Two Expedition 54 astronauts continue preparing for Monday’s upcoming spacewalk to wrap up robotics repair work. The crew is also working on a variety of science gear to ensure the orbital laboratory is in tip-top shape. Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei is going outside the International Space Station again for this year’s second spacewalk. This …
Arthrospira-B (Batch Culture): Today concluded the incubation of three Arthrospira-B experiment containers (ECs), one that began two weeks ago, and two that began last week. The ECs were removed from the BioLab Incubator and disassembled inside of the BioLab Glovebox, prior to the samples being inserted into the Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS …
One spacewalk down, two more to go before next weekend. A U.S. and a Japanese astronaut will go on the next spacewalk Jan. 29 followed by two cosmonauts on Feb. 2. Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Norishige Kanai will put on their U.S. spacesuits early next week and exit the Quest airlock to wrap …
USOS Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) #47: Today, Mark Vande Hei (as EV1) and Scott Tingle (as EV2) successfully completed USOS EVA #47 with a Phased Elapsed Time (PET) of 7 hrs 24 min. The primary goal of the EVA was to swap the Latching End Effector (LEE) from the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) …
Expedition 54 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle of NASA completed the first spacewalk this year at 2:13 p.m. EST, lasting 7 hours, 24 minutes. The two astronauts replaced a Latching End Effector (LEE) on the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2. There are two redundant end effectors on each end of the arm used to grapple …
Light Microscopy Module (LMM) Petri Plants Plate Operations: Over the weekend, the crew used the light meter in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) to take light intensity measurements before transporting the plates to the Lab to photograph the plates with and without lids. Plants cultivated in microgravity look mostly normal, but space-grown plants have a …
Vascular Echo: After completing the Cardiolab (CDL) blood pressure measurement earlier this week, today the 53S subject performed the Vascular Echo Exercise Portable Doppler (PDOP) measurement with ground team assistance. Using the CDL PDOP, the crewmember donned the PDOP femoral probe and performed a 1-minute exercise followed by a resting period during which data was …
The International Space Station has been orbiting Earth for 7,000 days as of today Friday, Jan. 19, 2018. The first module, the Russian Zarya cargo module, launched to space in November of 1998. The first crew arrived at the young three-module orbital laboratory in November of 2000. 54 crews and 205 spacewalks later, the current …
NASA’s new deep space exploration systems will send crew 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, and return them safely home. After traveling through space at 25,000 miles per hour, the Orion spacecraft will slow to 300 mph after it passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. The spacecraft then slows down to 20 mph before it safely splashes …
A bright fireball lit up skies over Michigan at 8:08 p.m. EST on Jan. 16, an event that was witnessed and reported by hundreds of observers, many who captured video of the bright flash. Based on the latest data, the extremely bright streak of light in the sky was caused by a six-foot-wide space rock …
