International Space Station Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineer Mikhail Kornienko, who have been living in space since March of last year, are spending their last full day in orbit today. The duo are returning home Tuesday evening with Soyuz Commander Sergey Volkov who will lead the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft back to Earth. Kelly will …
Last summer’s historic flyby of Pluto and its moons generated a wealth of science data, capturing this new world which had never before been explored. Thousands of high resolution images, spectra and particle data were recorded on the spacecraft’s two solid state recorders as the spacecraft flew by its targets. It was a fast flyby, …
Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS)-II: Kopra completed flame tests for the BASS-II investigation. BASS-II examines the burning and extinction characteristics of a wide variety of fuel samples in microgravity. The results of the BASS-II experiment will be used in the development of strategies for flammability screening of materials to be used in spacecraft as …
Airway Monitoring: Kopra and Peake completed a European Space Agency (ESA) Airway Monitoring session which began this morning when the crewmembers assembled a Lithium Hydroxide (LIOH) canister and portable fan assembly to prepare for carbon dioxide removal in the US Airlock. Subsequently, Nitric Oxide (NO) measurements were taken of both crewmembers at nominal and reduced …
A pair of astronauts is exploring breathing risks during long term space missions today while a trio of crew members is packing a Soyuz spacecraft for the return home. NASA astronaut and two-time space station resident Tim Kopra joined first-time British astronaut for the Airway Monitoring experiment. That study explores the risk of breathing in …
Two pathfinders, or test versions, of solid rocket booster segments for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The booster segments were transported from Promontory, Utah, for pathfinder operations at the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) to prepare for Exploration Mission-1. The boosters, which are inert, …
Water Process Assembly (WPA) Status: Following yesterday’s WPA Catalytic Reactor replacement, the WPA successfully completed a process cycle and is working nominally. In addition, the crew returned Treadmill 2 (T2) and Water Recovery System (WRS)-1 Racks back to their nominal configuration. Airway Monitoring: Peake completed setup of a camera and hardware for Airway Monitoring …
Three International Space Station crew members, two of whom have been in orbit nearly a year, will complete their stay in space March 1. As they prepare for landing, the Expedition 46 crew is moving right along with human research, advanced space science and ongoing lab maintenance. One-Year crew mates Commander Scott Kelly and Flight …
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The February 2016 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your answer can be […]
Space Automated Bioproduct Laboratory (SABL): Today, for the NASA SABL facility, Peake set up two SABL units in in the US Laboratory module and configured power, data, and thermal connections to the rack. SABL is an upgrade to the long standing ISS incubator, Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA). SABL supports a wide variety of experiments in …
