At approximately midnight local time on the night of September 6 (September 7, 6 UTC), a loud explosion was heard in an area near Managua, Nicaragua. A crater some 39 feet in diameter was found near 86.2 degrees west longitude, 12.2 degrees north latitude, in good agreement with the reports of explosive sounds. It has …
Energy: Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Gerst continued taking urine samples and eating a special diet over the weekend for the Energy investigation. FE-5 Wiseman also collected urine samples as the control subject. Today, Wiseman and Gerst continued with the Energy investigation. Energy measures change in energy balance in crewmembers following long term space flight. Energy also …
The Spectrometer for Sky-Scanning, Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research, or 4STAR, is an airborne instrument that measures aerosols (small particles suspended in the atmosphere), gases (ozone for example), and a variety of cloud properties. Currently it is being deployed on the NASA C-130 aircraft on its quest to measure aerosol and cloud properties in the Arctic, helping to […]
NanoRacks CubeSat Deployers (NRCSD): Utilizing the JEM Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS), Ground controllers performed an emergency stop shake test on the NRCSD. No deployments were observed during this time. However, after roughly 7 hours, an additional door (#7) was observed to be open, implying an inadvertent deploy during the morning of the crew workday. The …
NanoRacks CubeSat Deployers: Additional attempts to launch CubeSats from deployers #4, 7, and 8 were made overnight without success. 24 commands were sent attempting to deploy #4, 30 commands were sent to deployer #7, and 17 deploy commands were sent to deployer #8. Ground Teams are continuing to assess the issue and are working on …
NanoRacks CubeSat Deployers: Overnight, ground teams attempted deployment of three undeployed launchers (#4, 7, 8) without success. Additional deploy attempts are being planned this evening. Sprint Evaluation of Maximal Oxygen Uptake and Submaximal Estimates of VO2max Before, During, and After Long Duration International Space Station Missions (VO2Max): Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wiseman set up the Portable …
After a lengthy waiting period, we have successfully deployed our instrumentation to make aerosol measurements inside a tropical storm/hurricane. As of our last post, instrumentation was mounted aboard the NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft but we were awaiting installation of an inlet. This is not a trivial task, as any structure mounted to the exterior of […]
The answer to the August puzzler — Nagoya and the south-central coast of Japan — was puzzling even to Earth Observatory staff. When we first posted the image on August 26, even we did not know what we were looking at. We had asked our colleagues at the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) office at NASA Johnson Space Center […]
Mangrove forests are disappearing faster than any other tropical environment. NASA scientists are working to understand how human activities coupled with land use/ land cover change have altered mangrove environments.
