Blogs

For a few seconds early Thursday, night turned into day as an extremely bright fireball lit the pre-dawn sky over much of Arizona, blinding all-sky meteor cameras as far away as western New Mexico. Based on the latest data, a small asteroid estimated at 5 feet (1-2 meters) in diameter – with a mass of a …

By Walt Meier Jun. 1, 2016 — We started our last day of the camp with a morning visit to the Inupiat Heritage Center to learn more about the indigenous local culture. Many of the Inupiat in Barrow still live their traditional subsistence lifestyle – hunting, trapping, and fishing for food. They do however take advantage […]

NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer #8 (NRCSD#8) Deployment Operations: The final NRCSD #8 silo was successfully deployed yesterday at 9:15 PM CDT which concludes three consecutive days of deployment operations. Eight silos were deployed during these operations, each containing two CubeSats for a total of 16 Doves. The Dove satellites are a fleet of nanosatellites that enables …

The week’s final set of CubeSats were deployed Wednesday night as the new BEAM goes through a series of leak checks before next week’s entry. Back inside the orbital lab, the six-member Expedition 47 crew conducted advanced space research sponsored by private and public institutions. A final pair of CubeSats was deployed outside the Kibo …

After escaping from heavy seas, we are heading back to port. This will be not a short travel, it will take about 5 days to arrive at Woods Hole. But all the time and effort of science team and crew members are worthy in order to explore one of the most amazing ecosystems: oceans. One […]

PMEL Aerosol Group Aerosols are another name for particulate matter in the atmosphere. Aerosols are important because in clear skies they can scatter sunlight back to space can act to help cool the planet. Aerosols are also important because they can act as a site for water to condense on and form cloud particles. Particles […]

NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer #8 (NRCSD#8) Deployment Operations: Following completion of successful deployment of 5 NRCSD #8 silos, one more silo was successfully deployed last night and another earlier this morning. The last deploy is planned for tonight at 9:15 PM CDT, which will conclude three consecutive days of deployment operations for NRCSD#8. Each silo contains …

1) In most of the world, water hyacinth (Eichhonria crassipes) — a fast-growing, aquatic plant — is loathed for its ability to reproduce so quickly that it can blanket large portions of lakes and ponds with a thick mat of vegetation. 2) In a lake with strongly entrenched water hyacinth, plants interlock into such dense […]

More CubeSats are due to be deployed today contributing to humanitarian and environmental research. The crew is also continuing biomedical science to improve the health of astronauts in space and humans on Earth. The final set of CubeSats will be released tonight from a small satellite deployer outside Japan’s Kibo laboratory module. This current fleet …

By Walt Meier May 31, 2016 — The morning sessions this week have been inside in a classroom setting. It’s been like being back in school, which has been quite fun (believe it or not). For the first four days I’ve been a student, but today I got to be the teacher. I gave the class […]