Blogs

In spite of the rough weather, the FSG fellows have taken advantage of some calmer days to deploy a radiometer. A radiometer measures apparent optical properties or AOPs. AOPs describe how the light is entering and exiting the water column. Remember that sunlight contains a whole spectrum of colors that are determined by their wavelength. The character of the light that is reflected back out of the water can be different than what went in. More specifically, the wavelengths or colors that are reflected back out are the colors that were not absorbed or scattered forward.

Skin-B: Flight Engineer (FE) 3 Swanson conducted his first Skin-B data collection using the Tewameter probe to measure the skin barrier function; the Visioscan Camera to measure skin surface topography; and the Corneometer probe to measure skin hydration. The Skin-B experiment will improve understanding of skin aging, which is slow on Earth but very much …

For the second year in a row, an image from the Canary Islands took the championship of Tournament: Earth. In 2013, a submarine volcano near El Hierro Island was the crowd favorite. This year, it was a shot of the entire island chain that dominated the vote. When “Trailing the Canaries” faced “Activity at Kliuchevskoi” in […]

54 Progress (54P) Undock: 54P successfully undocked from the ISS at 8:58am CDT. Progress will remain in orbit for the non-ISS-related “Radar-Progress” experiment April 13-18. Deorbit is planned for April 18 at 9:52am CDT. SpaceX-3 Preparations: In preparation for SpaceX (SpX)-3 arrival, Commander (CDR) Wakata and Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Mastracchio  performed Dragon Robot 3 Onboard …

SpaceX announced Friday they will launch the next cargo mission to the International Space Station on Monday, April 14 at 4:58 p.m. EDT. The Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying a Dragon spacecraft loaded 5,000 pounds of experiments, crew supplies and other cargo. The launch window in instantaneous. …

Lab Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Troubleshooting:  On Monday, Remote Power Controller Module (RPCM) LAD62B_A RPC 12 experienced a trip.  This RPC powers six selector valves internal to the Lab CDRA.  Today, troubleshooting was performed with Mastracchio accessing the Atmosphere Revitalization (AR) rack through the Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) opening. He inspected and verified …

Last week I had the privilege of helping judge the 22nd Malofiej Awards. Presented by the Spanish Chapter of the Society for News Design, Malofiej 22 recognized the best news infographics of 2013. (For the uninitiated, infographics aren’t limited to those posters illustrating tenuously related facts with a handful of pie charts. A good infographic […]

By Clément Miège It might be hard to believe but yes, we are still in town! We have been delayed for a full week now, every day getting ready for a possible flight the next day, and every morning, we get the same message: “Unfortunately, there will be no flight to the ice cap today […]

By Ludovic Brucker  Kulusuk, 31 March 2014 — When I started writing this post, my opening was: Greetings from (still) white-out and windy Kulusuk 🙁 Updated opening sentence: Greetings from now rainy Kulusuk 🙁 🙁 The nice thing about weather forecasts is that they change all the time, so you never get bored watching them. […]

As many of you probably heard, there was an 8.2-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northern Chile on Tuesday night. As with any earthquake around a coastal region or on the ocean floor, there is a concern about the formation of a tsunami. However, the wave height (the height from the base of the wave at the water line to the top of the wave) in the deep, open ocean is very small, maybe a few feet tall. As you can imagine, a boat or ship in the open ocean wouldn’t even notice such a tiny wave.