As the International Space Program gets ready for a pair of spacewalks in February, the Expedition 54 crew was busy setting up a pair of experimental internal satellites and conducting vision checks today. NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei brought out a pair of tiny satellites, also known as SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, …
Personal CO2 Monitor Sensor Calibration: Today the crew will perform a single point calibration of the Personal CO2 monitors using and iPad and readings from a Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) sample port. The Personal CO2 Monitor demonstrates a system capable of unobtrusively collecting and downlinking individual crew members’ CO2 exposure for weeks to months. This …
International Space Station managers have rescheduled a U.S. spacewalk postponed on Monday to mid-February. Meanwhile, the Expedition 54 crew is also preparing for a Russian spacewalk this Friday. Astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Norishige Kanai are planning to begin their spacewalk Feb. 15 at 7:10 a.m. EST to stow and reposition a pair of Latching …
USOS ExtraVehicular Activity (EVA) 48 status: Over the weekend, ground teams were able to identify a root cause and a fix for the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) Latching End Effector (LEE) anomaly seen after USOS EVA 47. Because of this, the EVA to return the LEE to the configuration prior to EVA 47 …
Expedition 54 is now focusing on Friday’s spacewalk to install and remove gear on the Russian side of the International Space Station. This comes after today’s spacewalk to work on the Canadarm2 robotic arm was postponed to mid-February. Cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov will put on their Orlan spacesuits Friday and exit the Pirs …
NASA’s Recovery Team from Kennedy Space Center just finished a week at sea, testing and improving their processes and ground support hardware to recover astronauts in the Orion capsule once they splash down in the Pacific Ocean. Aboard the USS Anchorage, NASA and the U.S. Navy worked together to run through different sea conditions, time …
International Space Station officials have postponed Monday’s spacewalk to swap latching end effectors (LEEs) on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The decision was made after the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and its robotics specialist team developed a diagnostics software patch confirming an anomaly noted in a primary communications string on the spare end effector installed during …
European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) Preparation for Plant Gravity Perception Operations: To prepare the EMCS for the Plant Gravity Perception investigation, the crew replaced the empty EMCS Air Mix Supply Module located on the lower left side of the EMCS holding structure with a full Air Mix Module and then opened the EMCS Gas Valves …
During a spacewalk on Jan. 23, 2018, Expedition 54 flight engineers Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle replaced a Latching End Effector (LEE-B) on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. An issue preventing the LEE from transitioning to an operational state on one of two redundant sets of communications strings was detected. The spacewalking crew demated and …
FemtoSat Assembly and Deployment: Using onboard components printed from the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF)-Manufacturing Device, today the crew demonstrated FemtoSat deployment trajectories. This experiment consists of a 3D printed deployer, four FemtoSats and a 0.050” L-wrench. The four FemtoSats will be loaded in the deployer and locked in place with the L-wrench. When the L-wrench …
