Blogs

New Status: Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) Zero Robotics (ZR):  Following last Wednesday’s successful practice run, today Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Cassidy and FE-6 Nyberg conducted the competition finals event with a live student audience. This investigation establishes an opportunity for students to design research for the ISS. As part of a competition, students …

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaked on Aug. 12 and 13, 2013, filling the sky with streaks of light caused by the meteoroids burning up in Earth’s atmosphere. Big meteor showers like the Perseids, are caused when Earth travels through a region of space filled with debris shed by a comet. The Perseids have been …

New Status: USOS Crew Off Duty: The USOS crew was off duty today for compensation for HTV ingress activities performed on Saturday. H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-4 Cargo Operations: Saturday and Sunday the crew performed 13 hours of HTV cargo operations, however through efficiency, the crew completed approximately 25.5 hours of cargo transfers.  Today, the crew …

New Status: H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-4 Hatch Opening: This morning, Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Parmitano and FE-6 Nyberg successfully completed HTV-4 vestibule outfitting. The crew removed the HTV Hatch Thermal Blanket, installed power jumpers, removed the Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM) Controller Panel Assemblies (CPAs), installed an HTV Equalization and Inter-module Ventilation (IMV) supply Jumper, equalized pressures …

New Status: H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-4 Capture and Berthing: Robotics Ground Controllers powered up the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) in Hot Backup configuration.  Cassidy, Nyberg and Parmitano monitored the HTV4 approach from the Cupola Robotics Work Station (RWS) and successfully captured HTV using the SSRMS at approximately 6:22 am CDT. Robotics Ground Controllers then maneuvered …

New Status: H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-4 Status: HTV’s forward Reaction Control System (RCS)-A oxidizer latch valve  exhibited two recurrences of the unexpected “closed” indication during the past 24 hours. HTV continues to fly on the RCS-B string with RCS-A available as a backup. If this occurs on the RCS-B string during free flight, Japan Aerospace …

New Status: Advanced Colloids Experiment (ACE)-1: FE-6 Nyberg mixed the 6th of 10 wells for the ACE-1 experiment.  ACE-1 is the first in a series of microscopic imaging investigations of materials which contain small colloidal particles which have the specific characteristic of remaining evenly dispersed and distributed within the material. This investigation takes advantage of …

New Status: H-II Transfer Vehicle 4 (HTV4) Status:  Yesterday HTV4 telemetry indicated that the Reaction Control System (RCS)-A latching valve was closed unexpectedly. Ground teams tested the latching valve today and determined that both the latch and RCS-A are working nominally. They concluded that the anomaly was a transient in the switch that detects the …

New Status: H-II Transfer Vehicle 4 (HTV4) Status:  HTV4 launched successfully Saturday August 3rd at 2:48 PM CDT from Tanegashima Space Center, Japan. Capture and berthing are planned for Friday August 9th at 6:30 AM CDT. Over the weekend, Reaction Control System (RCS) and Main Engines thruster testing and leak checks were performed on both …

New Status: InSPACE-3 Operations: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Nyberg performed her first two test sessions of InSPACE-3  today.  InSPACE-3 obtains data on fluids containing ellipsoid-shaped particles that change the physical properties of the fluids in response to magnetic fields.  InSPACE-3 collects and records data on fluids containing ellipsoid-shaped particles that change the physical properties of the …