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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The HASP 1.0 (High-Altitude Student Platform) scientific balloon mission launched Sept. 4, 2024, during NASA’s fall balloon campaign in Fort Sumner, N.M.NASA/Erin Reed NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program’s fifth balloon mission of the 2024 fall campaign took flight Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, from the agency’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The HASP 1.0 (High-Altitude Student Platform) mission remained in flight over 11 hours before it safely touched down. Recovery is underway.
HASP is a partnership among the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, the Astrophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and the agency’s Balloon Program Office and Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. The HASP platform supports up to 12 student-built payloads and is designed to flight test compact satellites, prototypes, and other small experiments. Since 2006, HASP has engaged more than 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students involved in the missions.
Teams participating in the 2024 HASP 1.0 flight included: University of North Florida and University of North Dakota; Arizona State University; Louisiana State University; University of Colorado Boulder; College of the Canyons; Fort Lewis College; Capitol Technical College; University of Arizona; Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Peru); and McMaster University (Canada).
A new, larger version of the High-Altitude Student Platform (HASP 2.0) had its engineering test flight a few days prior. HASP 2.0 will be able to accommodate twice as many student experiments as HASP 1.0 once operational in the next year.
The remaining three balloon flights scheduled for the 2024 Fort Sumner fall campaign await next launch opportunities. To follow the missions, visit NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website for real-time updates on balloons altitudes and GPS locations during flight.
For more information on NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/scientificballoons
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Last Updated Sep 06, 2024 EditorOlivia F. LittletonContactOlivia F. Littletonolivia.f.littleton@nasa.gov Related Terms
Learning Resources Scientific Balloons Wallops Flight Facility View the full article
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By NASA
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov (Credit: NASA) Editor’s note: This release was updated on Aug. 30, 2024, to correct Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov’s role to mission specialist.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24, on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, previously announced as crewmates, are eligible for reassignment on a future mission.
Hague and Gorbunov will fly to the space station as commander and mission specialist, respectively, as part of a two-crew member flight aboard a SpaceX Dragon.
The updated crew complement follows NASA’s decision to return the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test uncrewed and launch Crew-9 with two unoccupied seats. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard the Starliner spacecraft in June, will fly home with Hague and Gorbunov in February 2025.
The decision to fly Hague was made by NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Acaba had to balance flying a NASA crew member with previous spaceflight experience to command the flight, while ensuring NASA maintains an integrated crew with a Roscosmos cosmonaut who can operate their critical systems for continued, safe station operations.
“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” said Acaba. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission. Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch, and they exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut.”
The agency will share reassignment details for Cardman and Wilson when available.
“I am deeply proud of our entire crew,” said Cardman, “and I am confident Nick and Alex will step into their roles with excellence. All four of us remain dedicated to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right.”
Wilson added, “I know Nick and Alex will do a great job with their work aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 72.”
With 203 days logged in space, this will be Hague’s third launch and second mission to the orbiting laboratory. During his first launch in March 2018, Hague and his crewmate, Roscosmos’ Alexey Ovchinin, experienced a rocket booster failure, resulting in an in-flight, post-launch abort, ballistic re-entry, and safe landing in their Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. Five months later, Hague launched aboard Soyuz MS-12 and served as a flight engineer aboard the space station during Expeditions 59 and 60. Hague conducted three spacewalks to upgrade space station power systems and install a docking adapter for commercial spacecraft. An active-duty colonel in the U.S. Space Force, Hague completed a developmental rotation at the Defense Department, and served as the Space Force’s director of test and evaluation from 2020 to 2022. In August 2022, Hague resumed duties at NASA, working on the Boeing Starliner Program until this flight assignment. Follow @astrohague on X and Instagram.
This will be Gorbunov’s first trip to space and the station. Born in Zheleznogorsk, Kursk region, Russia, he studied engineering with qualifications in spacecraft and upper stages from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Gorbunov graduated from the military department with a specialty in operating and repairing aircraft, helicopters, and aircraft engines. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he worked as an engineer for Rocket Space Corp. Energia and supported cargo spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Hague and Gorbonov will become members of the Expedition 72 crew aboard the station. They will join Wilmore, Williams, fellow NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner conducting scientific research and maintenance activities into the station’s 24th year of continuous human presence.
Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
-end-
Josh Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Courtney Beasley
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
courtney.m.beasley@nasa.gov
View the full article
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By NASA
Portraits of NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. (Credit: NASA) NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24, on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, previously announced as crewmates, are eligible for reassignment on a future mission.
Hague and Gorbunov will fly to the space station as commander and pilot, respectively, as part of a two-crew member flight aboard a SpaceX Dragon.
The updated crew complement follows NASA’s decision to return the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test uncrewed and launch Crew-9 with two unoccupied seats. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard the Starliner spacecraft in June, will fly home with Hague and Gorbunov in February 2025.
The decision to fly Hague was made by NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Acaba had to balance flying a NASA crew member with previous spaceflight experience to command the flight, while ensuring NASA maintains an integrated crew with a Roscosmos cosmonaut who can operate their critical systems for continued, safe station operations.
“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” said Acaba. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission. Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch, and they exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut.”
The agency will share reassignment details for Cardman and Wilson when available.
“I am deeply proud of our entire crew,” said Cardman, “and I am confident Nick and Alex will step into their roles with excellence. All four of us remain dedicated to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right.”
Wilson added, “I know Nick and Alex will do a great job with their work aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 72.”
With 203 days logged in space, this will be Hague’s third launch and second mission to the orbiting laboratory. During his first launch in March 2018, Hague and his crewmate, Roscosmos’ Alexey Ovchinin, experienced a rocket booster failure, resulting in an in-flight, post-launch abort, ballistic re-entry, and safe landing in their Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. Five months later, Hague launched aboard Soyuz MS-12 and served as a flight engineer aboard the space station during Expeditions 59 and 60. Hague conducted three spacewalks to upgrade space station power systems and install a docking adapter for commercial spacecraft. An active-duty colonel in the U.S. Space Force, Hague completed a developmental rotation at the Defense Department, and served as the Space Force’s director of test and evaluation from 2020 to 2022. In August 2022, Hague resumed duties at NASA, working on the Boeing Starliner Program until this flight assignment. Follow @astrohague on X and Instagram.
This will be Gorbunov’s first trip to space and the station. Born in Zheleznogorsk, Kursk region, Russia, he studied engineering with qualifications in spacecraft and upper stages from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Gorbunov graduated from the military department with a specialty in operating and repairing aircraft, helicopters, and aircraft engines. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, he worked as an engineer for Rocket Space Corp. Energia and supported cargo spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Hague and Gorbonov will become members of the Expedition 72 crew aboard the station. They will join Wilmore, Williams, fellow NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner conducting scientific research and maintenance activities into the station’s 24th year of continuous human presence.
Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
-end-
Josh Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Courtney Beasley
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
courtney.m.beasley@nasa.gov
View the full article
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By NASA
The SpaceX Dragon Endurance crew ship, carrying four Crew-5 members, approaches the International Space Station with the Earth’s horizon in the background. Credit: NASA/Kjell Lindgren NASA is extending U.S. media accreditation for the launch of the agency’s ninth rotational mission of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station. This mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The application period for U.S. media and U.S. citizens representing international media organizations is extended until 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 3. Media members who have already applied do not need to reapply. All new accreditation requests must be submitted online at:
https://media.ksc.nasa.gov
Launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, originally slated with four crew members, is targeted for no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24, from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
NASA announced astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on station and return home in February 2025 aboard Dragon with two other crew members assigned to the Crew-9 mission, during a news conference on Aug. 24. The agency will share more information about the Crew-9 complement when details are finalized.
NASA and SpaceX currently are working on several items before launch, including reconfiguring seats on the Dragon and adjusting the manifest to carry additional cargo, personal effects, and Dragon-specific spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams.
NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. For questions about accreditation or special logistical requests, email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. Requests for space for satellite trucks, tents, or electrical connections also are due by Sept. 3.
For other questions, please contact NASA Kennedy’s newsroom at: 321-867-2468.
Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo: 321-501-8425, o Messod Bendayan: 256-930-1371.
For launch coverage and more information about the mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
-end-
Joshua Finch / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov
Steve Siceloff / Danielle Sempsrott / Stephanie Plucinsky
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / danielle.c.sempsrott@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov
Leah Cheshier
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov
View the full article
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By NASA
5 min read
NASA’s EXCITE Mission Prepared for Scientific Balloon Flight
Scientists and engineers are ready to fly an infrared mission called EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) to the edge of space.
EXCITE is designed to study atmospheres around exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, during circumpolar long-duration scientific balloon flights. But first, it must complete a test flight during NASA’s fall 2024 scientific ballooning campaign from Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
“EXCITE can give us a three-dimensional picture of a planet’s atmosphere and temperature by collecting data the whole time the world orbits its star,” said Peter Nagler, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Only a handful of these types of measurements have been done before. They require a very stable telescope in a position to track a planet for several days at a time.”
EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) hangs from a ceiling at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility’s location in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The mission team practiced taking observations ahead of flight by looking out the hanger doors at night. NASA/Jeanette Kazmierczak EXCITE will study hot Jupiters, giant gas exoplanets that complete an orbit once every one to two days and have temperatures in the thousands of degrees. The worlds are tidally locked, which means the same side always faces the star.
The telescope will observe how heat is distributed across the planet, from the scalding hemisphere facing the star to the relatively cooler nightside.
It will also determine how molecules in a world’s atmosphere absorb and emit light over the entire orbit, a process called phase-resolved spectroscopy. Not only can this data reveal the presence of compounds — like water, methane, carbon dioxide, and others — but also how they circulate globally as the planet orbits its star.
NASA’s Hubble, James Webb, and retired Spitzer space telescopes have collected a handful of these measurements between them.
In 2014, for example, Hubble and Spitzer observed an exoplanet called WASP-43 b. To collect data over the world’s 22-hour day, scientists needed 60 hours of Hubble time and 46 hours from Spitzer. Resource-intensive studies like this on space-based observatories are difficult. Time is a limited resource, and studies must compete with hundreds of other requests for that time.
“During its first science flight, EXCITE aims to fly for over a dozen days from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility’s site in Antarctica,” said Kyle Helson, an EXCITE team member and a research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and NASA Goddard. “And at the pole, the stars we’ll study don’t set, so our observations won’t be interrupted. We hope that the mission will effectively double the number of phase-resolved spectra available to the science community.”
EXCITE will fly to about 132,000 feet (40 kilometers) via a scientific balloon filled with helium. That takes it above 99.5% of Earth’s atmosphere. At that altitude, the telescope will be able to observe multiple infrared wavelengths with little interference.
“The telescope collects the infrared light and beams it into the spectrometer, where it kind of goes through a little obstacle course,” said Lee Bernard, an EXCITE team member and a graduate research assistant at Arizona State University in Tempe. “It bounces off mirrors and through a prism before reaching the detector. Everything must be aligned very precisely — just a few millimeters off center and the light won’t make it.”
The spectrometer rests inside a vessel called a cryostat situated behind the telescope. The cryostat cools the spectrometer’s detector — once a flight candidate from Webb’sNIRSpec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph)— to about 350 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 210 degrees Celsius) so it can measure tiny intensity changes in the infrared light.
The EXCITE infrared detector, shown here, was once a flight candidate from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRSpec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph) instrument. Before being added to the mission’s spectrometer assembly, it was mounted to a copper base and topped with a protective black case. The detector allows EXCITE to collect spectroscopic measurements from 1 to 4 microns — the near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. NASA/Sophia Roberts The entire telescope and cryostat assembly rests in a rowboat-shaped base where it can rotate along three axes to maintain stable pointing down to 50 milliarcseconds. That’s like holding a steady gaze on a U.S. quarter coin from 65 miles away.
“Several different institutions contributed to EXCITE’s subsystems,” said Tim Rehm, an EXCITE team member and a graduate research assistant at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “It’s great to see them all assembled and working together. We’re excited to do this test flight, and we’re looking forward to all the future science flights we hope to have.”
The EXCITE instrument was primarily built by NASA Goddard, Brown, Arizona State University, and StarSpec Technologies in Ontario, with additional support from collaborators in the U.S., Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
NASA’s scientific balloons offer frequent, low-cost access to near-space to conduct scientific investigations and technology maturation in fields such as astrophysics, heliophysics, and atmospheric research, as well as training for the next generation of leaders in engineering and science. To follow the missions in the 2024 Fort Sumner fall campaign, visit NASA’s CSBF (Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility) website for real-time updates of a balloon’s altitude and GPS location during flight.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia manages the agency’s scientific balloon flight program with 10 to 15 flights each year from launch sites worldwide. Peraton, which operates CSBF in Texas, provides mission planning, engineering services, and field operations for NASA’s scientific balloon program. The CSBF team has launched more than 1,700 scientific balloons over some 40 years of operations. NASA’s balloons are fabricated by Aerostar. The NASA Scientific Balloon Program is funded by the NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate Astrophysics Division.
By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 22, 2024 Editor Jeanette Kazmierczak Related Terms
Astrophysics Exoplanets Goddard Space Flight Center Infrared Light Scientific Balloons The Universe Wallops Flight Facility View the full article
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