A robotic cargo ship will depart from the space station on Friday (Dec. 22), and you can watch the action for free. Northrop Grumman’s uncrewed Cygnus NG-19 spacecraft should undock from the International Space Station (ISS) at 8:05 a.m. EST (1305 GMT) on Friday. You can watch coverage here at Space.com, via NASA Television, starting at 7:45 a.m. EST (1245 GMT). Cygnus has spent 4.5 months at the orbiting complex, following an Aug. 4 arrival that brought up 8,200 pounds (3,800 kilograms) of hardware, supplies, science, commercial products and other…
Read MoreTag: International Space Station
Astronaut shows off vintage Nobel Prize in space — and talks ‘quantum dots’ ISS experiment (video)
Nobel Prize-winning work is flying in space as we speak. The International Space Station (ISS) is hosting a quantum experiment based on a discovery made by new Nobel laureate Moungi Bawendi, a French-born American/Tunisian chemist. Bawendi, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, called the ISS on Monday (Dec. 11) alongside fellow physics Nobel laureate Ferenc Krausz. Bawendi told students beforehand that science is a process of experiments that create unpredictable and yet interesting results. “Everything you discover is a little bit new,” he said. “You might have an…
Read MoreWatch ISS astronaut speak with Nobel Prize winners on Dec. 11
Some of this year’s Nobel Prize winners will make a call to space on Monday (Dec. 11), and you can watch online for free. Two European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts — one of them here on Earth and the other aboard the International Space Station (ISS) — will speak with recent Nobel laureates during the event. You can watch live here at Space.com, via ESA Web Two, at 9:10 a.m. EST (1410 GMT) on Monday. The conversation will include ISS Expedition 70 commander Andreas Mogensen, astronaut Marcus Wandt (who is…
Read MoreNASA marks 25th anniversary of ISS with call to crew on space station
Twenty-five years ago, Bob Cabana was at the aft flight deck controls of the space shuttle Endeavour when he fired the orbiter’s thrusters to connect a U.S.-built node with a Russian module in Earth orbit. The burst closed the short distance between “Unity” and “Zarya,” giving birth to the International Space Station (ISS). “I cannot believe it was 25 years ago today that we grappled Zarya and joined it with the Unity node,” said Cabana, now NASA‘s outgoing associate administrator, in a call to the space station’s 70th expedition crew…
Read MoreCosmonauts dock Russian Progress cargo ship to ISS on remote control after autopilot glitch
Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) took manual control of an incoming cargo ship carrying tons of supplies after its automated rendezvous system suffered a glitch. The unpiloted cargo ship, called Progress 86, docked to the station’s Russian-built Poisk module under remote control by Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who tracked its approach from inside the ISS. Kononenko took control of the cargo ship remotely using a system called TORU, while the Progress 86 craft was flying around the station at a range of about 150…
Read MoreISS astronauts watch Russian cargo ship burn up in Earth’s atmosphere (photos)
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station got a front-row seat to some rare atmospheric “fireworks.” On Wednesday (Nov. 29), the Russian Progress MS-23 cargo spacecraft departed from the International Space Station (ISS) with a load of refuse no longer needed on the orbital outpost. Specifically, the spacecraft was carrying “old equipment and household waste, or everything the experts have decided to toss from the station,” Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko told Russian media outlet TASS. Just four hours after Progress MS-23 undocked, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli was able to locate the…
Read MoreQuantum chemistry experiment on ISS creates exotic 5th state of matter
Aboard the International Space Station, there’s a compact lab about the size of a small refrigerator that makes some of the coldest stuff in the universe. It’s called the Cold Atom Lab, and for some time, scientists have been using this chamber to research the strange quantum properties of atoms in microgravity. But on Wednesday (Nov. 15), they announced they’ve reached a milestone. Operated remotely by a team with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, the Cold Atom Lab officially generated a quantum gas containing two species of atoms.…
Read MoreInternational Space Station dodges orbital debris hours before SpaceX cargo ship’s arrival: report
The International Space Station moved out of the way of space debris yet again this year, hours before a new cargo ship is supposed to arrive. A Russian Progress cargo spacecraft attached to the International Space Station (ISS) fired its engines Friday (Nov. 10) in a space debris avoidance maneuver, Russian federal space agency Roscosmos officials wrote on Telegram; translation was provided automatically by Google. (Space.com reached out to NASA officials and is awaiting the agency’s confirmation of the maneuver, as well as the nature of the debris.) The five-minute…
Read MoreTrack the ISS with NASA’s new ‘Spot the Station’ mobile app
Space fans hoping to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station streaking across the sky are getting a much-needed digital tool. NASA just released a new “Spot The Station” app, which can be downloaded for free on iOS and Android devices. The application improves upon the space agency’s official “Spot the Station” website, delivering added capabilities and information to expand the International Space Station (ISS) tracking experience for both casual stargazers and NASA acolytes. Related: Track the ISS: How and where to see it NASA’s “Spot the Station” app…
Read MoreNASA astronauts complete 4th-ever all-female spacewalk outside International Space Station
Two NASA astronauts completed their first spacewalk together outside of the International Space Station, the fourth all-female EVA (extravehicular activity) in history. Expedition 70 crewmates Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara replaced a bearing to keep the solar arrays on the International Space Station (ISS) rotating properly and conducted other maintenance activities, but ran out of time to finish the other major task planned for the spacewalk, the removal of an electronics box from a communications antenna. Moghbeli and O’Hara switched their spacesuits to battery power at 8:05 a.m. EDT (1205 GMT)…
Read More