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By NASA
1 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This September 2024 aerial photograph shows the coastal launch range at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Wallops is the agency’s only owned-and-operated launch range.Courtesy Patrick J. Hendrickson; used with permission A rocket-propelled target is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during a window Thursday, Nov. 7 to Friday, Nov. 8 between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. EST both days as part of a U.S. Navy Fleet Training exercise.
No real-time launch status updates will be available. The launch will not be livestreamed nor will launch status updates be provided during the countdown. The rocket launch may be visible from the Chesapeake Bay region.
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Last Updated Nov 05, 2024 LocationWallops Flight Facility Related Terms
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By NASA
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, carrying more than 6,000 pounds of supplies to the orbiting laboratory, lifted off at 9:29 p.m. EST Monday, on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Credits: NASA Following a successful launch of NASA’s SpaceX 31st commercial resupply mission, new scientific experiments and cargo for the agency are bound for the International Space Station.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, carrying more than 6,000 pounds of supplies to the orbiting laboratory, lifted off at 9:29 p.m. EST Monday, on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Live coverage of the spacecraft’s arrival will begin at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, on NASA+ and the agency’s website. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
The spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously dock at approximately 10:15 a.m. to the forward port of the space station’s Harmony module.
The resupply mission will support dozens of research experiments conducted during Expedition 72. In addition to food, supplies, and equipment for the crew, Dragon will deliver several new experiments, including the Coronal Diagnostic Experiment, to examine solar wind and how it forms. Dragon also delivers Antarctic moss to observe the combined effects of cosmic radiation and microgravity on plants. Other investigations aboard include a device to test cold welding of metals in microgravity and an investigation that studies how space impacts different materials.
These are just a sample of the hundreds of investigations conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory in the areas of biology and biotechnology, physical sciences, and Earth and space science. Such research benefits humanity and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through the agency’s Artemis campaign, which will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
The Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to remain at the space station until December when it will depart the orbiting laboratory and return to Earth with research and cargo, splashing down off the coast of Florida.
Learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook, ISS Instagram, and the space station blog.
Learn more about the commercial resupply mission at:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/nasas-spacex-crs-31
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Claire O’Shea / Josh Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov
Stephanie Plucinsky / Steven Siceloff
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-876-2468
stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov / steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov
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By NASA
5 min read
NASA to Launch Innovative Solar Coronagraph to Space Station
NASA’s Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) is ready to launch to the International Space Station to reveal new details about the solar wind including its origin and its evolution.
Launching in November 2024 aboard SpaceX’s 31st commercial resupply services mission, CODEX will be robotically installed on the exterior of the space station. As a solar coronagraph, CODEX will block out the bright light from the Sun’s surface to better see details in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
In this animation, the CODEX instrument can be seen mounted on the exterior of the International Space Station. For more CODEX imagery, visit https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14647. CODEX Team/NASA “The CODEX instrument is a new generation solar coronagraph,” said Jeffrey Newmark, principal investigator for the instrument and scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It has a dual use — it’s both a technology demonstration and will conduct science.”
This coronagraph is different from prior coronagraphs that NASA has used because it has special filters that can provide details of the temperature and speed of the solar wind. Typically, a solar coronagraph captures images of the density of the plasma flowing away from the Sun. By combining the temperature and speed of the solar wind with the traditional density measurement, CODEX can give scientists a fuller picture of the wind itself.
“This isn’t just a snapshot,” said Nicholeen Viall, co-investigator of CODEX and heliophysicist at NASA Goddard. “You’re going to get to see the evolution of structures in the solar wind, from when they form from the Sun’s corona until they flow outwards and become the solar wind.”
The CODEX instrument will give scientists more information to understand what heats the solar wind to around 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit — around 175 times hotter than the Sun’s surface — and sends it streaming out from the Sun at almost a million miles per hour.
Team members for CODEX pose with the instrument in a clean facility during initial integration of the coronagraph with the pointing system. CODEX Team/NASA This launch is just the latest step in a long history for the instrument. In the early 2000s and in August 2017, NASA scientists ran ground-based experiments similar to CODEX during total solar eclipses. A coronagraph mimics what happens during a total solar eclipse, so this naturally occurring phenomena provided a good opportunity to test instruments that measure the temperature and speed of the solar wind.
In 2019, NASA scientists launched the Balloon-borne Investigation of Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the corona (BITSE) experiment. A balloon the size of a football field carried the CODEX prototype 22 miles above Earth’s surface, where the atmosphere is much thinner and the sky is dimmer than it is from the ground, enabling better observations. However, this region of Earth’s atmosphere is still brighter than outer space itself.
“We saw enough from BITSE to see that the technique worked, but not enough to achieve the long-term science objectives,” said Newmark.
Now, by installing CODEX on the space station, scientists will be able to view the Sun’s corona without fighting the brightness of Earth’s atmosphere. This is also a beneficial time for the instrument to launch because the Sun has reached its solar maximum phase, a period of high activity during its 11-year cycle.
“The types of solar wind that we get during solar maximum are different than some of the types of wind we get during solar minimum,” said Viall. “There are different coronal structures during this time that lead to different types of solar wind.”
The CODEX coronagraph is shown during optical alignment and assembly. CODEX Team//NASA This coronagraph will be looking at two types of solar wind. In one, the solar wind travels directly outward from our star, pulling the magnetic field from the Sun into the heliosphere, the bubble that surrounds our solar system. The other type of solar wind forms from magnetic field lines that are initially closed, like a loop, but then open up.
These closed field lines contain hot, dense plasma. When the loops open, this hot plasma gets propelled into the solar wind. While these “blobs” of plasma are present throughout all of the solar cycle, scientists expect their location to change because of the magnetic complexity of the corona during solar maximum. The CODEX instrument is designed to see how hot these blobs are for the first time.
The coronagraph will also build upon research from ongoing space missions, such as the joint ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA mission Solar Orbiter, which also carries a coronagraph, and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. For example, CODEX will look at the solar wind much closer to the solar surface, while Parker Solar Probe samples it a little farther out. Launching in 2025, NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will make 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind.
By comparing these findings, scientists can better understand how the solar wind is formed and how the solar wind changes as it travels farther from the Sun. This research advances our understanding of space weather, the conditions in space that may interact with Earth and spacecraft.
“Just like understanding hurricanes, you want to understand the atmosphere the storm is flowing through,” said Newmark. “CODEX’s observations will contribute to our understanding of the region that space weather travels through, helping improve predictions.”
The CODEX instrument is a collaboration between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute with additional contribution from Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics.
By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Oct 30, 2024 Related Terms
Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Heliophysics Division International Space Station (ISS) Science Mission Directorate Solar Wind Space Weather The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics Explore More
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