Due to forecast extreme weather off the coast of Florida, SpaceX CRS-22 undocking is no longer planned for Wednesday, July 7. NASA and SpaceX flight control teams continue to monitor the weather and splashdown locations and are prepared to support undocking of the Dragon cargo spacecraft once conditions are safe to do so. Certain parameters …
Payloads Collapsible Contingency Urinal (CCU) Demo: The crew performed multiple handheld fill and drain cycles of the CCU using fruit punch as a test fluid. The ground team guided and observed the operations to analyze performance characteristics and observe fluid dynamics and stability of liquid in the system. The CCU is exploration hardware flown to …
By Mara Johnson-Groh NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Plasma – a fourth state of matter after solid, liquid, and gas where particles have split into charged ions and electrons – is the most common form of matter in the universe. It’s somewhat rare on Earth, but it makes up 99% of the matter in the …
Payloads Electrostatic Levitation Furnace (ELF): The crew performed the steps necessary to gain access to the internal areas of ELF, change out the sample holder, and replace a gas bottle. JAXA’s ELF is an experimental facility designed to levitate, melt and solidify materials by container-less processing techniques using the electrostatic levitation method. With this facility, …
Due to forecasted extreme weather off the coast of Florida, SpaceX CRS-22 undocking is now planned for no earlier than July 7. NASA Television coverage will begin at 10:45 am EDT. NASA and SpaceX flight control teams continue to monitor the weather and splashdown locations. Certain parameters like wind speeds and wave heights must be …
The Sun emitted a significant solar flare peaking at 10:29 a.m. EDT on July 3, 2021. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however …
78 Progress (78P) Docking: Following the completion of a 33-orbit rendezvous, 78P successfully docked to the MRM2 SM Zenith docking port last night at 8:00 PM CT. Prior to docking, MCC-H lost command capability to ISS. Therefore, the onboard crew performed the nominal commanding to ISS systems through 78P docking. The crew then performed leak …
An uncrewed Russian Progress 78 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station’s Poisk module on the space-facing side of the Russian segment at 8:59 p.m. EDT, two days after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Sunday, Tuesday June 29 at 7:27 p.m. (4:27 a.m. Wednesday, June 30, Baikonur time). The spacecraft were flying …
The sole CubeSat of the 33rd Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) mission was deployed into space at 6:50 p.m. EDT June 29 from Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft hours following its departure from the International Space Station. The CubeSat, Ionosphere-Thermosphere Scanning Photometer for Ion-Neutral Studies (IT-SPINS), was stowed within the Nanoracks CubeSat Deployer (eNRCSD) mounted on …
Payloads Cold Atom Lab (CAL): The crew attached CAL science module 2 to a battery and packed it for return to the ground. The CAL produces clouds of atoms that are chilled to about one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero, much colder than the average temperature of deep space. At these low …
