NASA astronauts return to Earth from ISS after five months
US astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are set to splash down off California's coast in the Pacific Ocean at 3.33 p.m. UTC/GMT on Saturday.
The crew's return wraps up NASA's 10th commercial crew rotation. According to the space agency, the four astronauts conducted more than 200 'important and time-sensitive research' experiments over 146 days, including studies on plant growth and cell behavior in microgravity.
The Crew-10 mission was launched on March 14, replacing Crew-9, whose members included Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and Sunita 'Suni' Williams.
Wilmore and Williams were stranded for nine months aboard the ISS after their Boeing Starliner capsule developed propulsion issues.
Eventually, a SpaceX capsule owned by billionaire Elon Musk brought the stranded astronauts home. Wilmore retired this week after 25 years with NASA, the space agency announced.
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Times of Oman
2 days ago
- Times of Oman
NASA astronauts return to Earth from ISS after five months
California: Four astronauts from NASA's Crew-10 mission departed the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule, beginning an almost 18-hour journey back to Earth. US astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov are set to splash down off California's coast in the Pacific Ocean at 3.33 p.m. UTC/GMT on Saturday. The crew's return wraps up NASA's 10th commercial crew rotation. According to the space agency, the four astronauts conducted more than 200 'important and time-sensitive research' experiments over 146 days, including studies on plant growth and cell behavior in microgravity. The Crew-10 mission was launched on March 14, replacing Crew-9, whose members included Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and Sunita 'Suni' Williams. Wilmore and Williams were stranded for nine months aboard the ISS after their Boeing Starliner capsule developed propulsion issues. Eventually, a SpaceX capsule owned by billionaire Elon Musk brought the stranded astronauts home. Wilmore retired this week after 25 years with NASA, the space agency announced.
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US cancels mRNA vaccine contracts worth $500 million
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When earth's surface shifts, a new satellite will see it
A new radar satellite, successfully launched last week, will track tiny shifts across almost all of Earth's land and ice regions, measuring changes as slight as a centimeter, or less than half an inch. The satellite is a joint mission between NASA and India's space agency and has been in the making for more than a decade. The satellite lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India's southeastern coast. About 20 minutes later, it was released into an orbit that passes close to the North and South poles at 464 miles above Earth's surface. At the mission control center, the reaction was jubilation. The visitors' gallery there included a few thousand students, and tens of thousands of people watched online. 'This success is demonstrating teamwork, international teamwork between two space-faring nations,' V. Narayanan, chair of the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, said after the launch. 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The data could also reveal flooded areas that would otherwise be hidden by bad weather, providing help to rescue teams. The satellite could have helped after the magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia's Far East coast Wednesday and the subsequent tsunami. 'It's these types of events that remind us how important the types of measurements that NISAR will be making will be,' Sue Owen, deputy chief scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during the launch coverage. 'They will help us to be able to forecast where these types of events occur, as well as assess the damage after these earthquakes and tsunamis.' The first 90 days will be devoted to deploying the spacecraft, including extending a 39-foot-wide gold-plated-mesh antenna reflector, which looks a bit like a giant beach umbrella, testing the instruments and performing initial observations. The primary mission is scheduled to last three years. If the spacecraft is still operational at that point, it will have enough propellant left to continue for another couple of years. The underlying technology, known as synthetic aperture radar, has been used in space for decades. Sending and receiving multiple radar pulses simulates a much larger antenna, allowing smaller features on the ground to be observed. A synthetic-aperture radar instrument that flew on NASA's space shuttle Endeavour in 1994, for example, surveyed a buried 'lost city' on the Arabian Peninsula and searched for centuries-old ruins along the Silk Road in western China. What is different about NISAR is that it will bounce radar waves off almost all of Earth's surface and will do so repeatedly — twice every 12 days. That will allow scientists to detect slight changes like slow-motion landslides, and monitor places like Antarctica that are distant and inhospitable. NISAR 'will cover all of Antarctica for the first time,' Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said during NASA's launch coverage. 'Conducting these measurements in the Antarctic would be nearly impossible for ground parties, because the continent is so vast.' The NISAR data will track the motion of glaciers and ice sheets. 'Scientists will be able to use this information in climate models to project what sea level would look like in the next few years, in the next decades, in the next century, so we can better protect society and save human lives, too,' Rignot said. Siqueira said NISAR could provide practical information closer to home, tracking the growth of crops. Microwaves bounce off water, so a field of healthy plants will appear brighter. 'If a plant is desiccated, it'll be more radar transparent,' Siqueira said. The main part of the spacecraft is 18 feet long and weighs more than 5,000 pounds. 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The idea for a mission like NISAR dates back to a recommendation that appeared in a once-a-decade report by earth scientists that lays out the field's top priorities for observing Earth from space. NASA looked for an international partner to share the work and cost, and finally found one in India in 2014. NASA's share of the mission cost $1.2 billion, and ISRO's contribution was comparable, NASA officials said. Collaboration with India in space has increased in recent years. An Indian astronaut, Shubhanshu Shukla, flew on the private Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station in June, spending 18 days there. During a meeting at the White House in February, Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, and President Donald Trump had called for more collaboration in space exploration. No additional collaborations like NISAR have been announced yet. This article originally appeared in
