As a result of adverse weather conditions at the targeted splashdown zone off the coast of Daytona Beach, Florida, SpaceX has waved off today’s planned departure of an upgraded SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft. Teams are currently assessing weather conditions to determine the next opportunity for undocking. Splashing down off the coast of Florida enables quick …
By Miles Hatfield NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center A new NASA study finds that our distant planetary neighbors, Uranus and Neptune, may have magnetic “seasons:” A time of the year when aurora glow brighter and atmospheric escape may quicken. Study authors Dan Gershman and Gina DiBraccio, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, …
Payloads Antimicrobial Coatings: The crew touched each coupon on Antimicrobial Coatings placard. Boeing Environment Responding Antimicrobial Coatings tests an antimicrobial coating on several different materials that represent high-touch surfaces. Some microbes change characteristics in microgravity, which could create new risks to crew health and spacecraft systems as well as creating the possibility of contaminating other …
The Expedition 64 crew is going into the weekend packing the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship and readying it for a Monday morning undocking from the International Space Station. The orbital residents are also turning their attention to a pair of spacewalks taking place before the end of January. A month after its arrival and delivery …
The Expedition 64 crew had a light duty day Thursday following a busy holiday season filled with space research and U.S. cargo ship departure preparations. Soon the astronauts will be ramping up for a set of International Space Station maintenance and upgrades spacewalks planned for January and February. Final science experiments are wrapping up this …
Payloads Veg-03: The crew opened wicks on each Veg-03 Plant Pillow. Organisms grow differently in space, from single-celled bacteria to plants and humans. But future long-duration space missions will require crew members to grow their own food, so understanding how plants respond to microgravity is an important step toward that goal. Veg-03 uses the Veggie …
Cygnus Departure: Cygnus was successfully released by the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) and departed the ISS today at 9:10 AM CT with the crew monitoring from the Cupola. The vehicle has several post-departure science objectives to complete prior to destructive re-entry on January 26. Payloads Cardinal Heart: The crew performed microscopy ops on …
At 10:10 a.m. EST, flight controllers on the ground sent commands to release the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft from the Canadarm2 robotic arm after earlier detaching Cygnus from the Earth-facing port of the Unity module. The Cygnus spacecraft successfully departed the International Space Station three months after arriving at the space station to deliver about …
NASA is targeting the final test in the Green Run series, the hot fire, for as early as Jan.17. The hot fire is the culmination of the Green Run test series, an eight-part test campaign that gradually brings the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) — the deep space rocket that will power the agency’s next-generation human Moon missions …
Payloads FLUIDICS: The crew performed the first of three FLUIDICS runs. The measurement of liquid displacement within a sphere in microgravity relates to a given kinematic representation of a spacecraft’s fuel tank. The FLUIDICS investigation evaluates the Center of Mass (CoM) position regarding a temperature gradient on a representation of a fuel tank. The observation …
