Blogs

Crew and passengers need to be prepared to help ourselves and our mates.

Two NASA astronauts switched their spacesuits to battery power this morning at 7:47 a.m. EDT aboard the International Space Station to begin a spacewalk planned to last about 6.5 hours. Live coverage is available on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba of NASA will replace a …

Circadian Rhythms:  Yesterday a crewmember instrumented themselves with Thermolab Double Sensors and mounted the Thermolab Unit to their belt, which began 36 hours of monitoring for the Circadian Rhythm investigation.  Circadian Rhythms investigates the role of synchronized circadian rhythms, or the “biological clock,” and how it changes during long-duration spaceflight. Researchers hypothesize that a non-24-hour …

Four Expedition 53 crewmates huddled together and made final preparations the day before the third and final spacewalk planned for October. Meanwhile, NASA’s commercial partner Orbital ATK has announced Nov. 11 as the new launch date for its Cygnus cargo carrier to the International Space Station. Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba are …

Going to sea slows one down from the hectic sprint of modern city life and car travel.

The Expedition 53 crew trained for a medical emergency in space today after spending the morning on weekly housecleaning tasks. Afterward, two astronauts reviewed procedures and checked their tools ahead of Friday’s spacewalk. Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin joined NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba for a routine training session to handle a medical emergency …

Yesterday, Monday October 16th, I joined the Research Vessel (R/V) Roger Revelle for five weeks at sea in the Pacific Ocean. It feels great to be heading to sea again. This NASA field campaign has lasted more than a year, with intense shipboard work starting in August 2016 and finishing with this voyage in October-November […]

Miniature Exercise Device (MED-2):  Today crewmembers set up cameras in Node 3 to capture video from multiple views of the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) and MED-2 hardware.  They also applied body markers, and performed exercises before transferring the video for downlink.  The ISS’s exercise equipment is large and bulky, while the MED-2 aims to …

Two NASA astronauts are getting ready to go on their mission’s third spacewalk on Friday. In the midst of those preparations, the Expedition 53 crew also worked on science gear exploring a wide variety of space phenomena. Commander Randy Bresnik is preparing to go on the third spacewalk this month with NASA astronaut Joe Acaba. …