Rollout of our experimental supersonic X-plane, schedule updates for future Artemis missions, and another year of global record heat … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!
Video Producer: Andre Valentine
Video Editor: Andre Valentine
Narrator: Emanuel Cooper
Music: Universal Production Music
Credit: NASA
Watch the rollout of NASA’s newly painted X-59 Quesst supersonic aircraft live from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.
Quesst is NASA’s mission to demonstrate how the X-59 can fly supersonic without generating loud sonic booms, and then survey what people hear when it flies overhead. Reaction to the quieter sonic “thumps” will be shared with regulators who will then consider writing new sound-based rules to lift the ban on faster-than-sound flight over land.
More on this NASA Aeronautics mission: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/quesst/
Credit: NASA
Watch as the rocket and spacecraft for our Artemis I mission around the Moon move to their launchpad at Kennedy Space Center.
The integrated Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket will take a 4-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to launch pad 39B, with the full travel time expected to last from six to 12 hours. This step is in preparation for a prelaunch test known as wet dress rehearsal, which includes loading the rocket’s propellant tanks and conducting a launch countdown.
For more information about Artemis I, visit https://go.nasa.gov/3JnayUA
Twin solid rocket boosters that will produce a combined 7.2 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, a towering core stage, and the only human-rated spacecraft in the world capable of deep-space travel – together, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft stand ready to usher in a new chapter of exploration. Now fully assembled at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, SLS and Orion will soon roll to the launch pad.
Producer: Lisa Allen, Alysia Lee
Writer & Director: Paul Wizikowski
The Proton rocket that will launch the ExoMars 2016 spacecraft during rollout to the launch pad where it was moved into a vertical position.
Launch is scheduled for 09:31 GMT/10:31 CET on 14 March from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Watch the launch via the ESA website from 08:30 GMT/09:30 CET: http://www.esa.int
Credit: ESA/Roscosmos/ExoMars
This timelapse video shows the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft during transfer from the MIK 40 integration facility to Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad 31, as well as the launch on 23 November 2014 with ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and her crewmates to the International Space Station where they will live and work for five months.
With Samantha are Russian Soyuz commander Anton Shkaplerov and NASA astronaut Terry Virts. All three are part of the Station’s Expedition 42/43 crew.
On this mission, Samantha is flying as an ESA astronaut for Italy’s ASI space agency under a special agreement between ASI and NASA.
Directed by Stephane Corvaja, ESA
Edited by Manuel Pedoussaut, Zetapress
Music: MZB
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen’s third video diary from Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, where he is currently joining the Expedition 42/43 crew in quarantine ahead of their launch to the International Space Station on 23 November. In this video Andreas reports on the roll-out of the Soyuz rocket to the launch pad.
Andreas is in Baikonur to experience launch preparations ahead of his own launch to the ISS in September 2015. He will spend 10 days on the Space Station for his Iriss mission.
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is a member of the Expedition 42/43 crew and will spend 6 months on the ISS for the Futura mission.
Connect with Andreas at http://andreasmogensen.esa.int
Connect with Samantha at http://samanthacristoforetti.esa.int
At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 37/38 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and NASA Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins conducted their final fit check “dress rehearsal” in their Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft and conducted other ceremonial activities Sept. 20. The Soyuz spacecraft was mated to its booster rocket on Sept. 22, and moved to the launch pad on a railcar Sept. 23 for final preparations before launch to the International Space Station on Sept. 26, Kazakh time. The trio will spend five and a half months onboard ISS, joining station Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA and Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency. The footage also includes interviews at the launch pad Sept. 23 with Joel Montalbano, Deputy ISS Program Manager, and Ellen Ochoa, Director of the Johnson Space Center.
The final rollout of the Space Shuttle Program has brought Atlantis from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center for the liftoff of STS-135 targeted for July 8. Mated to its external tank and solid rocket boosters, the orbiter traveled the 3.4-miles atop a crawler-transporter at a top speed of less than a mile an hour. Also, farewell to Spirit; cave research; lunabotics, and aviation history revisited.