Blogs

Thermolab Deinstrumentation for Circadian Rhythms: The crew removed the double sensors and Thermolab Unit before cleaning and stowing the equipment following completion of the European Space Agency (ESA) Circadian Rhythm experiment. The measurement process took 36 hours to complete.  Biological Rhythms 48 Hours Actiwatch Preparation: Today, the crew configured and donned the Actiwatch to commence …

Today’s blog is from Anne Verbiscer, a research associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia. On the New Horizons science team she studies the scattering properties and composition of icy surfaces in the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt. Every year, planets orbiting the sun beyond Earth’s orbit reach what …

I’m Christina Williamson, a postdoctoral scientist at CIRES CU-Boulder/NOAA-ESRL interested in Atmospheric Aerosols, the small particles in the air that cause haze, and on which clouds are formed. I’m working with a few colleagues from NOAA to take a suite of instruments on NASA’s ATom mission that will measure the number and size of particles […]

Dragon Operations:  The crew was scheduled to ingress and configure Dragon for on-orbit operations today, however, these tasks were completed yesterday. Today they transferred critical cargo and unpacked double cold bags to retrieve science as well as transferring 2 “Polar” freezers from Dragon into the EXPRESS rack locations that had been prepared for them.  Mouse …

Take 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, 0.03 percent carbon dioxide – that’s 99.93 percent of the atmosphere. But the trace gases and airborne particles that make up that last approximately 0.07 percent are what NASA’s Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission is interested in. ATom is a chemistry mission to study the movement […]

The hatches between Dragon and station were opened at 2:27 p.m. EDT Wednesday, July 20. The crew entered to document the interior and will begin unloading cargo this afternoon. The spacecraft delivered nearly 5,000 pounds of science, hardware and supplies, including instruments to perform the first-ever DNA sequencing in space, and the first of two …

Installation of new work platforms for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and the journey to Mars reached the halfway point this week inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The F North and South platforms were lifted by crane from the transfer aisle floor of the VAB, slowly …

SpaceX (SpX)-9 Capture: The Dragon vehicle was successfully captured by the SSRMS at 5:56AM CDT today. Ground teams then berthed the vehicle to the Node 2 Nadir (N2N) port at approximately 9 AM, after which the crew performed vestibule pressurization and outfitting.  Thanks to the crew and ground operators getting ahead of the timeline, they …

We are ready for the big day! Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will start our put-in to the field. With a total of 5 helicopter flights all our gear, science equipment and the entire team will be flown to our field site, approx. 130 km northwest of Kulusuk. However, we have to take the weather in account; […]

The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was bolted into place on the Harmony module of the International Space Station at 10:03 a.m. EDT as the station flew about 252 statute miles over the California and Oregon border. The spacecraft is delivering nearly 5,000 pounds of science, hardware and supplies, including instruments to perform the first-ever DNA …