Blogs

New Status: SpaceX-2 Unberth Delay:  The SpaceX Dragon vehicle unberth and departure from ISS was scheduled for Monday March 25th but has been deferred due to rough seas predicted at the splash-down location. The new unberth and departure date is Tuesday March 26, 2013.  On-board Training (OBT) for Emergency Response: All 3 crewmembers participated in this training. …

New Status: Marangoni Inside (MI) Fluid Physics Experiment Facility (FPEF): In preparation for the start of the experiment tonight, Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Tom Marshburn installed the sample cassette in the FPEF. The experiment will run through early July during crew sleep. Marangoni convection is the flow driven by the presence of a surface tension gradient which …

Images were taken by Rob Suggs and Aaron Kingery in twilight through cirrus clouds around 00:36 UT on 17 Mar 2013 with a 14 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at Marshall Space Flight Center’s Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatoryin Huntsville, Ala.  The detector was a low-light level B&W video camera with a focal reducer giving a 20 …

New Status: Amine Swingbed Payload Review:  Commander (CDR) Hadfield unstowed Amine from its temporary stowage configuration inside Express Rack 8 and placed it in the payload’s double locker chassis. Then he re-assembled the payload in its normal operating configuration. This task follows Kevin Ford’s troubleshooting activities earlier this month when he replaced the Amine gear box.  …

By Lora Koenig Hello and welcome (or hopefully, welcome back) to yet another of my field blogs! It’s a chilly day here in Greenbelt, Maryland, and I am packing away my warmest parka and sleeping bags – yes, I said bags, in plural, since I will need two to keep me warm enough during my […]

New Status: SpaceX (SpX)-2 Cargo Operations:  Commander (CDR) Hadfield and Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Marshburn loaded cargo in preparation for unberth scheduled on March 25, 2013. Marangoni Inside (MI) Core Cleaning:  Following yesterday’s completion of this experiment, Marshburn cleaned the inside of the Marangoni core.  When he was finished cleaning he powered off the camcorder to terminate real …

New Status: Coarsening in Solid Liquid Mixture 3 (CSLM-3) Experiment: Over the weekend Hadfield transferred data from the 3rd sample and started the 4th of 6 runs of this experiment. CSLM-3 is a materials science investigation that studies the growth and solidification processes (i.e., coarsening) in lead-tin solid-liquid mixtures that contain a small amount of tin branch-like …

How is your bracket looking now after Round 2 of Tournament Earth?

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.

New Status: 32 Soyuz (S) Undock & Landing: Following a delay in undocking yesterday due to adverse weather conditions, 32 Soyuz undocked from ISS tonight at 6:43pm CDT bringing Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin back to earth.  The Soyuz performed a nominal automated de-orbit burn and following a nominal separation of modules, descended successfully under parachutes.  The …