Astronaut Christina Koch will set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman when she completes her 11-month-long mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2020. Her long stay on ISS has to do with NASA's preparation of human missions to the Moon and Mars.
The team working on the project, Crystallization of LRRK2 Under Microgravity Conditions-2 (CASIS PCG 16), grows protein crystals of Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) on the space station.
NASA astronauts endure weeks or even months exposed to microgravity and cosmic radiation not to mention the extreme G forces of take-off and re-entry, said Satish K Mehta at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
A Russian-American crew of three blasted off to the International Space Station early Friday, making a second attempt to reach the outpost after October’s aborted launch.
It will spend five days docked to the orbiting outpost, before making a retro-style splashdown in the Atlantic next Friday — all vital training for the next space demo, possibly this summer, when two astronauts strap in.
The commercial cargo vessel will bring home a variety of critical space research, including ISS hardware to extracted for analysis, refurbishment or discarding, NASA said.
A Russian Soyuz capsule with NASA's Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Russian Sergey Prokopyev and German astronaut Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency landed on the snow-covered steppes in Kazakhstan.
In 2013, Russia introduced a six-hour route to the International Space Station, consisting of four orbits.
Besides delivering supplies and hardwares, the Dragon will also deliver science experiments including the Robotic Refuelling Mission 3 (RRM3) and the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI).
NASA and Roscosmos said that all onboard systems were operating normally and the crew was feeling fine.
Following a six-hour journey making four orbits of Earth, the crew will dock the Soyuz to the station's Poisk module to begin their mission on the orbital laboratory.
The ISS was launched on November 20, 1998 and it is still the largest human-made object in low Earth orbit which can often be seen with the naked eye from Earth.
It will make 34 orbits of Earth before docking to the orbiting laboratory at 2.30 p.m. on Sunday.
In his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced an ambitious mission of sending an Indian astronaut to space by 2022.
The spacecraft is expected to reach the International Space Station on July 2.
The satellite is one of the world's first attempts to tackle the build-up of dangerous space debris orbiting the Earth.
The instrument will be called ECOSTRESS, or ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment and it will measure the temperature of plants from space.
The Soyuz spacecraft with NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba, and cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos landed at 8.31 a.m. in Kazakhstan, NASA said.
For the first time, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have identified microbes in space without having to samples back to Earth for tests.
The crew also watched "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" during the weekend. Astronaut Mark Vande Hei tweeted a photo of the astronauts aboard the space station enjoying the flick.
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