The newly-expanded Expedition 49 crew is getting ready to grow lettuce to learn how to grow fresh food in space. Meanwhile, the International Space Station is getting ready for another crew swap. New station crew member Shane Kimbrough is installing hardware and plant pillows for the Veg-03 plant growth experiment. The study is a validation …
Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The October 2016 puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, what the image shows, and why the scene is interesting. How to answer. Your answer can be […]
The first half of the B-level work platforms, B south, for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, arrived by heavy-load transport truck at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 21. The B platforms are the ninth of 10 levels of new platforms for High Bay 3 in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). …
Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) Ingress and Sampling: FE-6 stowed the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) then opened Node3 Aft hatch to ingress the BEAM. Once inside, the crew collected Microbial Air Sampler (MAS) and Surface Sample Kit (SSK) microbial and surface samples and deployed the Radiation Area Monitors (RAMs) delivered on 48Soyuz (48S). The …
Cygnus Rendezvous and Capture: This morning the crew monitored the Cygnus approach from the Cupola Robotic Workstation and successfully captured Cygnus using the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) at 6:28 am CDT. The Ground Robotics team maneuvered Cygnus into position to inspect the Passive Common Berthing Mechanism (CBM), and berthed Cygnus onto the Node-1 …
Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft was berthed to the Unity module of the International Space Station at 10:53 a.m. EDT. The Expedition 49 crew will begin unloading approximately 5,000 pounds of science investigations, food and supplies when the hatch between the newly arrived spacecraft and the Unity module of the space station is opened. The …
Expedition 49 Flight Engineers Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Kate Rubins of NASA successfully captured Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft with the station’s robotic arm at 7:28 a.m. EDT. NASA TV coverage of operations to install Cygnus to the space station’s Unity module begins at 9 a.m. Get weekly video highlights at: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/
48 Soyuz (48S) Dock: 48S launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, October 19th, and docked to the ISS this morning bringing Ryzhikov, Borisenko, and Kimbrough to the ISS. Docking to the Mini Research Module-2 (MRM-2) module was completed at 4:53 am CDT with hatch opening at 7:20 am CDT. Today’s docking increases the ISS …
Testing of the Orion Service Module Umbilical (OSMU) is complete at the Launch Equipment Test Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A series of tests, called regressions tests, were performed on the umbilical’s design modifications to validate it for installation on the mobile launcher. The tests were conducted by Kennedy’s Engineering Directorate for …
Processing engineers are set to encapsulate the GOES-R weather satellite into its payload fairing at the Astrotech payload processing facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The work is being performed as teams from NASA, United Launch Alliance and NOAA progress toward a liftoff on Nov. 16 from Space Launch Complex 41 aboard an …
