THIS WEEK @NASA: Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Departs the Space Station, Artemis I Rocket Moves Closer to Launch

By  //  July 11, 2021

latest happenings around NASA

Dragon Cargo Spacecraft Departs the Space Station

On July 8, an uncrewed SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station with about 5,000 pounds of scientific experiments and supplies for researchers on Earth.

The Dragon left the station just over a month after it delivered several tons of experiments and new solar arrays.

This is the company’s 22nd commercial resupply services flight for NASA.

Watching Tropical Storm Elsa from Space

On July 4, space station astronaut Megan McArthur captured images of Elsa, the fifth named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, as the storm made its way through the Caribbean Sea. Elsa, the earliest-forming fifth named Atlantic storm on record, according to our partner agency, NOAA, reached hurricane status but weakened to a tropical storm before making landfall July 7 in the northwest portion of Florida.

Study Projects Surge in Coastal Flooding in 2030s

According to a NASA-led study, in the mid-2030s a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by climate change and lead to a decade of dramatic increases in high-tide floods – also called nuisance floods or sunny day floods – for coastal cities around the U.S. The study also says that the floods will sometimes occur in clusters that could last a month or longer, due to the gravitational pull caused by the alignment of the Moon, Earth, and the Sun.

Artemis I Rocket Moves Closer to Launch

Our Artemis I mission reached another milestone on July 5 when teams at our Kennedy Space Center stacked the interim cryogenic propulsion stage or (ICPS) atop the Space Launch System or (SLS) rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. The ICPS’s RL-10 engine will be used to send the Orion spacecraft toward the Moon. Launching later this year, Artemis I will be an uncrewed flight test of Orion and the SLS rocket as an integrated system ahead of subsequent missions to send astronauts to the Moon, including the first woman and the first person of color.

10th Anniversary of Final Space Shuttle Launch

July 8 marked the 10th anniversary of the launch of space shuttle Atlantis on STS-135, the final launch of the historic space shuttle program. The mission delivered supplies, spare parts, and an Italian-built multipurpose logistics module to the station. Atlantis and its crew returned to Earth in the predawn hours of July 21 to complete the mission and close out an era of spaceflight that spanned 30 years.

That’s what’s up this week @NASA