Dragon docks at International Space Station
After a 36 hour journey, the Dragon cargo ship has made an Easter Sunday delivery of food, science experiments and supplies to the crew aboard the Internatio...
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Spacewalking Repairmen Star in Juggling Act at Space Station
Two astronauts quickly replaced a bad backup computer box and took on an extra task at the International Space Station on Wednesday during one of NASA's shortest spacewalks.
Within an hour, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson removed the old box, which failed to respond to commands on April 11, and installed a spare. Ground controllers reported that the new box, known as a multiplexer-demultiplexer or MDM, was working fine.
Mastracchio tucked the old box into an equipment bag and told Mission Control that he had "one MDM, slightly used."
"Nice and clean," Mission Control communicator Jeremy Hansen told the spacewalkers. "Good job."
Most spacewalks run for five or six hours, but this one lasted only an hour and 36 minutes arguably making it NASA's shortest glitch-free operation outside the space station.
An astronaut performs a repair job on the International Space Station during Wednesday's spacewalk.
Routine but critical task
The backup box is part of a redundant system that plays a part in controlling critical equipment on the station, including the solar arrays, a robotic rail car and the external cooling system. The primary computer box is working just fine, but NASA didn't want to go without a working backup any longer than necessary.
Replacing the box is considered one of the space station's "Big 12" routine maintenance tasks. Mastracchio and Swanson have been trained in advance for such jobs.
While Mastracchio switched the boxes, Swanson cut some dangling lanyards that had been blocking the way for the space station's Dextre robotic hand. In the future, Dextre might be able to perform maintenance tasks like the computer replacement without the need for a spacewalk.
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Spacewalking Repairmen Star in Juggling Act at Space Station
International Space Station Crew To Assist With APEX Investigations
April 23, 2014
Imaeg Caption: Project manager John Carver prepares the Advanced Plant Experiment (APEX) at the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The study will launch with the SpaceX-3 mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
NASA
Growing knowledge in a given field takes time, attention, andwater? It does when youre talking about plant studies aboard the International Space Station (ISS). All of these things and some scientific know-how come into play as astronauts find out just how green their thumbs are while assisting researchers on the ground.
The crew will assist with the Advanced Plant Experiments (APEX) investigation, a series of studies on the effects of the spaceflight environment on biological systems. Next in the APEX series is the APEX-02-2 study that launched to the space station aboard the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Dragon capsule on the SpaceX-3 resupply mission.
SpaceX-3 is the third station resupply flight under NASAs Commercial Resupply Services contract.
Using Petri plates of common brewers yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, scientists hope APEX-02-2 will help them pinpoint specific changes in the yeasts genetic expression when exposed to microgravity conditions.
Given that yeast is an eukaryotic organism, as are humans, the results will be applicable to organisms higher in the evolutionary chain than bacteria, which are prokaryotic cells. Researchers anticipate that their observations of yeast as a model for how cells adapt to microgravity will help them to better understand how more complex organisms evolve.
Ground testing and processing of the payload took place inside the Space Station Processing Facility at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Overseeing the project is payload manager Jose Camacho, who previously managed the Biological Research in Canisters-17 (BRIC-17) space station study, which launched on SpaceX-2 in 2013.
Camacho started his career with NASA as an electrical engineer working in the ISS Electrical Power Systems group and then migrated to integration engineer, or systems engineer. I would say my experience as a systems engineer along with an engineering management degree was what qualified me for this position, Camacho explained.
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International Space Station Crew To Assist With APEX Investigations
space flight day – Video
space flight day
Santa Fe team movements.
By: Santa Fe team
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Space Flight Final – Video
EE Week STEM Lounge Hangout: Girls in STEM – Video
EE Week STEM Lounge Hangout: Girls in STEM
National Environmental Education Week is hosting a Google+ Hangout on Air with NASA engineers and students to promote awareness about the role and importance...
By: NEEFusa
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University of Florida Among NASA Cargo Launching to Space Station
When the SpaceX-3 cargo resupply mission launched to the International Space Station April 18, two experiments designed by researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville were among the cargo headed to space.
One experiment, Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC), will focus on the growth and development of seedlings in microgravity. Seedlings will be preserved with a chemical fixative and returned to the ground for post-flight evaluation.
The other experiment, Molecular Biology of Plant Development in the Space Flight Environment (Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA)), investigates the growth and development of Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings in microgravity environment, focusing on how a root knows which direction to grow in when gravity is absent. Plants are harvested in orbit, preserved with a chemical preservative and returned to the ground for post-flight evaluation.
SpaceX-3 is NASA's third contracted resupply mission to the space station by U.S. company SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft launched atop the company's Falcon rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at3:25 p.m. EDT.
SpaceX developed its Dragon capsule, the only cargo spacecraft currently servicing the space station with the capability to return cargo back to Earth, with NASA and now successfully has completed three missions to the orbiting outpost. Expedition 39 crew members captured the SpaceX-3 Dragon using the station's robotic arm at 7:14 a.m. Sunday, April 20. The capsule is scheduled to remain attached to the station until May 18. It then will return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast California. It will return samples from scientific investigations currently underway aboard the space station.
The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has had continuous human occupation since November 2000. In that time it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
For more information about the SpaceX-3 mission and the International Space Station, visit:
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University of Florida Among NASA Cargo Launching to Space Station
NASA Hubble Instruments Highlight New National Air and Space Museum Exhibit
Two instruments that played critical roles in discoveries made by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope now are on display in an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
"Repairing Hubble" recognizes the 24th anniversary of Hubble's launch into space aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. The exhibit features Hubble's Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) instrument and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).
Soon after Hubble began sending back images in 1990, scientists discovered the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw called spherical aberration. The outer edge of the mirror was ground too flat by a depth of 4 microns, which is roughly equal to one-fiftieth the thickness of a human hair. The flaw resulted in images that were fuzzy because some of the light from the objects being studied was being scattered. After the amount of aberration was understood, scientists and engineers developed WFPC2 and COSTAR, which were installed in Hubble during the first space shuttle servicing mission in 1993.
COSTAR deployed corrective optics in front of three of Hubble's first generation instruments the Faint Object Camera, the Goddard High Resolution Spectrometer, and the Faint Object Spectrograph. COSTAR could not correct the vision for the Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WFPC) currently on Hubble. So, a replacement instrument, which was already in work as an upgrade, was hastened to completion as WFPC2. WFPC and WFPC2 were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
WFPC2 was separately fitted with corrective optics to compensate for the scattered light from the primary mirror. This allowed the camera to record razor-sharp images of celestial objects from nearby planets to remote galaxies -- for more than 15 years. A landmark observation was the Hubble Deep Field taken in 1995. This long-exposure captured the light of 4,000 galaxies stretching 12 billion years back into time.
WFPC2 was one of Hubble's main cameras until the Advanced Camera for Surveys was installed in 2002. WFPC2's 48 filters allowed scientists to study precise wavelengths of light and to sense a range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared light.
COSTAR and WFPC2 were removed from Hubble in 2009 during the fifth and final shuttle servicing mission and returned to Earth. COSTAR's removal made way for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. WFPC2 was replaced by Wide Field Camera 3.
Development of the National Air and Space Museum exhibit was supported by NASA, including the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The exhibit was designed and constructed by museum staff.
A reception at the National Air and Space Museum Wednesday featured presentations by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was the pilot for Discovery during the Hubble deployment mission in 1990; Gen. J.R. "Jack" Dailey, museum director; John Grunsfeld, NASA's Science Mission Directorate associate administrator and astronaut on several shuttle Hubble servicing missions; and John Trauger, former WFPC2 principal investigator at JPL. The presentations will air on NASA Television. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:
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NASA Hubble Instruments Highlight New National Air and Space Museum Exhibit
National Space Society Congratulates SpaceX on CRS-3 & First Flight of the Falcon 9R
(Washington, DC April 22, 2014) The Washington DC-based National Space Society (NSS) congratulates SpaceX on the successful launch of Commercial Resupply Services 3 (CRS-3) from Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 18th at 3:25 pm EDT. NSS Executive Senior Operating Officer Bruce Pittman said, "The successful reusability tests of the Falcon 9 v1.1 during the CRS-3 mission are a vital step on the path to dramatically reducing the cost of access to space."
The National Space Society will present two special awards to SpaceX at their 2014 International Space Development Conference (ISDC). Elon Musk, SpaceX Chief Designer and CTO, will accept the Robert A Heinlein Memorial Award. Gwynne R. Shotwell, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer, will accept the Space Pioneer Award for the Entrepreneurial Business category.
The Dragon capsule berthed with the ISS at 9:06 AM EDT Sunday April 20th. This is the first flight of the upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 to the ISS, and the fourth overall flight of the v1.1 version. In addition to carrying a record up mass (cargo) of 1,580 lb/3,476 kg to the ISS, the Falcon 9 v1.1 demonstrated for the first time the unfolding of the landing legs on the first stage. CRS-3 was part of a series of tests of reusable spacecraft technology that are planned to eventually lead to the full re-use of the Falcon 9. If this occurs, it will drive a revolution in access to space via lowering launch costs.
The Dragon capsule pressurized area carried a record of one GLACIER and two MERLIN freezers for transporting experiment samples, a replacement Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), or in everyday English, a spacesuit, plus additional supplies of food, water, and personal items. The unpressurized Dragon trunk contained the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) and the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) package made up of four commercial HD cameras. Dragon also brought VEG-01, a plant growth chamber to the ISS, where it will be used for experimental food production.
As expected for this early test flight, SpaceX did not recover the first stage, which "soft landed" in the ocean. At this time it appears that CRS-3 met SpaceX's reusability milestones, including first stage re-ignition to slow the first stage on it's return. Reusability tests of the Falcon 9 will continue throughout 2014, with a target of full first stage reuse by the end of 2014 or early 2015.
On Thursday April 17th the SpaceX Falcon 9R flew for the first time from McGregor, Texas, to a height of 250 m. The Falcon 9R is a 3-engine successor to the single-engine "Grasshopper" and will continue the development of reusable SpaceX rocket technology. Later this summer the Falcon 9R will move to Spaceport America in New Mexico for high-altitude test flights.
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National Space Society Congratulates SpaceX on CRS-3 & First Flight of the Falcon 9R
MERS-CoV scare: Search for 174 passengers intensified
Passengers walk past a thermal scanner at the medical quarantine area at the arrival section of Manilas International Airport in Paranaque. AP FILE PHOTO
Health authorities have opened a Facebook account, bought newspaper ad space for the names of 174 out of the 415 passengers of a flight from the Middle East who had yet to submit themselves as of Monday to nose-and-throat swab test for a deadly virus and enlisted the help of the police in tracing them.
President Benigno Aquino III would have wanted that all the copassengers of a male Filipino nurse, who initially tested positive for the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus (MERS-CoV), be contacted by the Department of Health (DOH) by Tuesday.
At a press briefing, Dr. Lyndon Lee Suy, DOH Emerging Infectious Diseases program manager, on Tuesday said that Mr. Aquino had strongly recommended that the agencys contact-tracing efforts for all the passengers of Etihad Airways Flight No. EY 0424 should have been completed a week after they had arrived in the country.
The male nurse, who arrived in Manila from the United Arab Emirates on April 15, was initially diagnosed with MERS-CoV while he was still at the UAE. But the two tests conducted on him by the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City yielded negative results.
The nurse came into contact with a Filipino paramedic who died of MERS-CoV in the UAE.
The strong recommendation by the President is for us to be able to contact and locate all the passengers within today. We are working hard and all our efforts are focused on finding these passengers. We are optimistic we can meet the Presidents deadline, Lee Suy said.
So far, were doing good. We dont see any problem with (contact tracing). But of course, the faster, the better, he added.
MERS-CoV is a communicable disease that may be passed on to others through close contact with a positive carrier. It has an incubation period of 10 to 14 days and symptoms may include fever, coughing, sneezing and runny nose two weeks after exposure.
The World Health Organization has recorded 242 confirmed cases of MERS-CoV, including 93 deaths, since it was first discovered in March 2012 in Saudi Arabia.
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UN heads say Syria aid needs 'largely unanswered'
Hussein Malla
Lebanese citizens who fled their houses from the Lebanese-Syrian border village of Tfail, sit on a pickup as they pass next of Lebanese soldiers on their way back home, in the Ras al-Haref mountains which link to Tfail village, eastern Lebanon, Tuesday April 22, 2014. A Lebanese convoy of soldiers, clerics and Red Cross officials delivered aid Tuesday to a remote village near the Syrian border that was bombed by Syrian government aircraft and blocked by Lebanese militants fighting alongside President Bashar Assads forces in the civil war next door. Hezbollah fighters have been patrolling the area on the Lebanese side and fighting has flared up inside Syria, cutting Tfails residents off from all sides for months. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Hussein Malla
Lebanese and Syrian citizens gather to receive aid supplies, at the main square of Tfail village at the Lebanese-Syrian border, eastern Lebanon, Tuesday April 22, 2014. A Lebanese convoy of soldiers, clerics and Red Cross officials delivered aid Tuesday to a remote village near the Syrian border that was bombed by Syrian government aircraft and blocked by Lebanese militants fighting alongside President Bashar Assads forces in the civil war next door. Hezbollah fighters have been patrolling the area on the Lebanese side and fighting has flared up inside Syria, cutting Tfails residents off from all sides for months. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Hussein Malla
Lebanese General Security forces sit behind tables after they set up a temporary checkpoint to put an exit and entry stamps for the citizens who want to leave or enter the Tfail village at the Lebanese-Syrian border, eastern Lebanon, Tuesday April 22, 2014. A Lebanese convoy of soldiers, clerics and Red Cross officials delivered aid Tuesday to a remote village near the Syrian border that was bombed by Syrian government aircraft and blocked by Lebanese militants fighting alongside President Bashar Assads forces in the civil war next door. Hezbollah fighters have been patrolling the area on the Lebanese side and fighting has flared up inside Syria, cutting Tfails residents off from all sides for months. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Hussein Malla
Lebanese General Security forces check the identity card of a Lebanese woman, center, as she leaves the Tfail village, in the Ras al-Haref mountains at the Lebanese-Syrian border, eastern Lebanon, Tuesday April 22, 2014. A Lebanese convoy of soldiers, clerics and Red Cross officials delivered aid Tuesday to a remote village near the Syrian border that was bombed by Syrian government aircraft and blocked by Lebanese militants fighting alongside President Bashar Assads forces in the civil war next door. Hezbollah fighters have been patrolling the area on the Lebanese side and fighting has flared up inside Syria, cutting Tfails residents off from all sides for months. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Hussein Malla
A Lebanese man steps outside a cave after he showed journalists where people hide from the shelling of Syrian government forces, in Tfail village, at the Lebanese-Syrian border, eastern Lebanon, Tuesday, April 22, 2014 A Lebanese convoy of soldiers, clerics and Red Cross officials delivered aid Tuesday to a remote village near the Syrian border that was bombed by Syrian government aircraft and blocked by Lebanese militants fighting alongside President Bashar Assads forces in the civil war next door. Hezbollah fighters have been patrolling the area on the Lebanese side and fighting has flared up inside Syria, cutting Tfails residents off from all sides for months. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
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Media advisory 4: On-site registration, press conferences streamed online
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
22-Apr-2014
Contact: Brbara Ferreira media@egu.eu 49-892-180-6703 European Geosciences Union
The General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), a meeting with over 11,000 scientists that covers all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences, is taking place next week (27 April 2 May) in Vienna, Austria. Interested journalists can register on-site free of charge. Those who cannot make it to Vienna, can watch press conferences remotely through a webstreaming link. Media briefings include presentations on the latest news from the Cassini mission and an update from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Other events of interest include debates on mining and geoengineering, which will also be streamed online.
Contents
Press conference schedule Online streaming Meeting programme Union-wide sessions of interest Media registration and badge collection
Press conference schedule
Press conferences at the EGU General Assembly will be held at the Press Centre located on the Yellow Level (Ground Floor) of the Austria Center Vienna. All times are CEST.
Documents relating to the press conferences listed below, such as press releases and presentation slides, will be made available from the Documents page at http://media.egu.eu during the meeting.
SINKING COASTAL CITIES Monday, 28 April, 14:00
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Media advisory 4: On-site registration, press conferences streamed online
Nasa Aur Mansahar Nishedh Abiyan 21_04_14 – Video
Nasa Aur Mansahar Nishedh Abiyan 21_04_14
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NASA Announcing Alien Life in 2014? Yes, Likely, According to Their Newly Released Graphs – Video
NASA Announcing Alien Life in 2014? Yes, Likely, According to Their Newly Released Graphs
NASA Animation Reveals Likelihood to Finding/ Announcing Life on an Alien Planet in 2014 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html Track Listing: Lil...
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NASA Announcing Alien Life in 2014? Yes, Likely, According to Their Newly Released Graphs - Video
NASA Chief Tells the Critics of Exploration Plan: 'Get Over It'
For years, critics have been taking shots at NASA's plans to corral a near-Earth asteroid before moving on to Mars and now NASA's chief has a message for those critics: "Get over it, to be blunt."
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden defended the space agency's 20-year timeline for sending astronauts to the Red Planet on Tuesday, during the opening session of this year's Humans 2 Mars Summit at George Washington University in the nation's capital.
That timeline calls for NASA to develop a new Orion crew capsule and a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System while continuing research on the International Space Station. By the mid-2020s, astronauts would travel to a near-Earth asteroid that was brought to the vicinity of the moon. That'd set the stage for trips to Mars and its moons sometime in the 2030s.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden discusses his agency's plan to get astronauts to Mars during a session at the Humans 2 Mars Summit in Washington on Tuesday.
Some members of Congress want NASA to forget about the asteroid and go directly to Mars or the moon's surface instead. But Bolden said NASA needed the asteroid mission as a "proving ground" for the farther-out missions to Mars.
"We don't think we can just go," the former astronaut and Marine general said.
Bolden said missions to Mars would be important not only to learn whether life once existed beyond Earth, but also to set the stage for interplanetary settlement. That would serve as an insurance policy against any potentially planet-destroying catastrophe on Earth's.
"Only multiplanet species survive for long periods of time," Bolden said, echoing echoing a call for outer-space colonization that has been made by luminaries ranging from physicist Stephen Hawking to SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk.
Bolden said getting astronauts to Mars by the 2030s would require "modest increases" in NASA's budget. Musk has said he could do it sooner, perhaps in 10 years if enough money was available. But Bolden said an Apollo-scale push to Mars isn't in the cards.
A NASA chart lays out the agency's step-by-step plan for human exploration of Mars.
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NASA Chief Tells the Critics of Exploration Plan: 'Get Over It'
NASA's 'Earth From Orbit' Highlights Reel Is Literally Awesome
Red Dwarf Star
Artist's depiction of the powerful flare that erupted from the red dwarf star EV Lacertae in 2008.
Unlike Earth, Venus lacks a magnetic field to deflect powerful solar outbursts -- as can be seen in this NASA-created image, a still from the video "Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth's Climate Engine."
This vertigo-inducing, false-color image from NASA's Cassini mission highlights the storms at Saturn's north pole. The angry eye of a hurricane-like storm appears dark red while the fast-moving hexagonal jet stream framing it is a yellowish green. Low-lying clouds circling inside the hexagonal feature appear as muted orange color. A second, smaller vortex pops out in teal at the lower right of the image. The rings of Saturn appear in vivid blue at the top right.
This Hubble photo is of a small portion of a large star-birthing region in the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula.
This computer simulation shows gas from a tidally shredded star falling into a black hole. Some of the gas also is being ejected at high speed into space.
This image of Asia and Australia at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012.
In this composite image, visible-light observations by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope are combined with infrared data from the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona to assemble a dramatic view of the well-known Ring Nebula.
A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.
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NASA's 'Earth From Orbit' Highlights Reel Is Literally Awesome
NASA Exploration Forum to Showcase Human Path to Mars
NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other agency leadership will showcase NASAs human exploration path to Mars at an Exploration Forum from 12:30 to 3 p.m. Tuesday, April 29.
The forum will be held in NASA Headquarters' Webb Auditorium at 300 E St. SW in Washington. The event is open to the public and will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
Other senior NASA officials speaking at the event are:
-- Robert Lightfoot, NASA associate administrator -- John Grunsfeld, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate -- William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate -- Sam Scimemi, director, International Space Station Division -- Phil McAlister, director, Commercial Spaceflight Division -- Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development -- Michele Gates, senior technical advisor, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate -- Jason Crusan, director, Advanced Exploration Systems Division -- Randy Lillard, Program Executive for Technology Demonstration Missions, Space Technology Mission Directorate -- David Miller, NASA chief technologist -- Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist
Media interested in covering the forum should contact Trent Perrotto at 202-358-1100 ortrent.j.perrrotto@nasa.govby noon Tuesday.
For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:
For more information about NASA's human path to Mars, visit:
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NASA International Space Station Spacewalk Live Stream: Watch The Maintenance Mission Here [VIDEO]
Update 10:32 a.m. EDT: Swanson and Mastracchio have removed the faulty backup MDM.
NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Rick Mastracchio will perform a 2 1/2-hour International Space Station spacewalk on Wednesday. The NASA live stream of the event begins at 8:30 a.m. EDT and the ISS Expedition 39 crew members will work to replace a faulty computer located on the exterior of the space station.
Swanson and Mastracchio will replace the unresponsive backup multiplexer-demultiplexer (MDM). NASA discovered the problem on April 11, and the backup MDM supports several robotic systems aboard the ISS. According to NASA, the MDM "provides redundancy for commanding the Mobile Transporter rail car on the truss of the station." The Mobile Transporter is part of the docking procedure that attaches spacecraft to the space station. For Swanson, it will be his fifth spacewalk, and it will be the ninth for Mastracchio.
The recent SpaceX ISS commercial resupply mission could have been delayed by the unresponsive MDM, but NASA went ahead with the launch and the spacecraft reached the ISS on Easter. There are 45 MDMs located throughout the space station and the backup MDM that failed has been attached to the ISS for more than 10 years.
According to NASA, the faulty backup MDM is located on the S0 truss, on top of the Destiny laboratory module. On Monday, the Expedition 39 crew spent the day unpacking the cargo from the Dragon spacecraft. The T-Cell Activation in Aging science experiment, which studies immune system depression in microgravity, was among the first items unloaded from the spacecraft.
On Tuesday, ISS Expedition 39 commander Koichi Wakata, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, met with Swanson and Mastracchio and discussed Wednesday's ISS spacewalk. Prior to the spacewalk, the ISS Progess 53 resupply spacecraft, which is currently docked at the ISS, will detach from the Zvezda service module, located on the Russian side of the space station. The cargo spacecraft will spend two days in space, traveling no farther than 311 miles away from the ISS, before reattaching on Friday, notes NASA.
The NASA International Space Station spacewalk is scheduled for 9:20 a.m. EDT and the live stream can be viewed below.
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NASA International Space Station Spacewalk Live Stream: Watch The Maintenance Mission Here [VIDEO]
Nanotechnology In Information Storage – Video
Nanotechnology In Information Storage
Nanotechnology affects the world in many different ways, but how does this relatively new technology affect the storing of Data and information.
By: Nathan Maciel
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UMN Physics and Nanotechnology Building construction time-lapse – Video
UMN Physics and Nanotechnology Building construction time-lapse
From fall 2011 to fall 2013, more than 816 workers from various trades participated in constructing a new 144000-square-foot, $84.5 million University of Mi...
By: umnCSE
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UMN Physics and Nanotechnology Building construction time-lapse - Video