Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Arriving to Station Soon Live on NASA TV
The SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft, carrying over 5,800 pounds of cargo, approaches the space station above the south Atlantic Ocean on July 16, 2022.
A SpaceX Dragon is on track to arrive at the International Space Station today, Saturday, March 23, with an expected docking of the cargo spacecraft about 7:16 a.m. EDT. Live coverage is underway on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.
When it arrives to the space station, Dragon will dock to the station’s Harmony module. NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Michael Barratt will monitor the arrival of the spacecraft.
Dragon successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 4:55 p.m. EDT, March 21, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying more than 6,000 pounds of research, hardware, and supplies to the International Space Station.
Elastocaloric materials heat up when exposed to a mechanical force and cool down, removing the same amount of heat from their environment, when the force is removed. Professor Cui will use the recently established DFT/machine learning guided metals development methodology to unravel the complex relationships between compositions, crystal structures, phase transformation, and fatigue behavior of the elastocaloric materials. He will develop novel, new elastocaloric materials and use them as the basis of a high-performance refrigeration system for NASA exploration applications.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward after its liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 4:55 p.m. EDT on Thursday, March 21, on the company’s 30th Commercial Resupply Services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Glenn Benson
A Dragon cargo spacecraft is orbiting Earth and heading for a docking to the International Space Station. On Friday, the Expedition 70 crew members installed hardware, collected data for health investigations, and prepared for Dragon’s delivery.
NASA’s SpaceX 30th commercial resupply mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida on Thursday, March 21 at 4:55 p.m. EDT. The Dragon spacecraft, carrying more than 6,000 pounds of scientific research, food, and supplies, will autonomously dock to the orbital complex at approximately 7:30 a.m. Saturday, March 23.
To prep for the cargo arrival, NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Michael Barratt reviewed Dragon operation procedures on Friday. The duo will be on console to monitor the arrival of the spacecraft, which will stay docked to the zenith port of the Harmony module for approximately one month. They were later joined by NASA astronauts Jeanette Epps and Matthew Dominick for a conference with ground teams to go over cargo unstowing procedures.
Once Dragon arrives, the crew will quickly get to work unpacking the cargo, which includes an array of new science investigations. Some of the new science consists of a set of sensors for the free-flying Astrobee robots, a botany experiment that will examine how two types of grass capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and a CubeSat that will measure global sea ice parameters.
O’Hara also had some time to complete CIPHER activities. With assistance from Dominick, O’Hara had her eye and head movements examined to help scientists better understand the effects of spaceflight on an astronaut’s balance and eye health. CIPHER, or the Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research, is an ongoing suite of total-body experiments that will help researchers pinpoint how the human body reacts to long-duration missions in space.
Barratt also had some time for health research and spent the morning collecting samples for the Standard Measures investigation. Meanwhile, Epps refilled water in the Cell Biology Experiment Facility’s (CBEF) humidifier that was installed a few days ago. She then proceeded to install a second humidifier to CBEF to prepare for upcoming Space Organogenesis research.
At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the launch of the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft is now scheduled for 8:36 a.m. Saturday, March 23. NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus will spend two days in orbit before docking to the station’s Prichal module at 11:09 a.m. Monday, March 25.
In the Roscosmos segment aboard station, the three cosmonauts—Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineers Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin—had the day off but did schedule in some time to clean the orbiting laboratory and complete their required two hours of daily exercise.
Transparent Superconductors for Single-photon Detectors
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Manuel Quevedo-Lopez
University Of Texas, Dallas
ESI23 Quevedo-Lopez Quadchart.pdf
Current SNSPD’s use a thin, superconducting film to detect photons. These films are highly reflective and must be made very thin, on the order of a few nanometers, in order to allow light to interact with their entire thickness. This leads to numerous drawbacks including lower sensitivity and higher signal noise. Professor Lopez will work to develop a new generation of transparent superconducting films for SNSPD applications to overcome these performance limitations.
Professor Guzzetti will study and design small metamaterial particles which can be predictably moved by forces that exist on orbit like the Earth’s magnetic field or heat flux. These Programmable Metamaterial Particle Ensembles (PMPEs) could be deployed as dust clouds and used to deorbit small (<1cm), orbital debris.
