Blogs

On Nov. 25, 2022, NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) team lost contact with the spacecraft. The ICON spacecraft is equipped with a built-in onboard command loss timer that will power cycle or reset the spacecraft after contact is lost for eight days. On Dec. 5, after the power cycle was complete, the team was still …

Payloads: Behavioral Core Measures (BCM): A BCM research session consisting of a set of 12 runs/tests was performed. The Standardized Behavioral Measures for Detecting Behavioral Health Risks during Exploration Missions (BCM) experiment initially examined a suite of measurements to reliably assess the risk of adverse cognitive or behavioral conditions and psychiatric disorders during long-duration spaceflight, …

The Expedition 68 crew took a break from its intense space research activities and focused on spacesuits, biomedical tests, and lab maintenance on Wednesday. Four International Space Station flight engineers also reviewed the procedures necessary to depart the orbiting lab in the unlikely event of an emergency. Flight Engineers Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann spent …

On Nov. 28, NASA's LunaH-Map spacecraft acquired its first star tracker image, showing the constellation Auriga and its two brightest stars, Menkalinan and Mahasim. The LunaH-Map navigation team used these images to test a new type of autonomous optical navigation software that can be run on the spacecraft's flight computer. On Dec. 2, LunaH-Map also …

    Orion exited the lunar sphere of gravitational influence Tuesday, Dec. 6, at 1:29 a.m. CST for the last time on the Artemis I mission less than a day after completing the return powered flyby burn that put the spacecraft on course for splashdown Sunday, Dec. 11. Earth’s force of gravity is now the …

Illustration of NEO Surveyor, which is a mission designed to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous asteroids that are near the Earth. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech Agency officials have completed a rigorous technical and programmatic review, known as Key Decision Point C (KDP-C), and confirmed NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) – the …

As of Nov. 29, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 290 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .95 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

Payloads: Biological Research In Canisters-26 (BRIC-26): BRIC-26 hardware was inserted into the BRIC-LED facility and activated to begin the experiment. Previous research shows that exposure to microgravity affects microbial characteristics such as virulence and environmental resistance, but the molecular mechanisms underlying these changes are unclear. BRIC-26 measures the effect of exposure to microgravity on three …

Life science and space physics filled the research schedule on Tuesday for the four Expedition 68 astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The orbiting lab’s three cosmonauts spent the day servicing Orlan spacesuits while maintaining electronics and life support systems. Following a day off on Monday, the space station’s four astronauts turned their attention to …

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is on course for its return to Earth on Sunday, Dec. 11. The spacecraft made its second and final close approach to the Moon at 10:43 a.m. CST Monday, Dec. 5, just before its return powered flyby burn, passing 80.6 miles above the lunar surface.   The burn, which used the spacecraft’s …