Two cosmonauts are resting today before they test a new system by flying a cargo ship back to its port early Friday. Commander Jeff Williams spent the morning testing a pair of free-floating satellites known as SPHERES. Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin will test a new telerobotically operated rendezvous system also called the …
A spacecraft designed to sample an asteroid and return that sample to Earth will depend greatly on its communications systems with Earth to relay everything from its health and status to scientific findings from making a detailed survey of the asteroid known as Bennu. That’s why engineers from NASA’s Deep Space Network spent the past …
Exposed Experiment Handrail Attachment Mechanism (ExHAM) #1-2 Operations: Following the JEMAL depressurization, venting, and leak check yesterday, today ExHAM was installed on the JEMAL Slide Table and extended to the JEM Exposed Facility (JEF) side. ExHAM is a cuboid mechanism equipped with a grapple fixture on the upper surface for the Kibo’s robotic arm, Japanese …
Three Expedition 48 crew members worked on a variety of science experiments today before this weekend’s cargo ship maneuvers. On the ground in Kazakhstan, another set of crew members is getting ready for a two-day trip to the International Space Station next week. Commander Jeff Williams worked on the 3-D Printing in Zero-G experiment inside …
3D Printing in Zero-G Experiment Setup: Today, the crew set up the 3D Printer in the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) work volume. The payload ground team remotely operated the device to produce two 3D printed test coupons, and the crew removed and stowed each of them. The 3D Printing In Zero-G experiment demonstrates that a …
Today’s post is written by Alex Parker, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, working on NASA’s New Horizons mission. Pluto and its moons are the most distant worlds ever visited by any of humanity’s robotic explorers, but for how much longer will that remain true? New Horizons is outbound through …
The second half of the D-level work platforms for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), D North, arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center on June 27. The D work platforms are the seventh set of new platforms to arrive at Kennedy. A total of 10 levels of work platforms will surround the SLS rocket and …
Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams is conducting a 3-D printing experiment inside the Destiny laboratory module today. His crewmates, Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin, worked on a variety of Russian experiments and readied a cargo ship for departure. Williams gathered the 3-D Printing payload hardware and set up the gear in the Destiny …
Ultrasonic Background Noise Test (UBNT): The crew replaced batteries and transmitted data by closing out the Station Support Computer (SSC’s) Distributed Impact Detection System (DIDS) software and removing the UBNT hardware. UBNT detects high-frequency sounds generated by hardware on the U.S.-built portions of the ISS. Identifying sources of noise will aid in development of a …
A pair of Expedition 48 cosmonauts are getting a Progress cargo ship ready to undock and redock Friday morning before its ultimate departure Saturday night. The maneuver will test an upgraded telerobotically operated rendezvous system installed in the Zvezda service module after the Progress docked in December. The Progress 62 (62P) resupply ship will undock …
