Scientific operations filled the day for the Expedition 73 crew with a wide variety of research advancing human health on and off the Earth. Meanwhile, two rockets on opposite sides of the world stand at their launch pads and are counting down to their lift off to resupply the International Space Station.
The Zvezda service module’s rear port opened up today after the undocking and departure of the trash-filled Progress 91 cargo craft completing a six-and-a-half-month stay at the International Space Station. The vacant port now awaits the arrival of the Progress 93 cargo craft set to launch from Kazakhstan at 11:54 a.m. EDT on Thursday.
The unpiloted Roscosmos Progress 91 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 11:45 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, backing away from the station for a deorbit maneuver and destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere to dispose of trash loaded by the crew.
Payload commissioning is underway for NASA’s PExT (Polylingual Experimental Terminal), a first-of-its-kind space communications demonstration designed to allow spacecraft to communicate with government and commercial networks. After launching on July 23, York Space Systems established first contact with their Bard satellite, the host spacecraft for PExT, and began bus commissioning on schedule. Over the next […]
The Progress 93 cargo craft from Roscosmos rolled out to its launch pad today at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where will launch at 11:54 a.m. EDT on Thursday to the International Space Station. Progress 93, carrying 2.8 tons of food, fuel, and supplies to resupply the Expedition 73 crew, will arrive at the orbital outpost and automatically dock to the Zvezda service module’s aft port at 1:27 p.m. on Saturday. NASA+ will begin its live launch broadcast at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday followed by docking coverage beginning at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.
NASA’s Dragonfly mission has cleared several key design, development and testing milestones and remains on track toward launch in July 2028. Dragonfly, a car-sized, nuclear-powered rotorcraft being designed and built for NASA at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, will explore Saturn’s moon Titan. Following launch and a six-year journey to […]
A suborbital rocket is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during a window extending from Sept. 5-19, 2025. The launch will not be live streamed, and updates will not be provided during the countdown.
Space-based production of human tissues and preventing space-caused head and eye pressure were the main research topics at the end of the week for the Expedition 73 crew. The International Space Station is also gearing up for a pair cargo missions this month supplying the orbital residents with food, fuel, science experiments, and more.
The High-Altitude Student Platform 2 (HASP2) successfully launched at 8:28 a.m. MDT (10:28 a.m. EDT) Thursday, Sept. 4 and reached a float altitude of nearly 122,000 feet. HASP remained in flight for a total of 11 hours,40 minutes. Science reports a successful flight. The balloon and payload have safely landed, and recovery efforts are underway.
The HASP2 program is a collaborative effort between Louisiana Space Grant Consortium at Louisiana State University (LaSPACE - LSU), NASA SMD: Astrophysics Division, NASA Balloon Program Office (BPO) and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) to develop and operate an inexpensive platform that can be used to flight test compact satellites, prototypes and other small payloads designed and built by students. The High Altitude Student Platform 2 (HASP2) is designed to carry up to twenty-four (24) student payloads at a time to an altitude of about 110,000 feet with flight durations of 15 to 20 hours.
Student Payloads and Organizations for 2025 include:
NASA, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX are accelerating the next commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station to maximize launch opportunities following an assessment of mission readiness. NASA now is targeting no earlier than 6:11 p.m. EDT, Sunday, Sept. 14, for the launch of a Northrop Grumman Cygnus XL on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
