On Tuesday, July 30, 2024, the Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft is seen being encapsulated inside the SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing as it prepares to launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for the 21st Northrop Grumman commercial resupply services for NASA.
Teams with NASA, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX completed the final major review before launch – the Launch Readiness Review – for the 21st Northrop Grumman commercial resupply to the International Space Station.
At the conclusion of the review, teams confirmed the target launch time of 11:29 a.m. EDT, Saturday, Aug. 3. Tune in to the agency’s website at 3 p.m. today, Aug. 2, to hear from senior leadership during a prelaunch teleconference.
Participants include:
Bill Spetch, operations integration manager, NASA’s International Space Station Program
Meghan Everett, deputy chief scientist, NASA’s International Space Station Program
Ryan Tintner, vice president, civil space systems, Northrop Grumman
Jared Metter, director, flight reliability, SpaceX
Melody Lovin, launch weather officer, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s 45th Weather Squadron
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to deliver more than 8,200 pounds of crew supplies, equipment, and science experiments to the orbiting laboratory.
Weather officials with Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s 45th Weather Squadron are currently predicting a 50% chance of favorable weather conditions for launch. Primary weather concerns are for potential violations of the cumulus cloud, surface electric fields, and thick cloud layers rules.
NASA Johnson Dedicates Dorothy Vaughan Center to Women of Apollo
On the eve of the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston commemorated the unsung heroes who helped make humanity’s first steps on the Moon possible.
To celebrate their enduring legacy, Johnson named one of its central buildings the “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo” on July 19, 2024, during a ceremony recognizing the early pioneers who laid the groundwork for the Artemis Generation.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston named one of its central building the “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo.”
NASA/David DeHoyos
Dorothy Vaughan, a mathematician and NASA’s first Black manager, played a crucial role in this historic achievement. As the head of the West Area Computing Unit at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, from 1949 to 1958, she led her team in mastering new computer programming languages, helping to pave the way for the agency’s current diverse workforce and leadership.
The program included remarks from Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche, NASA astronaut Christina Koch, and Deputy Associate Administrator Casey Swails.
Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche gives opening remarks at the building naming ceremony on July 19, 2024.
NASA/Robert Markowitz
“Dorothy Vaughan, alongside all of our Women of Apollo, represents the best of NASA’s past, and their legacies serve as the inspiration and foundation for our future,” said Wyche. “As we prepare to take our next giant leap, the Women of Apollo will take each step with us.”
NASA leadership joined for the special occasion, including Associate Administrator Jim Free, Acting Associate Administrator for Space Technology Mission Directorate and Langley Director Clayton Turner, Director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi John Bailey, and former Johnson Director Mike Coats. Also in attendance were Reps. Lizzie Fletcher and Sylvia Garcia, and representatives from the offices of Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. John Cornyn, and Rep. Brian Babin.
NASA astronauts Suni Williams, Jeanette J. Epps, and Tracy C. Dyson celebrated the historic moment with a special message from the International Space Station.
“We have accomplished our dreams of space exploration thanks to the many NASA women that paved the way for diversity, inclusion, and excellence,” said Epps.
“Building on the efforts of our space exploration pioneers, we continue to work for the benefit of humanity,” said Dyson. “NASA’s success is only possible because of the tenacity and expertise of individuals like Dorothy Vaughan whose legacy of brilliance continues to inspire us today.”
Texas Southern University’s Dr. Thomas F. Freeman Debate Team delivers a speech during the building naming event.
NASA/Robert Markowitz
The program also featured the reading of a poem by Dr. Vivian Ayers Allen, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet, cultural activist, and former NASA editor and typist. The poem, titled “Hawk,” was published just 11 weeks before humankind’s first venture into space with Sputnik I as an allegory where space flight symbolizes freedom. Allen’s daughter, Phylicia Rashad, recited the poem ahead of the presentation by Texas Southern University’s Dr. Thomas F. Freeman Debate Team.
The Women of Apollo stand behind the “Women in Human Spaceflight” panelists. From left: Sandy Johnson, CEO of Barrios Technology; Andrea Mosie, manager and senior sample processor for NASA’s Lunar Materials Repository Laboratory; NASA astronaut Christina Hammock Koch; Dr. Shirley Price, former NASA equal opportunity specialist; Lara Kearney, manager of NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program; and panel moderator Debbie Korth, deputy manager of the Orion Program.
NASA/Robert Markowitz
The ceremony also included a “Women in Human Spaceflight” panel discussion with some of the impactful Women of Apollo and current trailblazers in human spaceflight.
The panelists inspired the crowd with their collective experiences of breaking barriers and making monumental contributions to space exploration.
Debbie Korth, deputy manager of the Orion Program, moderated the event with panelists Lara Kearney, manager of NASA’s Extravehicular Activity and Human Surface Mobility Program; Sandy Johnson, CEO of Barrios Technology; NASA astronaut Christina Hammock Koch; Andrea Mosie, manager and senior sample processor for NASA’s Lunar Materials Repository Laboratory; and Dr. Shirley Price, former NASA equal opportunity specialist.
“I learned that as long as I am being myself, I can make a difference,” said Price. “Dorothy Vaughan helped me make that difference because she paved the way for me, and I am here to pave the way forward for more to follow.”
Koch reflected on the future, saying, “I am looking forward to us being driven by our values of inclusivity, making sure that we are going for all and by all in a non-hidden way and that we are calling out the amazing contributions of every single person that has a dream.”
Dorothy Vaughan’s granddaughter Heather Vaughan-Batten cuts the ribbon to officially name building 12 the Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of the Women of Apollo.
NASA/David DeHoyos
Heather Vaughan-Batten, Vaughan’s granddaughter, marked the official naming of the building with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Vaughan’s family reacts to the surprise unveiling of Dorothy Vaughan’s painted portrait, created by artist Eliza Hoffman.
NASA/David DeHoyos
The event concluded with a surprise unveiling of a painting of Vaughan to her family. The portrait, created by Eliza Hoffman, an artist and student from Clear Creek Independent High School, now illuminates the main hallway of the Dorothy Vaughan Center in honor of the Women of Apollo.
More than 30 portraits of women who made notable contributions to NASA during the Apollo era now line the building’s main hallway.
Watch the building dedication ceremony, ribbon-cutting, and portrait unveiling below.
Teams transport NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) core stage into the Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 24, 2024. Tugboats and towing vessels moved the Pegasus barge and 212-foot-long core stage 900-miles to the Florida spaceport from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where it was manufactured and assembled.
In the coming months, teams will integrate the rocket core stage atop the mobile launcher with the additional Artemis II flight hardware, including the twin solid rocket boosters, launch vehicle stage adapter, and the Orion spacecraft.
The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign, sending NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman, as well as CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back.
Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana would look up at the sky and marvel at the immensity of space when she was younger. Now, the bounds are limitless as she helps NASA explore the expansive universe by computing the trajectories and maneuvers to get a spacecraft into space.
Name: Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana Title: Astrodynamics and solar radiation pressure specialist, Formal Job Classification: Scientific collaborator Organization Navigation and Mission Design Branch (Code 595)
Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana is an astrodynamics and solar radiation pressure specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Photo courtesy of Ariadna Farrés-Basiana
What is your role at Goddard? What do you focus on?
I am part of the flight dynamics team. We are the ones in charge of computing the trajectories, maneuvers, amongst other things to get a spacecraft into space to its final destination. I am currently working on two main projects: the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) mission, which is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mission that will monitor space weather, and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope. I participate in both missions as part of the flight dynamics team. I am in charge of calculating the transfer trajectory, which would be the path through space that these missions must follow to go from Earth to Lagrange points L1 and L2. These are places in space where gravitational forces balance each other and a spacecraft doesn’t need to spend as much fuel to maintain its orbit. In addition to that, I work on station-keeping strategies, which are the routine maneuvers that we must do to keep our telescope in orbit.
What was your path to NASA?
My Ph.D. focused on solar sails, which is a way of navigating through space using the force of light emitted by the Sun as if it were wind that drives the sails of the spacecraft. I always thought that my contribution to NASA would be as a researcher or as a professor at a university. I had always dreamed of joining NASA, but I never thought it was possible. At the time, I was trying to find a position as a tenured professor at the University of Barcelona. While I was waiting, a professor of mine who had collaborated with people at NASA back in the ’90s called his former colleagues and told them that he had a Ph.D. student who was looking for a summer internship; then he asked if I could intern with them for a few months. And they said yes. I came to Goddard one summer as an intern and it was amazing. In the end I didn’t get the position as a tenured professor in Spain, and when I told my colleagues that I didn’t have a job, they asked me if I wanted to come and finish the research project I had started here, and after that I continued to extend my internship. In May 2017, I joined Goddard for the second time, this time as a full-time employee. What would have been only seven months of internship ended up being seven years that I have been here.
What made you interested in mathematics and specialize in it?
When it came time to choose what I wanted to major in, I was deciding between two majors: aerospace engineering, because I’ve always had space on my mind, or mathematics because I really enjoyed it. I chose mathematics, mainly because I could stay in my country. About 20 to 25 years ago, research in aerospace was not a thing in Spain; specializing in space engineering would have meant moving from my hometown and going to Madrid, which is where the only university I knew I could do that was. So, I ended up choosing math and decided it would be cool to learn more about it.
You mentioned that you were interested in space since you were a child. What fascinated you about the sky?
I remember looking at the sky, looking at the Moon and wondering what’s out there. My dad was also into science, and he would explain things regarding space. He had a friend that had a telescope and from time to time, we’d go observe it which was fascinating. There was something about the immensity of space and the fact that we don’t know much about it that interested me.
How do you feel about getting to work on two different telescopes, having been inspired by telescopes when you were younger?
It is very gratifying to know that my work will help these telescopes go to space and operate from there. Finding solutions for this makes me very proud of what I do. I feel like all the knowledge I have is being applied to something physical, practical, that will be in space and that will help other scientists make great discoveries.
What story or tradition from your hometown makes you smile when you think about it?
The most beautiful day is the Sant Jordi festival, it is a precious day. It’s the day of the book and the rose. It’s not a holiday, but everyone is looking for an excuse, any time of the day to go out and buy a book and a rose for their loved ones. The atmosphere is beautiful during those days. Also, my brother’s name is Jordi, so it’s a special day because we all celebrate it together.
“My dad was also into science, and he would explain things regarding space,” said Ariadna. “He had a friend that had a telescope and from time to time, we’d go observe it which was fascinating. There was something about the immensity of space and the fact that we don’t know much about it that interested me.”
Photo courtesy of Ariadna Farrés-Basiana
Are you involved in other activities outside of your work at NASA?
I am part of the Hypatia project. It encourages scientific vocations among girls who are potentially interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. We do analog missions in the Utah desert, which simulates day-to-day life on Mars. Who has not dreamed of going to space, or has simply wondered what a trip to Mars or life on Mars would be like? With these simulations we help bring these dreams closer to students. What I like most about this initiative is being able to go to schools to explain our experiences to them. It is important to show different women who do research. This helps change the ideology of many who imagine that to be a scientist you must be a man with glasses and a white coat. There are few women in the space field. Many times, you have the feeling that you have to prove that you are worth more, show that you are there because you deserve it. It’s nice to be involved in projects like Hypatia, because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about gender in STEM disciplines. It is my contribution so that the next generations are not so afraid to try to pursue a STEM career.
Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
I see myself here at NASA, working on different missions, perhaps taking on a role with a little more leadership or more responsibility.
Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.
Celebrating NASA’s Coast Guard Astronauts on Coast Guard Day
Each Aug. 4, Coast Guard Day commemorates the founding on Aug. 4, 1790, of the U.S. Coast Guard as the Revenue-Marine by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Although considered an internal event for active duty and reserve Coast Guard members, we take the opportunity of Coast Guard Day to honor the astronauts who began their careers in the Coast Guard. To date, NASA has selected three astronauts who served in the Coast Guard: Bruce E. Melnick in 1987, Daniel C. Burbank in 1996, and Andre Douglas in 2021. While Melnick and Burbank have retired from NASA, the decades long relationship between the agency and the Coast Guard carries on with Douglas.
Left: Coast Guard Day banner. Image credit: courtesy Veteran.com. Right: Official emblem of the U.S. Coast Guard. Image credit: courtesy U.S. Coast Guard.
Under the guidance of Treasury Secretary Hamilton, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the Revenue-Marine on Aug. 4, 1790. The bill also authorized the building of a fleet of 10 Revenue Service ships known as cutters, used to enforce tariff laws established by Congress. By the 1860s, the organization’s name had changed to the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service. On Jan. 28, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law an act of Congress that merged the Revenue Cutter Service with the U.S. Life Saving Service, naming the new organization the U.S. Coast Guard, dedicated to saving lives at sea and enforcing the nation’s maritime laws. After 177 years in the Treasury Department, the Coast Guard transferred to the newly formed Department of Transportation on April 1, 1967, and then to the Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.
Bruce E. Melnick
Left: Official astronaut portrait of Bruce E. Melnick, Class of 1987. Middle: Melnick aboard space shuttle Discovery during the STS-41 mission that deployed the Ulysses solar polar probe. Right: Melnick on the flight deck of Endeavour during its first flight, STS-49.
Melnick, a native of Florida, earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering with honors from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1972. During his 20-year career with the U.S. Coast Guard, Melnick’s assignments included serving as operations officer and chief test pilot at the Coast Guard Aircraft Program Office in Grand Prairie, Texas. During his Coast Guard service, Melnick received numerous awards, including two Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medals, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Secretary of Transportation Heroism Award. In 1992, he received the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Distinguished Alumni Award. He logged over 5,000 flight hours.. NASA selected Melnick in June 1987 as the first astronaut from the Coast Guard. He completed his training in August 1988, and flew as a mission specialist on Discovery’s STS-41 mission in October 1990. During the four-day flight, he and his crewmates deployed the Ulysses spacecraft to study the Sun’s polar regions. On his second and final spaceflight in May 1992, he served as the flight engineer on STS-49, the first flight of Endeavour. During that mission, the astronauts rescued and repaired the Intelsat VI satellite. He logged more than 300 hours in space. Melnick retired from the U.S. Coast Guard and NASA in July 1992.
Daniel C. Burbank
Left: Official astronaut portrait of Daniel C. Burbank, Class of 1996. Middle left: Burbank installs the Elektron oxygen generation unit in the Zvezda Service Module during STS-106. Middle right: Burbank performs a spacewalk during STS-115. Right: Burbank conducts a pulmonary function study while exercising on the bicycle ergometer in the Destiny module during Expedition 30.
Connecticut-born and Massachusetts native, Burbank received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and his commission from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in May 1985. After attending naval flight training in Pensacola, Florida, he was assigned to Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina. In July 1992, Burbank transferred to Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Massachusetts, followed by his assignment in May 1995 to Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, Alaska. Burbank logged over 4,000 flight hours, primarily in Coast Guard helicopters, and flew more than 2,000 missions, including over 300 search and rescue missions. NASA selected Burbank as an astronaut in the class of 1996. During his first spaceflight, the 12-day STS-106 International Space Station assembly mission in September 2000, Burbank and his crewmates prepared the station for the arrival of its first expedition crew. They delivered more than three tons of supplies and installed batteries, power converters, oxygen generation equipment, and a treadmill. He flew his second spaceflight aboard Atlantis in September 2006 on the 12-day STS-115 space station assembly mission. The astronauts delivered and installed the P3/P4 truss and solar arrays, and Burbank took part in one the three spacewalks of the mission, spending 7 hours 11 minutes outside. He flew his third and final mission between November 2011 and April 2012 as a member of Expeditions 29 and 30, serving as Commander of Expedition 30. During the 165-day flight, Burbank and his crewmates participated in nearly 200 experiments and completed 23 major hardware upgrades to the station. During his three missions, Burbank accumulated more than 188 days in space. He retired from NASA in June 2018.
Andre Douglas
Left: Official astronaut portrait of Andre Douglas, Class of 2021. Middle: Douglas collects soil samples during simulated moonwalks in Northern Arizona in May 2024. Right: Artemis II backup astronaut Douglas tries on his lunar spacesuit in July 2024. Image credit: Courtesy Andre Douglas.
Douglas, a Virginia native and 2008 U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduate, served as an active-duty Coast Guard officer from 2008 to 2015. He earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in systems engineering from George Washington University. NASA selected Douglas as an astronaut candidate in December 2021, and he completed his training on March 5, 2024. On March 19, the U.S. Coast Guard swore-in Douglas as a commander in the Coast Guard Reserve during a commissioning ceremony in Washington, D.C. On July 3, 2024, NASA named Douglas as a backup crew member for the Artemis II mission to circle the Moon.
