Around 3 a.m. on Saturday April 2, at approximately L-35 hours and 20 minutes, the Artemis I launch control team powered up the Space Launch System rocket’s core stage, which will be loaded with more than 700,000 gallons of propellants during the tanking phase of the countdown. During the day, teams will charge Orion flight …
Skywatchers, you have the opportunity to see not just one, but two planetary conjunctions during the month of April 2022! A conjunction is a celestial event in which two planets, a planet and the Moon, or a planet and a star appear close together in Earth’s night sky. Conjunctions have no profound astronomical significance, but …
At approximately 5 p.m. EDT, or L-45 hours, 40 minutes before the initial targeted test T-0, the launch team arrived at their stations inside the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The countdown is now underway for the wet dress rehearsal test for NASA’s Artemis I mission. Prior to “call to …
Payloads: Dose Distribution Inside the ISS – 3D (DOSIS-3D): The DOSIS-3D Passive Detector Packages (PDPs) were photographed before and after relocation to the Service Module ceiling area. DOSIS-3D uses several active and passive detectors to determine the radiation doses inside the ISS. The goal is a three-dimensional radiation map covering all sections of the ISS. …
Four Expedition 67 astronauts, who have been aboard the International Space Station since November, kicked off the weekend with a light duty day today following a pair of spacewalks and a crew swap in March. The orbiting lab’s newest crewmates, three Flight Engineers from Roscosmos, stayed busy with their science and maintenance tasks. March was …
The launch team is on track to begin the countdown for the Artemis I wet dress rehearsal test. Meteorologists with the U.S. Space Force Space Launch Delta 45 currently predict favorable weather conditions for tanking on April 3. The primary weather concern is lightning. There is currently less than a 10% chance of lightning within …
The sixth stage of aligning NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors to its scientific instruments so they will create the most accurate and focused images possible has concluded. While the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) continues its cooldown, optics teams have successfully aligned the rest of the observatory's onboard instruments to Webb's mirrors. Previous alignment efforts were …
Payloads: Gravitational References for Sensimotor Performance: Reaching and Grasping (GRASP): Crewmembers performed GRASP quasi-free-floating science sessions. The purpose of the GRASP investigation is to better understand how the central nervous system (CNS) integrates information from different sensations (e.g. sight or hearing), encoded in different reference frames, in order to coordinate the hand with the visual …
The Sun emitted a mid-level solar flare on March 31, 2022, peaking at 2:35 p.m. EST. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to …
Expedition 67 is officially underway following Wednesday’s undocking of three International Space Station crew members. Meanwhile, the seven orbital residents had a full schedule of human research and lab maintenance tasks on Thursday. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned to Houston today following his landing in Kazakhstan on Wednesday at 7:28 a.m. EDT with cosmonauts …
