Blogs

We created some interesting patterns reminiscent of alien crop circles during our snow surveys in Alaska’s Wrangell St Elias National Park last month. Anne Nolin, Chris Cosgrove, Kelly Sivy and I were flown to the Jaeger Mesa cabin in an R44 helicopter, and from there we spent a week measuring snow depth and density along […]

The Expedition 51 crew is getting ready for a spacewalk Friday and working on several scientific investigations. Robotics controllers also swapped out a power relay box over the weekend through a complex and innovative robotic procedure. Astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer will exit the International Space Station for a 6.5-hour spacewalk on Friday. The …

Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) 2 Remove & Replace (R&R):  Friday evening and into Saturday, Robotics Ground Controllers maneuvered the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) Arms and successfully removed the failed MBSU 2 and replaced it with a spare. The failed MBSU was then installed onto External Stowage Platform (ESP)-2.  After a successful power up …

Your challenge 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.

Spring has finally arrived in northern Alberta! The snow has melted, the skies are clear, and migration is in full swing. After several days of heavy snows and cold temperatures, the robins, and many other species, were in a big hurry to make their way north to their breeding grounds. Early in the mornings we […]

Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU)2 Robotic Remove & Replace (R&R): Last night, Robotics ground teams completed the extraction of the spare MBSU Flight Releasable Attachment Mechanism (FRAM) from External Stowage Platform 2 (ESP-2) and successfully relocated it on the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) Enhanced ORU Temporary Platform (EOTP).  Then, the SPDM was used to …

Two studies published in April 2017 suggest that an increase in global concentrations of methane may not be related to rising methane emissions.

OsteoOmics: The crew thawed BioCells and injected them into growth media inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG). After six BioCells were processed they were placed into BioCell Habitat 3, which was then placed in the Space Automated Bioproduct Lab (SABL).  Later in the day the crew removed a media kit from a Microgravity Experiment Research …

The five-member crew aboard the International Space Station was back at work Thursday researching how living in space affects the human body. Two of today’s experiments looked at how microgravity weakens bones and alters DNA. Commander Peggy Whitson joined Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet for the OsteoOmics bone loss study. The experiment compares bone loss in …

Here’s a roundup of some of the latest Earth science news from NASA.