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    ISS Daily Summary Report – 7/29/2019

    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 …

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    Fire Weather, Pyro Weather

    True color satellite image from MODIS on July 28, 2019. The red dots are fires detected by the MODIS and VIIRS instruments. In southwest Oregon, the smoke plume from the Milepost 97 fire is visible. Credit: NASA EOSDIS/ Worldview

    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 …

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    Crew Unloads Dragon as Russian Cargo Ships Depart, Prep for Launch

    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 …

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    A Visit to the National Interagency Fire Center

    The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, is the nerve center for fire fighting operations in the United States. Credit: NASA

    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 …

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    ISS Daily Summary Report – 7/28/2019

    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 …

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    Dragon Captured With New Science Experiments

    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 …

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    The Shady Fire, a Deviation From Plan

    The Shady Fire smoke plume seen from the DC-8 on Thursday, July 25. Credit: Bernadett Weinzierl, University of Vienna

    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 …

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    Dragon Installed to Station’s Harmony Module for Cargo Operations

    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 …

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    ISS Daily Summary Report – 7/26/2019

    Rodent Research-17 (RR-17):  The crew installed Rodent Habitats in the Lab rack in preparation for upcoming RR-17 operations following SpX-18 arrival.  RR-17 uses younger and older mice as model organisms to evaluate the physiological, cellular and molecular effects of the spaceflight environment. Some responses to spaceflight in humans and model organisms such as mice resemble …

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    Laying Down with Smoke in the Valley, an Unexpected Camping Trip

    Bruce Anderson and the NASA Langley Mobile Lab in a valley near Stanley, Idaho. July 24, 2019.

    By Ellen Gray / NEAR STANLEY, IDAHO / Wednesday, July 24 We were ready to fly. We'd heard Tuesday evening that there were two seats open on the DC-8 for the communications team on Wednesday, but as often happens in the field, plans change. For the first science flight, requests for extra seats from the …

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