Halos have a long and rich history in religious art, usually symbolizing the presence of someone or something divine. In the physical sciences, the beautiful displays of light are a sign of something more ordinary—the presence of hexagonal, plate-shaped ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds. As gravity pulls the ice crystals downward, their faces […]
Food Warmer Status: Today, Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Hopkins performed an in-flight repair of the secondary ground wire then placed Food Warmer (S/N 1001) into an alternate location (Express Rack 8 Locker 6), where it subsequently experienced an additional over current trip. Ground teams will continue developing troubleshooting plans for S/N 1001. Meanwhile, the Crew has …
ENERGY (Astronaut’s Energy Requirements for Long-Term Space Flight): Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Hopkins continued with his standardized diet protocol for his 10 day session of ESA’s ENERGY experiment. Today he collected water samples from the Potable Water Dispenser in the US Laboratory module, collected a urine sample, and logged all food and drink consumed. A loss …
Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Low Temperature Loop (LTL) Pump Troubleshooting, Part 2: Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wakata used a multimeter to take resistance measurements to determine if there is a short circuit in the power feed path from Power Distribution Box (PDB) TCS1 to the LTL Pump Package. This troubleshooting is part of the investigation into …
Columbus Cycle 14 Transition: Col-CC operations to transition the ground and onboard Columbus systems from software version 13 to 14 is proceeding nominally. Columbus cycle 14 made improvements to the system stability and robustness, incorporated provisions for Solid State Recorder (SSD) coming up on ATV-5, the Video Data Processing Unit (VDPU) MkII, new external payload …
Russian Segment (RS) EVA 37A: Kotov (EV1) and Ryazansky (EV2) performed RS EVA 37A within 6 hours and 8 minutes duration. During the EVA, Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Hopkins was isolated in the Mini-Research Module (MRM)-2/36S while FE-4 Tyurin, FE-5 Mastracchio, and FE-6 Wakata had access to all modules forward of the Service Module (SM). Tasks completed …
USOS Food Warmer Troubleshooting: On January 16th, the Express Rack 6 drawer in which the Lab Food Warmer resides, experienced an over current condition. Since then, the crew had been using a degraded Food Warmer within the Lab. Today, Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Hopkins replaced a damaged cabled associated with the non-degraded warmer then performed a successful …
Editor’s Note: Jeffrey Kargel is a hydrologist at the University of Arizona and for the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space project. This is his account of the research he did during the aftermath of a deadly flash flood in Nepal’s Seti River Valley to determine its cause. You can read more about the event […]
Body Measures Investigation: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Wakata, with operator assistance from FE-3 Hopkins, set up cameras and cabin video, performed body marker instrumentation, and collected calibration and body pose photos and circumference measurements. This is Wakata’s flight day 80 session, and is the third of six times he will conduct these measurements. The goal of …
Ocular Health (OH) Tonometry Examination: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Wakata acting as Crew Medical Officer (CMO) helped measure Hopkins’s blood pressure and vital signs and then conducted a vision and tonometry test on Hopkins. This was Hopkins’s Flight Day 120 session, which is the final session he will conduct on-orbit for this test. The Ocular Health protocol …
