Expedition 54 Commander Alexander Misurkin and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos are preparing for their exit from the station’s Pirs docking compartment airlock at approximately 10:34 a.m. EST to begin a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to service the International Space Station. The primary objectives during the spacewalk will be to remove …
NanoRacks DreamUp Xtronaut Crystal Growth (DreamXCG): The crew used hot water from the PWD to dissolve sugar crystals in two pouches and later transfer sugar water into the pouches with seeded dowels. This investigation teaches students about the effects of microgravity on crystal formations using near-identical flight kits flown and operated aboard the International Space …
A pair of cosmonauts have wrapped up preparations for Friday morning’s spacewalk to work on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. The other four Expedition 54 crew members continued more eye exams throughout the day on Thursday. Commander Alexander Misurkin and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov completed a spacewalk procedures review today, finished collecting …
Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) SmoothNav: The crew set up the SPHERES work area to activate and check out the hardware and EXPRESS laptop computer (ELC) before conducting the SmoothNav experiment run. SmoothNav develops an estimation algorithm aggregating relative state measurements between multiple, small, and potentially differently instrumented spacecraft. The algorithm obtains …
As the International Space Program gets ready for a pair of spacewalks in February, the Expedition 54 crew was busy setting up a pair of experimental internal satellites and conducting vision checks today. NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei brought out a pair of tiny satellites, also known as SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, …
Personal CO2 Monitor Sensor Calibration: Today the crew will perform a single point calibration of the Personal CO2 monitors using and iPad and readings from a Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) sample port. The Personal CO2 Monitor demonstrates a system capable of unobtrusively collecting and downlinking individual crew members’ CO2 exposure for weeks to months. This …
On Saturday, Jan. 27, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe began space environment testing, starting with the air being pumped out of the 40-foot-tall thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland where the spacecraft is currently housed. The chamber – officially called the Space Environment Simulator – creates a nearly identical replication of the conditions the spacecraft will face during its mission to the Sun.
International Space Station managers have rescheduled a U.S. spacewalk postponed on Monday to mid-February. Meanwhile, the Expedition 54 crew is also preparing for a Russian spacewalk this Friday. Astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Norishige Kanai are planning to begin their spacewalk Feb. 15 at 7:10 a.m. EST to stow and reposition a pair of Latching …
Traveling with us were four journalism students from the Stony Brook University School of Journalism; their professor, Elizabeth Bass, the founding director of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University; and teaching assistant Kevin Lizarazo. This group joined us in the field to see firsthand how research gets done. They hiked […]
