NASA will announce the agency’s plans to open the International Space Station to expanded commercial activities at 10 a.m. EDT Friday, June 7, at Nasdaq in New York City.
NASA Breaking News
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NASA has selected three commercial Moon landing service providers that will deliver science and technology payloads under Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) as part of the Artemis program.
NASA Breaking News
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The Expedition 59 crew is starting the weekend preparing the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft for its departure from the International Space Station on Monday. The space residents are also juggling a variety of research work and lab maintenance tasks today.
NASA TV is broadcasting the robotic release of Dragon from the station live on NASA TV beginning Monday at 11:45 a.m. EDT. Robotics controllers will command the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release the space freighter around 12:09 p.m. while astronaut David Saint-Jacques monitors from the cupola. Dragon will splashdown in the Pacific about 5:48 p.m. and will not be seen on NASA TV.
Several critical experiments have wrapped up aboard the orbiting lab with the completed results and hardware being packed inside the Dragon this weekend. After the space freighter splashes down Monday, it will be towed to shore where the finalized research will be distributed to labs around the world for analysis.
Astronauts Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques are cleaning up and inspecting the Life Sciences Glovebox (LSG) today. This comes after the crew completed a month-long study of the immune system’s response to weightlessness inside the LSG. Samples from that study will also return to Earth aboard Dragon Monday.
The pair first joined Flight Engineer Nick Hague during the morning checking out space biology hardware and transferring more frozen research samples into Dragon’s science freezers. Hague and McClain then participated in regularly scheduled eye exams in the afternoon.
Christina Koch of NASA is helping cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Alexey Ovchinin clean up after the duo’s spacewalk on Wednesday. She stowed the U.S. tools they used back in the Quest airlock while the cosmonauts serviced their Russian Orlan spacesuits in the Pirs airlock.
Mark Garcia
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This luminous orb is the galaxy NGC 4621, better known as Messier 59. Located in the 2,000-strong Virgo cluster of galaxies within the constellation of Virgo (the Virgin), Messier 59 lies approximately 50 million light-years away from us.
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The six-member Expedition 59 crew had a chance to sleep in the day after wrapping up a successful spacewalk on the Russian side of the International Space Station. The cosmonauts are cleaning up this afternoon from yesterday’s excursion while the rest of the orbiting crew focuses on exercise research and other light science duties.
NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch woke up after lunch today and strapped themselves into an exercise bike inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. The duo took turns working out on the specialized bicycle attached to sensors for the experiment measuring oxygen uptake and aerobic capacity.
Flight Engineers Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques checked on a couple of life science experiments during their relaxed afternoon. McClain updated software for the Photobioreactor study exploring how microalgae can create a hybrid life support system for astronauts and Earthlings. Saint-Jacques turned off and stowed the Canadian Bio-Monitor device that can quickly analyze human biological samples in space.
Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin are reconfiguring the Pirs airlock, cleaning spacesuits and stowing tools following Wednesday’s six hour and one minute spacewalk. The cosmonauts also debriefed spacewalk experts on the ground discussing their hardware removal and experiment jettisoning tasks.
Mark Garcia
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