Orbiter.ch Space News

mardi 30 janvier 2018

Vista From Mars Rover Looks Back Over Journey So Far

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) logo.

Jan. 30, 2018

Curiosity at Martian Scenic Overlook

Video above: Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada gives a descriptive tour of the Mars rover's view in Gale Crater. The white-balanced scene looks back over the journey so far. Video Credits: NASA/JPL.

A panoramic image that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took from a mountainside ridge provides a sweeping vista of key sites visited since the rover's 2012 landing, and the towering surroundings.

The view from "Vera Rubin Ridge" on the north flank of Mount Sharp encompasses much of the 11-mile (18-kilometer) route the rover has driven from its 2012 landing site, all inside Gale Crater. One hill on the northern horizon is about 50 miles (about 85 kilometers) away, well outside of the crater, though most of the scene's horizon is the crater's northern rim, roughly one-third that distance away and 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) above the rover.

Curiosity's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, took the component images of the panorama three months ago while the rover paused on the northern edge of Vera Rubin Ridge. The mission has subsequently approached the southern edge of the ridge and examined several outcrop locations along the way.

(Click on the image for enlarge)

Image above: Climbing "Vera Rubin Ridge" provided NASA's Curiosity Mars rover this vista of the interior and rim of Gale Crater, including much of the rover's route since its 2012 landing and features up to about 50 miles away. The left-eye camera of the rover's Mastcam took the component images Oct. 25, 2017. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Last week, the Curiosity team on Earth received copious new images from the rover through a record-setting relay by NASA's MAVEN orbiter -- surpassing a gigabit of data during a single relay session from Mars for the first time in history.

The team is preparing to resume use of Curiosity's drill for acquiring powdered rock samples to be analyzed by laboratory instruments inside the rover, more than a year after the most recent of the 15 times the drill has pulled sample material from Martian rocks.

Inside an Impact Crater

Mount Sharp stands in the middle of Gale Crater, which is 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter.

"Even though Curiosity has been steadily climbing for five years, this is the first time we could look back and see the whole mission laid out below us," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "From our perch on Vera Rubin Ridge, the vast plains of the crater floor stretch out to the spectacular mountain range that forms the northern rim of Gale Crater." The rover photographed the scene shortly before northern Mars' winter solstice, a season of clear skies, gaining a sharp view of distant details.

Image above: A viewpoint on "Vera Rubin Ridge" provided NASA's Curiosity Mars rover this detailed look back over the area where it began its mission inside Gale Crater, plus more-distant features of the crater. The right-eye, telephoto-lens camera of the rover's Mastcam took the component images Oct. 25, 2017. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Curiosity's exact landing spot on the floor of the crater lies out of sight behind a slight rise, but the scene includes "Yellowknife Bay." That's where, in 2013, the mission found evidence of an ancient freshwater-lake environment that offered all of the basic chemical ingredients for microbial life. Farther north are the channel and fan of Peace Vallis, relics of the streams that carried water and sediment into the crater about three billion years ago.

Sites such as "Kimberley" and "Murray Buttes" along the rover's route are marked on an annotated posting of the panorama. The Mastcam recorded both a wider version of the scene (from southwest to northeast) with its left-eye, 34-millimeter-lens camera and a more detailed, narrower version with its right-eye, 100-millimeter-lens camera.

The site from which these images were taken sits 1,073 feet (327 meters) in elevation above Curiosity's landing site. Since leaving that site, the rover has climbed another 85 feet (26 meters) in elevation. In recent days, the Mastcam has recorded component images for a panorama looking uphill southward toward the mission's next major destination area. That is called the "Clay Unit" because observations from orbit detected clay minerals there.

Image above: This image of the northwestern portion of Mars' Gale Crater and terrain north of it, from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, provides a locator map for some features visible in an October 2017 panorama from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover Image Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Record Relay

The opportunity for some high-volume relay sessions with the MAVEN orbiter is helping the Curiosity team gain a bounty of images and other data this month.

Most data from Curiosity, through the years, have been relayed to Earth by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey orbiter, which fly in nearly circular, nearly polar orbits predictably passing over Curiosity at about the same times every day. MAVEN, for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, flies an elliptical orbit varying more than 40-fold from its nearest to farthest point from Mars. This suits MAVEN's science focus on Mars' atmosphere but results in variable coverage for relaying rover data. Usually, MAVEN passes over rover locations when the distance is too large for optimal relays. However, during occasional periods when the low point of its orbit is near Curiosity's location on Mars, the relays can serve exceedingly well.

"MAVEN definitely has the potential to move lots of data for us, and we expect to make even more use of it in the future," said JPL's Roy Gladden, manager of NASA's Mars Relay Network Office. The Jan. 22 relay of 1,006 megabits topped the previous record of 840 megabits, also set by MAVEN, but might in turn be bested by other favorable MAVEN relay opportunities in coming days.

The rover team intends to put Curiosity's drill to work on Vera Rubin Ridge before proceding to the Clay Unit. Resuming use of the drill requires an enterprising workaround for a mechanical problem that appeared in late 2016 and suspended use of the drill. A motor within the drill that advances the bit relative to stabilizer points no longer operates reliably.The workaround being evaluated thoroughly on a test rover at JPL does not use the stabilizer points. It moves the whole drill forward, with bit extended, by motion of the robotic arm.

Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Laurie Cantillo/Dwayne Brown/Tony Greicius/JPL/Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Putting Down Roots in Space

ISS - Expedition 54 Mission patch.

Jan. 30, 2018

Plants grow just about everywhere on Earth, and are able to adapt to extreme conditions ranging from drought to disease. Spaceflight, however, exposes plants to stresses not found anywhere on their home planet. Growing plants aboard the International Space Station provides a unique opportunity to study how plants adapt to microgravity, and a team of researchers recently published results in “PLOS One” concerning plant adaptations at the genetic level.

Understanding how spaceflight affects plants is critical for future efforts to cultivate plants during spaceflight. Optimizing plant growth, both on Earth and in space is critical because plants may serve as a food source for long term missions, or even be used to supplement life support missions.

Image above: Expedition 39 flight engineer Steve Swanson harvests plant specimens from Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA) - Petri Plant plates. Image Credit: NASA.

“There are many environments on Earth that are becoming marginal through pollution, rising temperatures, encroaching drought, etc. and learning how plants respond to novel environments – any novel environment – can help us prepare for breeding crops to thrive in places they never had to before,” said primary investigator Anna-Lisa Paul .

The Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA) investigation sought to get to the root of this issue by examining the genetic basis of plant responses, and dug up intriguing possibilities for further studies.

“We did expect that genetics would play a role in adaptation to spaceflight,” CARA co-investigator Robert Ferl said. “What we did not expect was that certain genes might play dramatic roles. We found that changes in a single gene can enable a plant to be much better adapted to spaceflight – at least as measured by the amount of gene expression work that the plant has to use to adapt to spaceflight.”

Image above: Expedition 39 flight engineer Steve Swanson works to configure the LMM (Light Microscopy Module) in the Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) for the Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA) - Petri Plant experiment. Image Credit: NASA.

In 2014, NASA astronaut Steve Swanson grew Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, seeds aboard the station, as did investigators on the ground. The seeds represented three genotypes: Wassilewskija (WS), Columbia-0 (Col-0) and Columbia-0 PhyD (phyD). The last strain, phyD, differed from Columbia-0 only by a mutation in the phyD gene. Half the seeds were grown in ambient light conditions, while the other half were grown in darkness. Researchers later extracted RNA from the root tips of these plants in order to quantify changes in gene expression due to spaceflight.

While DNA can tell you if a gene is present or absent in an organism, RNA will measure it’s transcription level telling the researchers if a gene is experiencing changes in expression level during space flight.

In terms of plant health and productivity, the three genotypes responded similarly to spaceflight. Only ground-based WS plants grown in light showed a significant difference in root length. Sequencing the plants’ RNA revealed a different story. All three genotypes had altered gene expression, but differed in the number and type of genes affected. For instance, phyD had fewer changes in gene expression than Col-0, despite the genotypes differing only by a single gene. The number and type of genes with changed expression also varied depending on light conditions. Spaceflight altered gene expression in the plants more frequently in ambient light conditions than in dark conditions. Meanwhile, many of the genes that were expressed in plants grown in the light showed no change in the plants grown in the dark, and vice-versa.

Image above: View of Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA) - Petri Plant petri plates. Image Credit: NASA.

Some types of genes were more frequently altered by spaceflight, such as genes governing cell walls and intercellular communication. Others were specific to genotypes or lighting conditions. The research team concluded that plant response to spaceflight might best be characterized by categories of genes rather than specific genes. Plants have not had the opportunity to evolve a response to spaceflight, so there is no response as there are for stresses on Earth.

The difference between the reactions of Col-0 and phyD suggests that unwanted gene expression during spaceflight could be suppressed by alternating one or more genes. The phyD genotype exhibited fewer expressions than the Col-0 genotype despite the two genotypes differing by a single mutation.

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credits: STS-134/NASA

This suggests that with further research, it could be possible to develop plant strains with minimally-altered gene expression during spaceflight. It’s possible that a more efficient response to spaceflight would optimize plant health and use. If so, investigating alternate genotype reactions to spaceflight could facilitate future attempts to grow plants in microgravity environments.

This National Lab sponsored investigation is managed by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space and funded by the Space life and Physical Science Research and Application Division (SLPSRA).

Related links:

Published results in “PLOS One”: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180186

Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions (CARA): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=1020

Characterizing Arabidopsis Root Attractions-2 (CARA-2): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=2006

Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS): http://www.iss-casis.org/

Physical Science Research and Application Division (SLPSRA): https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/slpsra

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Michael Johnson/Johnson Space Center/International Space Station Program Science Office/Julia LaFond.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Cluster measures turbulence in Earth's magnetic environment

ESA - Cluster II Mission patch.

30 January 2018

For the first time, scientists have estimated how much energy is transferred from large to small scales within the magnetosheath, the boundary region between the solar wind and the magnetic bubble that protects our planet. Based on data collected by ESA's Cluster and NASA's THEMIS missions over several years, the study revealed that turbulence is the key, making this process a hundred times more efficient than in the solar wind.

The magnetosheath in Earth's magnetic environment

Image above: The magnetosheath in Earth's magnetic environment. Image Credits: ESA (background and Cluster spacecraft); NASA (THEMIS spacecraft).

The planets in the Solar System, including our Earth, are bathed in the solar wind, a supersonic flow of highly energetic, charged particles relentlessly released by the Sun. Our planet and a few others stand out in this all-pervasive stream of particles: these are the planets that have a magnetic field of their own, and so represent an obstacle to the sweeping power of the solar wind.

It is the interaction between Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind that creates the intricate structure of the magnetosphere, a protective bubble that shields our planet from the vast majority of solar wind particles.

So far, scientists have achieved a fairly good understanding of the physical processes that take place in the solar wind plasma and in the magnetosphere. However, many important aspects are still missing regarding the interplay between these two environments and about the highly turbulent region that separates them, known as magnetosheath, where it is suspected that most of the interesting action happens.

"To learn how energy is transferred from the solar wind to the magnetosphere, we need to understand what goes on in the magnetosheath, the 'grey area' between them," says Lina Zafer Hadid, from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Uppsala, Sweden.

Lina is the lead author of a new study that quantifies, for the first time, the role of turbulence in the magnetosheath. The results are published today in Physical Review Letters.

"In the solar wind, we know that turbulence contributes to the dissipation of energy from large scales of hundreds of thousands of kilometres to smaller scales of a kilometre, where plasma particles are heated up and accelerated to higher energies," explains co-author Fouad Sahraoui from the Laboratory of Plasma Physics in France.

"We suspected that a similar mechanism must be at play in the magnetosheath too, but we could never test it until now," he adds.

Energy cascade in turbulent plasma

Image above: Energy cascade in turbulent plasma. Image Credit: ESA.

The magnetosheath plasma is more turbulent, home to a greater extent of density fluctuations and can be compressed to a much higher degree than the solar wind. As such, it is substantially more complex, and scientists have only in recent years developed the theoretical framework to study the physical processes taking place in such an environment.

Lina, Fouad and their collaborators combed through a vast volume of data collected between 2007 and 2011 by the four spacecraft of ESA's Cluster and two of the five spacecraft of NASA's THEMIS missions, which fly in formation through Earth's magnetic environment.

When they applied the recently developed theoretical tools to their data sample, they were in for a big surprise.

"We found that density and magnetic fluctuations caused by turbulence within the magnetosheath amplify the rate at which energy cascades from large to small scales by at least a hundred times with respect to what is observed in the solar wind," explains Lina.

The new study indicates that about 10-13 J of energy is transferred per cubic metre every second in this region of Earth's magnetic environment.

"We expected that compressible turbulence would have an impact on the energy transfer in magnetosheath plasma, but not that it would be so significant," she adds.

In addition, the scientists were able to derive an empirical correlation that links the rate at which energy is dissipated in the magnetosheath with the fourth power of another quantity used to study the motion of fluids, the so-called turbulent Mach number. Named after Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, it quantifies the speed of fluctuations in a flow with respect to the speed of sound in that fluid, indicating whether a flow is subsonic or supersonic.

While the energy transfer rate is tricky to determine unless using space probes that take in situ measurements, like the Cluster spacecraft sampling the plasma around Earth, the Mach number can be more easily estimated using remote observations of a variety of astrophysical plasma beyond the realm of our planet.

"If this empirical relation turns out to be universal, it will be extremely useful to explore cosmic plasma that cannot be directly probed with spacecraft, such as the interstellar medium that pervades our Milky Way and other galaxies," says Fouad.

The scientists are looking forward to comparing their results with measurements of the plasma surrounding other Solar System planets with an intrinsic magnetic field, for example using NASA's Juno mission, currently at Jupiter, and ESA's future Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, and also the joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury that is scheduled for launch later this year.

"It is very exciting that a study based on several years of Cluster data has found the key to address a major, long unsolved question in plasma physics," says Philippe Escoubet, Cluster Project Scientist at ESA.

Notes for Editors:

The paper "Compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the Earth's magnetosheath: estimation of the energy cascade rate using in situ spacecraft data" by L. Z. Hadid et al. is published in the journal Physical Review Letters. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.055102.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.055102

Cluster is a constellation of four spacecraft flying in formation around Earth. It is the first space mission able to study, in three dimensions, the natural physical processes occurring within and in the near vicinity of the Earth's magnetosphere. Launched in 2000, it is composed of four identical spacecraft orbiting the Earth in a pyramidal configuration, along a nominal polar orbit of 4 × 19.6 Earth radii (1 Earth radius = 6380 km). Cluster's payload consists of state-of-the-art plasma instrumentation to measure electric and magnetic fields over wide frequency ranges, and key physical parameters characterising electrons and ions from energies of near 0 eV to a few MeV. The science operations are coordinated by the Joint Science Operations Centre (JSOC) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom, and implemented by ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany.

More information on the Cluster mission can be found here: http://sci.esa.int/cluster

NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) consists of five identical probes to study the violent colourful eruptions of aurorae. When THEMIS' prime mission concluded in 2010, two of its five spacecraft were repurposed as ARTEMIS and were moved to lunar orbits to study the moon's interactions with the Sun.

More information on the THEMIS and ARTEMIS mission can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/mission/index.html

Corrigendum

The original article previously stated: "The new study indicates that about 10¹³ J of energy is transferred per cubic metre every second in this region of Earth's magnetic environment." This has now been corrected to: "The new study indicates that about 10^-13 J of energy is transferred per cubic metre every second in this region of Earth's magnetic environment."

Related links:

NASA's Juno mission: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

ESA's future Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer: http://sci.esa.int/juice

ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission: http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: ESA/C. Philippe Escoubet/LPP, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Université Paris-Sud, Observatoire de Paris, Université Paris-Saclay, Sorbonne Université, PSL Research University/Fouad Sahraoui/Swedish Institute of Space Physics/Lina Zafer Hadid.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

lundi 29 janvier 2018

Crew Looking Ahead to Friday Russian Spacewalk

ISS - Expedition 54 Mission patch.

Jan. 29, 2018

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

Expedition 54 is now focusing on Friday’s spacewalk to install and remove gear on the Russian side of the International Space Station. This comes after today’s spacewalk to work on the Canadarm2 robotic arm was postponed to mid-February.

Cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov will put on their Orlan spacesuits Friday and exit the Pirs airlock around 10:30 a.m. EST. The duo will be spacewalking for about six and a half hours to replace an electronics box for a communications antenna on the aft end of the Zvezda service module. The old box will be jettisoned into space to eventually burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

If time allows, the Russian spacewalkers may be able work a few more tasks. A pair of exposed experiments, Test and Biorisk, are due to be retrieved and brought back inside the station. The cosmonauts may also photograph the back of Zvezda, reposition a foot restraint and jettison old experiment gear.

Image above: Cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov (left) and Alexander Misurkin work inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module participating in eye exams using a fundoscope. Image Credit: NASA.

Over the weekend space station managers postponed today’s spacewalk for robotics maintenance. Astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Norishige Kanai were expected to swap a Latching End Effector (LEE) on the tip of the Canadarm2 today installed last week on a spacewalk; however, Canadian Space Agency engineers uploaded a diagnostics software to identify the primary communications string anomaly and test the software upgrade on the spare LEE, eliminating today’s swap work. The final software patch will be uploaded in early February.

The duo is now planning for a mid-February spacewalk to bring an end effector inside the station removed from the arm during a spacewalk last October, and install the end effector removed last Tuesday on the mobile base system rail car on the station’s truss.

Related article:

Station Officials Postpone Monday’s (Today) Spacewalk to Mid-February
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2018/01/station-officials-postpone-mondays.html

Related links:

Test: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/develop/12.html

Biorisk: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/biology/05.html

Expedition 54: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition54/index.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Greetings. Orbiter.ch

Eroded Layers in Shalbatana Valles

NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) patch.

Jan. 29, 2018

Layers, probably sedimentary in origin, have undergone extensive erosion in this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of Shalbatana Valles, a prominent channel that cuts through Xanthe Terra.

This erosion has produced several small mesas and exposed light-toned material that may differ in composition from the surrounding material.

The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 27.5 centimeters (10.8 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning); objects on the order of 82 centimeters (32.3 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Station Officials Postpone Monday’s (Today) Spacewalk to Mid-February

ISS - Expedition 54 Mission patch.

January 29, 2018

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: NASA

International Space Station officials have postponed Monday’s (Today) spacewalk to swap latching end effectors (LEEs) on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. The decision was made after the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and its robotics specialist team developed a diagnostics software patch confirming an anomaly noted in a primary communications string on the spare end effector installed during a prior spacewalk Jan. 23 was not hardware related, and can be corrected through the implementation of software. A confidence test verifying the software upgrade was successfully completed Saturday night.

During its initial power up after last Tuesday’s spacewalk swap, the spare latching end effector did not communicate as expected on the primary string, but did so on its backup communications string. As a result, Monday’s spacewalk by Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was replanned to return the original latching end effector to the arm in place of the spare. But the software solution confirmed on Saturday will not require the spacewalkers to venture out on Monday.

Image above: Astronaut Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency tries on a pair of spacesuit sleeves inside the Quest airlock. To either side of Kanai are the U.S. spacesuits that were being readied for a pair of robotics maintenance spacewalks. Image Credit: NASA.

The original spacewalk by Vande Hei and Kanai to bring an end effector inside the station removed from the arm during a spacewalk last October, and install the end effector removed last Tuesday on the mobile base system rail car on the station’s truss, is expected to be executed by the two crew members in mid-February.

Related links:

Expedition 54: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition54/index.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Animation (mentioned), Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

dimanche 28 janvier 2018

Space Station Science Highlights: Week of Jan. 22, 2018

ISS - Expedition 54 Mission patch.

Jan. 28, 2018

The crew living and working aboard the International Space Station explored research in the fields of human research, earth and space science, and physical science as they continued preparations for the second spacewalk of the year later this month.

Animation above: NASA astronaut Scott Tingle configures the Light Microscopy Module for the ACE-T-6 investigation. Animation Credit: NASA.

Take a look at some of the science that happened this week aboard the orbiting laboratory:

Investigation Studies Changes to Brain Structure and Function in Spaceflight

Previous research and anecdotal evidence from astronauts suggests movement control and cognition can be affected in microgravity. NeuroMapping investigates whether long-duration spaceflight causes changes to brain structure and function, using MRI and fMRI imaging. Changes in motor control or multi-tasking abilities are documented, as well as the time it takes for the brain and body to recover from possible changes. This week, NASA astronaut Scott Tingle set up the NeuroMapping hardware and performed his Flight Day 150 tests.

Image above: NASA astronaut Scott Tingle works within the Japanese Experiment Module airlock. Image Credit: NASA.

Investigation Seeks to Provide Data on Meteor Showers

The Meteor investigation employs a visible spectroscopy instrument to observe meteors in Earth orbit. Meteor uses image analysis to provide information on the physical and chemical properties of the meteoroid dust, such as size, density, and chemical composition. Continuous measurement of meteor interactions with the Earth’s atmosphere could spot previously unforeseen meteor showers. This week, the crew removed and replaced the hard drive and performed an antivirus update to the Meteor laptop located in the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF).

Operations Begin in Colloidal Experiment to Improve Product Shelf Life

Colloids are suspensions of microscopic particles in a liquid, and are found in products ranging from milk to fabric softener. Consumer products often use colloidal gels to distribute specialized ingredients. The Advanced Colloids Experiment-Temperature-6 (ACE-T-6) investigation studies the microscopic behavior of colloids in gels and creams, to provide new insight into fundamental interactions that can improve product shelf life. This week, the crew configured the Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) Light Microscopy Module (LMM) to initiate ACE-T-6 operations by installing the ACE module.

Space to Ground: Christina's Lessons: 01/26/2018