NASA Weekly ISS Space to Ground Report for 30 July, 2021

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

Using nearly a decade of satellite data, researchers at Colorado State University have uncovered "milky seas" in a way they've never been seen before - a rare and fascinating oceanic bioluminescent phenomenon detected by a highly sensitive spaceborne low-light sensor.

Jupiter may be the bully planet of our solar system because it's the most massive planet, but it's actually a runt compared to many of the giant planets found around other stars.

The uncrewed Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), named Nauka, the Russian word for "science," arrived at the International Space Station's Poisk module on the space-facing side of the Russian segment at 9:29 a.m. EDT, eight days after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Malé - the capital and most populous city in the Republic of Maldives.

To mark the 10th International Space Apps Challenge, the largest annual global hackathon in the world, NASA is collaborating with nine space agency partners to bring the event to even more communities Oct. 2-3, 2021.

Astronomers have captured the first-ever spin measurements of HR 8799, the famed system that made history as the very first exoplanetary system to have its image taken.

What lies beneath the frozen surface of Mars' south polar region has been a recent hot topic among researchers, and a new paper by Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Isaac Smith refines the answer, pouring cold water on the subglacial lake theory.

Teams with NASA's Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) and contractor Jacobs integrated the launch abort system (LAS) with the Orion spacecraft inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 23, 2021.

The uncrewed Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), named Nauka, the Russian word for "science," arrived at the International Space Station's Poisk module on the space-facing side of the Russian segment at 9:29 a.m. EDT

The Apollo 11 Eagle Lunar Module ascent stage was abandoned in lunar orbit after the historic landing in 1969. Its fate is unknown.

Thomas Pesquet: Peru celebrates its national day today (and tomorrow), and no I won't do all the countries (although...) but this one is a special one, 200 years since its independence! (and I visited friends there a while ago).

Astronomers have developed the most realistic model to date of planet formation in binary star systems.

Scientists have published a new, detailed radio image of the Andromeda galaxy - the Milky Way's sister galaxy - which will allow them to identify and study the regions of Andromeda where new stars are born.

Middle-aged stars can experience their own kind of midlife crisis, experiencing dramatic breaks in their activity and rotation rates at about the same age as our Sun, according to new research published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

Twenty months after declaring a climate emergency and establishing a set of vital signs for the Earth, a coalition headed by two Oregon State University researchers says the updated vital signs "largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual."

Thomas Pesquet: So long DC1! 👋 After almost twenty years of service, instead of getting a medal, one of the Space Station's oldest modules got a little trip through the atmosphere.

The ability to transmit and receive data is crucial in space exploration. Spacecraft need robust networking capabilities to send data - including large files like photos and videos - captured by onboard instruments to Earth as well as simultaneously receiving commands from control centers.

An international team of astrophysicists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI, USA) has discovered the presence of transverse rotation (in the plane of the sky) in three dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

Black holes aren't what they eat. Einstein's general relativity predicts that no matter what a black hole consumes, its external properties depend only on its mass, rotation and electric charge. All other details about its diet disappear.

Astronomers have discovered the shortest-ever gamma-ray burst (GRB) caused by the implosion of a massive star.

The unpiloted Russian Progress 77 cargo spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station while attached to the Pirs docking compartment at 6:55 a.m. EDT.

Thomas Pesquet: Raivavae in the Austral Islands. Ia ora na! A flight over the French Polynesia is rare as they are small in the incredibly vast Pacific ocean, and our orbit doesn't take us over the area often - let alone that I have time to grab the camera.

This image was taken by the NAV_LEFT_B camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3188 (2021-07-25T19:17:23.000Z)

A new index shows that the world's rainforests are responding differently to threats like a warming climate and deforestation.

Thomas Pesquet: Today the Olympics start in Tokyo, but we held the very first space Olympics last week!!! For crew cohesion and fun, we put together a friendly competition between the Soyuz team and the Dragon team!

Thomas Pesquet: The pyramids, Cairo airport and the Suez canal, or when #wondersoftheworld meets the #modernworld.

Editor's Note: If you download this image for your left eye and this image for your right eye and do the cross-eyed thing you will see a stereoscopic image of the summit of Mt. Everest - from orbit.

About six gigatons -- roughly 12 times the mass of all living humans -- of carbon appears to be emitted over land every year, according to data from the Chinese Global Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Scientific Experimental Satellite (TanSat).

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

The Tarso Toussidé volcanic massif is featured in this false-colour composite image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.

The Expedition 65 crew capped off this week's research activities aboard the International Space Station by making headway with various science experiments related to human health and materials performance.

A dust storm that engulfed Mars in 2018 destroyed a vortex of cold air around the planet's south pole and brought an early spring to the hemisphere.

A delay in the undocking events scheduled for tomorrow gave the crew of Expedition 65 aboard the International Space Station extra time to focus on training, science, and maintenance today.

Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA's InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars.

A new approach to analysing the development of magnetic tangles on the Sun has led to a breakthrough in a longstanding debate about how solar energy is injected into the solar atmosphere before being released into space, causing space weather events.

Little is known about the weather at night on Venus as the absence of sunlight makes imaging difficult.

Ingenuity, the helicopter that arrived on the Red Planet on the Mars Perseverance rover, has made nine flights on Mars. Ingenuity's historic achievement is the first powered flight on a terrestrial body other than Earth.

Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disc around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time.

Crew Dragon Endeavour with NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and  Megan McArthur, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut  Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, have re-docked to the International Space Station.

Thomas Pesquet: Le Mont Blanc (just sticking out of the clouds on some pictures) and Chamonix valley and a white glacier.

According to the latest cosmological models, large spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way grew by absorbing smaller galaxies, by a sort of galactic cannibalism.

THE IDEA: Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani has led a series of studies that make the first case for a gravitational wave infrastructure on the surface of the moon.

Globular clusters are spherical groups of stars held together by gravity; they often contain some of the oldest stars in their galaxies.

Today, the Expedition 65 crewmates aboard the International Space Station continued down their checklists in preparation for the next day's planned mission activities -- to include a port-relocation maneuver and the launch of a new module that will replace the Pirs Docking Compartment.

Thomas Pesquet: I was challenged by friends to picture the highest mountain peaks around the world, and I do like a challenge.

A serendipitous flythrough of the tail of a disintegrated comet has offered scientists a unique opportunity to study these remarkable structures, in new research presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021.

Thomas Pesquet: These are not clouds, they are icy mountains! Megan claimed to have spotted Antarctica, and we doubted her, fools! The next day she studied our trajectory and calculated the right timing to look out the window, and guess what, we could all see it with our own eyes (and a camera).

These motions were measured by analyzing 10 years of observations from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

Blue Origin successfully completed New Shepard's first human flight today with four private citizens onboard.

As the week kicked off, the Expedition 65 crew members spent much of their Monday fine-tuning procedures in anticipation of Wednesday's port-relocation activity, which will free up the Harmony's forward port for the docking of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station.

The Expedition 65 crew members focused their Friday space research activities on nanoparticles and free-flying robotics.

Thomas Pesquet: Fresh food only comes up on new cargo ships. I was so happy to see some of my personal selection I took a picture 😋 As you can see, fresh is a word used lightly (no pun intended).

Thomas Pesquet: Clouds and shadows and the curvature of Earth. Simple really, but so breathtaking! See how the camera lens used changes the shape of Earth's curve?

The final stage of cataclysmic explosions of dying massive stars, called supernovae, could pack an up to six times bigger punch on the surrounding interstellar gas with the help of cosmic rays, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford.

New models of neutron stars show that their tallest mountains may be only fractions of millimetres high, due to the huge gravity on the ultra-dense objects. The research is presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2021.

Scientists from the University of Graz, Kanzelhöhe Observatory, Skoltech, and the World Data Center SILSO at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, have presented the Catalogue of Hemispheric Sunspot Numbers.

Installing a critical system for our Orion spacecraft, the latest engine test for our Artemis Moon missions, and working to give spacecraft propulsion a boost... a few of the stories to tell you about - This Week at NASA.

SpaceCast Weekly is a NASA Television broadcast from the Johnson Space Center in Houston featuring stories about NASA's work in human spaceflight.

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

Lima, the capital and largest city of Peru, is featured in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image.

Science and maintenance using virtual and augmented reality tools were prominent aboard the International Space Station today.

ISS Solar Arrays At Orbital Sunset

NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout is tucked away safely inside the agency's powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Thomas Pesquet: Diego Garcia, I didn't know the island is a military base, but you learn something new everyday, look up its history on your own!

When the titans of space -- galaxy clusters -- collide, extraordinary things can happen. A new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory examines the repercussions after two galaxy clusters clashed.

Thomas Pesquet: A photograph of France as you are more inclined to see it on a map - from the south looking to the north. We were flying over the Mediterranean Sea at the time. The perspective comes from flying a little high!

NASA astronaut and Expedition 65 Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei harvests plants growing in petri plates inside the Veggie facility for the APEX-7 (Advanced Plant Experiment-07) space botany study.

On June 7, 2021, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter's ice-encrusted moon Ganymede than any spacecraft in more than two decades.

As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star.

Dr. Iair Arcavi, a Tel Aviv University researcher at the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, participated in a study that discovered a new type of stellar explosion - an electron-capture supernova.

Nanoparticles and microscopic animals were the research highlights aboard the International Space Station today.

For most of the year, the Lena River Delta--a vast wetland fanning out from northeast Siberia into the Arctic Ocean--is either frozen over and barren or thawed out and lush.

Thomas Pesquet: Near Abu Dhabi, this tiny red dot caught my eye and its the Ferrari theme park or museum (at least it has the logo on the roof).

In the vicinity of black holes, space is so warped that even light rays may curve around them several times.