THIS WEEK @NASA: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Teams “Making Ready” for Artemis I Launch

By  //  November 28, 2020

ABOVE VIDEO: Making ready for the first Artemis mission around the Moon and back, the space station is getting a new doorway to space, and how to know when and where you can look up to spot the station … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

NASA Kennedy Teams “Making Ready” for Artemis I Launch

Teams at our Kennedy Space Center have been practicing stacking the Space Launch System, or SLS solid rocket boosters and other work to make ready for the launch of our uncrewed Artemis I mission next year.

Artemis I will be the first integrated roundtrip flight test to the Moon using the SLS, the Orion spacecraft, and the ground systems at Kennedy. There’s more about the mission at nasa.gov/artemis-1 including a map charting the mission’s journey around the Moon and back.

A New Doorway to Space for the Space Station

The next SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station, targeted for Dec. 5, is scheduled to deliver a new doorway to space. The size of the Nanoracks Bishop Airlock Module will make it easier to move larger payloads inside and outside the station, and could help increase the volume of research. Bishop will be the first commercial airlock added to the space station, keeping in line with NASA’s strategy to provide more opportunities for U.S. industry in low-Earth orbit.

Spot the Station!

Believe it or not, there are several thousand locations around the world where it’s possible to see the International Space Station from the ground as it passes overhead, traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour. The station is one of the brightest objects in the sky and easy to spot if you know where and when to look. Visit spotthestation.nasa.gov for more details.

NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge

NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge is looking for ideas for new technologies to excavate the Moon’s icy regolith, or dirt, and deliver it to a hypothetical processing plant at the lunar South Pole. Such a system could support a sustained human presence on the Moon by the end of the decade. The two-phase competition offers up to $5 million in prize money between both phases. For more details go to nasa.gov/breaktheice.

NASA Helps Keep Thanksgiving Food Safe

Kate Rubins, NASA Astronaut:
“This is our first Thanksgiving up here with 7 crew members. And so we plan to have a special meal.”

When it comes to Thanksgiving meals, the crew aboard the International Space Station, and all of us on Earth can be thankful for a system created in the early days of the Apollo program to provide safe food for astronauts on space missions. Today, that system, called the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, is a food industry standard adhered to by all the companies that put food on your Thanksgiving table – and it’s a key reason why illness from packaged food is extremely rare.

That’s what’s up this week @NASA

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