NASA to Highlight 13th Space Station Research, Development Conference

NASA will broadcast groundbreaking discoveries, benefits for humanity, and how the agency and its commercial and international partners are maximizing research and development in orbit from the 13th annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference.

The conference runs Monday through Thursday, Aug. 1, in Boston. The full conference agenda is available online.

NASA will stream live coverage of select panels on NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms, including social media.

NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern):

Tuesday, July 30

9 a.m. – Igniting Innovation Keynote with the following participants:

• Diana Ly, manager, deputy director, Biological and Physical Sciences, NASA Headquarters
• Michael Roberts, chief scientific officer, International Space Station National Laboratory

9:35 a.m. – NASA’s Expedition 71 astronauts will discuss research from aboard the orbiting space station laboratory with the following participants:

• Mike Barratt
• Matt Dominick
• Jeanette Epps
• Tracy C. Dyson

Wednesday, July 31

12 p.m. – Keynote address with the following participant:

• NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free

1:45 p.m. – Lightning: The Power of Science in Low Earth Orbit talk with the following participant:

• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters

2:05 p.m. – Low Earth Orbit Research Continuity panel with the following participants:

• Robyn Gatens, director, International Space Station Program, NASA Headquarters
• Kirt Costello, utilization manager, Low Earth Orbit Development Program, NASA Johnson
• Ryan Prouty, manager, International Space Station Research Integration Office, NASA Johnson

Thursday, Aug. 1

8:40 a.m. – International Space Station International Partners panel with the following participants:

• Dana Weigel, manager, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson
• Dr. Masaki Shirakawa, director, Japanese Experiment Module Utilization Center, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
• Fabio Caramelli, manager, Space Rider System Payload and Exploitation, ESA (European Space Agency)
• Mathieu Caron, director, Astronauts, Life Sciences and Space Medicine, CSA (Canadian Space Agency)
• Hazzaa Al Monsoori, chief, Astronaut Office, United Arab Emirates
• Luca Di Fino, utilization manager, International Space Station Program, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana

10:15 a.m. – Accessibility to Low Earth Orbit panel with the following participants:

• Brittany Brown, director, digital communications, Office of Communications, NASA Headquarters
• Jessica Gagen, scientist and educator, Miss United Kingdom 2024
• Eric Ingram, chairman and chief strategy officer, SCOUT Space, Inc.
• John Shoffner, founder, Perseid Foundation

12:15 p.m. – Keynote address with the following participant:

• Steve Bowen, NASA astronaut

The International Space Station Research and Development Conference is hosted by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space and the American Astronautical Society, in cooperation with NASA, and brings together leaders from industry, academia, and government.

With more than 23 years of continuously crewed operations, the space station is a unique scientific platform where crew members conduct experiments across multiple disciplines of research, including Earth and space science, biology, human physiology, physical sciences, and technology demonstrations not possible on Earth. Crews living aboard the station have executed more than 3,300 experiments in microgravity for thousands of researchers on Earth. The space station also supports space commerce, from commercial crew and cargo partnerships to commercial research and national lab research. Data collected from these activities helps set standards for future commercial stations.

Get updates about the science conducted aboard the space station on X at @ISS_Research.

Learn more about conducting research in microgravity at:

https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science

-end-

Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

Patrick O’Neill
International Space Station National Laboratory
904-806-0035
poneill@issnational.org

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Jessica Taveau

Sols 4257-4258: A Little Nudge on Kings Canyon

Earth planning date: Friday, July 26, 2024

Today’s 2-sol weekend plan is our first taste of a new location for a potential sampling campaign. We call today’s plan type: Drill Sol 1 – triage contact science.

We arrived this morning to a lovely new workspace. The science team has been eagerly observing these lighter-toned rocks first from orbital data, then from our drive direction imaging as we approached them, and now they are right in front of us! Because the science team had been contemplating the possibility of sampling these rocks, the drive that we planned on Wednesday ended in just the right orientation in case the team does decide to drill here. Variables that matter are the rover roll and pitch – so that we can both drill the rock safely but also then deliver sample to our two internal instruments, CheMin and SAM. Additionally, the rover heading needs to be just right so that we can communicate clearly with Earth – perhaps for several weeks if we remain for a campaign! We have specially certified Rover Planners called Sampling Campaign Rover Planners (SCaRPs) and they go into action on Drill Sol 1 to confirm that all those special considerations for drilling are met including finding the actual target on the ground that we want to assess. 

This morning, the SCaRPs swiftly found a great target and we named it “Kings Canyon.” Kings Canyon National Park is in the southern Sierra Nevada range in California. Kings Canyon itself is a glacially carved canyon more than a mile deep! The national park also contains some of the world’s largest stands of Giant Sequoia trees. 

The Drill Sol 1 plan has two purposes – first to determine if our target, Kings Canyon, meets the science teams criteria for sampling – for example, is it compositionally interesting? The second objective is to determine if the rock and specific target, are safe to drill; can it handle the forces from the drill, for example. We call this activity a “drill preload test.” Therefore, the primary activities in today’s plan are the preload test and contact science on Kings Canyon – we will first brush the target to remove surface dust and then take close-up imaging with our MAHLI instrument and compositional data with our APXS instrument.

In anticipation of a notional full drill on Monday, today’s team was very conservative with the amount of power we used. This meant limiting our remote sensing observations to only those that the team thought were most important to get down timely to support a drill campaign. We’ll use our ChemCam instrument to also study Kings Canyon, ChemCam provides complementary compositional data to the APXS observations. Together these observations will help inform the science about whether they want to proceed with sampling. Today’s plan also includes our typical environmental monitoring observations that we take at a regular cadence. 

Hope your weekend is as busy and fun as Curiosity’s!

Written by Elena Amador-French, Science Operations Coordinator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Explore More

2 min read

Sols 4255-4256: Just Passing Through

Article


23 mins ago

2 min read

Sols 4253-4254: Pit Stop for Contact Science

Article


6 days ago

3 min read

Sols 4250-4252: So Many Rocks, So Little Time

Article


6 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…

All Mars Resources

Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…

Rover Basics

Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…

Mars Exploration: Science Goals

The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…

Sols 4257-4258: A Little Nudge on Kings Canyon

Earth planning date: Friday, July 26, 2024

Today’s 2-sol weekend plan is our first taste of a new location for a potential sampling campaign. We call today’s plan type: Drill Sol 1 – triage contact science.

We arrived this morning to a lovely new workspace. The science team has been eagerly observing these lighter-toned rocks first from orbital data, then from our drive direction imaging as we approached them, and now they are right in front of us! Because the science team had been contemplating the possibility of sampling these rocks, the drive that we planned on Wednesday ended in just the right orientation in case the team does decide to drill here. Variables that matter are the rover roll and pitch – so that we can both drill the rock safely but also then deliver sample to our two internal instruments, CheMin and SAM. Additionally, the rover heading needs to be just right so that we can communicate clearly with Earth – perhaps for several weeks if we remain for a campaign! We have specially certified Rover Planners called Sampling Campaign Rover Planners (SCaRPs) and they go into action on Drill Sol 1 to confirm that all those special considerations for drilling are met including finding the actual target on the ground that we want to assess. 

This morning, the SCaRPs swiftly found a great target and we named it “Kings Canyon.” Kings Canyon National Park is in the southern Sierra Nevada range in California. Kings Canyon itself is a glacially carved canyon more than a mile deep! The national park also contains some of the world’s largest stands of Giant Sequoia trees. 

The Drill Sol 1 plan has two purposes – first to determine if our target, Kings Canyon, meets the science teams criteria for sampling – for example, is it compositionally interesting? The second objective is to determine if the rock and specific target, are safe to drill; can it handle the forces from the drill, for example. We call this activity a “drill preload test.” Therefore, the primary activities in today’s plan are the preload test and contact science on Kings Canyon – we will first brush the target to remove surface dust and then take close-up imaging with our MAHLI instrument and compositional data with our APXS instrument.

In anticipation of a notional full drill on Monday, today’s team was very conservative with the amount of power we used. This meant limiting our remote sensing observations to only those that the team thought were most important to get down timely to support a drill campaign. We’ll use our ChemCam instrument to also study Kings Canyon, ChemCam provides complementary compositional data to the APXS observations. Together these observations will help inform the science about whether they want to proceed with sampling. Today’s plan also includes our typical environmental monitoring observations that we take at a regular cadence. 

Hope your weekend is as busy and fun as Curiosity’s!

Written by Elena Amador-French, Science Operations Coordinator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Explore More

2 min read

Sols 4255-4256: Just Passing Through

Article


23 mins ago

2 min read

Sols 4253-4254: Pit Stop for Contact Science

Article


6 days ago

3 min read

Sols 4250-4252: So Many Rocks, So Little Time

Article


6 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…

All Mars Resources

Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…

Rover Basics

Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…

Mars Exploration: Science Goals

The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…

Sols 4255-4256: Just Passing Through

Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Happy Wednesday, terrestrials! We wrapped up our Mammoth Lakes drill campaign only three weeks ago and are already looking for our next drill site. This will be the last drill campaign in the Gediz Vallis region, an area on Mars the Curiosity team has had their eyes on since sol 0, just under 12 years ago! This upcoming campaign is even more exciting after the elemental sulfur we found at Mammoth Lakes. And while sulfur on its own doesn’t smell, I’ve always wondered… what does Mars smell like? 

Finding ourselves less than a meter from our hopeful end-of-drive on Monday, we started on a very familiar plan: Starting with an arm backbone for removing dust and using APXS to investigate a bedrock target named “Russell Pass,” placing the arm out of the way for imaging, spending just over an hour on Mastcam imaging and ChemCam LIBS on Russell Pass, then one more arm backbone for MAHLI images of Russell Pass, and finally a drive in the afternoon. These plans, dubbed “touch-and-go” plans, are usually busy at the start and slow at the end. Our drive this time is planned to go ~10 meters almost perfectly east and leaving our heading almost perfectly west. If on Friday, our wheels are solidly on the Martian ground and there is a flat-enough bedrock surface to place our drill, we might be staying put for another two weeks while we try and collect another Gediz Vallis channel sample. And since we drive backwards with the arm taking up the rear, we might even have a workspace we’ve already driven over – hopefully exposing some internal bedrock even before drilling.

Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems

Explore More

3 min read

Sols 4257-4258: A Little Nudge on Kings Canyon

Article


15 mins ago

2 min read

Sols 4253-4254: Pit Stop for Contact Science

Article


6 days ago

3 min read

Sols 4250-4252: So Many Rocks, So Little Time

Article


6 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…

All Mars Resources

Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…

Rover Basics

Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…

Mars Exploration: Science Goals

The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…

60 Years Ago: Ranger 7 Photographs the Moon

Long before Apollo astronauts set foot upon the Moon, much remained unknown about the lunar surface. While most scientists believed the Moon had a solid surface that would support astronauts and their landing craft, some believed a deep layer of dust covered it that would swallow any visitors. Until 1964, no closeup photographs of the lunar surface existed, only those obtained by Earth-based telescopes and grainy low-resolution images of the Moon’s far side obtained in 1959 by the Soviet Luna 3 robotic spacecraft. On July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 launched toward the Moon, and three days later returned not only the first images of the Moon taken by an American spacecraft but also the first high resolution close-up photographs of the lunar surface. The mission marked a turning point in America’s lunar exploration program, taking the country one step closer to a human Moon landing.

Left: Block I Ranger 1 spacecraft under assembly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Middle: Block II Ranger spacecraft, showing the black-and-white spherical landing capsule. Right: Block III Ranger 7 spacecraft under assembly at JPL.

The Ranger program, initiated in 1960 and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, sought to acquire the first high resolution close-up images of the lunar surface. The program consisted of three phases of increasing complexity. The first phase of the program, designated “Block I,” intended to test the Atlas-Agena launch vehicle by placing a Ranger spacecraft in a highly elliptical Earth orbit where its equipment could be tested. The second “Block II” phase built on the lessons of Block I to send three spacecraft to the Moon to collect images and data and transmit them back to Earth. Each Block II Ranger carried a television camera for collecting images, a gamma-ray spectrometer for studying the minerals in the lunar rocks and soil, and a radar altimeter for studying lunar topography. These spacecraft carried a capsule, encased in balsa wood to protect it from the impact of landing, containing a seismometer and transmitter that would be able to operate for up to 30 days after being dropped on the lunar surface. The final “Block III” phase consisted of four spacecraft that each carried a high-resolution imaging system consisting of six television cameras with wide- and narrow-angle capabilities. They could take 300 pictures per minute.

The Block I and II Rangers met with limited success. Neither Ranger 1 nor 2 left low Earth orbit due to booster problems. Ranger 3, the first Block II spacecraft, missed the Moon by 22,000 miles and sailed on into solar orbit, returning no photographs but taking the first measurements of the interplanetary gamma ray flux. Ranger 4 has the distinction as the first American spacecraft to impact the Moon, and on its far side to boot, but due to a power failure in its central computer could not return any images or data. Ranger 5 missed the Moon by 450 miles but also failed to return images due to a power failure and entered solar orbit. None of the Block II Rangers delivered their seismometer-carrying capsules to the Moon’s surface. Ranger 6, the first Block III spacecraft, successfully impacted on the Moon in January 1964, but its television system failed to return any images due to a short circuit. NASA and JPL delayed the next mission until a thorough investigation identified the source of the problem and engineers completed corrective actions. All hopes rested on Ranger 7 to redeem the program.

Left: Schematic diagram of a Block III Ranger, showing its major components. Middle: The television camera system aboard Ranger 7. Right: Launch of Ranger 7.

On July 28, 1964, Ranger 7 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Atlas-Agena rocket first placed the spacecraft into Earth orbit before sending it on a lunar trajectory. The next day, the spacecraft successfully carried out a mid-course correction, and on July 31, Ranger 7 reached the Moon. This time, the spacecraft’s cameras turned on as planned. During its final 17 minutes of flight, the spacecraft sent back 4,308 images of the lunar surface. The last image, taken 2.3 seconds before Ranger 7 impacted at 1.62 miles per second, had a resolution of just 15 inches. Scientists renamed the area where it crashed – between Mare Nubium and Oceanus Procellarum – as Mare Cognitum, Latin for “The Known Sea,” to commemorate the first spot on the Moon seen close-up.

Left: Ranger 7’s first image from an altitude of 1,311 miles – the large crater at center right is the 67-mile-wide Alphonsus. Middle: Ranger 7 image from an altitude of 352 miles. Right: Ranger 7’s final image, taken at an altitude of 1,600 feet.

Left: Impact sites of Rangers 7, 8, and 9. Middle: The Ranger 7 impact crater photographed during the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. Right: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of the Ranger 7 impact crater, taken in 2010 at a low sun angle.

Two more Ranger missions followed. Ranger 8 returned more than 7,000 images of the Moon. NASA and JPL broadcast Ranger 9’s images of the Alphonsus crater and the surrounding area “live” as the spacecraft approached its crash site in the crater – letting millions of Americans see the Moon up-close as it happened. Based on the photographs returned by the last three Rangers, scientists felt confident to move on to the next phase of robotic lunar exploration, the Surveyor series of soft landers. The Ranger photographs provided confidence that the lunar surface could support a soft-landing. Just under five years after Ranger 7 returned its historic images, Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the Moon.

Enjoy a brief video about Ranger 7, or a more detailed video of the entire mission.

Explore More

9 min read

25 Years Ago: STS-93, Launch of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Article


5 days ago

11 min read

45 Years Ago: Space Shuttle Enterprise Completes Launch Pad Checkout

Article


5 days ago

5 min read

Eileen Collins Broke Barriers as America’s First Female Space Shuttle Commander

Article


1 week ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Kelli Mars