Blogs

VIIRS Day-Night Band data is spectacular, but takes a little bit of work to visualize.

As the ER-2 pilot got ready for his first flight out of Fairbanks, I wondered what it’s like piloting the aircraft, all by himself, 65,000 feet up. The NASA ER-2 pilots for this campaign, Tim Williams and Denis Steele, are flying the MABEL instrument to study the glaciers and ice sheets. Before they fly, they […]

Cardio Ox Ultrasound and Blood Pressure (BP) Operations: With Commander (CDR) Swanson as operator, Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wiseman collected ultrasound and BP data for the Flight Day (FD) 60 Cardio Ox investigation. The goal of Cardio Ox is to determine whether biological markers of oxidative and inflammatory stress are elevated during and after space flight …

NanoRack Cubesat Deployer-Quad (NRCSD-Q) Installation: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Gerst installed two sets of NRCSD-Qs on the slide table in the JEM Airlock (JEMAL). The Cubesats were delivered on Orb-2 and will be deployed via the JEM Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS) at a later time. Clean Bench (CB) Maintenance and Valve Check: Commander (CDR) Swanson cleaned …

Debris Avoidance Maneuver (DAM): Ground teams evaluated tracking data yesterday and throughout the night for a possible conjunction with Object #38925. Due to inconsistent tracking on the object, a 32 second, .5m/sec. Service Module (SM) main engine DAM was performed at 5:56am CDT. To protect 56 Progress (56P) 4-orbit rendezvous today, the DAM was performed …

Conjunction with Object #38925 Status: Ground teams evaluated tracking data throughout the day for a possible conjunction with Object #38925. Because tracking on the object was inconsistent ground teams began planning for a Debris Avoidance Maneuver (DAM). Time of Closest Approach (TCA) for the object is tomorrow at 8:16 am CDT. Unless the tracking data …

The Alaska G-LiHT Campaign is a partnership between scientists and NASA and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). The design for the research is to link field measurements of forest structure, vegetation composition, and soils with airborne remote sensing data from G-LiHT. At this stage of the mission, the flight planning looks a little like a technicolor version […]

Text by Robert Foster City College of New York – CUNY Here we are ending the 4th full day aboard the R/V Endeavor, and I can hardly believe it! Time really does fly when you’re having fun! Amid the rush of running cables, installing sensors, learning new and exciting science and making new friends, I […]

55 Progress (55P) Undock:  55P successfully undocked from the ISS at 4:44pm CDT. Progress will remain in orbit for the non-ISS-related “Radar-Progress” experiment. Final deorbit burn is planned for July 31 at 4:54pm CDT. Intravehicular Activity (IVA) Clothing Study: Over the weekend, Commander (CDR) Swanson, Flight Engineer (FE)-1 Skvortsov, and FE-2 Artemyev started their 15-day …

Text by Doug MortonNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center I have always enjoyed looking out the window of a plane. From the typical cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner, the view of lakes and fields and mountains is familiar (but still fascinating) to a NASA scientist used to looking at Earth from space. Vegetation and land use follow the […]