Blogs

The crew will work late into the nominal crew work day today to prepare Dragon for unberth and release tomorrow morning. The next daily report will resume on Wednesday, April 8th. Payloads Over the weekend: CASIS PCG 10: The crew transferred five sample cards into MELFI to freeze in preparation for a return on SpX-20. …

A Russian rocket rolled out to its launch pad today as a new crew gets ready for liftoff to the International Space Station. Meanwhile, the Expedition 62 crew will send off a U.S. cargo craft on Tuesday packed with science and hardware. Russia’s Soyuz MS-16 crew ship stands at its launch pad in Kazakhstan today …

The assembly, test and launch operations team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, making significant strides in preparing the agency's Mars Perseverance rover for its planned July 2020 launch. Final assembly and testing of the rover continue at Kennedy, including the recent installation of its wheels and …

As spring blooms in the Northern Hemisphere, here’s what’s happening in the night sky! Venus On April 3, Venus will pass near a star cluster known as the Pleiades. Also known as the Seven Sisters or M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away from Earth, toward the constellation of the Bull — or …

Veggie PONDS Validation: The crew removed the Germination Cap from each Veggie Ponds Module and added water to reservoirs of each module in both facilities. Photos were taken and plant thinning was performed as needed. Organisms grow differently in space, from single-celled bacteria to plants and humans. Future long-duration space missions will require crew members …

The International Space Station expanded its research capabilities overnight after robotics controllers installed a new external science platform. Meanwhile, the Expedition 62 crew is packing cargo for return to Earth while getting ready for its own departure. Europe’s latest contribution to the orbiting lab, Bartolomeo, was attached to the outside of the Columbus laboratory module …

After cracks formed in the sea ice, the MOSAiC expedition team decided to move instruments to safer location.

A U.S. cargo craft is being packed for its return to Earth next week while robotics controllers get ready to install a new European science platform on the International Space Station. The Expedition 62 crew also continued its ongoing human research activities. The reusable SpaceX Dragon space freighter is being loaded this week with thousands …

Fluid Shifts: The crew performed the setup for baselining eye Fundoscope images. Fluid Shifts is a NASA investigation, divided into Dilution Measurements, Baseline Imaging, and Imaging with Chibis. The Chibis hardware is used to perform the Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) part of the experiment. The Fluid Shifts experiment investigates the causes for severe and …