The Expedition 66 crew focused on science, training, and exercise aboard the International Space Station on Friday and prepared for the Cygnus departure tomorrow. NASA Flight Engineers Raja Chari and Kayla Barron continued the GRIP experiment that they began earlier this week. The experiment studies how long-duration spaceflight affects crews’ ability to regulate grip force and upper limbs …
Payloads: Airborne Particulate Monitor (APM): The crew removed the memory card from the APM, transferred the data, and then reinstalled the card. Air quality in crewed spacecraft is important for keeping astronauts healthy and comfortable. Although requirements exist for maximum allowable concentrations of particulate matter, currently no measurement capability verifies whether these requirements are met. …
We have a rare opportunity to witness the longest partial lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years. If the weather permits, it will grace our sky on the night of Nov. 18 and early in the morning Nov. 19 across all of the United States. A lunar eclipse happens when the Sun, Earth, and Full Moon …
Media accreditation is now open for SpaceX’s 24th cargo resupply mission for NASA to the International Space Station. Liftoff of the cargo Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket is targeted for late December from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at Kennedy. …
Payloads: Grip Seated Science 2 Experiment Session: From an upright seated posture, the crew performed experiment tasks looking at friction, discrete movement (with eyes open/closed), and collisions. The Grip experiment studies the long-duration spaceflight effects on the abilities of human subjects to regulate grip force and upper limbs trajectories when manipulating objects during different kind …
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft was attached to its payload adapter on Nov. 11 inside the SpaceX Payload Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. An integrated team of workers with NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP), SpaceX, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) completed the work in preparation for …
We continue to explore Webb’s instrumentation this week, highlighting the Canadian contributions to the mission. As you’ll see, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument is ideally suited for studying two of Webb’s scientific themes. Scientists will use NIRISS to take advantage of the natural phenomenon of the atmospheric transmission of transiting exoplanets and …
The Expedition 66 crew is turning its attention to the U.S. Cygnus space freighter as it nears departure this weekend after 100 days berthed to the station’s Unity module. The astronauts are also preparing for a spacewalk to replace a faulty antenna system on the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and …
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft continues to operate in cruise mode – the standard mode for its orbit away from Earth. Checkouts for the Lucy instruments were successfully completed Nov. 8, and all instruments are working normally. Following checkout completion, the instruments were powered off, and the remaining spacecraft subsystem commissioning activities are continuing as scheduled. Lucy’s …
NASA and U.S. Space Command continue to monitor the debris cloud created by a recent Russian anti-satellite test. The International Space Station and crew members are safe and have resumed normal operations. The largest risk from the debris was in the first 24 hours and telemetry from the space station indicates no issues during that …
