The August 2021 puzzler is out. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us what we are looking at, where it is, and why it is interesting.
Crew Gets Ready for Cargo Dragon and Russian Spacewalks
The Expedition 65 crew is turning its attention to this weekend’s arrival of a U.S. cargo craft and a pair of Russian spacewalks starting several days later. SpaceX is planning to launch its Cargo Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station on Saturday at 3:37 a.m. EDT. It will arrive on Sunday and dock autonomously …
NASA Tests Ways to Reduce Stress in Plants Growing in Space
When astronauts embark on long-duration missions in the future, crews will grow food to supplement what they can bring with them. More than 20 years of continuously living and working in space aboard the International Space Station has provided many opportunities for crews and researchers to observe the challenges of growing plants in the stressful conditions of …
Orion Spacecraft Goes ‘Shields Up’ for Artemis I
Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida are putting the final touches on the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission by connecting the ogive fairings for the launch abort system (LAS) assembly. Pronounced oh-jive, the ogive fairings consist of four protective panels, and their installation will complete the LAS assembly. Technicians and engineers …
ISS Daily Summary Report – 8/23/2021
Payloads Combustion Integrated Rack/Advanced Combustion via Microgravity Experiments/Cool Flames Investigation with Gasses (CIR/ACME/CFI-G): A crewmember exchanged a used 100% propane bottle with a new bottle of the same composition. Cool diffusion flames were discovered during droplet combustion experiments aboard the ISS in 2012, and this initiated a rapidly growing field of combustion research. A cool …
Spacewalk is Postponed
The U.S. spacewalk outside the International Space Station originally planned for Tuesday, Aug. 24 with NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide has been postponed due to a minor medical issue involving Vande Hei. This issue is not a medical emergency. The spacewalk is not time-sensitive and crew …
August 2021 Brings Rare Seasonal ‘Blue Moon’
This month we’ll get to see a Full Moon on Aug. 22, 2021, known by some early Native American tribes of the northeastern United States, as the Sturgeon Moon. The name was given to the Moon because the large sturgeon fish of the Great Lakes, and other major lakes, were more easily caught at this …
ISS Daily Summary Report – 8/20/2021
Payloads Cardinal Muscle: A crewmember captured images of Cardinal Muscle BioCell Wells. Muscle mass diminishes with age on Earth via a condition called sarcopenia, and astronauts experience similar and accelerated loss of muscle mass during spaceflight. Tissue Engineered Muscle in Microgravity as a Novel Platform to Study Sarcopenia (Cardinal Muscle) evaluates whether engineered human muscle …
NASA’s ESCAPADE Mission – Twin Martian Orbiters – Moves Toward Launch
NASA's Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE mission, passed a mission review on August 17, 2021, moving the mission into its next phase with a new target launch readiness date of October 2024.