Blogs

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, secured inside its payload fairing, was moved July 30, 2018, from nearby Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Florida, to Space Launch Complex 37 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The following day, the spacecraft was lifted and attached to the top of the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket in the Vertical Integration Facility.

The Expedition 56 crew has nearly completed loading the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship with cargo for retrieval back on Earth this Friday. The orbital residents are also busy with an intense day of space research and Russian spacewalk preparations. Dragon is due to be released Friday at 12:37 p.m. EDT from the International Space Station …

The team that tested the umbilical lines and launch accessories that will connect from the mobile launcher (ML) to NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft for Exploration Mission-1 celebrated their achievement during a banner signing at the Launch Equipment Test Facility (LETF) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Engineers and …

Aerosol Samplers: Today the crew deployed Active Aerosol Samplers (AASs) in Nodes 1 and 3.  The battery-powered AASs actively pull in air and collect particles using the principal of thermophoresis. This is accomplished by flowing the sampled air through a large thermal gradient in a narrow channel. During this process, particles are driven to the …

Numerous microgravity investigations are wrapping up this week onboard the International Space Station. The Expedition 56 crew is carefully packing the research results and science gear inside the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft for return to Earth on Friday. A host of life science studies being returned aboard Dragon looked at cancer therapies, gut microbes, and …

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has cleared the final procedures in the clean room before its move to the launch pad, where it will be integrated onto its launch vehicle, a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy.

35.8 million miles is definitely not what most of us would consider “close.” But in planetary terms, close is definitely relative! On July 31, Mars will be 35.8 million miles from Earth, which is the closest it has been to Earth in 15 years. What does this mean for sky watchers? It means the Red …

Micro-12: On Sunday, the crew activated all eighteen Micro-12 Group Activation Packs (GAPs) by mixing microbial media and inoculum. Then crew terminated one GAP by adding a microbial fixative to preserve the organism for subsequent ground-based characterization.  Today the crew terminated additional GAPs.  Micro-12 examines the effects of spaceflight on the physiology of an exoelectrogenic …

A new cancer therapy study is wrapping up aboard the International Space Station this week as an American cargo craft is packed for return to Earth. The Expedition 56 crew also researched how astronauts perceive time and distance in space and back on Earth. NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor has been contributing to pharmaceutical research since …

Micro-11: Today the crew performed the final two sessions for the Micro-11 investigation. They checked out, configured and calibrated the Micro-11 microscope, thawed samples removed from a General Laboratory Active Cryogenic ISS Experiment Refrigerator (GLACIER), fixed those samples and loaded them into the microscope for imaging. Afterwards, they inserted the samples into a Minus Eighty …