by Emily Fischer Flying a plane over Alaska's vast landscape provides a birds-eye view of some incredible sights. Bears run across frigid streams, moose trample through mounds of snow, and golden eagles own the air above ice-capped mountains. Glaciers cut paths through these mountains, leaving lakes and rivers in their wake. These glaciers are especially …
Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently finished meticulously applying more than 180 blocks of ablative material to the heat shield for the Orion spacecraft set to carry astronauts around the Moon on Artemis II. The heat shield is one of the most critical elements of Orion and protects the capsule and the astronauts inside from the …
Payloads NRCSD-18 Install to Slide Table: In preparation for the NanoRacks Cubesat Deployer – mission 18 (NRCSD-18) currently planned for later this month, the crew installed the appropriate hardware onto the JEM airlock slide table. The NRCSD is a stackable, modular, ground loaded launch case. Each NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer accommodates up to eight launch cases, …
About a dozen technicians and engineers from Exploration Ground Systems worked together recently at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to carry out the first step in stacking the twin solid rocket boosters that help launch NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the first Artemis lunar mission. Inside the Florida spaceport’s Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility, the NASA and Jacobs team completed a pin. …
The Expedition 63 crew readied a pair of tiny satellites for deployment and finished packing a Russian cargo craft for departure. The International Space Station residents also checked on BEAM today then worked on life support and computer maintenance. Two CubeSats were installed inside a NanoRacks small satellite deployer this morning for release into Earth …
Payloads Fluids Integrated Rack/Light Microscopy Module (FIR/LMM)/CDM change out: As a continuation of the CDM experiment, the crew installed the sixth of the ten experiment modules on the FIR/LMM. Capillary-Driven Microfluidics in Space (Capillary Driven Microfluidics or more simply, CDM) examines the drawing of fluids into a tiny narrow tube in microgravity. Results may improve …
Today is my first day fully transitioned as the head of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and I am honored to lead a new era of human spaceflight. You’ll hear me say this time and time again: exploration is a team sport. I saw that in low-Earth orbit with NASA, industry and our …
A Russian cargo craft is due to depart the International Space Station in the middle of the week after seven months on orbit. The five-member Expedition 63 crew stayed busy all-day Monday continuing the upkeep of space research gear and life support hardware. The Progress 74 (74P) resupply ship is being packed with trash and …
Payloads Astrobee: The crew powered on both Astrobee free flier units and verified the LEDs were as expected. Following this, the ground team loaded the appropriate software/maps and adjusted settings. The ground then commanded one of the Astrobee free fliers to undock and maneuver in the JEM. These activities are preparation for the upcoming Kibo …
