How Have You Used The Experience Gained From Curiosity To Make Perseverance Better? Like, Curiosity's

How Do Cargo Spacecraft Work?

Today is the day that our commercial partner, Orbital ATK, has set for the launch of its fourth contracted mission to the International Space Station. The Cygnus spacecraft will carry more than 7,000 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory.

How Does it Launch?

This mission is the first Cygnus mission to utilize NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force base in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The cargo will be launched inside the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft using a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. 

But how does it get there? Is there someone on the ground controlling and directing it to the space station? Surprisingly, no. After launch, the Cygnus spacecraft is automated until it gets near the station. At that point, the robotic controllers use the CanadArm2 to reach out and grapple it (grab), and then berth (connect) it to the station.

What’s Inside?

In order to keep the thousands of pounds of supplies, science and hardware from moving during launch and in flight, the cargo is packed in bags and strapped to the walls.

The new experiments arriving to the space station will challenge and inspire future scientists and explorers. A few of the highlights are:

The Packed Bed Reactor Experiment (PBRE) - This experiment (image below) will study the behavior of gases and liquids when they flow simultaneously through a column filled with fixed porous media. The findings from this will be of interest in many chemical and biological processing systems as well as many geophysical applications.

BASS-M (Burning and Suppression of Solids – Milliken) - This experiment (image below) will evaluate flame retardant and/or resistant textiles as a mode of personal protection from fire-related hazards. Studying this in microgravity will aid in better designs for future textiles and benefit those who wear flame retardant and/or resistant protective apparel such as military personnel and civilian workers in the electrical and energy industries. 

Space Automated Bioproduct Lab (SABL) - This equipment is a single locker-sized facility (image below) that will enable a wide variety of fundamental, applied and commercial life sciences research. It will also benefit K-16 education-based investigations aboard the space station. Research will be supported on microorganisms (bacteria, yeast, algae, fungi, viruses, etc.), animal cells and tissues and small plant and animal organisms.

Nodes Satellites – These satellites (image below) will be deployed from the space station to demonstrate new network capabilities critical to the operation of swarms of spacecraft. They will show the ability of multi-spacecraft swarms to receive and distribute ground commands, exchange information periodically and more. 

Holiday Surprises - With the upcoming holidays the crew’s family has the opportunity to send Christmas gifts to their family members on the International Space Station. 

What About After?

The spacecraft will spend more than a month attached to the space station before it’s detached for re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in January 2016, disposing of about 3,000 pounds of trash. It will disintegrate while entering the atmosphere. 

Want to Watch Launch?

Launch coverage begins at 4:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 3 on NASA Television. Cygnus is set to lift off on the Atlas V at 5:55 p.m., the beginning of a 30-minute launch window, from Space Launch Complex 41.

In addition to launch coverage, a post-launch briefing will be held approximately two hours after launch. All briefings will air live on NASA TV. 

UPDATE: Due to poor weather conditions, today’s launch has been scrubbed and moved to tomorrow at 5:33 p.m. EST. The forecast for tomorrow calls for a 30% chance of acceptable conditions at launch time. Continuous countdown coverage will be available on NASA Television starting at 4:30 p.m.

UPDATE 2: The uncrewed Cygnus cargo ship launched at 4:44 p.m. EST on Sunday, Dec. 6 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to begin its three-day journey to the orbiting laboratory.

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Celebrating the Earth (Off the Earth!)

To find the perfect perch for Earth observation research, just look up – about 240 miles up. The International Space Station serves as an optimal platform for studying our dynamic planet, where spectacular views support science.

With currently active instruments and facilities like High Definition Earth Viewing, Crew Earth Observations, Lightning Imaging Sensor, SAGE-III and Meteor, researchers on the ground are able to use the station’s unique (and useful!) vantage point to track Earth’s weather patterns, obtain images documenting changes on the planet’s surface, understand the origin of meteors falling towards Earth, and better understand the atmosphere.

The space station’s 90-minute orbit allows it to cover 90% of the Earth’s populated surfaces. That means we are able to study A LOT of that big blue marble.

Let’s talk a little about how the space station serves as a platform for Earth observation:

Each day, as the space station passes over regions of the Earth, crew members photograph the area below as a part of the Crew Earth Observations Facility investigation, one of the longest-running experiments on the orbiting laboratory. Crew members are able to photograph large-scale weather events like the recent Hurricane Harvey from the space station’s Cupola. These little science postcards from space can be used by researchers and the public to learn more about our home planet.

Want to see a picture of your hometown from space? Search for it in the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (GAPE).

The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment streams live video of Earth for online viewing. This investigation not only provides hours and hours of footage of the Earth below, but also demonstrates how the technology holds up against the harsh environment of space. High school students helped design some of the cameras' components, through the High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) program, and student teams perform most of the HDEV operation. (Whoa! Check out HUNCH and STEM on Station for more opportunities for student involvement!)

Useful for weather forecasting, hurricane monitoring, and observations of large-scale climate phenomena such as El Niño, RapidScat used radar pulses reflected off the ocean to measure wind speed and direction over the ocean.

RapidScat completed its successful two-year mission, outlasting its original decommission date before suffering a power loss. Although RapidScat is no longer transmitting data back to Earth, the station hosts many other Earth-observation tools the Cyclone Intensity Measurements from the ISS (CyMISS) an experiment that seeks to develop detailed information on tropical storm structure to better estimate storm intensity, which will help government agencies to better prepare communities for impending natural disasters; and the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a previously-flown lidar instrument which measured atmospheric profiles of aerosols and clouds to better understand their properties and interactions, as well as provided data useful to improving climate change models.

Learn more about RapidScat’s mission conclusion HERE! Take a look at CATS mission data HERE!

Watch more inspiring videos and learn about how we’re capturing the beauty of Earth HERE.

Crew members are able to photograph large-scale weather events like the recent Hurricane Harvey from the space station’s Cupola. These little science postcards from space can be used by researchers and the public to learn more about our home planet.

Plants in space!

Future long-duration missions into the solar system will require a fresh food supply to supplement crew diets, which means growing crops in space. Growing food in such a harsh environment also teaches us a little bit about growing in harsh environments here on Earth.

Here are a few plant-based investigations currently happening aboard the orbiting laboratory:

Veggie is a chamber on the space station that helps scientists grow, harvest and study different space crops. This experiment is called VEG-03D and they’ve been able to grow six rounds of crops so far.

SpaceX's 13th Commercial Resupply vehicle carried many valuable items to the orbiting laboratory, including Plant Gravity Perception, an investigation that uses the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) to simulate gravity to help plants grow its roots downward, and shoots upwards. The shoots need to face upwards, towards the light, so they can absorb sunlight and nutrients. Without this, plants wouldn’t know which way to grow. Yikes!

Learn more about Plant Gravity Perception HERE!

The Advanced Plant Habitat is a large chamber that supports commercial and fundamental plant research for at least one year of continuous use. A great feature to this habitat is that the astronauts can view the plant’s progress through a window on the door.

Whether astronauts are taking pictures of the planet or growing crops in space, all science aboard the space station plants seeds for a better life on Earth. Biology investigations directly grow our knowledge of agricultural techniques for harsh environments and imagery from space can give us a clearer idea of our planet’s health and emerging weather patterns.

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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Astronaut Shane Kimbrough!

After years of training NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough is launching to the International Space Station on Wednesday, so there’s not much left to say, right?  Wrong!  Here are five secrets about his past that the Texas native and retired Army officer hasn’t told us, until now.

1. Shane went to elementary school in Germany

But his family returned to the U.S. where he attended middle and high school.

2. Life is Smyrna, Georgia 

Shane attended middle and high school in the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna with movie star Julia Roberts!

3. Shane had an accomplished military career

A retired Army colonel, Shane graduated from West Point, after which he became an Army aviator. He later became a jumpmaster and has had a long and distinguished military career.

Read his bio.

4. He loves sports. All sports!

He LOVES playing, coaching and watching sports. Watching college football is one of the things he’ll miss while he’s on the station.

5. Leading the future

His passion for teaching is one that he finds “most rewarding.”

Follow Shane on the station at @astro_kimbrough.

Learn more about missions to the International Space Station HERE.

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And that’s a wrap!! Thank you for all the wonderful questions in this Tumblr Answer Time, and we hope you learned a little something about what it takes to launch humans to space. 

You can follow all of our latest Space Station news on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. 

If the forecast in the town you are visiting says "partly cloudy" should you be worried you won't see anything? Looking at Hillsborough, Missouri (St. Louis area)

I believe you are in the path of totality in the St. Louise area. Even if there is complete cloud cover, you’ll likely still notice it getting darker, and you’ll definitely still feel the temperature drop. I’m not sure if you’ll notice odd animal behavior as that’s not my area of expertise, but I would think you might. I would say you should still go and see it! Especially if you are in an area with a chance of partly cloudy. You never know, the clouds may disappear for at least a portion of totality! 

A Dusty Fingerprint in Space

A new image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable cosmic sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. Just 5,300 light-years from Earth, the star duo are collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140. Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) collided so forcefully that some of the gas was compressed into dust. The stars' orbits bring them together about once every eight years, and forms a half-shell of dust that looks like a ring from our perspective. Like a cosmic fingerprint, the 17 rings reveal more than a century of stellar interactions—and the "fingerprint" belonging to Wolf-Rayet 140 may be equally unique. Other Wolf-Rayet stars produce dust, but no other pair are known to produce rings quite like Wolf-Rayet 140.

Learn more about Wolf-Rayet 140.

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Throwback Thursday: Frequently Asked Questions about Apollo

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, we’ll be sharing answers to some frequently asked questions about the first time humans voyaged to the Moon. Answers have been compiled from archivists in the NASA History Office.

How many people worked on the Apollo program?

At the height of Apollo in 1965, about 409,900 people worked on some aspect of the program, but that number doesn’t capture it all.

It doesn’t represent the people who worked on mission concepts or spacecraft design, such as the engineers who did the wind tunnel testing of the Apollo Command Module and then moved on to other projects. The number also doesn’t represent the NASA astronauts, mission controllers, remote communications personnel, etc. who would have transferred to the Apollo program only after the end of Gemini program (1966-1967). There were still others who worked on the program only part-time or served on temporary committees. In the image above are three technicians studying an Apollo 14 Moon rock in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Johnson Space Center. From left to right, they are Linda Tyler, Nancy Trent and Sandra Richards.

How many people have walked on the Moon so far?

This artwork portrait done by spaceflight historian Ed Hengeveld depicts the 12 people who have walked on the Moon so far. In all, 24 people have flown to the Moon and three of them, John Young, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan, have made the journey twice.  

But these numbers will increase.

Are the U.S. flags that were planted on the Moon still standing?

Every successful Apollo lunar landing mission left a flag on the Moon but we don’t know yet whether all are still standing. Some flags were set up very close to the Lunar Module and were in the blast radius of its ascent engine, so it’s possible that some of them could have been knocked down. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin both reported that the flag had been knocked down following their ascent. 

Our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took photographs of all the Apollo lunar landing sites. In the case of the Apollo 17 site, you can see the shadow of the upright flag.

But why does it look like it’s waving?

The flags appear to “wave” or “flap” but actually they’re swinging. Swinging motions on Earth are dampened due to gravity and air resistance, but on the Moon any swinging motion can continue for much longer. Once the flags settled (and were clear of the ascent stage exhaust), they remained still.  And how is the flag hanging? Before launching, workers on the ground had attached a horizontal rod to the top of each flag for support, allowing it to be visible in pictures and television broadcasts to the American public. Armstrong and Aldrin did not fully extend the rod once they were on the Moon, giving the flag a ripple effect. The other astronauts liked the ripple effect so much that they also did not completely extend the rod. 

Why don’t we see stars in any of the pictures?

Have you ever taken a photo of the night sky with your phone or camera? You likely won’t see any stars because your camera’s settings are likely set to short exposure time which only lets it quickly take in the light off the bright objects closest to you. It’s the same reason you generally don’t see stars in spacewalk pictures from the International Space Station. There’s no use for longer exposure times to get an image like this one of Bruce McCandless in 1984 as seen from Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-41B).

The Hasselblad cameras that Apollo astronauts flew with were almost always set to short exposure times. And why didn’t the astronauts photograph the stars? Well, they were busy exploring the Moon!

When are we going back to the Moon?

The first giant leap was only the beginning. Work is under way to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon in five years. As we prepare to launch the next era of exploration, the new Artemis program is the first step in humanity’s presence on the Moon and beyond.

Keep checking back for more answers to Apollo FAQs.

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how are the glaciers doing ?

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

1. See Shadows on Jupiter

Jupiter dominates the evening sky this month, rising at sunset and setting at dawn. On the nights of March 14 and 15, Jovian moons Io and Europa will cross the planet's disk. When the planet is at opposition and the sun shines on Jupiter's moons, we can see the moons' shadows crossing the planet. There are actually 11 of these double shadow transits in March.

2. One Year of Dawn at Ceres

NASA's Dawn spacecraft gently slid into orbit around Ceres just over one year ago, becoming the first spacecraft to reach a dwarf planet. Since then, the spacecraft has delivered a wealth of images and other data that open an exciting new window to this previously unexplored body in the asteroid belt.

3. The Latest from Saturn

Days ago, on Mar. 11, 2016, Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) watched as the plume of gas and icy particles from the moon Enceladus passed in front of the central star in Orion's Belt. Such observations, known as stellar occultations, provide information about the density and composition of the plume.

4. The Equinox is Upon Us

March 20 is the vernal equinox--the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, and the start of fall in the southern hemisphere. During the two equinoxes each year, the line between day and night is vertical, so all over the planet, the length of the day and night are nearly equal. For the rest of the year, the Earth's tilt angles the line between day and night, culminating with the solstices, in which the poles receive weeks of unending sunshine or darkness depending on the time of year.

5. Up Close with a Comet

Before Rosetta crash lands into comet Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in September, 2016, it will continue taking pictures and detailed measurements of this mysterious comet to study the origin of comets and how they relate to the origin of the solar system.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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So you want to work at NASA?

An out of this world career or internship might not be as far out of reach as you think. Check out all the ways you can get involved!

If you’re a student…

Our internships are the perfect place to start! We offer paid internships for spring, summer, and fall semesters to U.S. citizens currently attending an accredited university full time. Learn more at: https://intern.nasa.gov

Seriously considering a job in the Federal civil service? Check out the Pathways Internship Program which allows you to do multiple work tours while you finish school: http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/employment/iep.htm

If you’re a recent graduate…

If you’re a U.S. citizen who has graduated from an accredited college or university within the past 2 years (or 6 if you have served in the military), then the our Recent Graduates program is just for you. Accepted applicants are placed in a 1 year career development program with the possibility of an additional year, or even granted term or permanent jobs within the agency. Learn more at: http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/employment/rgp.htm.

If you’re a professional…

You can search for our job openings any time at USAJobs.com. Create an account, then use the USAJobs resume builder. Want to make sure your resume maximizes your opportunity for a job at NASA? Check out our Applicant Guide: https://applyonline.nasa.gov/applicant_guide.html.

You can then search for our job openings here: https://nasai.usajobs.gov/.

If you want to be an astronaut…

Astronaut candidate applications are accepted every few years- including right now! Get yours in before the current application closes on February 18, 2016.

Do you have a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field and 3 years of related professional experience? You might be eligible. Find out more and apply online at: https://nasai.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/423817000.

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