The Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) was successfully relocated from the Unity module to the Tranquility module Wednesday morning. Engineers from Canada and Houston jointly maneuvered the PMM with the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Astronauts Terry Virts and Scott Kelly monitored the installation then successfully bolted the PMM in place on Tranquility. The duo are now …
The Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) was successfully relocated from the Unity module to the Tranquility module at 9:08 a.m. EDT Wednesday. The PMM was robotically relocated from the Earth-facing port of the Unity module on the International Space Station to the forward port of the Tranquility module in the next step to reconfigure the complex …
The International Space Station’s Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) was detached from a berthing mechanism on the Earth-facing port of the Unity module at 5:50 a.m. EDT by robotics flight controllers at Mission Control, Houston, working in tandem with Canadian Space Agency (CSA) engineers at the robotics support center located at CSA Headquarters in St. Hubert, Quebec, Canada. Used as a …
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The May 2015 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 a […]
Fine Motor Skills (FMS): Kelly and Kornienko performed their Flight Day 60 FMS sessions this morning. In the Fine Motor Skills experiment, crew members perform a series of interactive tasks on a touchscreen tablet. Fine motor skills are crucial for successfully interacting with touch-based technologies, repairing sensitive equipment, and a variety of other tasks. In …
A cargo module is getting ready to be relocated from the Unity module to the Tranquility module Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, the crew also conducted science, health checks and Japanese robotics work. Commander Terry Virts and One-Year crew member Scott Kelly prepared the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) for its relocation. The duo closed the hatch on …
Congratulations to reader Suzi for being the first to answer our April puzzler. As Suzi noted, the image shows South Korea’s Sisan Island. While Suzi (and several other readers) thought the offshore grid pattern was evidence of oyster or fish farming, our research suggests it is mainly seaweed farming. Several sources cited the western part of South Korea’s […]
Fluid Shifts Before, During and After Prolonged Space Flight and Their Association with Intracranial Pressure and Visual Impairment (Fluid Shifts): Kelly and Padalka performed a system test of the Ultrasound in the Service Module. The crew configured the ultrasound, laptop, and video, and with assistance from the ground remote guider, then performed an ultrasound scan. …
Ocular Health (OH): Virts and Cristoforetti completed their Return (R)-30 OH today. They each performed ultrasounds of their eye with the assistance of the other crewmember acting as a Crew Medical Officer (CMO). Virts, again with Cristoforetti as his CMO, performed an ultrasound echocardiogram. The Ocular Health protocol calls for a systematic gathering of physiological …
Researcher Amy McNally spent two weeks in Yanco, Australia to participate in the three week Soil Moisture Active Passive Experiment-4 (SMAPEx-4) field campaign in May. The field campaign measures soil moisture and related data using ground and airborne instruments. The data is used to validate actual data and algorithms from the SMAP satellite. In the […]
