New Status: SpaceX-2 Unberth Delay: The SpaceX Dragon vehicle unberth and departure from ISS was scheduled for Monday March 25th but has been deferred due to rough seas predicted at the splash-down location. The new unberth and departure date is Tuesday March 26, 2013. On-board Training (OBT) for Emergency Response: All 3 crewmembers participated in this training. …
New Status: Marangoni Inside (MI) Fluid Physics Experiment Facility (FPEF): In preparation for the start of the experiment tonight, Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Tom Marshburn installed the sample cassette in the FPEF. The experiment will run through early July during crew sleep. Marangoni convection is the flow driven by the presence of a surface tension gradient which …
Images were taken by Rob Suggs and Aaron Kingery in twilight through cirrus clouds around 00:36 UT on 17 Mar 2013 with a 14 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at Marshall Space Flight Center’s Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatoryin Huntsville, Ala. The detector was a low-light level B&W video camera with a focal reducer giving a 20 …
New Status: Amine Swingbed Payload Review: Commander (CDR) Hadfield unstowed Amine from its temporary stowage configuration inside Express Rack 8 and placed it in the payload’s double locker chassis. Then he re-assembled the payload in its normal operating configuration. This task follows Kevin Ford’s troubleshooting activities earlier this month when he replaced the Amine gear box. …
By Lora Koenig Hello and welcome (or hopefully, welcome back) to yet another of my field blogs! It’s a chilly day here in Greenbelt, Maryland, and I am packing away my warmest parka and sleeping bags – yes, I said bags, in plural, since I will need two to keep me warm enough during my […]
New Status: SpaceX (SpX)-2 Cargo Operations: Commander (CDR) Hadfield and Flight Engineer (FE)-6 Marshburn loaded cargo in preparation for unberth scheduled on March 25, 2013. Marangoni Inside (MI) Core Cleaning: Following yesterday’s completion of this experiment, Marshburn cleaned the inside of the Marangoni core. When he was finished cleaning he powered off the camcorder to terminate real …
New Status: Coarsening in Solid Liquid Mixture 3 (CSLM-3) Experiment: Over the weekend Hadfield transferred data from the 3rd sample and started the 4th of 6 runs of this experiment. CSLM-3 is a materials science investigation that studies the growth and solidification processes (i.e., coarsening) in lead-tin solid-liquid mixtures that contain a small amount of tin branch-like …
How is your bracket looking now after Round 2 of Tournament Earth?
Use the comments section to tell us what part of the world we are looking at, when the image was acquired, and why the scene is interesting.
