NASA's Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft recently eclipsed multiple key milestones at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Following a series of "aliveness" tests to verify the health of the spacecraft, teams mated the structure to the payload adapter – a ring that interfaces between the spacecraft and the top of the rocket. …
At 1:58 a.m. CST, 2:58 a.m. EST this morning, the Russian Progress 79, attached to the space station, fired its thrusters for 2 minutes and 41 seconds to slightly lower the station’s orbit. This maneuver provided a healthy margin of separation from a fragment of Pegasus rocket debris (object 39915) that ballistics specialists have been …
A team of NASA and Northrop Grumman engineers fired a 2-foot-diameter, subscale solid rocket booster on Dec. 2, 2021, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This test, conducted in Marshall’s East Test Area, was the second of three tests supporting the Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) program, which will have an …
Flight controllers and orbital debris experts in Houston are assessing the potential risk of a piece of orbital debris from a Pegasus rocket that may pass close to the International Space Station early Friday morning. Mission Control is working with NASA’s international partners to prepare for a possible debris avoidance maneuver. The closest pass is …
LAUNCH UPDATE: NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) is now scheduled to lift off Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 3:04 a.m. CST (4:04 a.m. EST) aboard United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. Get more details here. Have you ever witnessed one of NASA’s launches? It’s definitely a sight to see when a rocket takes to the …
Payloads: BioLab: Experiment containers were removed from the Biolab Centrifuge Rotors inside the Incubator. The Biological Experiment Laboratory in Columbus (BioLab) is a multiuser research facility located in the European Columbus laboratory. The facility is used to perform space biology experiments on microorganisms, cells, tissue cultures, small plants, and small invertebrates. BioLab allows scientists to …
NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron concluded the first Expedition 66 spacewalk at 12:47 p.m. EST, after 6 hours and 32 minutes. Marshburn and Barron successfully installed an S-band Antenna Subassembly (SASA) on the Port-1 truss structure and stowed the failed antenna. Additionally, the pair completed get-ahead tasks on the Port-4 truss structure, including resetting the torque …
Welcome to NASA's #SolarTour! The Sun has an immense influence in space. It shapes and impacts our entire solar system in ways that we are still trying to understand. To help unravel some of the Sun's biggest mysteries, NASA launched Parker Solar Probe in 2018 to study the Sun up close. This year, the mission …
Weeks of work are paying off for engineers and technicians from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida who have been preparing the agency's Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft since its arrival by truck from Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Nov. 5, 2021. Important activities continue …
NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron are reviewing the procedures they will use during Thursday’s spacewalk. The duo will exit the International Space Station after setting their U.S. spacesuits to battery power at 6:15 a.m. EST signifying the start of their spacewalk. photographed the condition of electronics gear that supports commercial spaceflight operations. Maurer …
