Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Every year on NASA’s Day of Remembrance, the agency pauses to honor the sacrifice of the NASA family members who gave their lives to advance the cause of exploration. Employees remember friends and colleagues, including the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia.
A key element in observances across the agency centers on lessons learned from each tragedy and the importance of embracing NASA’s core value of safety.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, and Associate Administrator Jim Free led a virtual agencywide Day of Remembrance Safety Town Hall on Jan. 23. In a dialogue with employees, the leaders highlighted how NASA safety is the cornerstone to achieving mission success.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, right, lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetary in Arlington, Virginia, as part of NASA’s Day of Remembrance.
Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber
Center Director Dr. Jimmy Kenyon and Deputy Director Dawn Schaible led NASA Glenn Research Center’s Day of Remembrance observance in Cleveland. While at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Schaible worked on payload recovery efforts for Columbia and helped get the space shuttle back in flight. She shared how these experiences affected her and shaped her NASA career.
NASA Glenn Research Center Deputy Director Dawn Schaible addresses employees during NASA Glenn’s Day of Remembrance Observance.
Credit: NASA/Sara Lowthian-Hanna
Schaible stressed the importance of communication and the threat of compliancy. She explained that all jobs have potential hazards to employees and others. Schaible called on employees to take the time to pause, listen, and ask questions during their daily activities.
The globular cluster, NGC 2298, sparkles in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.
NASA, ESA, G. Piotto (Universita degli Studi di Padova), and A. Sarajedini (Florida Atlantic University); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope view shows the globular cluster NGC 2298, a sparkling collection of thousands of stars held together by their mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters are typically home to older populations of stars, and they mostly reside in the dusty outskirts of galaxies.
Scientists utilized Hubble’s unique ability to observe the cosmos across multiple wavelengths of light to study NGC 2298 in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. This valuable information helps astronomers better understand how globular clusters behave, including their internal movements, orbits, and the evolution of their stars.
NASA Johnson Director to Discuss Exploration Park at ASCENDxTexas
Feb. 13, 2024
MEDIA ADVISORY: J24-002
JSC Town Hall with Center Director Vanessa Wyche. Photographer: Robert Markowitz
NASA
NASA Johnson Director to Discuss Exploration Park at ASCENDxTexas
Media are invited to attend an event with NASA taking place as part of ASCENDxTexas on Thursday, Feb. 15.
Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, will be in attendance, as will Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp and Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh. They will provide updates on Exploration Park and are available briefly for interviews after the announcement.
NASA sought proposals for use of the undeveloped and underutilized land near Saturn Lane, known as Exploration Park, on June 9, 2023. The parcel is outside of Johnson’s controlled access area and adjacent to its main campus.
ASCENDxTexas, hosted by AIAA, begins on Wednesday, Feb. 14, at South Shore Harbour Resort and Conference Center, League City, Texas. Media check-in will begin at 9:20 a.m. CST, with the event beginning promptly at 9:45 a.m. For ASCENDxTexas media credentialing, visit:
For more than 60 years, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has led the nation and the world on a continuing adventure of human exploration, discovery, and achievement. Today, Johnson is the hub of human spaceflight, the home of mission control and astronaut training, and leads the International Space Station, Orion, and Gateway programs, while also playing important roles in numerous other advanced human exploration and research projects.
Tech Installs and Maintenance for Crew Ahead of Cargo Launch
Expedition 70 Flight Engineers (from left) Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, both from NASA, pose for a portrait inside the Destiny laboratory module.
Equipment installs and station maintenance topped the in-orbit schedule aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday. The Expedition 70 crew members expanded on work that began yesterday while completing some maintenance around station as they await the arrival of an upcoming cargo craft.
The Progress 87 cargo craft is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:25 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Feb. 14. Loaded with nearly three tons of food, fuel, and supplies, Progress will dock to the station around 1:12 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 17.
As one cargo resupply ship readies for launch, two cosmonauts—Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub—were on duty last night, Feb. 12, to monitor the departure of the Progress 85 cargo craft. Progress undocked from the orbital lab at 9:09 p.m. before it reentered Earth’s atmosphere three hours later and harmlessly burned up over the Pacific Ocean.
Kononenko and Chub had a light duty day afterward, focusing on cargo audits and preparations for future experiments.
Meanwhile, ESA (European Space Agency) Commander Andreas Mogensen spent the bulk of his day working in the Nanoracks Bishop Airlock. He installed the Nanoracks-GITAI S2 modular robotic arm, which demonstrates the design, build, and operations of extravehicular robotic systems. This tech demonstration aims to aid in the development of robots for in-space assembly and manufacturing, supporting future commercial lunar missions.
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli spent her day on a few different tasks, collecting blood pressure data for the Vascular Aging investigation, stowing the Bio-Monitor garment and headband she donned yesterday, and collecting atmosphere samples throughout the station.
NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara assisted Mogensen with the Nanoracks-GITAI S2 install before photographing Plant-Microbe Interactions in Space (APEX-10) petri plates, which launched aboard Northrop Grumman’s 20th commercial resupply mission to the station. The new investigation examines whether beneficial microbes can mitigate some of the negative effects the space environment can have on plant growth and development.
In the Kibo Laboratory, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa spent his day recording space demonstrations suggested by students for JAXA’s Try Zero-Gravity educational activity. Students can vote for and suggest tasks for JAXA astronauts to carry out on station, such as putting in eye drops, performing push-ups on the ceiling, and more, to allow the youth to interact with station residents and learn about living and working in microgravity.
In the Roscosmos segment, Flight Engineer Konstantin Borisov completed some orbital maintenance tasks and ran a distillation cycle on the Roscosmos water management system.
It’s oh-so-easy to be mesmerized by this spiral galaxy. Follow its clearly defined arms, which are brimming with stars, to its center, where there may be old star clusters and – sometimes – active supermassive black holes. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope delivered highly detailed scenes of this and other nearby spiral galaxies in a combination of near- and mid-infrared light.
