Editor's Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. On the morning of Saturday, Nov. 5, an international team of planetary scientists woke up with great delight to the first Webb images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Here, Principal Investigator Conor Nixon and others …
The Artemis I mission management team met today to review the overall status of the flight test and polled “go” for Orion to depart from its distant retrograde orbit, where it has been since Nov. 25. Orion will conduct a burn to depart the orbit at 3:53 p.m. CST Thurs., Dec. 1 and begin its …
ISS Reboost: Today, the ISS performed a reboost using the 81 Progress 8 R&D thrusters. This reboost is one of several reboosts setting up phasing for 67 Soyuz 2-Orbit rendezvous and 68 Soyuz landing in March. The burn duration was 12 minutes 3 seconds with a Delta-V of 1.20 m/s and a total of 214kg …
Science and spacewalk preparations kept the Expedition 68 crew busy throughout Wednesday. Meanwhile, the International Space Station is orbiting slightly higher after a docked cargo craft fired its engines during the morning. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Frank Rubio began the morning cleaning and stowing biology hardware used to transfer research samples from the SpaceX …
As of Nov. 27, 2022, InSight is generating an average between 285 and 295 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).
NASA's PACE mission, which will provide a major boost to scientists studying Earth's atmosphere and ocean health, completed a milestone test in October at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) on the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission passed thermal vacuum tests to ensure it can …
NASA, the French space agency Centre National d'Études Spatiales, and SpaceX are now targeting 3:46 a.m. PST Thursday, Dec.15, for the launch of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. The new date allows for additional time to complete prelaunch processing and checkouts of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SWOT will be NASA's first …
Engineers continued with the jet firing development flight test objective that began on flight day 12. Today, teams demonstrated the “low” portion of the reaction control thruster firing time range. This test objective is designed to exercise the reaction control system jets in a different configuration to model how thruster jets will be used during …
Payloads: ICE Cubes #7: Experiment Cubes were removed for the ICE Cubes Facility and replaced with new cubes which recently arrived on SpX-26. The Artery in Microgravity – Orbit Your Thesis! (Ice Cubes #7) is a student-built experiment, part of the European Space Agency’s “Orbit Your Thesis!” program that investigates blood flow through models of …
New science experiments delivered aboard a U.S. cargo craft are being activated aboard the International Space Station this week. The Expedition 68 crew is also preparing for upcoming spacewalks in December. NASA Flight Engineers Nicole Mann and Frank Rubio worked together on Tuesday unloading research samples from the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft. The duo carefully …
