since 1966 this is 37km, by Nick Piantanida)
4. Fastest free fall

He will wear a special suite based on the space-suites astronauts use. In this suite he can survive for 1 hour in an environment
with only 1HectoPascale pressure (1/1000 of the normal earth’s pressure)
On his record breaking jump he’ll be facing different kind of dangers
- The risk for a long embolie is high
- The body itself can ‘explode’ at these speeds
- The big question is what will happen with the body if he breaks the sound barrier?