NASA’s TESS spacecraft is already running on internal power and the rocket will transition to internal power in the next few minutes. There are several other significant milestones coming up between now and launch — the rocket’s engines will be chilled and its onboard propellant tanks pressurized, and the gantry-like strongback structure will be retracted …
Weather is expected to cooperate with NASA’s and SpaceX’s launch plans this evening. According to the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, there is less than a 10 percent chance of conditions violating launch rules, meaning the weather is 90 percent “go” for launch. Launch-watchers gathered at viewing areas across Florida’s Space Coast are being …
Countdown clocks are ticking at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as NASA’s next planet-hunting spacecraft awaits liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 6:51 p.m. EDT. The launch window extends for 30 seconds. When a planet crosses in front of the star it’s orbiting, that event is called a transit – and the …
Launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s TESS spacecraft remains scheduled for 6:51 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Follow the countdown here and on www.nasa.gov/live starting at 6:30 p.m. TESS is sealed inside the protective payload fairing atop its ride into space: the two-stage …
Ku Control Unit (KCU) Software Transition: Following yesterday’s swap to KCU2, running the new R4 software, the KCU2 modem card stopped processing Ku forward commands. An eventual power cycle of the entire KCU2 unit recovered KCU2 forward link. Later the KCU2 modem card once again stopped processing Ku forward commands. Ku was transitioned back to …
Launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s TESS spacecraft remains scheduled for 6:51 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. If you’re in the Space Coast area – that’s the east coast of central Florida, about 45 minutes from Orlando – and you’re interested in seeing …
A docked Russian cargo craft automatically fired its engines this morning boosting the International Space Station’s altitude a little higher. During the rest of the day, the Expedition 55 crew supported life science and swapped out station hardware. Russia’s Progress 69 resupply ship docked to the Zvezda service module fired its thrusters boosting the station’s …
NASA scientists are working to create the largest publicly available inventory of landslides—and they want your help collecting information.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for no earlier than 6:51 p.m. EDT. Frequent updates from the countdown will begin here at 6:30 p.m. You can also watch at http://www.nasa.gov/live. TESS …
Metabolic Tracking (MT): The crew set up the hardware and materials to support two separate sessions of thawing and inoculation today for the MT investigation. They injected the thawed inoculum into multiwell BioCells, and inserted them into a NanoRacks Plate Reader. Samples were placed into a Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI). …
