NASA Astronaut Butch Wilmore Available for Interviews Before His Space Station Mission

NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, who is making final preparations for his launch this month to the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 6-7 a.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 8.



September 02, 2014

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An Astronaut's View from Space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on Tuesday morning, Sept. 2, 2014. "My favorite views from #space – just past #sunrise over the ocean," the Expedition 40 astronaut tweeted. The Expedition 40 crew has been busy aboard the Space Station, recently performing health checks and humanoid robot upgrades. In the meantime, a trio of orbital residents is packing up gear as they prepare to return home in less than two weeks. Commander Steve Swanson powered down and stowed Robonaut 2 after wrapping up its mobility upgrades this week. He installed new legs on the humanoid robot including external and internal gear as well as cables. This sets the stage for more upgrades in the fall before Robonaut takes its first steps as an assistant crew member. Robonaut was designed to enhance crew productivity and safety while also aiding people on Earth with physical disabilities. Image Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) via NASA http://ift.tt/1tqRDhy

ISS Daily Summary Report – 08/29/14

FLame Extinguishment Experiment (FLEX)-2 Operations: Flight Engineer (FE)-5 Wiseman removed the Combustion Integration Rack (CIR) alignment guides which isolated the rack, allowing ground teams to conduct another FLEX-2 test point via ground commanding. A toluene and heptane mixture was used for this test point. FLEX-2 uses small droplets of fuel to study the special burning […]



August 30, 2014 at 12:51AM

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Airglow Ripples over Tibet

Why would the sky look like a giant target? Airglow. Following a giant thunderstorm over Bangladesh in late April, giant circular ripples of glowing air appeared over Tibet, China, as pictured above. The unusual pattern is created by atmospheric gravity waves, waves of alternating air pressure that can grow with height as the air thins, in this case about 90 kilometers up. Unlike auroras powered by collisions with energetic charged particles and seen at high latitudes, airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light in a chemical reaction. More typically seen near the horizon, airglow keeps the night sky from ever being completely dark. via NASA http://ift.tt/1vCd543

SpaceX FISO Telecon and Presentation

Future In-Space Operations Teleconference with SpaceX Garrett Reisman, SpaceRef Buisness "On August 27, 2014, former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman participated in the Future In-Space Operations (FISO) teleconference. Now the DragonRider Program Manager for SpaceX, Reisman presented a slide show on...



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Video: Buzz Aldrin Conquers the Solar System

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ESA invites amateurs to produce portraits of comet 67P

After a pause of about a week in daily image releases from Rosetta, ESA has begun sharing four-image sets of photos of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and invited the public to help produce pretty pictures from them.



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