Successful Start to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission

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Image (Credit): October 5, 2022 departure of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the ISS. (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Earlier today, SpaceX Crew-5 successfully departed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on their way to the International Space Station (ISS). The four members on this flight are NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. The population of the ISS will increase to 11 until 3 astronauts return to Earth a few days later.

Here is NASA’s bio on the new crew members:

  • As commander, Mann is responsible for all phases of flight, from launch to re-entry, and will serve as an Expedition 68 flight engineer. This will be her first spaceflight since becoming an astronaut in 2013. Mann was born in Petaluma, California, and will be the first indigenous woman from NASA in space. She is a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, and she served as a test pilot in the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet.
  • Cassada is the spacecraft pilot and second in command for the mission. He is responsible for spacecraft systems and performance. Aboard the station, he will serve as an Expedition 68 flight engineer. This will be his first flight since his selection as an astronaut in 2013. Cassada grew up in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and is a physicist and U.S. Navy test pilot.
  • Wakata will be making his fifth trip to space and as a mission specialist he will work closely with the commander and pilot to monitor the spacecraft during the dynamic launch and re-entry phases of flight. Once aboard the station, he will serve as a flight engineer for Expedition 68. With Crew-5’s launch, Dragon will be the third different type of spacecraft Wakata has flown to space.
  • Kikina will be making her first trip to space, and will serve as a mission specialist, working to monitor the spacecraft during the dynamic launch and re-entry phases of flight. She will be a flight engineer for Expedition 68.

A Day in Astronomy: New Space Agencies

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Original NASA seal. (NASA)

October 1 is a significant date for two of the world’s largest space agencies.

On this day in 1958, NASA had its first day of operations after being created a few months earlier by President Eisenhower in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Here is more about the creation of the Agency as noted by NASA’s History Division:

On this date the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operation. At the time it consisted of only about 8,000 employees and an annual budget of $100 million. In addition to a small headquarters staff in Washington that directed operations, NASA had at the time three major research laboratories inherited from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics-the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory established in 1918, the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory activated near San Francisco in 1940, and the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory built at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1941-and two small test facilities, one for high-speed flight research at Muroc Dry Lake in the high desert of California and one for sounding rockets at Wallops Island, Virginia. It soon added several other government research organizations.

Today NASA has a budget of about $24 billion and approximately 17,000 employees.

And on this day in 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was formed from a merger of three previous Japanese space agencies – the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan, and National Space Development Agency of Japan.

Here is more information about JAXA today:

With about 1,500 staff, JAXA carries out the following main activities:

  • Promoting satellite utilization to enhance the quality of life;
  • Advancing scientific knowledge of the universe and the origin of life;
  • Exploring the Moon and planets, to broaden the horizon of human activity;
  • Ensuring the operation of the ISS and promoting space environment utilisation to create new opportunities for the society;
  • Developing rocket technologies, to respond to diversifying launch needs;
  • Advancing engineering research, to pursue aviation safety and environmentally-friendly technologies; and
  • Pursuing fundamental engineering research, to carry out autonomous space activities.
Credit: JAXA

Hubble: SpaceX to the Rescue

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Image (Credit): The Hubble Space Telescope orbiting Earth. (Hubblesite.org)

The Washington Post reports that NASA and SpaceX are looking into the idea of extending the life of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has already been in service more than 30 years. The space telescope’s orbit has been deteriorating since 2009, when it was last visited for repairs. The current orbit should be okay until the mid-2030s, and then it will fall to Earth.

To keep the Hubble in service for even more years, it would need to be pushed into a higher orbit. This is where SpaceX comes in. It can assist NASA by moving Hubble just 40 miles higher in order to get another 15 to 20 years out of the space telescope.

The article notes that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was not developed to replace Hubble but rather to complement it. Hence, the extra life for Hubble means more and better astronomical observations over additional years in conjunction with the JWST. For instance, we will get more shots like the one below where the Hubble captured the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission before and after it struck the asteroid.

Update: I have also included the JWST DART image below just to show the two space telescopes can work in tandem.

Image (Credit): This animated GIF combines three of the images NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured after NASA’s DART spacecraft intentionally impacted Dimorphos, a moonlet asteroid in the double asteroid system of Didymos. The animation spans from 22 minutes after impact to 8.2 hours after the collision took place. As a result of the impact, the brightness of the Didymos-Dimorphos system increased by 3 times. The brightness also appears to hold fairly steady, even eight hours after impact. (NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); animation: Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
Image (Credit): This animation gif is a timelapse of images from NASA’s JWST. It covers the time spanning just before impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT, Sept. 26, through 5 hours post-impact. Plumes of material from a compact core appear as wisps streaming away from where the impact took place. An area of rapid, extreme brightening is also visible in the animation. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Cristina Thomas (Northern Arizona University), Ian Wong (NASA-GSFC); Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

A Day in Astronomy: Launch of the Orbiting Solar Observatory 7

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Image (Credit): Artist’s impression of NASA’s Orbiting Solar Observatory 7 circling the Earth. (NASA)

On this day in 1971, NASA launched the Orbiting Solar Observatory 7 satellite to study the Sun. It successfully completed its mission and remained in orbit through July 9, 1974.

According to a December 31, 1972 report by Ball Brothers Research Corporation, the goal of the Orbiting Solar Observatory program was to make observations and measurements contributing to:

  • Determination of details of the sun’s atmospheric structure, composition and physical state and the process of energy transport radially outward and inward;
  • Determination of origin, energy supply, and solar/terrestrial consequences of transient solar phenomena such as sun spots, flares, radio bursts, and particle bursts;
  • Prediction of transient solar events and their consequences by combining data with those from other spacecraft, rockets, balloons, and ground-based observations; and
  • Secondary objectives including study of the earth and celestial objects.

You can read more about the Orbiting Solar Observatory 7 mission here.

NASA launched eight successful Orbiting Solar Observatory missions in all, but the program had some problems along the way. One satellite launched in 1965 failed to reach orbit, with the satellite burning up in the atmosphere. In another case, a rocket motor test in 1964 went awry, killing three men and wounding eight others.

NASA News: An Eye on Hurricane Ian

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Image (Credit): Images from the ISS’s instruments monitoring Hurricane Ian as the storm neared Cuba. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It may have been a bad week for NASA regarding the delayed launch of the Artemis I mission from Florida, but it has been a good week for NASA as it illustrates the benefits of monitoring Hurricane Ian as it crosses the Caribbean and heads towards Florida.

Two NASA instruments on the International Space Station (ISS) in particular are helping with this monitoring:

  • Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) to measure the amount of rain in the atmosphere; and
  • Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) to track the volume of ice particles pushed into the upper atmosphere by the storm.

Together these instruments give us a much better understanding of the storm hitting the eastern coast of the United States. In this type of situation, any additional details can assist civic leaders and potentially save lives.

We are all fascinated by NASA’s images showing dust storms sweeping across Mars or highlighting the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which represents a violent storm that has marked the planet’s surface for hundreds of years. Enormous storms mark and transform the face of our Earth as well. Monitoring our own planetary storm systems is another worthwhile goal for our NASA scientists.