Robonaut Setup: Commander (CDR) Swanson gathered tools and set up the Robonaut hardware in preparation for mobility upgrades tomorrow. Robonaut is a dexterous humanoid robot designed with the versatility and dexterity to manipulate hardware, exhibit greater endurance than humans and react safely when bumped or interacted with in a way that was not expected. Story …
Circadian Rhythms: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Gerst removed the Circadian Rhythms hardware to end a 36 hour data take and downloaded the data to the ground for analysis. The main objective of the experiment is to get a better basic understanding of alterations in circadian rhythms in humans during long-term space flights. This data will provide …
We have completed our analyses and here’s what we know: At 10:19 PM Central Daylight Time on August 2 (Saturday night), NASA meteor cameras detected a very bright fireball at an altitude of 57 miles above Hoodoo Road just east of the town of Beechgrove, TN. The meteoroid, which was about 15 inches in diameter …
Binary Colloidal Alloy Test (BCAT)-Canada 1 (C1) Image Transfer: Commander (CDR) Swanson transferred BCAT-C1 images, set the camera intervalometer and verified the camera was set up to take images of the BCAT-C1 samples. The sample contains a more viscous fluid which requires more mixing on-orbit than previous samples. BCAT-KP provides a platform for material and …
We published a photograph of a lone turquoise melt pond as our Image of the Day on August 2, 2014. Although that was one of the largest that scientists participating in the 2014 MABEL campaign saw, it certainly wasn’t the only one. In fact, that melt pond had plenty of company—and we had no shortage […]
Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS)-II Operations: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Gerst conducted flame tests for the BASS-II investigation which examines the burning and extinction characteristics of a wide variety of fuel samples in microgravity. The experiment will guide strategies for materials flammability screening for use in spacecraft as well as provide valuable data on solid …
For more than 65 hours this month, NASA’s high-altitude ER-2 aircraft flew from Fairbanks over melting sea ice, glaciers, forests, permafrost, lakes, volcanoes and more. It zigged and zagged over the Beaufort Sea, and soared straight over the Bagley Ice Field. The goal: to use a laser altimeter called MABEL to take elevation measurements over […]
Over four missions, astronaut Carl Walz logged 231 days in space. Before the launch of the International Space Station resupply Orb-2 mission from Wallops Island, Virginia, in July 2014, he described a few of views of Earth from space that he remembers best. Walz is now Vice President of Human Space Flight Operations at Orbital, […]
Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS)-II Operations: Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wiseman conducted flame tests for the BASS-II investigation which examines the burning and extinction characteristics of a wide variety of fuel samples in microgravity. Today, Wiseman burned four samples of 2 centimeter wide acrylic slabs. The slabs measured 1, 2, 4, and 5 millimeters thick. …
After nearly 20 years, it’s time for me to leave NASA and do something radically different—help Planet Labs develop world-class satellite imagery. OK, not that radically different. In any case, now is as good a time as ever to point to some of my favorite visualizations. If you’d like like to get in touch with […]
