The SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft is pictured docked to the International Space Station as it soared 257 miles above Hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico on Oct. 8, 2024.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, with Expedition 72 crew members NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, undocked from the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 6:35 a.m. EST, to autonomously redock with the module’s space-facing port.
Redocking is planned at 7:18 a.m. NASA coverage continues live on NASA+. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
This is the fifth port relocation of a Dragon spacecraft with crew aboard following previous moves during the Crew-1, Crew-2, Crew-6, and Crew-8 missions.
The SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft is pictured through the window of the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft with a vivid green and pink aurora below.
Four Expedition 72 crew members are preparing take a short ride to a different International Space Station port this weekend to make way for an upcoming cargo mission. In the meantime, the orbital residents wrapped up the workweek with life science experiments and lab maintenance.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov reviewed procedures on Friday for the SpaceX Dragon Freedom spacecraft’s relocation maneuver scheduled to begin at 6:35 a.m. EST on Sunday when they undock from the Harmony module’s forward port. They will be joined inside Freedom by station Commander Suni Williams and Flight Engineer Butch Wilmore, both NASA astronauts, as they redock to Harmony’s space-facing port at 7:18 a.m. Hague and Gorbunov launched as SpaceX Crew-9 members to the orbital outpost on Sept. 28 aboard Dragon Freedom. However, they will return to Earth in February next year bringing home Williams and Wilmore.
Harmony’s vacated forward port will await the arrival of the next Dragon cargo mission set to launch at 9:29 p.m. on Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Dragon will dock to Harmony at 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday delivering nearly 6,000 pounds of new science experiments and station supplies. Hague and Wilmore will be on duty monitoring Dragon’s arrival
NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit joined the four Dragon crewmates at the end of Friday’s shift and called down to mission controllers to discuss Sunday’s Dragon relocation. Pettit will be on duty Sunday inside the space station monitoring Dragon as it completes its automated relocation maneuver.
Pettit earlier joined Hague drawing their blood samples, spinning them in a centrifuge, then stowing the specimens in a science freezer for preservation and later analysis. Pettit later removed components from the Cell Biology Experiment Facility preparing the research device for new experiments being delivered aboard the next Dragon cargo mission. Hague spent the rest of Friday reviewing procedures to command Dragon during Sunday’s relocation maneuver.
Williams and Wilmore started their Friday shift on orbital maintenance. Williams replaced filters on the Tranquility module’s water recycling system as Wilmore installed an instrumentation box on the advanced resistive exercise device. The duo later trained for the two upcoming Dragon missions rounding out the day.
In the Roscosmos segment of the orbiting lab, Flight Engineer Ivan Vagner assisted Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin with maintenance activities in the aft end of the Zvezda service module. Earlier, Ovchinin explored spacecraft and robotic piloting techniques future crew members might use on planetary missions. Gorbunov started his day closing operations for an experiment that images Earth’s nighttime atmosphere in near-ultraviolet wavelengths before joining Hague for Dragon relocation procedure reviews.
NASA Awards Contract for Refuse and Recycling Services
Credit: NASA
NASA has awarded the Custodial and Refuse/Recycle Services contract to Ahtna Integrated Services LLC of Anchorage, Alaska, to provide trash, waste, and recycling services at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.
This is a hybrid contract that includes a firm-fixed-price and an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity portion. The period of performance begins Friday, Nov. 1, with a 60-day phase-in period, followed by a one-year base period, and options to extend performance through November 2029. This contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $24 million.
Under this contract, the company will perform basic, regularly scheduled custodial and refuse and recycling services at NASA Ames. The company will focus on health and safety, environmental compliance, sanitary cleaning, and customer service.
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NASA’s New Edition of Graphic Novel Features Europa Clipper
A new edition of Issue #4 of Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe has been released to include the NASA Europa Clipper mission.
NASA Astrobiology/Aaron Gronstal
To celebrate the successful launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, the agency’s Astrobiology program has released a new edition of Issue #4 – Missions to the Outer Solar System – of its graphic history series Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe.
Issue #4 tells the story of the outer solar system, from beyond the asteroid belt to the outer reaches of the Sun’s magnetic influence. Gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are not habitable, but many of their moons raise questions about life’s potential far, far away from the warmth of the Sun.
One such body is Jupiter’s moon Europa, which contains an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface. The Europa Clipper mission is designed to help scientists understand whether this ocean holds key ingredients that could support habitable environments for life as we know it. The spacecraft launched on Oct. 14 and will arrive at Jupiter in 2030.
Additional content in the fourth edition of Issue #4 also includes ESA’s (European Space Agency) Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission, which will arrive in the Jovian system in 2031 and collect data on many of Jupiter’s moons, including Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, and Io, that is complementary to Europa Clipper’s investigation.
Read more about how astrobiologists study the potential for life on worlds like Europa and the exciting data that Europa Clipper will gather by visiting NASA’s Astrobiology website and downloading the new edition.
Digital wallpaper for phones, desktops, or meeting backgrounds that feature the new Europa Clipper artwork from Issue #4 are also available.
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
European company apetito uses Neurala’s vision inspection software to ensure the quality of its prepared meals, such as green bean portions pictured here. The software evolved from code Neurala was developing more than a decade ago, with NASA funding, for a rover that could independently learn to traverse Martian terrain.
Credit: Neurala Inc.
Artificial intelligence software initially designed to learn and analyze Martian terrain is now at the heart of a system to monitor assembly lines on Earth.
The vision inspection software from Neurala Inc., an artificial intelligence company in Boston, Massachusetts, works with existing cameras, computers, and even cellphones to monitor the quality of products running along a conveyor belt, for instance.
“Our software can learn very quickly on a processor with a very small footprint, a skill we learned working with NASA,” said Neurala cofounder and CEO Massimiliano Versace. “By doing so, we enable vision inspection with whatever components are already available, deploying in minutes. In our exploration of the market, we realized that the manufacturing space had a precise need for this technology.”
Versace and Neurala (Spinoff 2018) began working with NASA more than a decade ago on a project funded through the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program. NASA was interested in “adaptive bio-inspired navigation for planetary exploration,” and Versace and his team had been working on neural network AI software modeled on the human brain.
Focusing on a rover concept that could independently learn to traverse Martian terrain, Neurala went on to win STTR Phase II funding for the project. Additional money from a NASA Center Innovation Fund enabled the Neurala team to adapt its technology to drone navigation and collision avoidance.
In both the rover and the drone applications, the Neurala software could run on a small device on the vehicle itself, eliminating the delay of sending signals to a decision maker in another location. Since then, the company developed the software to help monitor assembly lines.
Onsite computing is an advantage in manufacturing, as well, where an assembly line may have a hundred items passing every minute, making visual inspections for quality control difficult.
