Expedition 69 Northrop Grumman Cygnus Cargo Craft Secured to Space Station
Loaded with food, fuel, and supplies, the unpiloted Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft arrived at the International Space Station Aug. 4 where it was installed to the nadir port of the Unity module. Cygnus launched from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Aug. 1 atop an Antares rocket and will remain docked to the space station for approximately two months on the company’s 19th resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA. Northrop Grumman named the Cygnus spacecraft the S.S. Laurel Clark after late NASA astronaut Laurel Clark. Clark was a crew member of NASA’s STS-107 mission aboard space shuttle Columbia, successfully conducting 80 experiments while logging 15 days in space. She and her fellow STS-107 crew members tragically lost their lives when Columbia did not survive its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
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Expedition 69 Space Station Crew Answers Galveston, Texas, Student Questions
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 69 Flight Engineers Frank Rubio and Steve Bowen of NASA answered questions about life and work on the orbiting laboratory during an in-flight event Aug. 14 with students at the Odyssey Academy in Galveston Texas. Rubio and Bowen are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies. Such research benefits people on Earth and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through the agency’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
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Expedition 69 Space Station Crew Answers Kingfisher, Oklahoma, Student Questions
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 69 Flight Engineers Frank Rubio and Steve Bowen of NASA answered questions about life and work on the orbiting laboratory during an in-flight event Aug. 14 with students attending Kingfisher High School in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Rubio and Bowen are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies. Such research benefits people on Earth and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through the agency’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
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133 days on the sun
as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system.
With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 133-day time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona. Compiling images taken 108 seconds apart, the movie condenses 133 days, or about four months, of solar observations into 59 minutes. The video shows bright active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates. The Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days. The loops extending above the bright regions are magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma. These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, which appear as bright flashes as magnetic fields snap together in a process called magnetic reconnection.
While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed toward the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. Some of the dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. Other blackouts are caused by instrumentation being down or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground every day. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments.
SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun in the years to come, providing further insights about our place in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe.
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