The first non-American to be added to the crew for a SpaceX Dragon flight to the International Space Station is Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
Tag: International Space Station
Astronauts on the International Space Station get thick calluses on the tops of their feet instead of the bottoms, but today students tried out ways to make the final frontier a little friendlier for feet.
Not only did they get a chance to talk with NASA astronaut Jessica Meir about socks in space, over a video link between the space station and Seattle’s Museum of Flight, but they also ran their own experiment as part of an Astro Socks Challenge created by NASA and Microsoft Education.
The challenge, and the Earth-to-space chat, made a teachable moment out of a fact of life for long-duration spacefliers.
Northrop Grumman’s robotic Cygnus cargo spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after two launch postponements.
SHORELINE, Wash. — Running a startup out of your garage may sound like a tech cliche, but for Voxa CEO Chris Own, it’s routine.
What’s not routine are the breadbox-sized electron microscopes that are sitting in Own’s garage, and in the living room that’s been converted into a workshop. This weekend, one of those microscopes is scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station.
Voxa’s Mochii microscope is among the science payloads that are due to go into orbit inside Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo capsule as early as Sunday, as part of an uncrewed resupply mission launching from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast.
“The payload itself is an experiment,” Own told GeekWire at the family home in Shoreline. “It’s the first time an electron microscope — any instrument of this type of complexity in such a small, convenient form factor — has ever been flown.”
NASA astronaut Christina Koch struck a joyful note today after finishing up 328 days in space aboard the International Space Station, a stay that has gone into the history books as the longest spaceflight made by a woman.
Houston-based Axiom Space has won NASA’s nod to attach a commercial habitation module to the International Space Station by as early as 2024.
The “Axiom Segment” of the space station is designed to connect to the station’s Harmony node and provide a crew habitat, a research and manufacturing facility and a large-windowed Earth observatory. When the International Space Station reaches retirement, Axiom plans to add a power platform and turn its hardware into a free-flying commercial space station.
Axiom’s team also include Boeing, Thales Alenia Space Italy, Intuitive Machines and Maxar Technologies.
With a fiery flash and volleys of cheers, SpaceX and NASA today rehearsed something they hope will never happen: a catastrophic rocket failure at the worst time in the launch of a crewed mission to the International Space Station.
Fortunately, the closest things to crew members on today’s in-flight abort test of the Crew Dragon spaceship were two test dummies, sitting on sensors in the seats that will tell engineers how flesh-and-blood fliers would have weathered the aborted trip.
If the results of the test look good, that should take care of the final major hurdle before two actual NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, ride a different Crew Dragon to the station and back later this year.
A troop of muscle-enhanced mice was among more than 3,500 pounds of experiments and equipment that came back to Earth today when a robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of a monthlong resupply mission to the International Space Station.
Every day for the next six weeks, NASA astronaut Christina Koch will be setting a new women’s record for continuous time in space.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner space taxi made a flawless automated landing in New Mexico today, marking the end of an orbital test flight that was cut short due to a glitch with the craft’s timing system.
Because of the glitch, NASA and Boeing had to forgo Starliner’s planned trip to the International Space Station. But the uncrewed transport notched a first in space history nevertheless by becoming the first crew-capable U.S. space capsule to make its return from orbit on land.
The spacecraft also got its christening from NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who is scheduled to fly on the craft after its refurbishment.
“A little homage to other explorers and the ships that they rode on,” Williams said during a NASA webcast. “I think we’re going to call her Calypso.”