Satellite Phones Delivered by Progress

Friday's launch of a Russian Progress rocket marked the start of new connectivity in space: the unmanned mission, to resupply the ISS, brought something that's a lot more common on Earth than in space: satellite phones.

The communicators would probably work just fine in the Station's low orbit, but they weren't sent just so American Edward Lu and Russian Yuri Malenchenko (right) could keep from being bored, or to save on NASA's bandwidth bill: they were sent so that, when the astronauts do get to come home, somebody will be able to find them.

Remember last May, when Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and NASA astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit landed a few hundred miles from where they were supposed to, and nobody could find them for a couple hours? The thought is, if they had been packing a sat-phone, they could have alerted rescuers, and had some reassuring words as the retrieval went into gear.

Oh -- and the Progress mission brought the usual: fresh food, water, movies, toilet paper... Those two boys have been up there since April 28, and their experimenting has been curtailed due to the short-manning of the ISS and the possibility of the necessity to extend consumables and provisions.

FMI: www.nasa.gov