As category 4 Super Typhoon Usagi churned toward Taiwan on September 19, 2013, a satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above used a radar instrument to map the storm’s inner structure. The instrument on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) observed two tall complexes of rain clouds called hot towers in the inner eyewall, a sign that Usagi was a […]
Cygnus Status: On Sunday, the joint operations teams discontinued the nominal rendezvous attempt with ISS when Cygnus’s Relative GPS (RGPS) System was unable to initialize. The problem stems from Cygnus GPS time reference not matching that of the JEM’s GPS time. The A3 DV burn which was scheduled to occur this morning at 7:29 a.m. CDT …
Congratulations to Felix Bossert for being the quickest to solve the September puzzler. The answer is the Chara Sands. See the Image of the Day that published on September 21, 2013, for a second image and details about the area. Also congratulations to Robert Emberson for providing interesting details about the geologic history of the […]
Cygnus Status: In preparation for Cygnus operations this weekend, the crew was scheduled for a half-duty day today. Cygnus systems continue to function nominally. The spacecraft performed its 4th planned phasing burn (DV-4) today at 1:11 p.m. CDT. NASA teams are reviewing the Demo 1 results this afternoon in preparation for Saturday’s ISS Mission Management …
Cygnus Status: Cygnus completed its far-field demonstrations today. Delivery of the data package for Demo 1 (Position and Attitude Control) to NASA has been delayed due to TDRS communications issues. However, is expected to be delivered to NASA this evening. Data packages for Demo 2a & 2b (Free Drift & Active Abort) were delivered to …
Cygnus Orbital Demo 1 (Orb-D1) Launch: Orbital’s Antares rocket successfully launched today from Launch Pad 0A at Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, at 9:58 CDT. The Cygnus spacecraft was successfully injected into orbit. The vehicle’s solar arrays deployed as expected. One issue ground teams are actively working is associated with the Cygnus communications system experiencing problems …
Advanced Colloids Experiment (ACE)-M-1: Today Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Nyberg mixed a sample in the 9th of 10 wells of the ACE-M-1 experiment in the Fluids Integrated Rack facility. ACE-M-1 is the first in a series of microscopic imaging investigations of materials which contain small colloidal particles which remain evenly dispersed and distributed within the material. …
Resist Tubule (Mechanisms of Gravity Resistance in Plants From Signal Transformation and Transduction to Response): Today Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Nyberg attached a Plant Experiment Unit (PEU) with plant samples and the Dehumidifier inside the Cell Biology Experiment Unit (CBEF) and then activated the PEU program. After 32 days of growth in the PEU an ISS …
Drew Skau and I have received a few comments on Subtleties of Color that deserve to be included. (By the way, don’t be shy. You can leave a comment here or at visual.ly) Naomi B. Robbins demonstrated that the standard land cover classification palette fails for color-deficient viewers. She also pointed out that “color-deficient” is […]
Each month, Earth Observatory offers up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. The September 2013 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, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your […]
