On Monday, Jan. 24, engineers plan to instruct NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to complete a final correction burn that will place it into its desired orbit, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth at what is called the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or “L2” for short. Mathematically, Lagrange points are solutions to what …
Payloads: AstroPi: The crew adjusted the back focus of the AstroPi 5 mm camera lens and set the aperture to 8. This was performed for the AstroPi unit currently mounted in the Node 2 nadir window. The current Astro Pis are a very recent upgrade and replacement for the original Astro Pi hardware that flew …
The five astronauts representing the Expedition 66 crew had an off-duty day on Friday while the two cosmonauts continued their post-spacewalk activities. A U.S. resupply ship is also on track to depart the International Space Station on Saturday. Mission controllers have given the go for the Cargo Dragon, packed with science experiments and station hardware, …
Payloads: Micro Monitor: A 350 ml water sample was collected from the Potable Water Dispenser (PWD) to be returned to the ground for analysis. Development of the On-board Monitoring System for Microorganisms in Potable Water on Manned Spacecraft (Micro Monitor) examines a high-performance, real-time system for monitoring spacecraft water systems. It uses an ultraviolet light and …
The Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare on Jan. 20, 2022, peaking at 1:01 a.m. EST. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to …
A U.S. resupply ship will wait at least one extra day to undock from the International Space Station while being packed with critical research samples for return to Earth. Meanwhile, two Expedition 66 cosmonauts are cleaning up following a spacewalk to activate a Russian docking module. A forecast of inclement weather has caused a postponement …
Editor’s Note: This post was updated to clarify the strength vs. stiffness of beryllium. Last week, the Webb team began moving the observatory’s individual mirror segments out of their launch positions. Today, we hear from Erin Wolf, Webb program manager at Ball Aerospace, about the completion of that process: “Today, the James Webb Space Telescope …
Russian Segment (RS) Extravehicular Activity (EVA) #51: During today’s EVA, the Russian crew worked outside the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) to complete the below tasks. The USOS crew assisted with the Airlock operations in the Service Module (SM). The following tasks were completed and deferred during the EVA: Completed: Installation of NM Handrail Limiters (2 …
Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos concluded their spacewalk at 2:28 p.m. EST after 7 hours and 11 minutes. Shkaplerov and Dubrov completed their major objectives for today to ready the new Prichal module for future Russian visiting spacecraft. The cosmonauts installed handrails, rendezvous antennas, a television camera, and docking targets on Prichal, …
Expedition 66 Commander Anton Shkaplerov and Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos began a spacewalk to ready the new Prichal module for future Russian visiting spacecraft when they opened the hatch of the Poisk docking compartment airlock of the International Space Station at 7:17 a.m. EST. Coverage of the spacewalk continues on NASA Television, the NASA app, and …
