• December 12, 2021: An astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph of the southern Andes Mountains. The mountain peaks here reach high enough and temperatures remain cold enough year-round that permanent ice persists today. The brilliant white Northern Patagonian Icefield is the smaller of two icefields (the other being the Southern Patagonian) that are often observed from space by astronauts. 1)
- The icefield was significantly larger about 18,000 years ago, during the coldest phase of the last Ice Age. It covered almost the entire view in this image—an enormous area considering that the present icefield is more than 100 km (60 miles) long.
- Glacial ice moves slowly downhill under its own weight. As it flows, it cuts valleys into the underlying rocks. There have been several ice ages in the past, and scientists now know that the lakes at the top of this image and the network of valleys (fjords) at the bottom were gouged out by the erosion of moving glacial ice when the icefields were much larger.
- Two of the biggest glaciers flowing off the icefield, San Rafael and San Quintín, are prominent features on the Pacific side of the icefield. (Note that north is to the left in this photo.) Both have been melting faster than the ice has been supplied from upstream. The retreat of the snout of San Quintín has been documented in previous detailed photos taken by astronauts.
- In a recently published survey of glaciers, scientists showed that the Patagonian icefields follow the global trend of ice melting and loss. Ice losses here have occurred because air temperatures have been increasing along the length of the Andes, even while there has been a small increase in precipitation (snow) that feeds the glaciers.
• December 5, 2021: While in orbit over the San Francisco Bay Area, an astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of the south end of Lake Berryessa, a large freshwater reservoir in nearby Napa County, California. The canyons surrounding the lake provide areas for water recreation, marinas, and campgrounds. The lake is primarily fed by Putah Creek, with additional contributions from smaller waterways such as Capell Creek and Wragg Creek. The visible swirls in the middle of the lake are sediments stirred up by the flow of the water around the canyon walls. 2)
- The artificial lake was created in the 1950s with the construction of Monticello Dam and flooding of Berryessa Valley. The dam stands 304 feet (93 meters) tall and stretches about 1,300 feet (400 m) across Devil's Gate, a narrow pass on Putah Creek. Lake Berryessa stores and distributes water to surrounding cities and nearby farmlands, including vineyards in Napa Valley.
- Water levels in Lake Berryessa and Putah Creek were low at the time of this July 2021 photo, when the entire state of California faced serious drought. The thin, light-colored zone along the shorelines is a "bathtub ring" of dry lakebed where water levels have dropped and vegetation-free sediments stand out.
- During an extended drought in the 1980s, Putah Creek dried up downstream of the reservoir. To prevent this from occurring again, dam operators now regularly release water to mimic the previous seasonal ebb and flow in the creek. Lake Berryessa also provides flood protection for parts of Northern California during large rain events in the winter.
• November 30, 2021: NASA postponed a spacewalk outside the International Space Station by two astronauts just hours before it was scheduled to start after getting a warning that debris would pass close to the station (see Figure 3). 3)
- In a brief statement issued early Nov. 30, NASA said a "debris notification" it received on the evening of Nov. 29 led the agency to postpone the spacewalk by astronauts Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, which had been scheduled to start at about 7:10 a.m. EST. The two had planned to replace an S-band antenna on the station's truss that recently lost the ability to transmit data.
- "Due to the lack of opportunity to properly assess the risk it could pose to the astronauts, teams have decided to delay the spacewalk until more information is available," NASA said in the statement. The agency did not identify the debris in question or the times and distances of closest approach to the station.
- "As ISS passed through the orbit of the debris, we had a heightened, elevated concern for about 24 hours after the event," said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS deputy program manager, at the Nov. 29 briefing. "Since that time the debris has dispersed out quite a bit more."
- For the station overall, she said the background environment of debris is double what is had been before the test. However, the risk to the spacesuits is dominated by very small debris, primarily micrometeoroids. She said the risk to the suits was increased by only about 7% because of the ASAT test based on modeling. The risk to the astronauts "falls within the family of what we've had for EVAs over the last few years."
- That specific risks to the suits, Weigel said later, refer to debris penetrating the suit, but not necessarily a "catastrophic" penetration. The baseline risk of such an event is 1 in 2,700 over the course of a standard EVA lasting six and a half hours.
- Station managers did modify the spacewalk by reducing the number of "get-ahead" tasks available for the astronauts to perform if they completed the antenna work ahead of schedule. Those tasks dropped from the spacewalk included routing an Ethernet cable and releasing bolts for a spare nitrogen tank, activities NASA said could be deferred to later spacewalks.
- "Because we had to make the decision about the content of the EVA a couple weeks ago and we didn't have all the assessment data in, we didn't understand yet what the debris environment risk increase was," Weigel said. "We were conservative in eliminating things from the spacewalk."
- She added that the station program overall was dealing with 1,700 new objects being tracked after the ASAT test. "It will take a few months to get all of those cataloged and into our normal debris tracking processes," she said.
- The 1,700 figure is the first update from a U.S. government agency on the amount of tracked debris since initial statements Nov. 15 by U.S. Space Command that it was tracking more than 1,500 pieces of debris created by the destruction of the Cosmos 1408 spacecraft. Space Command did not respond to a Nov. 22 inquiry seeking an update on the amount of debris it was tracking from that test.
• November 30, 2021: It can be hard to appreciate that a human-made, football-pitch-sized spacecraft is orbiting 400 km above our heads, but there it is. 4)
- Since this image was taken, there has even been a new addition in the form of the Russian Node Module, known as Prichal. The final Russian module planned for the Station, it is a spherical node attached to the Russian segment with six docking ports for future Progress and Soyuz arrivals.
- A collaboration between five space agencies, the Station has become a symbol of peaceful international cooperation for 23 years now. It represents the best of our space engineering capabilities as well as humankind's pursuit of scientific knowledge and exploration.
- By any standards, it is an incredible piece of spacecraft engineering. Weighing 420 tons, it travels in low-Earth orbit at more than 27,000 km/hour, circling Earth approximately 16 times every day.
- Crew members conduct scientific research in microgravity at facilities such as ESA's Columbus module. Some of these experiments and tests are preparing the way for human exploration of the Moon and beyond. But the Station also provides a unique view of Earth, while its science benefits life on our planet.
- Current ESA astronaut in residence is Matthias Maurer, a first-time flier spending around six-months in orbit for his Cosmic Kiss mission. Matthias will continue to support a wide range of European and international science experiments and technological research on the Station before handing off to the next ESA astronaut to fly, Samantha Cristoforetti.
• November 27, 2021: An astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) shot this photograph of two neighboring stratovolcanoes on Java, the most populated island of Indonesia. Mount Sundoro and Mount Sumbing are two symmetrical, cone-shaped peaks in Central Java province that are part of a larger east to west chain of volcanoes. Both peaks rise more than 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level and are still active, though they have not erupted since 1730 (Sumbing) and 1971 (Sundoro). 5)
- The brighter zones encircling the bases of both volcanoes include areas of intensive agriculture; these contrast with the dark forests on the higher slopes. The peaks of Sumbing and Sundoro rise high enough that the rocky summits elevations reach above the tree line.
- The rich volcanic soils surrounding the peaks are very fertile, providing productive farmland in this region of Central Java. The tropical climate of Indonesia also provides abundant rain and sunlight. The area's main crop is rice, grown in irrigated fields. Other lowland crops include corn, sugarcane, and coffee.
• November 25, 2021: This autumn marks the 400th anniversary of a 1621 gathering of members of the Wampanoag Nation and European colonists near Plymouth, Massachusetts. Historians still debate the exact circumstances of the gathering, but the story inspired the modern American tradition of Thanksgiving, which was designated a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. For many Native Americans, however, it is not a day of thanksgiving, but of mourning. 6)
- The colonists landed on Cape Cod in November 1620 after crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower from Plymouth in southwest England. After exploring parts of the Cape and making their first encounters with the Wampanoag, the colonists sailed across Cape Cod Bay, landed near an abandoned Wampanoag settlement known as Patuxet, and founded the Plymouth Colony.
- Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Plymouth, England, are shown above in photographs shot by astronauts from the International Space Station. These two similarly named locations also share an even older geological connection. During the Paleozoic Era, several hundred million years ago, the land that would become southeastern Massachusetts and southwestern England were part of the same microcontinent—Avalonia, or the Avalon terrane.
- A terrane is a group of rocks that share a similar origin and geologic history. Much of northeast North America is made of terranes. Over several hundred million years, plate tectonic forces welded various terranes on to the east coast of Laurentia, the ancient paleocontinent that makes up the core of North America.
- The land that would become Avalonia first formed as a chain of volcanoes off the western coast of the supercontinent Gondwana about 600 million years ago. Then, about 465 million years ago, the land rifted away from Gondwana. It began inching west across the proto-Atlantic Ocean, driven by plate tectonic forces.
- Between about 425 million and 380 million years ago, Avalonia collided with Laurentia and forced up a mountain range along the suture. This collision was an early part of the Acadian Orogeny, the second major mountain-building phase of the Appalachian Mountains. In the U.K., it is called the Caledonian Orogeny.
- The third phase of Appalachian mountain-building, the Alleghanian Orogeny, occurred around 350 million to 250 million years ago. During this phase, Avalonia, now attached to North America, was caught in the middle as the continents converged, closing the proto-Atlantic Ocean and forming the supercontinent Pangaea.
- When Pangaea began to break up about 200 million years ago, Avalonia was rifted apart. Pieces of it can now be found in North America, Europe, and Africa. Continued rifting separated North America and Europe and opened the modern Atlantic Ocean—setting the stage for the historical events to follow millions of years later.
• November 21, 2021: The heavily textured surface of Perito Moreno, one of the world's last non-retreating glaciers, glistens in this detailed photograph taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS). The glacier, located at the southern end of the Southern Patagonian Icefield in Argentina, rises more than 60 meters (200 feet) above the surface of Lago Argentino to the northeast. It marks the separation point between the main lake and its murkier southern branch, Brazo Rico. A single road winds along the coast of Peninsula Magallanes toward Moreno. 7)
- The surface of Perito Moreno is marked by a mixture of glacial cracks (crevasses) and ice columns (seracs). These features are the result of shear stress within the glacier, as the "river of ice" cycles through periods of advancement and retreat. Where the glacier meets the lake, ice separates in a sonorous event called calving that happens almost daily. This spectacle has made Los Glaciares National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular tourist destination.
- Periodically, Moreno advances all the way to Peninsula Magallanes, acting as a natural dam and cutting off Brazo Rico from the rest of Lago Argentino. During such periods, Brazo Rico's water muddies and its level rises. While the channel to Lago Argentino is open in this photo, evidence of this cyclical process is manifested in the higher tree line surrounding Brazo Rico. The rise and fall of the water creates a bathtub-ring separator between the shore and the lower forest. In contrast, the forests around Lago Argentino reach all the way to the lake's edge.
• November 15, 2021: In the past 20 years, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have shot millions of photographs of Earth. The collection offers more than just remarkable views of our home planet; it is a valuable tool for researchers. Christopher Small, of Columbia University, has found the nighttime images to be especially illuminating. By analyzing images of Earth at night, he is working to gain insight into how cities grow and evolve. 9)
- Small has been working to characterize the different types of lighting used across a variety of urban areas. Specifically, he wants to quantify things like the relative brightness, color, and areal abundance of different types of city lights. He has sorted through hundreds of photos of cities that were shot from the ISS, looking specifically for cities with lights in a wide range of colors and spatial configurations.
- In general, the warmer orange and yellow colors in the photographs are likely high-pressure sodium lights. Chicago, for example, has long been known for its widespread orange glow. (That is starting to change in recent years, however, as the city swaps in more LEDs.) Cooler greens and blues are likely mercury vapor lights. LEDs could also be contributing to the color.
- A key part of Small's research has been trying to determine how much light comes from thoroughfares (highways and city streets) compared to individual lights (parking lot lights, façade lights, and billboards). He has found that "the light in urban environments comes almost entirely from outdoor lighting rather than from light transmitted from within buildings. And most of this light is on streets and roads."
- The ability to resolve individual light sources and their color—from high resolution ISS photographs—together with repeat observations of night light brightness—from lower-resolution satellite sensors such as VIIRS—are helping scientists better understand urban growth. "The brightness and color of different types of lighting can help us distinguish different types of infrastructure related to the form and function of urban development," Small said. "This informs our understanding of how spatial networks of development evolve during urban growth."
- Small says that research is already showing that lights in most cities tend to display common network structures and often "emerge without centralized planning or design," which could imply that cities follow similar growth processes no matter where they are. "The suggestion that the process of emergent behavior seems to be similar in cities all over the world is interesting in itself," Christopher Small noted.
• November 14, 2021: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) shot this photograph that captures a some of the essence of tidal features around the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago located just southwest of Cornwall, England. The archipelago includes up to 150 inhabited islands in the Celtic Sea. Pictured are St. Mary's, Tresco, St. Martin's, Bryher, and St. Agnes—the largest islands in the chain. 10)
- Some of the coastal waters surrounding the islands have a bright turquoise hue, indicating the presence of shallow reefs and shoals. Deeper waters have richer blue hues. This photo also captures swell patterns caused by waves that intersect one another as they move around the islands due to the westerly sea breeze.
- The Isles of Scilly are remnants of the underlying Cornubian Batholith—a mass of ancient volcanic rock (a plutonic intrusion) that formed the Cornish Peninsula. This intrusion originated with the crystallization of magma into igneous rock approximately 290 million years ago. It now sits an estimated 10 kilometers (6 miles) below the surface.
- Tides ebb and flow throughout the year and, at their lowest, can expose sandbars that allow people to walk between some islands. Low tides also can expose large rocks along the shore that are used by gray seals to bask in the sun. And bottlenose dolphins migrate with the tidal cycles here—most notably during high tides— in search of fish to feed on.
• November 13, 2021: NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, along with fellow veteran astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria and Scott Kelly, were inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame class of 2021 on Saturday, Nov. 13. Their induction ceremony, held at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, brings the Hall of Fame's membership to 102. 11)
- Melroy, Lopez-Alegria, and Kelly have spent a combined total of more than 635 days in space. They were honored for demonstrating outstanding accomplishments in furthering NASA's mission of exploration and discovery.
- NASA Administrator Bill Nelson provided keynote remarks at the ceremony and former CNN space correspondent John Zarrella served as host. Both praised the inductees for their contributions to NASA's space program.
- "These three pioneers propelled upward and explored the heavens. They broke barriers and set records. They pushed the boundaries of humanity's reach," Nelson said. "Pam, Michael, and Scott, congratulations on this well-earned recognition. And thank you for daring us to keep looking upward and pushing outward into the unknown."
- Melroy was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1994. A veteran of three space shuttle missions, she served as pilot for two flights and commander for her third, making her one of only two women to command a space shuttle. Melroy logged more than 924 hours in space. She retired from NASA in 2007 and was sworn in as the agency's deputy administrator on June 21, 2021.
- "It is a great honor to be inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame together with my distinguished colleagues," said Melroy. "Now we are building a program to achieve a series of objectives that will provide the blueprint to how we maintain a human presence in deep space as we explore the solar system, and then the universe. Those of us who had the incredible good fortune to go to space know that all of humanity is the crew of spaceship Earth, and it is our duty to care for each other and our home planet."
- NASA selected Kelly as an astronaut in 1996. He served as pilot on his first space shuttle mission and commander on his second. In October 2010, Kelly launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-A spacecraft to serve a tour of duty aboard the International Space Station and commander of Expedition 26. In March 2015, Kelly returned to the space station for a one-year mission, serving as a flight engineer and then commander. During the mission, almost 400 experiments were conducted on the station.
- The agency selected Lopez-Alegria as an astronaut in 1992. He was a mission specialist for three flights aboard the space shuttle and served as commander of Expedition 14 aboard the space station from September 2006 to April 2007. Lopez-Alegria logged more than 257 days in space and performed 10 spacewalks, totaling 67 hours and 40 minutes.
- The 2021 inductees were selected by a committee of Hall of Fame astronauts, former NASA officials, flight directors, historians, and journalists. The process is administered by the Astronaut Selection Foundation, which was founded by the original seven Mercury astronauts in 1984. To be eligible, an astronaut must have made his or her first flight at least 17 years before the induction and have been retired from NASA for at least five years. Each candidate must be a U.S. citizen and a NASA-trained commander, pilot, or mission specialist who has orbited Earth at least once.
- The Astronaut Selection Foundation has awarded more than $7 million to more than 600 college students majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics studies.
• November 9, 2021: NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 astronauts safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida Monday aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, completing the agency's second long-duration commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. The mission set a record for the longest spaceflight by a U.S. crewed spacecraft. The international crew of four spent 199 days in orbit, surpassing the 168 days set by NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission earlier this year. 12)13)
- NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at 10:33 p.m. EST off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Crews aboard SpaceX recovery vessels successfully recovered the spacecraft and astronauts. After returning to shore, the astronauts will fly back to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
- "We're happy to have Shane, Megan, Aki, and Thomas safely back on Earth after another successful, record-setting long-duration mission to the International Space Station," said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. "Congratulations to the teams at NASA and SpaceX who worked so hard to ensure their successful splashdown. NASA's Commercial Crew Program continues to demonstrate safe, reliable transportation to conduct important science and maintenance on the space station."
- The Crew-2 mission launched April 23 on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crew Dragon Endeavour docked to the Harmony module's forward port of the space station April 24, nearly 24-hours after liftoff.
- Kimbrough, McArthur, Hoshide, and Pesquet traveled 84,653,119 statute miles during their mission, stayed 198 days aboard the space station, and completed 3,194 orbits around Earth.
- Throughout their mission, the Crew-2 astronauts contributed to a host of science and maintenance activities, scientific investigations, and technology demonstrations. In addition, they conducted four spacewalks and multiple public engagement events while aboard the orbiting laboratory. They studied how gaseous flames behave in microgravity, grew hatch green chiles in the station's Plant Habitat Facility, installed free-flying robotic assistants, and even donned virtual reality goggles to test new methods of exercising in space, among many other scientific activities. The astronauts took hundreds of pictures of Earth as part of the Crew Earth Observation investigation, one of the longest-running investigations aboard the space station, which contributes to tracking of natural disasters and changes to our home planet.
- Kimbrough, Hoshide, and Pesquet also completed four spacewalks to install, deploy, or otherwise prepare for installation of ISS Roll-out Solar Arrays. This brought the total number of spacewalks for Kimbrough, Hoshide, and Pesquet to nine, four, and six, respectively. The fourth spacewalk, conducted by Hoshide and Pesquet on Sept. 12, was the first in the history of the space station that did not include an American or Russian.
- On July 21, all four Crew-2 astronauts boarded Endeavour for a port relocation maneuver, moving their spacecraft from the forward-facing port to the space-facing port on the station's Harmony module.
- The Crew-2 flight is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which has worked with the U.S. aerospace industry to launch astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil to the space station. The splashdown of Crew-2 comes just before the launch of NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than Wednesday, Nov. 10, on another long duration mission of approximately six months.
- Endeavour will return for inspection and processing to SpaceX's Dragon Lair in Florida, where teams will examine the spacecraft's data and performance throughout the flight.
- Following Crew-3's launch, the next NASA and SpaceX crew rotation mission is Crew-4, currently targeted for launch in April 2022. Crew-3 astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth shortly after welcoming their Crew-4 colleagues to the orbiting laboratory.
- The goal of NASA's Commercial Crew Program is safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station. This already has provided additional research time and has increased the opportunity for discovery aboard humanity's microgravity testbed for exploration, including helping NASA prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
• November 7, 2021: An astronaut onboard the International Space Station shot this panoramic, west-looking photograph of cloudscapes around Sumatra, one of Indonesia's largest islands. The image also shows the smaller, neighboring Bangka and Belitung Islands, the Java Sea, and the west coast of Borneo (far right margin, above the solar panel). The long, bright clouds—generated by thunderstorms—cast dark shadows on the land and sea below. The brightest zone of the Sun's reflection on the water (sunglint) highlights the narrow strait between Sumatra and the islands. Singapore is hidden beneath a thunderstorm. 14)
- On the day this photo was taken, winds were blowing from the northeast (right to left in this view). After crossing the Java Sea, the moist air would have risen as it was heated. Such heating likely caused thunderstorms to form over each island.
- The tops of some of the storms were sheared off by winds to form clouds with flattened upper surfaces; these as called anvil clouds. Winds can extend anvils across great distances, making long, narrow tails. The big anvil that starts over Bangka Island stretches about 200 kilometers (120 miles) across Sumatra into the Indian Ocean. Other anvil clouds formed where air was forced to rise over the high Barisan Mountains on Sumatra's southwest coast (far left). Small cumulus clouds also formed over the small line of Mentawai Islands (top left).
- Cloud-free zones appear over the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean. Both zones lie downwind of landmasses (Borneo and Sumatra), with air apparently descending onto the sea surface on this day. Descending air usually suppresses cloud formation.
• November 4, 2021: Four International Space Station astronauts continue packing their U.S. spacecraft as they plan for a return to Earth this month. Meanwhile, the Expedition 66 crew continued its ongoing space research and maintenance aboard the orbital lab. 15)
- Flight Engineers Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, who are also the commander and pilot of NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 mission respectively, have been loading and readying the Crew Dragon Endeavour for its upcoming undocking and splashdown. The duo may undock for the ride back to Earth as early as Sunday, Nov. 7, with astronauts Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) ending a mission that began in April. NASA and SpaceX are continuing to review launch and return opportunities for Crew-3 and Crew-2, respectively.
- Kimbrough also spent the day uninstalling incubator components before inspecting portable emergency gear. McArthur photographed a variety of space station tools for a survey. Hoshide replaced air filters as Pesquet organized cables and checked camera sensors.
- NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei, who is over halfway through his near yearlong mission, opened up the Microgravity Science Glovebox on Thursday morning and began setting up a semiconductor crystal experiment. The study takes advantage of microgravity and lessons from previous studies to produce higher-quality semiconductor crystals potentially resulting in smaller, more powerful electronic devices.
- The station's two cosmonauts, Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov from Roscosmos, focused their activities today on the docked ISS Progress 78 and 79 resupply ships. The duo checked docking components on the both cargo craft while also unpacking science gear from the Progress 79 spacecraft.
• November 4, 2021: NASA and SpaceX continue to review launch and return opportunities for the upcoming crew rotation flights to and from the International Space Station as part of the agency's Commercial Crew Program. 16)
- Mission teams now are considering whether to return the agency's SpaceX Crew-2 mission from the space station ahead of launching the next crew rotation due to the associated weather considerations for both launch and recovery operations.
- The earliest possible opportunity for Crew-2 undocking from the space station is at 1:05 p.m. EST Sunday, Nov. 7, to begin the return trip to Earth for splashdown off the coast of Florida. A back-up undocking opportunity also is available Monday, Nov. 8.
- The earliest possible opportunity for NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 launch is 9:51 p.m. EST Monday, Nov. 8, if mission teams do not pursue Crew-2 return on Sunday, Nov. 7 or Monday. Nov. 8.
- Mission teams will make a final decision on whether to prioritize Crew-3's launch or Crew-2's return in the coming days based on the likelihood of favorable conditions for a Crew Dragon splashdown or Crew Dragon launch. NASA and SpaceX also are reviewing the time needed between launch or return operations.
• October 30, 2021: An astronaut on the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of the Acarnanian Mountains and the neighboring Ionian Islands of Greece. This oblique shot highlights the rugged topography of the coastal region along the western edge of the country. (Note that north is to the left.) 17)
- At almost 1,160 meters (3,800 feet) above sea level, Psili Koryfi is the largest mountain peak in the Acarnanian range (known locally as Akarnanika Ori). Low clouds obscure the peak in this image. The Acarnanians are a relatively small range of limestone mountains on the Balkan Peninsula.
- Between the mountains and the sea, Lake Voulkarias is a protected wetland and refuge for many endangered migratory birds. The shallow lake was created by a combination of tectonic activity, karstification, and sedimentation. Like Lake Voulkarias, the Ionian Islands and surrounding water also include protected areas for threatened birds and marine life like the Mediterranean monk seal.
- The islands of Kastos, Kalamos, Meganisi, and Lefkada are a few of many in the Ionian Sea. Located between Italy and Greece, this marginal sea is a part of the larger Mediterranean. This area is the most seismically active region in the eastern Mediterranean, and the nearby coasts have experienced multiple tsunamis over the past few thousand years.
- Though most of the islands were formed due to natural processes, Lefkada was originally a part of mainland Greece. When the Lefkas Canal was constructed more than 2,500 years ago, it separated Lefkada from Greece. The small canal was built for easier water transportation between the islands in the Ionian Sea and the mainland, similar to the Corinth Canal in southern Greece.
• October 28, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet from France began Alpha - his second mission to the International Space Station - on 23 April 2021. 18)
Figure 19: Launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, on the second operational flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon, Thomas has now spent around six months in orbit on mission Alpha. In addition to science experiments, he has taken part in four spacewalks and countless scientific investigations. On 4 October Thomas became the fourth European International Space Station Commander. He is now the ESA astronaut with the most total time spent in space and on spacewalks (video credit: ESA)
• October 24, 2021: The city and port of Palma is captured in great detail in this photograph taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS). This capital city of the Balearic Islands (part of Spain) is situated on the largest island of Mallorca, east of the Iberian Peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. Sunglint highlights boat wakes throughout the marinas and the greater Bay of Palma. 19)
- Palma has a rich history that has been influenced by several civilizations, including the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Moors, before becoming a province of Spain. This compact coastal city and its port continues to act as a pivotal location along Mediterranean trade routes, and it is the largest port in the Balearic Islands today.
- Overlooking the city is the Bellver Castle, built in the 14th century as a royal residence for the rulers of Mallorca. The castle has seen many different uses over the years, and it is now one of the island's main tourist attractions and home to the Palma History Museum.
• October 18, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission 'Alpha'. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This picture shows Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at night. 20)
• October 17, 2021: The Bighorn River flows through much of north-central Wyoming and southern Montana, cutting through the rugged and angular terrain of the Bighorn Basin. Red rocks and complex geology are distinctive features of this physiographic region. The semi-arid climate creates a sparsely vegetated environment where dramatic geologic structures are easily identified from space and from the ground. 21)
- An astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) looked westward to take this photo, capturing the shadows from the local sunrise. Along the right side of this image, the Bighorn River is almost hidden amid the mountains due to the shadows cast into Sheep Canyon.
- Located in Wyoming's Rocky Mountains, Bighorn Basin is a large, oval-shaped depression and home to many rivers and geologic formations. This photo is centered on the Sheep Mountain anticline, a type of fold that forms due to compressional stress on rock layers. Geologic structures like this anticline are found throughout the Bighorn Basin and many are associated with oil and gas reservoirs.
• October 17, 2021: Timelapse video made during ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet's second mission to the International Space Station, "Alpha".The camera is setup to take pictures at intervals of two a second, and the pictures are then edited into this video that plays at 25 pictures a second. The video is around 12 times faster than real speed. 22)
Figure 23: Thomas shared this video on social media with the caption: "Sometimes aurora seem to creep over the horizon and envelop our globe. Under the technological powerhouse of Canadarm, the Station's solar panels and one of our radio antennas, this timelapse passes the aurora so you can marvel at the stars and ends on a sunrise." (video credit: ESA/NASA)
• October 14, 2021: A veteran cosmonaut will soon lead two Russian spaceflight participants on a ride through Earth's atmosphere to a parachuted landing in Kazakhstan this weekend. Meanwhile, the rest of the Expedition 65 crew stayed focused on a multitude of science, cargo, and maintenance activities throughout Thursday. 23)
- Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy will complete his third station mission when he undocks from the Nauka multipurpose laboratory on Saturday at 9:14 p.m. EDT inside the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship. He, with the station's two filmmaking guests Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko riding alongside him, will touchdown on the Kazakh steppe on Sunday at 12:36 a.m. (10:36 a.m. Kazakh time).
- Novitskiy has been packing the Soyuz spacecraft for several days with station hardware, science samples and personal items. He has also been practicing Soyuz descent techniques and training for the departure maneuvers on a Russian computer. The three-time station resident, with assistance from cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, has also been testing a specialized suit, the lower body negative pressure suit, that may help his body adjust quickly to Earth's gravity after 191 days in space.
- The station's three NASA flight engineers had their hands full today with a host of research and lab upkeep activities in the orbiting lab's U.S. segment. Megan McArthur swapped fuel bottles inside the Combustion Integrated Rack then performed simulated robotic tasks for a cognition test. Shane Kimbrough had some light plumbing duties during the morning before continuing cargo work inside the Cygnus space freighter. Mark Vande Hei, who is staying on the station for nearly a year, filmed a video about safety in space for students on Earth then worked on life support and networking gear.
- The two international astronauts, Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide, spent some time in their respective modules, Europe's Columbus laboratory and Japan's Kibo laboratory, ensuring smooth lab operations. Pesquet, of ESA (European Space Agency), serviced a variety of science freezers inside Columbus. Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reorganized stowage space inside Kibo making room for new science gear soon to be delivered on the next SpaceX Cargo Dragon mission.
- Over in the station's Russian segment, Roscosmos Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov worked on an exercise study and dismantled a radiation detector. Dubrov downloaded and checked radiation data then configured radiation sensors, or dosimeters.
• October 12, 2021: Solar Cycle 25 is underway, and that means more frequent opportunities to see auroras—more commonly known as the northern lights and the southern lights. One of the best opportunities in recent years occurred on October 11-12, 2021. 24)
- That same night, astronaut Shane Kimbrough photographed the aurora (image below) from his perch on the International Space Station. The night brought the first sustained, widespread glance at the northern lights for mid-latitude viewers in several years. Many photographers and aurora chasers captured photos that night, some of which were shared with the Aurorasaurus citizen science project.
- Solar cycles track the activity level of the Sun, our nearest star. A cycle is traditionally measured by the rise and fall in the number of sunspots, but it also coincides with increases in solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), radio emissions, and other forms of space weather. These bursts of magnetized plasma and energetic waves from the Sun's atmosphere energize the gases and particles in Earth's magnetosphere and send them plunging down in colorful light displays in the upper atmosphere. Scientists have forecasted the next peak of solar activity (solar maximum) will be reached in mid-2025.
- According to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, the Sun erupted with a solar flare and CME on October 9, 2021, and the storm arrived at Earth late on October 11. Geomagnetic storm activity reached G2 on a scale from G1 to G5. It was likely the first head-on CME impact of the new solar cycle. NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO-A) and the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the flare and CME.
- You can participate in aurora citizen science through Aurorasaurus. The project team tracks auroras around the world via reports to its website and on Twitter, then generates a real-time global map of those reports. Citizen scientists log in and verify the tweets and reports, and each verified sighting serves as a valuable data point for scientists to analyze and incorporate into space weather models. The Aurorasaurus team, in collaboration with citizen scientists and the scientific community, published the first scientific study of Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE), an aurora-like phenomenon that appears closer to the equator and flows from east to west. The project is a public-private partnership with the New Mexico Consortium supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.
• October 9, 2021: Situated in the South China Sea, the large island of Hainan is China's southernmost province, spanning approximately 339,000 hectares (3390 km2 or1,300 square miles). This photograph, taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS), focuses on the landscape around Gangmen Harbor and captures many typical characteristics of Hainan: forested mountain terrain juxtaposed with dense populations. Cleared lands show up with bright orange and red soils that owe their color to the oxidation of iron-rich sediments. The coasts are lined with tropical beaches, while the inner bays are lined with floating fishing villages often built in a grid-like patterns in shallow waters. 25)
- Língshui Li Autonomous County, at the south end of Hainan, sustains a large nomadic sea community. China is already a world leader in wild catch fish production, and fish farming is rapidly expanding. China grows nearly 60 percent of the world's farmed fish, particularly for carp and tilapia. These aquaculture sites are often paired with fishing ports (such as Gangmen) that provide efficient transport for fish, machinery, and construction materials needed to sustain aquacultural production.
• October 5, 2021: The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko docked to the International Space Station at 8:22 a.m. EDT while both spacecraft were flying about 260 miles above Earth to the north of the Philippine islands. 26)
- The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko docked to the International Space Station at 8:22 a.m. EDT while both spacecraft were flying about 260 miles (~400 km) above Earth to the north of the Philippine islands.
- When the hatches between the two spacecraft are opened following standard pressurization and leak checks, the trio will join Expedition 65 Commander Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov.
- Watch the hatch opening on NASA TV, the agency's website, and the NASA app beginning at 9:30 a.m. for hatch opening targeted for about 10 a.m.
• October 5, 2021: A Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station Oct. 5 carrying a cosmonaut as well as an actress and director who will film scenes for a Russian movie. 27)
- A Soyuz-2 rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:55 a.m. EDT (08:55 UTC) and placed the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft into orbit. The Soyuz docked with the Rassvet module of the ISS at 8:22 a.m. EDT after a two-orbit approach. The spacecraft's commander, Anton Shkaplerov, had to perform a manual docking after a problem with the automated Kurs docking system.
- Shkaplerov is a veteran Roscosmos cosmonaut who has spent 533 days in space on three long-duration ISS expeditions. The other two people on the spacecraft were spaceflight participants: Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko. They will film scenes for a Russian movie called Vyzov or Challenge, directed by Shipenko and starring Peresild.
- In the movie, Peresild plays a doctor sent to the space station to perform heart surgery on a cosmonaut so he can return home. She was selected as part of an open casting call that resulted in about 3,000 applications. Shipenko is the movie's director and will serve as camera operator and other roles while on the station.
- Peresild and Shipenko will spend 12 days in space, filming scenes primarily in the Russian segment of the station. Some scenes will be shot in the cupola in the U.S. segment of the station. For those scenes, they will be escorted by NASA astronauts under terms of an agreement governing spaceflight participants on the station. About a half-hour of footage for Vyzov will be shot on the station, with the rest of the movie filmed on Earth after the mission.
- The two spaceflight participants will return on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that has been docked to the station since April. Oleg Novitskiy, commander of that spacecraft, will return to Earth with Peresild and Shipenko.
- Shkaplerov will remain on the station with NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, who flew to the station on MS-18. They will remain until March 2022, meaning that Dubrov and Vande Hei will have spent nearly one year in space, a record for an American astronaut.
- Vande Hei said before his launch that the film would likely mean he would spend up to a year, rather than six months, on the ISS. "The opportunity to experience this with wonderful crewmates while contributing to science and future exploration is exciting!" he wrote in September, when NASA confirmed the extended mission.
- Vyzov is often described as the first movie filmed in space, but it is more accurate to call it the first feature-length drama filmed in space. Several documentaries, including large-format Imax films, have been filmed in space. In 2008, private astronaut Richard Garriott filmed a short movie, Apogee of Fear, during a visit to the ISS. The eight-minute humorous science-fiction film featured Garriott and several astronauts and cosmonauts on the station.
• October 4, 2021: Expedition 65 Commander Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will hand over command of the International Space Station today to ESA (European Space Agency) Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet. Pesquet will command the station until he departs with Hoshide and NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough in mid-to-late November. 28)
- The four crewmates have been living on the orbital lab since April when they arrived aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour. The quartet will return to Earth next month inside Endeavour and parachute to a splashdown off the coast of Florida completing a six-month stay in space.
- About 12 hours after Pesquet takes command of the orbiting lab, three Russian crewmates will launch toward the space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Soyuz Commander Anton Shkaplerov will ride inside the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship in between spaceflight participants Klim Shipenko and Yulia Peresild.
- The trio will lift off inside the Soyuz MS-19 crew ship at 4:55 a.m. EDT on Tuesday (5 October) and orbit the Earth twice before docking to the Rassvet module less than three-and-a-half hours later. Shkaplerov will stay in space until April while Shipenko and Yulia Peresild will return to Earth about 12 days later. The two spaceflight participants will ride back to Earth and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan inside the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship with Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Novitskiy.
- NASA TV starts its live coverage of the change of command ceremony today at 3:20 p.m. EDT on the NASA app and the agency's website. NASA TV will be back on the air on Tuesday at 4:15 a.m. broadcasting the launch, docking and crew greeting at the space station of the new Russian trio.
- The seven residents aboard the station today started the work week servicing a variety of research hardware. Kimbrough cleaned the Life Science Glovebox today following two weeks of rodent research activities. NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei swapped fuel bottles inside the Combustion Integrated Rack and also helped McArthur organize food to open up more space on the station.
- Hoshide installed the Tele-Luminescence Analysis System that observes tissues and genes in small animals in the Kibo laboratory module. Pesquet set up the Fluidics experiment for a couple of runs today to better understand how fuels behave in spacecraft fuel tanks.
• October 3, 2021: An astronaut onboard the International Space Station shot this photograph of Lake Pueyrredón and Lake Posadas in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina. Snow-covered foothills of the Andes Mountains appear along the lower margin. Streaks on the lake surface are produced by the strong winds that are very common in the region. The dark shadow of a cloud falls on the surface of Lake Posadas. Though the permanent population is small, tourism brings many people to Patagonia's lake region; the small airstrip and lakeside road aid with arrivals. 29)
- Rivers from the local hills have dumped sediment on the shores of the lakes to form small deltas. Three are prominent on the shore of Lake Pueyrredón. (To the west in Chile, Lake Pueyrredón is known as Lake Cochrane.) Very strong and persistent winds have generated waves and currents powerful enough to erode sand from the toes of the fan-deltas, creating long, thin sand spits pointing down-current.
- The biggest delta is connected to the opposite shore by a sand bar 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) long; it actually may be an ancient moraine. This sand bar cut off the eastern end of Lake Pueyrredón to form the smaller Lake Posadas. Posadas is lighter in color because of the light-toned sediment flowing into it from the incoming river.
- Land surfaces here have been dynamic in the past one or two million years. Geologists now know that ice sheets that formed along the nearby Andes Mountains have expanded repeatedly, each time covering the entire area shown in the photo. Other astronaut photos such as this one show the Northern Patagonian ice sheet that affected Lake Pueyrredón.
• September 28, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet with the Lumina experiment during his Alpha mission on the International Space Station, 25 August 2021. 30)
- The Lumina experiment will demonstrate the reliability of a fibre-optic dosimeter in measuring radiation ionizing inside the International Space Station. The Lumina technology demonstration features two spools of kilometer-long fibres that will improve our understanding of how fibre optic cables cope with long-duration spaceflight. This knowledge is essential as we prepare to protect astronauts and hardware on longer missions farther from Earth.
• September 26, 2021: In this photograph taken by a cosmonaut on the International Space Station, the water cascading through Niagara Gorge and the three waterfalls between Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, are easily identified by their white foam and spray. Shadows accentuate the depth of the canyon that the Niagara River has carved over the past 12,000 years. Meanwhile, the falls are slowly receding upstream as erosion whittles away the underlying rock. 31)
- More than 750,000 gallons of water (340 m3) flows from the Lake Erie basin, over the falls, and into the Lake Ontario basin every second. Goat Island and Luna Island sit in the middle of the Niagara River and divert the channel into three distinct falls. The largest, Horseshoe Falls, has not always had its namesake shape. What once was a gentle crescent has become a deep horseshoe as the middle of the ledge has retreated more quickly than the edges. The other two falls, American and Bridal Veil, were conjoined until the waterfall line receded into Luna Island. The land now acts as a separator between the two watery curtains.
- While the falls and river channel were long in the making, the human influence on the region is relatively recent. Since the 1950s, the U.S. and Canada have undertaken projects to preserve the falls from further erosion and to harness the hydroelectric power of the flow. The International Niagara Control Works is a water diversion mechanism designed to send more water toward the American and Bridal Veil falls and to channel some of it toward power plant intakes. The U.S. and Canadian power stations near the falls are a critical part of the region's energy supply.
• September 25, 2021: A volcanic eruption on La Palma in the Canary Islands (Spain) has destroyed hundreds of homes and led thousands of people to evacuate. The proximity of the lava to developed areas is especially apparent in this photograph, shot with a handheld camera on September 22, 2021, by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS). 32)
- The eruption began on September 19 from fissures on the western flanks of Cumbre Vieja, an elongated volcanic range spanning the southern two-thirds of the island. Observers reported an initial explosion that day that lofted ash and gas thousands of feet into the air.
- Pulsating fountains of lava have since been feeding lava flows running downslope, engulfing trees, banana plantations, homes, and infrastructure. According to news reports, more than 5,000 people evacuated as lava flows threatened neighborhoods in El Paso, Los Llanos de Aridan, and Tazacorte. Ashfall and sulfur dioxide emissions affected nearby communities as well.
- La Palma is one of the youngest of the Canary Islands, a volcanic archipelago off the west coast of Morocco. La Palma's Cumbre Vieja last erupted in 1971. "While 50 years is a relatively long time for humans, it's a geological moment in terms of this very active volcano," said William Stefanov, a remote sensing scientist for the International Space Station science office.
- Stefanov previously wrote about La Palma in 2008, describing geologic features visible in an astronaut photograph of the same area. By day, it becomes easy to see Cumbre Vieja's numerous cinder cones, craters, and lava flows.
• September 23, 2021: The Expedition 65 astronauts are moving full speed ahead today studying how living in space affects skin processes. The International Space Station is also gearing up for a busy period of spaceship activities. 33)
- Rodents continue to be observed aboard the orbiting lab today so scientists can identify genes and observe cell functions that are impacted by weightlessness and affect skin processes. The Rodent Research-1 Demonstration will take place until next week when the mice are transferred into the SpaceX Cargo Dragon vehicle for return and examination on Earth.
- Commander Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) spent Thursday morning exploring how weightlessness affects microbes living on the station. He extracted DNA earlier this week from microbe samples he swabbed from surfaces inside the station. Today, Hoshide prepared the DNA for onboard sequencing to help researchers understand the microbial environment of the station and future spacecraft.
- In the Russian segment of the orbital lab, Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov are familiarizing themselves with the procedures for next week's relocation of their Soyuz MS-18 crew ship. The duo, along with Vande Hei, will take a short ride in the Soyuz on Tuesday when they undock from the Rassvet module at 8:21 a.m. EDT.
- They will temporarily maneuver toward the station's U.S. segment where they will photograph the orbiting lab's configuration. Shortly after that, they will move back toward the Russian segment and redock to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module at around 9 a.m.
• September 21, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission "Alpha". In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures shows the Florida Keys, USA, made from around 80 pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage. The images were taken on 28 April 2021 from 16:40 GMT. 34)
• September 19, 2021: An astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) shot this photograph of the northwestern portion of Noirmoutier, a small tidal island about 20 km long on the western coast of France. Taken at approximately 1:00 p.m. local time, the image highlights exposed mudflats, salt marshes, and sand dunes visible at low tide, as well as the small communities and farms of the island. 35)
- Access to Noirmoutier historically required well-timed traversing of the Passage du Gois (out of the frame to the southeast), a causeway linking the island to the mainland. A bridge was constructed in 1971 to permit travel during high tide, which still floods the lowland passage twice a day. Meanwhile, several boats leave white wakes off the north and west side of the island as they travel to and from the deep-water fishing port at L'Herbaudiere.
- The exposed mudflats surrounding the island are teeming with shellfish. Oyster aquaculture is widespread in the bay, and several of the associated fish-farming structures stand out along the coast during low tide.
- Locals also reap another sort of harvest from the salt marshes. Salt, or "white gold," is collected from a series of channels and pools as the water evaporates in the summer months.
• September 16, 2021: The Moon seen from the International Space Station by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet on 30 May 2021. 36)
- Thomas commented on the photo: "The Cupola windows have scratch panes on the inside, that protect the windows from camera lenses bumping into it... but they are quite scratched over the years and it makes it very difficult to take pictures with the big lenses .... only one window has a bump shield that slides open. I was only too happy to see the Moon frame itself perfectly in that window. Serendipity! The Moon is symbolically getting closer all the time with new programs and humans set to land on our natural satellite in the next few years, brought there by the European Service Module for NASA's Orion spacecraft ..."
• September 14, 2021: Two ISS crew members have had their stay onboard the orbiting lab extended to nearly a year. Meanwhile, space biology and life support maintenance kept the Expedition 65 crew busy on Tuesday. 37)
- With the plans for Russian spaceflight participants to visit the space station as part of the Soyuz MS-19 crew in October 2021, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov will remain aboard the station until March 2022. Upon return to Earth, Vande Hei will hold the record for longest single spaceflight for an American.
Figure 39: NASA Astronaut Mark Vande Hei on setting the record for longest single spaceflight for an American. With the plans for Russian spaceflight participants to visit the International Space Station as part of the MS-19 Soyuz crew in October 2021, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov will remain aboard the station until March 2022. Upon return to Earth, Mark Vande Hei will hold the record for longest single spaceflight for an American. Vande Hei talked about his mission extension and impending spaceflight record during an interview from the International Space Station. - A potential benefit to this extension is NASA gaining deeper insight into how the human body adapts to life in microgravity for longer periods of time. This research helps prepare for Artemis missions to the Moon and eventually long-duration missions to Mars, as well as provides critical opportunities for additional research to be conducted aboard the station that can benefit life on Earth (video credit: NASA/JSC)
- A potential benefit to this extension is NASA gaining deeper insight into how the human body adapts to life in microgravity for longer periods of time. This research helps prepare for Artemis missions to the Moon and eventually long-duration missions to Mars, as well as provides critical opportunities for additional research to be conducted aboard the station that can benefit life on Earth.
- Rodents living on the station will soon be studied to understand how microgravity affects a variety of biological systems and processes. NASA Flight Engineers Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough began their day Tuesday training for the Rodent Research-1 Demonstration (RR-D1) experiment that will take place inside the Kibo laboratory module.
- Afterward, Commander Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency joined Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) and took their turn studying for the upcoming RR-D1 study. The rodents will live in JAXA's Mouse Habitat Unit and the experiment will be housed inside Kibo's Life Science Glovebox. The biology study specifically aims to understand how weightlessness impacts normal skin function and wound healing.
- Vande Hei, with assistance from Kimbrough, removed support components today that kept a new carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubber attached to the SpaceX Cargo Dragon spaceship during its flight to the station last month. The device that cleans the station's atmosphere of CO2 will soon be installed in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module.
- Dubrov and fellow cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy are still reconfiguring the station's Russian segment following their two spacewalks on Sept. 3 and Sept. 9. The duo also took turns wearing heart monitoring gear. Dubrov then began setting up a laptop computer and a European robotic arm controller inside the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.
• September 15, 2021: In his free time, like many astronauts, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. 38)
• September 14, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet (left) and JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide (right) performed a spacewalk on Sunday 12 September to prepare another section of the International Space Station for its solar panel upgrade. 39)
- The new solar arrays, called IROSA (ISS Roll-Out Solar Array), are being gradually installed over the existing arrays to boost the International Space Station's power system.
- Thomas and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough prepared and installed two IROSA solar panels across three spacewalks in June. The arrays were taken from their storage area outside the Space Station and passed from spacewalker to spacewalker to the worksite. There the rolled arrays were secured, unfolded, connected and then unfurled.
- Aki and Thomas prepared the P4 truss for its IROSA installation. This is the same area as where Thomas and Shane installed two IROSA's but closer to the main body of the Space Station, in an area called the 4A channel. Only one new solar array will be installed here, on a later spacewalk.
- While Sunday's extravehicular activity or EVA was already the fourth spacewalk during Thomas' Alpha mission, it was his first with Aki and the first time a spacewalking pair did not feature a US or Russian astronaut.
- Aki and Thomas made good time preparing the 4A channel for the next IROSA and were able to complete a second task to replace a floating potential measurement unit that was faulty. This unit measures the difference between the Space Station's conductive structures and the atmospheric plasma.
- Thomas and Aki completed their spacewalk in six hours and 54 minutes, which hands Thomas the ESA record for longest time spent spacewalking. — How did he celebrate? With ice cream!
- Thomas reminds us that, "Spacewalks last seven hours and are like top sport, so we need the calories afterwards!"
• September 13, 2021: Long shadows creep across Ulaagchinii Khar Nuur in this sunrise photo taken from the International Space Station by an astronaut. The shadows accentuate the topography in and around the lake, including the Big and Small Avgash Islands. Cracks permeate the ice-covered surface of the lake, and dunes skirt the shore. The cold, flat ice surface contrasts with the distinctive, rolling waves of sand dunes. While typically associated with hot climates, dunes can form in all deserts, including the cold steppe of western Mongolia. 40)
- Though located in Mongolia's Great Lakes Depression, the water surface of Khar Nuur Lake is still more than 1900 meters (6,400 feet) above sea level. Due to the high altitude and location, temperatures in the freshwater lake dip below freezing for most of the winter months. Situated in central Asia between China and Russia, Mongolia sits in the subarctic zone where cold air from Siberia extends winter climate patterns well into April.
- Khar Nuur is within the Ulaagchinii Khar National Park, which is part of the Eurasian Steppe that stretches from eastern Europe almost to the Pacific Ocean. Steppe regions are home to many vulnerable animals, including a variety of threatened bird species protected within Ulaagchinii Khar.
• September 12, 2021: Astronauts Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) have concluded the first spacewalk conducted by two international partner astronauts out of the International Space Station's Quest airlock at 3:09 p.m. EDT, after 6 hours and 54 minutes. 41)
- Hoshide and Pesquet successfully assembled and attached a support bracket in preparation for future installation of the orbiting laboratory's third new solar array. NASA is augmenting six of the eight existing power channels of the space station with new solar arrays to ensure a sufficient power supply is maintained for NASA's exploration technology demonstrations for Artemis and beyond as well as utilization and commercialization.
- The crew also replaced a device that measures the electrical charging potential of the arrays and associated surfaces in its vicinity, called a floating point measurement unit, on a separate truss section. The new device was powered on successfully.
- This was the fourth spacewalk for Hoshide, the sixth for Pesquet, and the 12th spacewalk this year. Hoshide has now spent a total of 28 hours and 17 minutes spacewalking, and Pesquet's total spacewalking time is 39 hours and 54 minutes. Space station crew members have now spent a total of 64 days, 5 hours, and 54 minutes working outside the station conducting 244 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory.
- In November 2020, the International Space Station surpassed its 20-year milestone of continuous human presence, providing opportunities for unique research and technological demonstrations that help prepare for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars and also improve life on Earth. In that time, 244 people from 19 countries have visited the orbiting laboratory that has hosted nearly 3,000 research investigations from researchers in 108 countries and areas.
• September 9, 2021: A smoke alarm sounded Thursday in Russia's segment of the International Space Station (ISS) and astronauts smelled "burning" on board, Russia's space agency and NASA said. 42)
- The incident, which the Russian space agency Roscosmos said happened at 01:55 GMT ahead of a scheduled spacewalk, is the latest in a string of problems to spur safety concerns over conditions on the Russian segment.
- "A smoke detector was triggered in the Zvezda service module of the Russian segment of the International Space Station during automatic battery charging, and an alarm went off," Roscosmos said in a statement.
- French astronaut Thomas Pesquet said "the smell of burning plastic or electronic equipment" wafted to the US segment of the station, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing a NASA broadcast.
- The Russian crew turned on a filter and after the air was cleaned up the astronauts went back to sleep, Roscosmos said.
- The space agency said that a planned spacewalk would go ahead as scheduled.
- Russia's Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov are scheduled to leave the station to continue work on the Nauka science module that docked in July.
- "All systems are operating normally," Roscosmos said.
- The Russian segment of the ISS has experienced several problems recently and a space official warned last month that out of date software could lead to "irreparable failures".
- The Zvezda service module, part of the Russian segment, has experienced several air leaks, including earlier this year and in 2019.
- Citing concerns stemming from ageing hardware, Russia has previously indicated that it plans to leave the ISS after 2025 and launch its own orbital station.
- In July, the entire ISS tilted out of orbit after the thrusters of the Nauka module reignited several hours after docking.
• August 29, 2021: Thirty-six years ago, an astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery focused a camera lens on South America's Paraná River. This southward-looking panorama shows the point where the Paraná flows into northern Argentina, then bends south, and finally reaches the Atlantic Ocean at the River Plate estuary (top left). For scale, the distance from Asunción, the Paraguayan capital, to the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires is more than 1000 km (600 miles). 43)
- This photo shows a very large ‘inland delta' where the Paraná River has spread out laterally to form a huge, triangular surface (outlined in gray) that measures 425 km (265 miles) from the apex to the most distant point near La Paz. The entire surface of the delta—known to geologists as a megafan—is covered by numerous channels showing where the Paraná used to flow. The channels can be seen radiating across the delta from the apex.
- At the time, views like this were surprising to geologists, who had thought megafans were few and far between on Earth's surface. (Fewer than a dozen were known at the time.) Orbital images such as this spurred research to identify the largest megafans, defined as being greater than 80 km (50 miles) long. The tally now stands at nearly 300 megafans worldwide.
- Megafans can spread across vast areas, especially where they coalesce in major river valleys such as the Paraná. There are many other megafans in South America, but the combined area of just the three megafans in Figure 44 is 376,000 km2 (145,200 square miles), almost equal to the land area of Japan.
- Megafans are being adapted for agriculture at an ever increasing rate. Their flat landscapes are ideal for developing transport and irrigation infrastructure. Being composed of softer river sediments, they are also relatively easy to plow.
• August 23, 2021: Months before the world turned its eye toward Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics, an astronaut on the International Space Station captured this image of the Japanese megacity. The photograph offers a distinctive, high-resolution view of the city's structure via its nighttime light. 44)
- Many cities are oriented around a center. In most modern cities, this is a bright downtown. In Tokyo, it's the Imperial Palace. Strings of light emanate from the palace and follow Tokyo's major expressway system outward. The brightest points indicate clusters of large buildings in several downtown areas. Major sports venues—like the Olympic Stadium and horse racing tracks—also leave subtle marks on the Tokyo nightscape.
- In a city so well illuminated, the dark areas stand out as much as the bright. As Tokyo's population pushes past 40 million, the city is reaching geographic limits on outward growth. Naturally bounded by Tokyo Bay to the east and mountains to the west, darker areas farther from the city center are often designated parks. The park system of Tokyo is extensive, covering 36 percent of the total land area in the prefecture.
- The other negative space in the photo is Tokyo Bay and the major rivers (the Sumida, Tama, and Edo) that run through the city and into the bay. The only interruption to the darkness of the bay is the small points of light caused by ships traveling to and from Tokyo's busy docks. The sharp, angular nature of the docks contrasts with the winding of the rivers and highlights their human-made origin.
• August 18, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage is made up of 58 images digitally mapped, rotated and assembled to provide a highly detailed overview of Venice, Italy, and the Venetian Lagoon. 45)
• August 15, 2021: This expansive view of the River Thames flowing eastward through the London metropolitan area is a mosaic of 29 overlapping photographs taken by an astronaut looking down from the International Space Station (ISS). A detailed view of London at this scale is seldom achieved from the ISS due to frequently cloudy conditions. 46)
- Recorded history along the Thames dates back to around 50 CE, when the Roman Empire invaded the region and established the settlement of Londinium on the north bank of the river. Londinium became the core financial area as the location was ideal for trade. Invasions, plagues, and fire have since shaped this area over the past several centuries.
- Sections of the Thames have different historical and cultural significance. One of the most notable is the difference between the east and west ends. Since the river flows east toward the North Sea, most of the shipping and heavy industrial districts developed downstream in the East End where the river is deeper. The West End contains more open spaces with parks and royal palaces.
- Bridges are prevalent along the Thames, clustered near London and Westminster. The first "London Bridge" was built by the Romans, and many more were added to the landscape over time. Major landmarks in the mosaic include Wembley Stadium, Hampstead Heath, Regent's Park, Hyde Park, London Stadium (the 2012 Olympic venue), The O2, Greenwich Park, and the London City Airport.
• August 13, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet took this picture of the Soyuz and the MLM (Multi-purpose Laboratory Module) Nauka of Roscosmos orbiting over Earth during an aurora show from the International Space Station. 47)
• August 10, 2021: The International Space Station Expedition 65 crew recorded themselves on a day off after a long week of work having some weightless fun. From Earth orbit, 400 km above our planet, the crew present the very first Space Olympics. 48)
Figure 50: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet shared this video on social media with the caption: "The first ever Space Olympics ! A Saturday afternoon on the International Space Station. Four disciplines. Rules that evolved as we played. Seven athletes. Four nations. Two teams. Crew cohesion and morale boosted like never before. The first Space Olympics saw Team Crew Dragon and Team Soyuz compete in lack-of-floor-routine, no-handball, synchronized space swimming and weightless sharpshooting."(video credit: ESA/NASA)
- Over 200 experiments are planned during Thomas' time in space, with 40 European ones and 12 new experiments led by the French space agency CNES. Throughout Mission Alpha Thomas is highlighting the parallels between being an astronaut and an athlete: both need to perform at key moments, and train hard to be at their best. Thomas has often said that sport taught him the values of team spirit and respecting team mates, and no astronaut is an island – if one profession is an example of teamwork it is being an astronaut. It takes a team to ensure they are at their best.
• August 8, 2021: While in orbit over southern Nevada, an astronaut onboard the International Space Station took this photo of brightly colored rocks and deep canyons in the Mojave Desert. 49)
- The Muddy and Virgin Rivers cut through the desert to deliver water to Lake Mead reservoir. The Muddy River flows through Moapa Valley, where it is bordered by agricultural fields and towns. The nearby Virgin River, by contrast, is bordered by dark vegetated areas and lacks urban structures. Both rivers empty into the Overton Arm, the northern part of Lake Mead that eventually merges with the Colorado River to the south.
- Red-orange rock exposures near the center of the photo mark the Valley of Fire State Park, located approximately 40 miles (60 km) to the northeast of Las Vegas. At sunset, valley outcrops made of bright, rust-colored Aztec sandstone appear to be on fire, which led early European explorers to give the area its colorful name. This sandstone here formed from ancient sand dune fields that covered the area during the Jurassic Period. The slab was subsequently faulted and uplifted by tectonic forces, and then eroded by water and wind into the current landscape.
- Significant archaeological artifacts have been found throughout Moapa Valley, with some dating back to 300 BCE. Among the finds are ancient petroglyphs (not visible in this photo) etched into the sandstone. Anasazi Native Americans occupied the area during that time, hunting, gathering, and building pueblo villages. The discovery of pit houses, pueblo walls, and other ancient cultural artifacts in what was to become Lake Mead caused people to dub the area "the Lost City." At the top of this photograph, the southern part of the Moapa River Indian Reservation is visible.
• August 1, 2021: An astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photo while orbiting over Thailand and Malaysia. This region of the world is not often photographed from space due to persistent clouds. While still cloudy, this view offers a rare peek at both coasts of the Malay Peninsula. 50)
- This photo was taken near the end of Malaysia's northeast monsoon season (November to March). The oblique and panoramic view shows thin clouds and possibly small smoke plumes being blown from the northeast—typical of wind patterns for this time of year. Malaysia experiences a second monsoon season from May to September each year.
- The Isthmus of Kra, at 70 km (45 miles) wide, is the narrowest part of the peninsula that separates the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. Looking toward Earth's limb, mainland Thailand is hardly distinguishable through the atmospheric haze, due in part to Southeast Asia's burning season. On the day this photo was taken, hundreds of fires were detected in the region by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite.
• July 26, 2021: This photo captures an astronaut's view of Fogo, an island 600 kilometers (400 miles) off the coast of West Africa. The name Fogo translates from Portuguese to English as "fire." The name epitomizes the volatile nature of the Cabo Verde (or Cape Verde) volcanic islands. 51)
- Pico de Fogo is the highest peak in Cabo Verde, towering 2829 meters (9,280 feet) above sea level. It is also the highest peak in West Africa. Pico de Fogo is the active cone at the summit of the Fogo stratovolcano that forms the island. As seen from the International Space Station, the semicircle of surrounding cliffs marks the edge of the Cha das Caldeiras summit caldera. Research by geologists shows that the entire east side of Fogo volcano slid into the sea in a process known as lateral collapse. That event, now known as the Monte Amarelo landslide, formed the caldera approximately 80,000 years ago.
- Scientists using subsea backscatter sonar techniques have been able to identify the landslide rubble on the seafloor offshore of the east side of the island. So much material slid off the volcano flank that the debris field covers an area larger than the area of Fogo Island itself. Landslides are common on active volcanic islands—such as Fogo and the Hawaiian islands—as the repeated burial of unconsolidated rock debris by subsequent eruptions can create fault zones. Acidic solutions can also form from volcanic gases; these can alter rock-forming minerals to clay minerals, leading to weaker rock masses.
• July 23, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth.
• July 21, 2021: Crew Dragon Endeavour with NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide,and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, have re-docked to the International Space Station. 52)
- Crew Dragon autonomously undocked from the forward port of the station's Harmony module at 6:45 a.m. and relocated to the space-facing port at 7:35 a.m. completing the second space station port change for the crewed spacecraft.
- Next up for commercial crew, Boeing's CST-100 Starliner is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station about one day following its launch at 2:53 p.m. Friday, July 30, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The uncrewed flight test, NASA's Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), will test the end-to-end capabilities of Starliner from launch to docking, atmospheric re-entry, and a desert landing in the western United States. The uncrewed mission will provide valuable data about Boeing's crew transportation system, and help NASA certify Starliner and the Atlas V rocket for regular flights with astronauts to and from the space station.
- The Crew-2 astronauts are targeted to return to Earth in early-to-mid November following a short handover with NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts targeted to launch on Sunday, Oct. 31.
• July 18, 2021: Sand dunes, ancient rocks, a solar power plant, and the Orange River stand out in this image of the southern Kalahari Desert taken by a camera system on the International Space Station. 53)
- The dark line of South Africa's largest river, the Orange, winds across farm-covered floodplains toward the Atlantic Ocean. Populations are small in this desert region. The small farming town of Groblershoop is barely visible compared to the local main roads, which show up as white lines etched across the landscape.
- The strong orange color in this image is mostly due to geologically young dunes (only a few million years old) in what is known locally as the Duineveld (dune country). Poking up through the sands are sinuous hills made up of very ancient, dark-toned rocks. These rocks were folded and faulted around one billion years ago by mountain-building forces similar to those currently raising the Himalayas. The ancient mountains were later planed off by erosion over millions of years to form the dune-covered plains and low hills we see today.
- Alongside one of the main roads lies a small, bright rectangular shape: This is the Bokpoort solar power plant. It was constructed specifically to take advantage of the high number of sunny days in the Kalahari Desert. The plant includes nearly 240,000 mirrors covering 0.65 km2 (about 0.25 square miles). Unlike the photovoltaic solar panels at many traditional installations, this power plant uses mirrors to focus the Sun's energy on a large salt-filled storage tank (too small to see in this image). The focused sunlight melts the salt, which has a high heat storage capacity. This heat in turn drives steam turbines that can generate power long after sunset. This renewable-energy plant came online in 2015.
• July 14, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures shows Paris, France, made from many pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage of 21211 by 20289 pixels.
• July 12, 2021: While in orbit over central Sudan, an astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph featuring Lake Tana and the Ethiopian Highlands. The oblique angle and shadows help emphasize the rugged terrain of the Ethiopian Plateau, while Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia, appears mirror-like due to sunglint. The low-lying, tectonically active East African Rift Valley is bounded by the eastern edge of the Ethiopian Highlands. 54)
- The Semien (or Simien) Mountains tower over the plateau. With a peak rising 4,533 meters (14,926 feet) above sea level, Ras Dashen is the highest point in Ethiopia. Much of the Ethiopian Highlands are part of a large igneous province — a region with a significant accumulation of large lava rocks. The Semien Range was formed due to volcanic activity about 31 million years ago.
- Although the highlands are surrounded by deserts, their elevation results in a temperate climate with ample rainfall. Lake Tana and its tributaries support an important fishing industry, in addition to agriculture in the surrounding wetlands. The lake also feeds the Blue Nile, which runs through northern Ethiopia and southern Sudan and delivers water to many communities. The river flows out of the south side of Lake Tana, through lower canyon areas south of the lake, and then east to ultimately join the White Nile in Sudan.
• July 7, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet is spending six months on the International Space Station as part of his second mission Alpha. In his free time, like many astronauts, he enjoys looking out of the Cupola windows at Earth. This collage of pictures shows London, United Kingdom, made from many pictures mapped together, digitally rotated and assembled into this large collage. 55)
• July 4, 2021: The original layout and design of Washington, D.C., comes to life in this springtime photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station. The near-nadir, high resolution photo offers a view of the city's layout that its architects, Peter L‘Enfant and Andrew Ellicott, could only imagine when they drew up plans for the District of Columbia in the 1790s. Nestled at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, today the city serves as both the seat of the U.S. government and as a tribute to the history of the nation. 56)
- From above, the city layout draws the eye to the Capitol. This was the architects' starting point, and the rest of the city was built in quadrants defined by axes extending in cardinal directions from this "center" of American government. These axes orient the rest of the D.C. street grid, with one notable exception. Wide, diagonal avenues radiate from the Capitol outward through the city, meeting with other diagonals to form parks and public spaces. These diagonals, named after the first states, are the main thoroughfares. The most famous of these avenues is a direct line between two branches of government—Pennsylvania Avenue physically links the White House with the Capitol.
- L‘Enfant left a mile long stretch west of the Capitol as a grand avenue for the public interest. It was not until the early 1900s that the National Mall and Tidal Basin had enough monuments and museums that it began to take the form that appears in the image. At the turn of the 20th century, the Washington Monument, seen here casting a long shadow, was the only monument completed within the National Mall. The next hundred years saw the construction of additional monuments, memorials, and museums that commemorate U.S. history and achievements.
• July 1, 2021: An uncrewed Russian Progress 78 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station's Poisk module on the space-facing side of the Russian segment at 8:59 p.m. EDT, two days after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Sunday, Tuesday June 29 at 7:27 p.m. (4:27 a.m. Wednesday, June 30, Baikonur time). The spacecraft were flying over southeast Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile at the time of docking. 57)
- Carrying more than 3,600 pounds (1630 kg) of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 65 crew, the Progress 78 resupply spacecraft will spend almost five months at the station. The cargo craft is scheduled to perform an automated undocking and relocation to the new "Nauka" Multipurpose Laboratory Module in late October. Named for the Russian word for "science," Nauka is planned to launch to the space station in July.
• June 27, 2021: An astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) shot this photograph of Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula, a distinct feature protruding from the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. Shades of blue along the coastline accent sediment-laden waters from where the Waimakariri and Rakaia Rivers enter the sea. The city of Christchurch and Lake Ellesmere flank the peninsula. 58)
- Christchurch is the largest city on South Island and the second most populated city in New Zealand. Situated on the north side of the Banks Peninsula, this city is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Port Hills to the south. The hills, harbors, and coves of the Banks Peninsula are remnants of extinct, eroded volcanoes.
- The sources of the Waimakariri and Rakaia Rivers are found in the Southern Alps, a mountain range that runs along most of South Island's west coast. The rivers transport large amounts of sediment from the mountains and into the lower Canterbury Plains before flowing into the Pacific Ocean. Groundwater from the Waimakariri and Rakaia also feeds the brackish Lake Ellesmere. The volume and particle size of the sediment results in the formation of braided rivers. In the case of the Waimakariri, the river course has been further channelized to reduce flooding.
• June 20, 2021: NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet concluded their spacewalk at 2:10 p.m. EDT, after 6 hours and 28 minutes. In the eighth spacewalk of the year outside the International Space Station, the two astronauts completed the deployment of a new ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the far end of the left (port) side of the station's backbone truss structure (P6). 59)
- Kimbrough and Pesquet successfully unfolded the solar array, bolted it into place, and connected cables to the station's power supply to complete deployment. Additionally, the astronauts removed and stowed hardware in preparation for releasing the second iROSA from the flight support structure for installation. The pair will work toward the second solar array upgrade – this one on the P6 truss' 4B power channel – during another spacewalk, tentatively scheduled for June 25.
- NASA is augmenting six of the eight existing power channels of the space station with new solar arrays to ensure a sufficient power supply is maintained for NASA's exploration technology demonstrations for Artemis and beyond as well as utilization and commercialization.
- This was the eighth spacewalk for Kimbrough, the fourth for Pesquet, and the fourth they have conducted together. Kimbrough has now spent a total of 52 hours and 43 minutes spacewalking, and Pesquet's total spacewalking time is 26 hours and 15 minutes.
• June 20, 2021: This photo of the Sonoran Desert in Southern California was taken with a camera mounted on the outside of the International Space Station. Blocky patches of farmland are concentrated on both ends of the Salton Sea, and a short section of U.S Interstate 10—which stretches over 2,400 miles (3,800 km) from California to Florida—passes through the flat areas between the mountains. An array of solar panels stands north of the interstate. 60)
- The nearby Orocopia and Chocolate Mountains are comprised of a mix of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks along the San Andreas Fault, allowing a variety of geologic features to be studied within a short distance. The mountains were among the locations that Apollo crews visited to train for their trips to the Moon. These "outdoor classrooms" allowed the astronauts to learn the skills necessary to make scientific observations in barren and challenging landscapes. Such field work is still a part of astronaut training.
- The Salton Sea, California's largest lake, started growing in 1905 after an irrigation canal broke and allowed the Colorado River to fill the basin. This lake has no natural outlet, so water must evaporate to leave the system; this makes it saltier than the ocean. Water continues to flow into the Salton Sea from agricultural runoff, but that runoff has decreased over time and does not balance out the water lost to evaporation. Because of this, the lake is expected to become saltier with time.
• June 19, 2021: In the early 1800s, privateers and smugglers who were involved in the slave trade periodically used Galveston Island as an outpost for operations. The sandy barrier island in what is now Texas appealed to smugglers because of its proximity to Caribbean slave-trading islands, its natural harbor, and the abundance of streams and rivers that could serve as hiding places. 61)
- By 1860, about one-third of Galveston's population lived under the oppression of chattel slavery. Even after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, in the midst of America's Civil War, change came slowly to Galveston. Most enslaved people were unaware of Lincoln's executive order, and the practice of buying and selling Black people based on race continued in Galveston and other parts of Texas until well into 1865. As long as the Confederate Army still held power in the region, there was no way to enforce Lincoln's order.
- Circumstances changed in April 1865 with the arrival of U.S. Major General Gordon Granger and 2,000 Union troops. On June 19, 1865, Granger issued General Order No. 3 and Union troops marched through Galveston and read the order aloud at several locations, including Union Army headquarters at the Osterman building.
- "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free," the order stated. "This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor."
- As news of the order spread, spontaneous celebrations broke out in African-American churches, homes, and other gathering places. As years passed, the picnics, barbecues, parades, and other celebrations that sprang up to commemorate June 19th became more formalized as freed men and women purchased land, or "emancipation grounds," to hold annual Juneteenth celebrations.
- The location of one of these areas—Emancipation Park in Houston—is marked in the astronaut photograph above. Reverend Jack Yates, a Baptist minister and former slave, worked with his congregation and other leaders to pool money to buy the land as a site for Juneteenth celebrations in 1872. The city of Galveston and the sediment-rich waters of Galveston Bay appear on the right side of the image.
- The Texas legislature formally recognized Juneteenth as a state holiday in 1980. Dozens of other states also began to recognize the holiday in the following decades. On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Congress passed and the President signed a law declaring Juneteenth to be a federal holiday. The holiday is sometimes also called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Juneteenth Independence Day, and Black Independence Day.
• June 18, 2021: ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet snapped this image of the Tyrone Mine, USA during his second long-duration mission known as Alpha. He posted it on social media saying: "An early morning pass over USA. The most vivid and contrasted colors are obtained in the middle of the day, but I like the shadows and pastel tones of the early morning. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!" 62)
- Thomas was launched to the ISS for his second mission, Alpha, on 23 April 2021. He will spend six months living and working on the orbital outpost where he will support more than 200 international experiments in space.
• June 16, 2021: Astronauts Thomas Pesquet of France and Shane Kimbrough of the United States were floating outside the International Space Station on Wednesday as they began the painstaking process of installing new solar panels to boost the orbital outpost's deteriorating power systems. 63)
- It is the first of several excursions to augment the ISS's existing eight solar arrays, with the first pair operating continuously since December 2000.
- The spacewalking duo were installing the first of six new rollout panels — but problems with display and controls on Kimbrough's spacesuit forced him to return to the station to reset his systems, and the time lost meant they will not complete the process Wednesday.
- The spacewalks "are going to be very challenging, very complex, so we've got to make sure that we're both on the same page for every movement that we do," Kimbrough said ahead of leaving the airlock Wednesday morning.
- Part of the installation procedure has to be carried out while the ISS is in the Earth's shadow, when the station is operating on battery power.
- The combination of the original arrays and six smaller arrays that are more efficient will restore power by 20 to 30 percent.
- "Together in combination they generate more power than what our original array when it was new did on its own," Dana Weigel, deputy manager, of the International Space Station program said.
- When the mission is complete, the ISS will be back to operating at 215 kW. For comparison, a desktop computer and monitor runs at around 270 watts, and a small refrigerator uses about 725 watts.
- The new arrays can be rolled out like yoga mats and are smaller and lighter than traditional solar panels.
- NASA hopes to move forward with the technology for the Artemis mission to return to the Moon, and similar panels will likely be used on a future lunar station called Gateway.
- It was Pesquet's third spacewalk and Kimbrough's seventh.
• June 15, 2021: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, according to one of the three laws of robotics imagined by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. On board humanity's only outpost in space, this obedience has turned into cooperation. Astronauts and robots are working together. 64)
- The latest robot to service the International Space Station is the European Robotic Arm (ERA). This android automaton is much like a human arm. It has an elbow, shoulders and even wrists, and it the first robot able to ‘walk' around the Russian part of the Space Station.
- The arm will be launched into space together with the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, called ‘Nauka', from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on 15 July 2021 at 19:18 CEST.
- "I am happy to see the European Robotic Arm fly next month. It was a real pleasure to help prepare this fantastic piece of robotics for its duties on the International Space Station", says André, who trained under water with a real-size model of the robot at Star City, in Russia, before his spaceflight.
- Astronauts will find in ERA a most valuable ally – it will save them precious time to do other work in space. ERA will transfer payloads from inside to outside the International Space Station, but it will also help spacewalkers by transporting them around like a cherry-picker crane.
- The crew can control ERA from both inside and outside the Space Station, a feature that no other robotic arm has offered before. The robotic arm can perform many tasks automatically, and it can be controlled in real time or preprogrammed. ERA's first tasks in orbit are to set up the airlock and install a large radiator for ‘Nauka'.
- ERA is 100% made-in-Europe. A consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands designed and assembled it for ESA.
- The story of the European Robotic Arm is one of perseverance – it has survived four changes of scenario, dealt with different space agencies and coped with budget shortfalls while keeping an international team motivated.
- After two decades of technical and programmatic challenges, the long-awaited premiere of ERA in space is finally happening.
• June 13, 2021: This photograph, taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS), captures the estuarine ecosystem of the Loza Bay wetlands in northwest Madagascar. Estuaries are coastal habitats where fresh water from rivers—in this case, the Ankofia and Maevarano—mixes with salt water from the ocean in partially enclosed basins. 65)
- Rivers carry oxidized sediment loads down from Madagascar's high central plateau toward the Mozambique Channel (not pictured). This reddish-brown sediment-laden freshwater mixes with the clearer, blue saltwater that sloshes in and out of the estuary from the sea with the movement of the tides.
- Mangrove forests are common around Madagascar's major estuaries as the brackish waters create the environmental conditions in which the trees thrive. Mangrove forests play a vital role in sustaining coastal communities—not only as resources for agriculture and aquaculture, but as sources for fuelwood, charcoal production, and timber. However, the unsustainable harvesting of these mangroves and other local vegetation and wildlife threatens the biodiversity of coastal Madagascar.
• June 6, 2021: An astronaut aboard the ISS focused a camera lens on Delhi, the capital city and center of the largest urban region in India and fifth largest in the world. Including the surrounding metropolitan areas, the population of Delhi in 2021 surpassed 31 million people. 66)
- The conurbation now links the surrounding cities of Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Faridabad, and Gurgaon; collectively, this urbanized area stretches for 70 kilometers (45 miles) along the Yamuna River. These cityscapes display the typical light-toned grays of building materials in the region.
- The government center, New Delhi, is an inner sector of Delhi that hosts India's parliament, ministries, and presidential palace. An abundance of trees and parks makes New Delhi appear as a darker-toned region straddling the Yamuna River. This part of Delhi also houses national sports stadiums and major cultural buildings, such as the Hindu Akshardham Temple. It is home to the Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in India; it was completed in 1656 during the period of the Mughal Empire.
- Smaller cities surrounding the urban region include Panipat, Rohtak, Rewari, and Mathura west of the river and Meerut and Aligarh on the east side. The cities are, in turn, surrounded by hundreds of small towns and villages, which show up as small gray dots scattered across the view. The rust color south of the metro region is due to reddish rocks that appear at the land surface.
- A short reach of the Ganga River (Ganges) appears at the top right. The width of the Ganga is greater than that of the Yamuna, indicating its larger flow and wider channel. These rivers drain water from the Himalaya Mountains, and both are critical to the water supply of the Delhi region. Water from the Ganga is led along the Upper Ganga Canal, which was built in the 1800s to bring water to the city and the rich farmland of the surrounding plains.
- Delhi's large footprint also stands out in nighttime photos taken by ISS astronauts in August 2020 and August 2011.
• June 2, 2021: Expedition 65 Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos have completed a spacewalk lasting seven hours and 19 minutes. 67)
- The two cosmonauts opened the hatch to the Poisk docking compartment airlock to begin the spacewalk at 1:53 a.m. EDT. They re-entered the airlock and closed the hatch at 9:12 a.m.
- During the spacewalk, the duo disconnected the external mechanical links between Pirs and the space station, relocated spacewalk hardware including a telescoping crane, and reconfigured antennas to prepare the Pirs module for undocking and disposal. Additionally, the cosmonauts replaced a fluid flow regulator panel on the nearby Zarya module, jettisoned the old panel as planned, and replaced biological and material science samples on the exterior of the Russian modules.
- Pirs will be replaced by the new Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module, named "Nauka," which is Russian for "science." The undocking of Pirs is scheduled for this summer, about two days after Nauka launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
- This was the first spacewalk for both cosmonauts and the 238th spacewalk overall in support of International Space Station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades. It also marks the sixth spacewalk of 2021.