Notes written on the side of the GPM shipping container. Credit: NASA/Ellen Gray “To: Japan, Love: GSFC.” So says a note, written in black marker on the outside of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) shipping container. This is at least the fourth satellite that has been transported in this particular container. Stenciled officially on […]
Countermeasures System (CMS) Periodic Fitness Evaluation (PFE): Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Mastracchio with assistance from FE-3 Hopkins, performed his PFE today. PFEs monitor crewmembers’ overall fitness levels, to ensure that cardiovascular and musculoskeletal health and performance is satisfactory. The activity consists of performing a graded exercise test on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization …
Capillary Flow Experiment (CFE) Interior Corner Flow (ICF)-8 Test: Today, Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Wakata set up and initiated a CFE ICF-8 run. CFE ICF studies capillary flow in interior corners of vessels with various geometries. The ICF-8 vessel has vanes aligned along the vertex of a teardrop shaped cylinder. Liquid shifts from the base of …
Before the first survey flight of an IceBridge field campaign can get under way a lot of things have to happen. Instruments have to be installed on the plane, researchers need to get into the field and ground stations need to be set up. IceBridge’s McMurdo-based Antarctic campaign is the result of a year and […]
Right now if you want to take a look at the Global Precipitation Measurement mission’s Core Observatory, you can’t. As of last weekend, it’s sealed up inside a giant white shipping container, all prepped for its long journey to Japan where it will launch in early 2014. This isn’t your typical satellite delivery. As Project […]
Ocular Health (OH) Measurements: Flight Engineer (FE)-3 Hopkins completed a series of activities in support of his flight day 60 session of Ocular Health, the 3rd of his 6 planned sessions. FE-6 Wakata performed the vision, tonometry and blood pressure measurements tests, with ground experts providing remote support, on Hopkins. Researchers believe that the measurement …
Happy 15th Birthday, International Space Station! The first International Space Station component, the Russian Zarya module, was launched in November 1998. In the years since, NASA and its global partners have built a world-class orbiting laboratory and kept a continuous human presence in space since 2000. I decided to celebrate the occasion by searching through the […]
Last week, a city-state sized chunk of ice broke off of Pine Island Glacier (PIG), sending iceberg B-31 into a bay off West Antarctica. Though the formation of the 700 square-kilometer iceberg could be a purely natural event — the result of a floating ice tongue growing too long and losing its balance on the sea — […]
Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD)-2 Launches: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Wakata opened the JEM Airlock outer hatch and extended the slide table with the SSOD out to the JEM Exposed Facility (JEF). He released the JEM Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS) Small Fine Arm (SFA) Attachment Mechanism (SAM) Latching Arm to prepare for …
AnisoTubule Experiment: Today, Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Wakata began activities to support JAXA’s Aniso Tubule experiment. He watered seeds in a sample chamber and then stowed the chamber in a Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) for a five-day preparation for sprouting, simulating the winter season for plants. The Aniso Tubule experiment investigates …
