Not content with looking at ice from the air, on their day off from flying last week the MABEL and ER-2 team decided to look at ice underground. About a dozen of us went to visit the Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility, a U.S. Army site north of Fairbanks, Alaska, where the crew is based for a summer campaign.
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The July 2014 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 […]
Force Shoes: Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wiseman conducted an Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) exercise session using Force Shoes which were calibrated during Treadmill 2 (T2) exercise last week. The data from the ARED exercise session will be used to measure the loads experienced during ARED exercise. Robonaut Operations: Commander (CDR) Swanson continued with Robonaut upgrade …
Fly north from Fairbanks and after a while, you’ll be off the map. Literally, as ER-2 pilot Tim Williams found out Thursday when he flew the NASA aircraft on a mission to the North Pole and back. “At some point, the map’s not there,” he said at a post-flight debrief Thursday evening. Williams flew due […]
Text and photos provided by Doug Morton NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center NASA and USDA Forest Service scientists are collaborating on an ambitious project to inventory forest resources in the Tanana Valley of interior Alaska, a region the size of Iowa. The pilot project, funded by the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station […]
Orbital-2 (Orb-2) Ingress: Following yesterday’s successful capture and berthing of Cygnus, the crew completed vestibule outfitting, ingressed the vehicle, and began transferring cargo to ISS. Robonaut Operations: Commander (CDR) Swanson removed the Robonaut panels and battery backpack to gain access to the Robonaut processor and board. Tomorrow, Swanson will continue Robonaut operations. The Robonaut upgrades …
I didn’t know a hybrid sedan could take a corner that fast. We were sitting in the car, adjacent to the runway where NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude aircraft was about to land. Tim Williams – an ER-2 pilot who will fly later this campaign – was driving, poised to speed down the runway after the plane, […]
Orbital-2 (Orb-2) Capture/Berthing: The crew successfully captured Cygnus using the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) at 5:39 am CDT. The ground used the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) to maneuver Cygnus into position near the Node 2 Nadir berthing port for Passive Common Berthing Mechanism (PCBM) inspection and berthing. Following berthing, the crew proceeded …
Starting July 2014, scientists with NASA’s Ship-Aircraft Bio-Optical Research (SABOR) experiment will make observations from ship and aircraft off the U.S. Atlantic Coast aimed at advancing the technology needed to measure microscopic plankton in the ocean from space. For the next three weeks, follow SABOR researchers as they work toward finding out how and why […]
Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS)-II Operations: Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wiseman completed two 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 …
