Microgravity research is ramping up aboard the International Space Station with brand new science payloads and an expanded Expedition 60 crew. July will see one more mission going up to the orbiting lab as a Russian cargo craft counts down to a Wednesday launch and docking. The Cell Science-02 experiment is underway on the station …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ From Alberta, Canada, to Michigan, USA. That's how far the plumes of smoke traveled in a few short days, from July 21 to July 24. Smoke from wildfires has staying power. Laura Thapa, a graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles and member of the FIREX-AQ forecasting …
72 Progress (72P) Undock: 72P undocked from the Docking Compartment (DC) 1 port today at 5:44 AM CT. The deorbit burn occurred at 8:50 AM CT followed by atmospheric entry and destruction. Biofabrication Facility (BFF): The crew installed the test print cassette into the BFF in preparation for today’s test print. Using 3D biological printers …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ Each morning Amber Soja gets up at 5:00 a.m. to check the fire weather. She's an associate scientist from the National Institute of Aerospace based at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, one of the lead forecasters for FIREX-AQ with one of the most important jobs: distilling the information …
A new U.S. space freighter is open for business today after delivering its payload to the International Space Station on Saturday. Meanwhile, a Russian resupply rocket is processing for another space delivery mission on Wednesday that will take less than three and a half hours after launch. NASA Flight Engineer Nick Hague opened Dragon’s hatch …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ The FIREX-AQ campaign is flying out of Boise, Idaho. The choice of location was no accident. Boise is also home to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), the nerve center of all major firefighting operations for the United States. Earlier this week, we took a tour. "NIFC is not …
SpX-18 Capture, Berthing and Ingress: The Dragon vehicle was successfully captured at 8:12 AM CT yesterday. The robotic ground controllers then maneuvered the SSRMS to inspect the Dragon Passive CBM sealing surface and installed/berthed Dragon on the Node 2 Nadir CBM at 11:23 AM CT. The crew also completed vestibule pressurization, leak check and vestibule …
While the International Space Station was traveling more than 260 miles over southern Chile, astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch of NASA grappled Dragon at 9:11 a.m. EDT using the space station’s robotic arm Canadarm2. Ground controllers will now send commands to begin the robotic installation of the spacecraft on bottom of the station’s Harmony …
By Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ Thursday, July 25 "It's nice to have a flight plan to deviate from," said DC-8 pilot Tim Vest at the debrief on Thursday night. It was just after 10 p.m. and the DC-8 had just returned from a 6-hour flight over a fire they weren't planning on visiting. The …
Two days after its launch from Florida, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was installed on the Earth-facing side of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 12:01 p.m. EDT. The 18th contracted commercial resupply mission from SpaceX (CRS-18) delivers more than 5,000 pounds of research, crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory. A key …
