What's Going on At NASA excerpts from Astronaut and Center Director Ellen Ochoa's recent message to employees..

It’s been a very busy few weeks for NASA and JSC. On July 6 (Houston time), Kate Rubins, along with cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi launched to the space station. The trio traveled in an upgraded Soyuz spacecraft, testing modified systems and successfully docked to the ISS a couple of days later. The full Expedition 48 crew, which also includes Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexei Ovchinin, will continue several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.  Jeff and Kate taped a welcome for the annual ISS R&D conference, held in San Diego last week.  An amazing group of researchers and technologists gathered to talk about their scientific research and new innovations on ISS.  Keeping them well stocked are a Progress vehicle that docked on Monday, and the latest Dragon spacecraft which was captured this morning, bringing many new science experiments, including a Biomolecule Sequencer (one of JSC’s 2x2015 projects) which will attempt to sequence DNA, and the International Docking Adapter needed for commercial crew vehicles.

 

It’s also a busy time for development, testing and evaluation for the Commercial Crew Program. On June 21, Boeing's new Space Training, Analysis and Review (STAR) Facility opened during with a ribbon cutting in their local building that included local, state and congressional officials. The four commercial crew cadre astronauts, along with other JSC folks, have been busy with both Boeing and SpaceX, evaluating hardware, software, space suits, other safety equipment, displays and controls, as well as the simulators that they will use to train.

 

The Orion team has activities going on all over the world.  The EM-1 crew module is being built up with systems at KSC; a test article is going through water splashdown tests at Langley Research Center; the ESA Service Module (ESM) structural test article is undergoing acoustic testing at Glenn Research Center and the first flight ESM is in Bremen, Germany.  The first parachute system qualification drop test, planned for late June, was postponed due to an aircraft issue, but we’ll see a series of 8 tests start later this summer.  The Space Launch System Booster passed a major milestone June 28 with a successful firing of its second qualification ground test at Orbital ATK's test facilities in Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS’s first uncrewed test flight with the Orion spacecraft, EM-1 set for late 2018.

 

We currently have people both about to spend time underwater and in our JSC habitat, HERA (Human Exploration Research Analog), as part of our exploration efforts.  The NEEMO 21 crew is scheduled to splash down today and will splash up early August, after evaluating tools and techniques both inside and outside their habitat, including another 2x2015 project, the mini exercise device MED 2.   A crew of 4 is inside HERA for 30 days, as part of the Human Research Program’s studies, focusing on behavioral health.

 

Beyond human space flight, NASA marked July 4^th with the Jupiter orbit insertion. Juno’s historic mission – the first-ever polar orbit of Jupiter – will skim Jupiter’s atmosphere as close as an incredible 2,600 miles – and send back new images and data over the next year and a half. All of our science missions are helping us to perfect technologies to advance our journey to Mars, and one way Juno is doing this is through its cutting edge solar technology.

 

Follow ELLEN on twitter @Astro_Ellen. as she navigates the Twittersphere and shares a few of her favorite things.