Blogs

New Status:  Node 3 Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Air Selector Valve (ASV) 102 Remove & Replace (R&R): On April 25 the Node 3 CDRA valve 102 failed to reach its commanded position. Over the following 24 hours the CDRA shut down 6 more times due to valve 102 not reaching position. Engineering teams reviewed the …

The big science highlight so far is that over May 2 through May 4, the GPM Ground Validation team finally collected a coordinated, co-scanned multi-radar frequency and dual-polarimetric dataset with the D3R and NPOL radars and we did it in one of the most complex multi-day precipitation events that we’ll measure in mid and high […]

New Status:  Robonaut Taskboard/Teleops: Following yesterday’s procedures review and camcorder setup, today Cassidy and Marshburn retrieved Robonaut and supporting hardware, installed Robonaut to a seat track and connected the cables for powered/commanded operations. Today and tomorrow will be the 3rd 2-day session of these activities. The Robonaut Tele-operation System is used to demonstrate the ability to …

A composite image of 13 Eta Aquarid meteors from the NASA All Sky Fireball Network station in Mayhill, New Mexico the morning of May 6, 2013.  Clouds seriously hampered our view of the ETAs this year. Observations reported to the International Meteor Organization indicate an outburst in the early hours of  May 6th UTC.(Credit: All Sky …

Despite interference from the moon and clouds (and rising sun!), this morning we snagged our first observations of the 2013 Eta Aquarids.  Here’s an image of one from the all sky camera in Tullahoma, Tennessee.  The Eta Aquarids peak in the pre-dawn hours on May 6 and are material from Halley’s comet.  They zoom around …

New Status:  Spinal: Hadfield and Marshburn conducted their 3rd and final session of this experiment with Cassidy as operator and remote guidance from ground teams. Spinal Ultrasound uses ground and space-based studies to characterize spinal changes during and after spaceflight.  Ground based pre- and post-flight Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and high fidelity ultrasound, combined with in-flight …

New Status:   improved Payload Ethernet Hub Gateway (iPEHG)-1 and -2 Installation: Commander (CDR) Hadfield upgraded PEHG-2 Wednesday and PEHG-1 today by removing the legacy PEHGs and installing two new iPEHGs. The new iPEHGs have enhanced configuration capabilities over the legacy PEHG, improved Gateway modes of operation and improved network protocols to support integration into Joint Station …

Our forecasters at Iowa State, and I believe via the National Weather Service, are calling this a “once in a career storm.” The heavy snow in central Iowa—really, almost on top of us right now, is the reason. We ran NPOL all night long with the D3R radar in cold rain that started around 2 […]

New Status:  Burning and Suppression of Solids (BASS) Experiment (BASS): Cassidy conducted the 7th of 13 sessions planned for this experiment. BASS examines the burning and extinction characteristics of a wide variety of fuel samples in microgravity and will guide strategies for extinguishing fires in microgravity. BASS results contribute to the combustion computational models used …

We have been waiting for rain at the NPOL site. Yesterday evening it got very close- within 50 km or so. In the interim, we were waiting for convective cells to develop along what is called a radar “fine-line”.  Fine-lines are little boundaries in the lowest part of the atmosphere associated with small changes in […]