Blogs

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 …

Sixty years ago next week, the hopes of Cold War America soared into the night sky as a rocket lofted skyward above Cape Canaveral

Our first destination in Potrillo was Kilbourne Hole, a maar crater that was formed about 16,000 to 24,000 years ago. It’s an irregular hole measuring about 1-1/2 miles by 2 miles. Kilbourne is thought to be the result of a steam explosion that occurred when hot magma encountered shallow groundwater. The result was excavation of […]

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 …

Tom and I have returned to McMurdo Station! Our traverse is complete, our gear has been stored for next season, and we are ready to head north to warmer climates. But in the meantime, we are awaiting our flight to Christchurch, New Zealand, at Antarctica’s largest research station. McMurdo is one of three permanent US research stations in Antarctica. […]

Your challenge for the January 2018 satellite puzzler is to use the comments section to tell us what we are looking at, when the image was acquired, and why the scene is interesting.

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 …