Stephanie Shelton, a payload communications manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, joins NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei for a call to the onboard crew of the International Space Station. Vande Hei and Acaba visited Marshall April 11 for their honorary Expedition 54 plaque hanging ceremony and to provide valuable feedback of their on-orbit science investigations with the Payload Operations and Integration Center team..

The Payload Operations Center (POC) is the science command post for the International Space Station (ISS). Located at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, it is the focal point for American and international science activities aboard the ISS. The POC's unique capabilities allow science experts and researchers around the world to perform cutting-edge science in the unique microgravity environment of space. The POC is staffed around the clock by shifts of payload flight controllers. At any given time, 8 to 10 flight controllers are on consoles operating, plarning for, and controlling various systems and payloads. This photograph shows the Payload Communications Manager (PAYCOM) at a work station. The PAYCOM coordinates payload-related voice communications between the POC and the ISS crew. The PAYCOM is the voice of the POC.

Penny Pettigrew is an International Space Station Payload Communications Manager, or PAYCOM, in the Payload Operations Integration Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Standing inside Discovery’s payload bay, Carol Scott (right), lead orbiter engineer, talks about her job as part of a special feature for the KSC Web. With his back to the camera is Bill Kallus, Media manager in the KSC Web Studio. Behind Scott can be seen the open hatch of the airlock, which provides support functions such as airlock depressurization and repressurization, extravehicular activity equipment recharge, liquid-cooled garment water cooling, EVA equipment checkout, donning and communications. The outer hatch isolates the airlock from the unpressurized payload bay when closed and permits the EVA crew members to exit from the airlock to the payload bay when open.

Rick Doe, payload program manager at SRI International, discusses the Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment during a NASA prelaunch technology TV show for the Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 23, 2019. The experiment’s two CubeSats will work with six other satellites to study irregularities in Earth’s upper atmosphere that interfere with GPS and communications signals. It is one of NASA payloads scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A beginning at 11:30 p.m. EDT on June 24, 2019. STP-2 is managed by the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center.

Karen Fox, NASA Communications, moderates a payload briefing for NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft on Dec.7, 2021 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. IXPE is scheduled to launch no earlier than 1 a.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 9, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. NASA’s Launch Services Program is managing this launch. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the IXPE mission. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations with support from the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Explorers Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 provides range support for this launch. SpaceX is providing the launch vehicle for this mission.

A payload briefing for NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft is held on Dec.7, 2021 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Participants from left are Karen Fox, moderator, NASA Communications; Brian Ramsey, deputy principal investigator, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; Elisabetta Cavazzuti, ASI IXPE program manager, Italian Space Agency; Luca Baldini, Italian co-principal investigator, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; and MacKenzie Ferrie, IXPE program manager, Ball Aerospace. IXPE is scheduled to launch no earlier than 1 a.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 9, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. NASA’s Launch Services Program is managing this launch. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the IXPE mission. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations with support from the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Explorers Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 provides range support for this launch. SpaceX is providing the launch vehicle for this mission.

A payload briefing for NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft is held on Dec.7, 2021 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Participants from left are Karen Fox, moderator, NASA Communications; Brian Ramsey, deputy principal investigator, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; Elisabetta Cavazzuti, ASI IXPE program manager, Italian Space Agency; Luca Baldini, Italian co-principal investigator, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; and MacKenzie Ferrie, IXPE program manager, Ball Aerospace. IXPE is scheduled to launch no earlier than 1 a.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 9, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. NASA’s Launch Services Program is managing this launch. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the IXPE mission. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations with support from the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Explorers Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 provides range support for this launch. SpaceX is providing the launch vehicle for this mission.

NASA Communications’ Kenna Pell, left, and Brock Howe, airlock program manager, Nanoracks, participate in a #NASASocial Science and Station Q&A show at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 4, 2020. During the briefing, NASA Social participants heard from principal investigators for payloads launching on SpaceX’s 21st Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-21) mission. CRS-21 is scheduled to launch from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A on Dec. 5, 2020. Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and cargo Dragon spacecraft is targeted for 11:39 a.m. EST.

During a Spacelab flight, the hub of activity was the Payload Operations Control Center (POCC) at the Johnson Space Flight Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. The POCC became home to the management and science teams who worked around the clock to guide and support the mission. All Spacelab principal investigators and their teams of scientists and engineers set up work areas in the POCC. Through the use of computers, they could send commands to their instruments and receive and analyze experiment data. Instantaneous video and audio communications made it possible for scientists on the ground to follow the progress of their research almost as if they were in space with the crew. This real-time interaction between investigators on the ground and the crew in space was probably the most exciting of Spacelab's many capabilities. As principal investigators talked to the payload specialists during the mission, they consulted on experiment operations, made decisions, and shared in the thrill of gaining new knowledge. In December 1990, a newly-established POCC at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) opened its door for the operations of the Spacelab payloads and experiments, while JSC monitored the Shuttle flight operations. MSFC had managing responsibilities for the Spacelab missions.

Engineer Emmanuel Decrossas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California makes an adjustment to an antenna's connector, part of a NASA telecommunications payload called User Terminal, at Firefly Aerospace's facility in Cedar Park, Texas, in August 2025. Figure A (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA26596_figA.jpg) shows members of the team from JPL and NASA (dark blue) and Firefly (white) with the User Terminal antenna, radio, and other components on the bench behind them. Managed by JPL, the User Terminal will test a new, low-cost lunar communications system that future missions to the Moon's far side could use to transfer data to and from Earth via lunar relay satellite. The User Terminal payload will be installed atop Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 2 lunar lander, which is slated to launch to the Moon's far side in 2026 under NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative. NASA's Apollo missions brought large and powerful telecommunications systems to the lunar near-side surface to communicate directly with Earth. But spacecraft on the far side will not have that option because only the near side of the Moon is visible to Earth. Sending messages between the Moon and Earth via a relay orbiter enables communication with the lunar far side and improves it at the Moon's poles. The User Terminal will for the first time test such a setup for NASA by using a compact, lightweight software defined radio, antenna, and related hardware to communicate with a satellite that Blue Ghost Mission 2 is delivering to lunar orbit: ESA's (the European Space Agency's) Lunar Pathfinder. The User Terminal radio and antenna installed on the Blue Ghost lander will be used to commission Lunar Pathfinder, sending test data back and forth. After the lander ceases operations as planned at the end of a single lunar day (about 14 Earth days), a separate User Terminal radio and antenna installed on LuSEE-Night – another payload on the lander – will send LuSEE-Night's data to Lunar Pathfinder, which will relay the information to a commercial network of ground stations on Earth. LuSEE-Night is a radio telescope that expected to operate for at least 1½ years; it is a joint effort by NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, and University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory. Additionally, User Terminal will be able to communicate with another satellite that's being delivered to lunar orbit by Blue Ghost Mission 2: Firefly's own Elytra Dark orbital vehicle. The hardware on the lander is only part of the User Terminal project, which was also designed to implement a new S-band two-way protocol, or standard, for short-range space communications between entities on the lunar surface (such as rovers and landers) and lunar orbiters, enabling reliable data transfer between them. The standard is a new version of a space communications protocol called Proximity-1 that was initially developed more than two decades ago for use at Mars by an international standard body called the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), of which NASA is a member agency. The User Terminal team made recommendations to CCSDS on the development of the new lunar S-band standard, which was specified in 2024. The new standard will enable lunar orbiters and surface spacecraft from various entities – NASA and other civil space agencies as well as industry and academia – to communicate with each other, a concept known as interoperability. At Mars, NASA rovers communicate with various Red Planet orbiters using the Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) radio band version of the Proximity-1 standard. On the Moon's far side, use of UHF is reserved for radio astronomy science; so a new lunar standard was needed using a different frequency range, S-band, as were more efficient modulation and coding schemes to better fit the available frequency spectrum specified by the new standard. User Terminal is funded by NASA's Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office, part of the agency's Science Mission Directorate, which manages the CLPS initiative. JPL manages the project and supported development of the new S-band radio standard and the payload in coordination with Vulcan Wireless in Carlsbad, California, which built the radio. Caltech in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26596

Researchers examine the Space Plasma-High Voltage Interaction Experiment (SPHINX) satellite in the Electric Propulsion Laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lewis Research Center. Lewis’ Spacecraft Technology Division designed SPHINX to study the electrical interaction of its experimental surfaces with space plasma. They sought to determine if higher orbits would improve the transmission quality of communications satellites. Robert Lovell, the Project Manager, oversaw vibrational and plasma simulation testing of the satellite in the Electric Propulsion Laboratory, seen here. SPHINX was an add-on payload for the first Titan/Centaur proof launch in early 1974. Lewis successfully managed the Centaur Program since 1962, but this would be the first Centaur launch with a Titan booster. Since the proof test did not have a scheduled payload, the Lewis-designed SPHINX received a free ride. The February 11, 1974 launch, however, proved to be one of the Launch Vehicle Division’s lowest days. Twelve minutes after the vehicle departed the launch pad, the booster and Centaur separated as designed, but Centaur’s two RL-10 engines failed to ignite. The launch pad safety officer destroyed the vehicle, and SPHINX never made it into orbit. Overall Centaur has an excellent success rate, but the failed SPHINX launch attempt caused deep disappointment across the center.

Engineers and technicians from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory work on the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload in a clean room at JPL on Feb. 3, 2023. The payload is scheduled to ship to India in March 2023. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and ISRO – will measure changes to Earth's land ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch. Data collected by this satellite will help researchers monitor a wide range of changes critical to life on Earth in unprecedented detail. This includes spotting warning signs of imminent volcanic eruptions, helping to monitor groundwater supplies, tracking the melt rate of ice sheets tied to sea level rise, and observing shifts in the distribution of vegetation around the world. The data will inform humanity's responses to urgent challenges posed by natural disasters and climate change, and help communities prepare for and manage hazards. There are two instruments on the satellite that will send and receive radar signals to and from Earth's surface to make the mission's measurements. An L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which uses a signal wavelength of around 9 inches (24 centimeters), and an S-band SAR with a signal wavelength of nearly 5 inches (12 centimeters). Both will bounce their microwave signal off of the planet's surface and record how long it takes the signal to make one roundtrip, as well as the strength of that return signal. This enables the researchers to calculate the distance from the spacecraft to Earth's surface and thereby determine how the land or ice is changing. An antenna reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, supported by a deployable boom, will focus the microwave signals sent and received by the SARs. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR and is providing the mission's L-band SAR instrument. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25771

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Tom Engler, deputy director of Center Planning and Development at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, speaks to members of the media during an event to announce the agency's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative and introduced one of the partners, Moon Express Inc. of Moffett Field, California. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Tom Engler, deputy director of Center Planning and Development at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, speaks to members of the media during an event to announce the agency's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative and introduced one of the partners, Moon Express Inc. of Moffett Field, California. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

Greg C. Shavers, Lander Technology director at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, speaks to members of the media during an event to announce the agency's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative and introduced one of the partners, Moon Express Inc. of Moffett Field, California. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

The primary objective of the STS-35 mission was round the clock observation of the celestial sphere in ultraviolet and X-Ray astronomy with the Astro-1 observatory which consisted of four telescopes: the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT); the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE); the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT); and the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT). The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) Spacelab Payload Operations Control Center (SL POCC) at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was the air/ground communication channel used between the astronauts and ground control teams during the Spacelab missions. Teams of controllers and researchers directed on-orbit science operations, sent commands to the spacecraft, received data from experiments aboard the Space Shuttle, adjusted mission schedules to take advantage of unexpected science opportunities or unexpected results, and worked with crew members to resolve problems with their experiments. Pictured is Jack Jones in the Mission Manager Area.

Members of the media watch a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, or RASSOR, during a media event at the automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Tom Engler, center, in the suit, deputy director of Kennedy's Center Planning and Development, announced Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Bob Richards, co-founder and chief executive officer of Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California, speaks to the media during an event to announce the company's selection to use Kennedy Space Center's facilities as part of NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Bob Richards, co-founder and chief executive officer of Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California, speaks to the media during an event to announce the company's selection to use Kennedy Space Center's facilities as part of NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

Rob Mueller, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office in Kennedy Space Center's Engineering and Technology Directorate, demonstrates the Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, or RASSOR, during a media event at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. The event was held to announce Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Greg C. Shavers, Lander Technology director at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, speaks to members of the media during an event to announce the agency's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative and introduced one of the partners, Moon Express Inc. of Moffett Field, California. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

A team of engineers and technicians from the Indian Space Research Organisation and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California pose in June at ISRO's U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru, India, after working together to combine the two main components of the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite. Set to launch in early 2024 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, NISAR is being jointly developed by NASA and ISRO to observe movements of Earth's land and ice surfaces in extremely fine detail. As NISAR observes nearly every part of Earth at least once every 12 days, the satellite will help scientists understand, among other observables, the dynamics of forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands. The radar instrument payload, partially wrapped in gold-colored thermal blanketing, arrived from JPL in March and consists of L- and S-band radar systems, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. Both sensors can see through clouds and collect data day and night. The bus, which is shown in blue blanketing and includes components and systems developed by both ISRO and JPL, was built at URSC and will provide power, navigation, pointing control, and communications for the mission. The team combined the payload and the bus with the help of a crane. NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission's L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. URSC, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25867

The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite sits in a clean room facility at U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru, India, in mid-June 2023, shortly after engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Indian Space Research Organisation joined its two main components, the radar instrument payload and the spacecraft bus. Set to launch in early 2024 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, NISAR is being jointly developed by NASA and ISRO to observe movements of Earth's land and ice surfaces in extremely fine detail. As NISAR observes nearly every part of Earth at least once every 12 days, the satellite will help scientists understand, among other observables, the dynamics of forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands. The radar instrument payload, partially wrapped in gold-colored thermal blanketing, arrived from JPL in March and consists of L- and S-band radar systems, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. Both sensors can see through clouds and collect data day and night. The bus, which is shown in blue blanketing and includes components and systems developed by both ISRO and JPL, was built at URSC and will provide power, navigation, pointing control, and communications for the mission. NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission's L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. URSC, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25865

Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), working in a clean room facility at ISRO's U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) in Bengaluru, India, in mid-June 2023, use a crane to align the radar instrument payload for the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission above the satellite's spacecraft bus so that the two components can be combined. Set to launch in early 2024 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, NISAR is being jointly developed by NASA and ISRO to observe movements of Earth's land and ice surfaces in extremely fine detail. As NISAR observes nearly every part of Earth at least once every 12 days, the satellite will help scientists understand, among other observables, the dynamics of forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands. The radar instrument payload, partially wrapped in gold-colored thermal blanketing, arrived from JPL in March and consists of L- and S-band radar systems, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. Both sensors can see through clouds and collect data day and night. The bus, which is shown in blue blanketing and includes components and systems developed by both ISRO and JPL, was built at URSC and will provide power, navigation, pointing control, and communications for the mission. NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission's L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. URSC, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25866

NASA's NISAR Project Manager Phil Barela (with hands raised) speaks with Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman S. Somanath about the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Feb. 3, 2023. Somanath was among a group of visitors to the facility that included officials from NASA, ISRO, and the Indian Embassy. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and ISRO – will measure changes to Earth's land ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch. Data collected by this satellite will help researchers monitor a wide range of changes critical to life on Earth in unprecedented detail. This includes spotting warning signs of imminent volcanic eruptions, helping to monitor groundwater supplies, tracking the melt rate of ice sheets tied to sea level rise, and observing shifts in the distribution of vegetation around the world. The data will inform humanity's responses to urgent challenges posed by natural disasters and climate change, and help communities prepare for and manage hazards. There are two instruments on the satellite that will send and receive radar signals to and from Earth's surface to make the mission's measurements. An L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which uses a signal wavelength of around 9 inches (24 centimeters), and an S-band SAR with a signal wavelength of nearly 5 inches (12 centimeters). Both will bounce their microwave signal off of the planet's surface and record how long it takes the signal to make one roundtrip, as well as the strength of that return signal. This enables the researchers to calculate the distance from the spacecraft to Earth's surface and thereby determine how the land or ice is changing. An antenna reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, supported by a deployable boom, will focus the microwave signals sent and received by the SARs. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR and is providing the mission's L-band SAR instrument. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25598

Officials from NASA, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the Indian Embassy, grouped at left, visit a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Feb. 3, 2023, to view the scientific instrument payload for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission. The payload is scheduled to be shipped to India in March 2023. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and ISRO – will measure changes to Earth's land ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch. Data collected by this satellite will help researchers monitor a wide range of changes critical to life on Earth in unprecedented detail. This includes spotting warning signs of imminent volcanic eruptions, helping to monitor groundwater supplies, tracking the melt rate of ice sheets tied to sea level rise, and observing shifts in the distribution of vegetation around the world. The data will inform humanity's responses to urgent challenges posed by natural disasters and climate change, and help communities prepare for and manage hazards. There are two instruments on the satellite that will send and receive radar signals to and from Earth's surface to make the mission's measurements. An L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which uses a signal wavelength of around 9 inches (24 centimeters), and an S-band SAR with a signal wavelength of nearly 5 inches (12 centimeters). Both will bounce their microwave signal off of the planet's surface and record how long it takes the signal to make one roundtrip, as well as the strength of that return signal. This enables the researchers to calculate the distance from the spacecraft to Earth's surface and thereby determine how the land or ice is changing. An antenna reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, supported by a deployable boom, will focus the microwave signals sent and received by the SARs. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR and is providing the mission's L-band SAR instrument. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25599

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload sits in its specially designed, climate-controlled shipping container in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 23, 2023. Engineers and technicians used a crane to lift the payload and mount it vertically onto a stage at the far end of the container before tilting it horizontally. The payload was then shipped to Bengaluru, India, on March 3, arriving on March 6. There it will be integrated with the satellite body, or bus, and undergo further testing leading up to launch in 2024. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation – will observe nearly all the planet's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, measuring movements in extremely fine detail. It will also survey forests and agricultural regions to understand carbon exchange between plants and the atmosphere. NISAR's science payload will be the most advanced radar system ever launched as part of a NASA mission, and it will feature the largest-ever radar antenna of its kind: a drum-shaped, wire mesh reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter that will extend from a 30-foot (9-meter) boom. The mission's science instruments consist of L- and S-band radar, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. ISRO built the S-band radar, which it shipped to JPL in March 2021. Engineers spent much of the last two years integrating the instrument with the JPL-built L-band system, then conducting tests to verify they work well together. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR. In addition to the L-band radar, NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. In addition to the S-band radar, ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25566

A specially designed, climate-controlled shipping container holding the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload sits outside an airlock at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 26, 2023. The payload was shipped to Bengaluru, India, on March 3, arriving on March 6. There it will be integrated with the satellite body, or bus, and undergo further testing leading up to launch in 2024. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation – will observe nearly all the planet's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, measuring movements in extremely fine detail. It will also survey forests and agricultural regions to understand carbon exchange between plants and the atmosphere. NISAR's science payload will be the most advanced radar system ever launched as part of a NASA mission, and it will feature the largest-ever radar antenna of its kind: a drum-shaped, wire mesh reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter that will extend from a 30-foot (9-meter) boom. The mission's science instruments consist of L- and S-band radar, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. ISRO built the S-band radar, which it shipped to JPL in March 2021. Engineers spent much of the last two years integrating the instrument with the JPL-built L-band system, then conducting tests to verify they work well together. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR. In addition to the L-band radar, NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. In addition to the S-band radar, ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25568

In a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 23, 2023, engineers and technicians use a crane to prepare to seal a specially designed, climate-controlled shipping container holding the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload. The payload was then shipped to Bengaluru, India, on March 3, arriving on March 6. There it will be integrated with the satellite body, or bus, and undergo further testing leading up to launch in 2024. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation – will observe nearly all the planet's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, measuring movements in extremely fine detail. It will also survey forests and agricultural regions to understand carbon exchange between plants and the atmosphere. NISAR's science payload will be the most advanced radar system ever launched as part of a NASA mission, and it will feature the largest-ever radar antenna of its kind: a drum-shaped, wire mesh reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter that will extend from a 30-foot (9-meter) boom. The mission's science instruments consist of L- and S-band radar, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. ISRO built the S-band radar, which it shipped to JPL in March 2021. Engineers spent much of the last two years integrating the instrument with the JPL-built L-band system, then conducting tests to verify they work well together. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR. In addition to the L-band radar, NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. In addition to the S-band radar, ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25567

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload, housed in a specially designed shipping container, sits at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Airport in Bengaluru, India. The payload left NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Feb. 28, and departed the United States on March 3 aboard a U.S. Air Force cargo plane, arriving in Bengaluru on March 6. From there it was transported to the Indian Space Research Organisation's U R Rao Satellite Centre, where it will be integrated with the satellite body, or bus, and undergo further testing leading up to launch in 2024. The NISAR mission – a joint effort between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation – will observe nearly all the planet's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days, measuring movements in extremely fine detail. It will also survey forests and agricultural regions to understand carbon exchange between plants and the atmosphere. NISAR's science payload will be the most advanced radar system ever launched as part of a NASA mission, and it will feature the largest-ever radar antenna of its kind: a drum-shaped, wire mesh reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter that will extend from a 30-foot (9-meter) boom. The mission's science instruments consist of L- and S-band radar, so named to indicate the wavelengths of their signals. ISRO built the S-band radar, which it shipped to JPL in March 2021. Engineers spent much of the last two years integrating the instrument with the JPL-built L-band system, then conducting tests to verify they work well together. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR. In addition to the L-band radar, NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. In addition to the S-band radar, ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25570

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, twin communications-relay CubeSats, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) are installed on an Atlas V rocket. MarCO constitutes a technology demonstration being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena in California. They will launch in on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft to land on Mars. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. InSight is the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. InSight is scheduled for liftoff May 5, 2018. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes. InSight will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will provide a better understanding of how other rocky planets, including Earth, were created. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Several European partners, including France's space agency, the Centre National d'Étude Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center, are supporting the mission. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is providing the Atlas V launch service. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.

Officials from NASA, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and the Embassy of India hold a send-off ceremony for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) science instrument payload on Feb. 3, 2023, outside a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The payload is scheduled to be shipped to India in March. Pictured left to right: Karen St. Germain, director, Earth Science Division, NASA; Mitra Dutta, NISAR program executive, NASA; Sripriya Ranganathan, ambassador and deputy chief of mission, Indian Embassy; Larry James, deputy director, JPL; Bhavya Lal, associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy, NASA; Jim Graf, director, Earth Science and Technology Directorate, JPL; S. Somanath, chairman, ISRO; Laurie Leshin, director, JPL; Krunal Joshi, counselor, space and ISRO technical liaison officer, Indian Embassy; M. Sankaran, director, U R Rao Satellite Centre, ISRO; Shantanu Bhatawdekar, scientific secretary, ISRO; Paul Rosen, NISAR project scientist, JPL; CV Shrikant, NISAR project director, ISRO; Phil Barela, NISAR project manager, JPL; and Gerald Bawden, NISAR program scientist, NASA. NISAR – a joint effort between NASA and ISRO – will measure changes to Earth's land ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch. Data collected by this satellite will help researchers monitor a wide range of changes critical to life on Earth in unprecedented detail. This includes spotting warning signs of imminent volcanic eruptions, helping to monitor groundwater supplies, tracking the melt rate of ice sheets tied to sea level rise, and observing shifts in the distribution of vegetation around the world. The data will inform humanity's responses to urgent challenges posed by natural disasters and climate change, and help communities prepare for and manage hazards. There are two instruments on the satellite that will send and receive radar signals to and from Earth's surface to make the mission's measurements. An L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which uses a signal wavelength of around 9 inches (24 centimeters), and an S-band SAR with a signal wavelength of nearly 5 inches (12 centimeters). Both will bounce their microwave signal off of the planet's surface and record how long it takes the signal to make one roundtrip, as well as the strength of that return signal. This enables the researchers to calculate the distance from the spacecraft to Earth's surface and thereby determine how the land or ice is changing. An antenna reflector nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter, supported by a deployable boom, will focus the microwave signals sent and received by the SARs. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of NISAR and is providing the mission's L-band SAR instrument. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25600

Rob Mueller, left, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office in Kennedy Space Center's Engineering and Technology Directorate, talks with former NASA Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, or RASSOR, at the automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The event was held to announce Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Rob Mueller, left, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office in Kennedy Space Center's Engineering and Technology Directorate, talks with former NASA Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, or RASSOR, at the automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The event was held to announce Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Rob Mueller, left, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office in Kennedy Space Center's Engineering and Technology Directorate, talks with former NASA Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, or RASSOR, at the automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The event was held to announce Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Members of the media watch a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, or RASSOR, during a media event at the automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Tom Engler, center, in the suit, deputy director of Kennedy's Center Planning and Development, announced Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

The primary objective of the STS-35 mission was round the clock observation of the celestial sphere in ultraviolet and X-Ray astronomy with the Astro-1 observatory which consisted of four telescopes: the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT); the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE); the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT); and the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT). The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) Spacelab Payload Operations Control Center (SL POCC) at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was the air/ground communication channel used between the astronauts and ground control teams during the Spacelab missions. Teams of controllers and researchers directed on-orbit science operations, sent commands to the spacecraft, received data from experiments aboard the Space Shuttle, adjusted mission schedules to take advantage of unexpected science opportunities or unexpected results, and worked with crew members to resolve problems with their experiments. Due to loss of data used for pointing and operating the ultraviolet telescopes, MSFC ground teams were forced to aim the telescopes with fine tuning by the flight crew. This photo captures the activity of viewing HUT data in the Mission Manager Actions Room during the mission.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Rob Mueller, left, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office in Kennedy Space Center's Engineering and Technology Directorate, talks with former NASA Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, or RASSOR, at the automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The event was held to announce Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Bob Richards, standing at left in front of the cameras, co-founder and chief executive officer of Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California, speaks to the media during an event to announce the company's selection to utilize Kennedy Space Center facilities as part of NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Third from left in the group is former NASA Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST.

The primary objective of the STS-35 mission was round the clock observation of the celestial sphere in ultraviolet and X-Ray astronomy with the Astro-1 observatory which consisted of four telescopes: the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT); the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE); the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT); and the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT). The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) Spacelab Payload Operations Control Center (SL POCC) at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was the air/ground communication channel used between the astronauts and ground control teams during the Spacelab missions. Teams of controllers and researchers directed on-orbit science operations, sent commands to the spacecraft, received data from experiments aboard the Space Shuttle, adjusted mission schedules to take advantage of unexpected science opportunities or unexpected results, and worked with crew members to resolve problems with their experiments. Due to loss of data used for pointing and operating the ultraviolet telescopes, MSFC ground teams were forced to aim the telescopes with fine tuning by the flight crew. This photo captures the activities at the Mission Manager Actions Room during the mission.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Bob Richards, standing at left in front of the cameras, co-founder and chief executive officer of Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California, speaks to the media during an event to announce the company's selection to utilize Kennedy Space Center facilities as part of NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Third from left in the group is former NASA Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The event took place at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – From left, John Bellardo, co-principal investigator Cubesat at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, David Rider, GRIFEX principal investigator at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and Dave Klumpar, Firebird-II principal investigator and director of the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, discuss three Educational Launch of Nanosatellites ELaNa CubeSat that are being flown as auxiliary payloads on NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission, or SMAP, with the audience of a NASA Social held for at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. This NASA Social brought together mission scientists and engineers with an audience of 70 students, educators, social media managers, bloggers, photographers and videographers who were selected from a pool of 325 applicants from 45 countries to participate in launch activities and communicate their experience with social media followers. The SMAP mission is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg on Jan. 29. To learn more about SMAP, visit http://www.nasa.gov/smap. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Rob Mueller, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office in Kennedy Space Center's Engineering and Technology Directorate, demonstrates the Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, or RASSOR, during a media event at Kennedy's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology, or ALHAT, hazard field at the north end of the Shuttle Landing Facility. The event was held to announce Moon Express Inc., of Moffett Field, California is selected to utilize Kennedy facilities for NASA's Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown, or Lunar CATALYST, initiative. Moon Express is developing a lander with capabilities that will enable delivery of payloads to the surface of the moon, as well as new science and exploration missions of interest to NASA and scientific and academic communities. Moon Express will base its activities at Kennedy and utilize the Morpheus ALHAT field and a hangar nearby for CATALYST testing. The Advanced Exploration Systems Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate manages Lunar CATALYST. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

The full-scale mock-up of NASA's MarCO CubeSat held by Farah Alibay, a systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is dwarfed by the one-half-scale model of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter behind her. MarCO, short for Mars Cube One, is the first interplanetary use of CubeSat technologies for small spacecraft. JPL is preparing two MarCO twins for launch in March 2016. They will ride along on an Atlas V launch vehicle lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with NASA's next Mars lander, InSight. MarCO is a technology demonstration aspect of the InSight mission. The mock-up in the photo is in a configuration to show the deployed position of components that correspond to MarCO's two solar panels and two antennas. During launch, those components will be stowed for a total vehicle size of about 14.4 inches (36.6 centimeters) by 9.5 inches (24.3 centimeters) by 4.6 inches (11.8 centimeters). After launch, the two MarCO CubeSats and InSight will be navigated separately to Mars. The MarCO twins will fly past the planet in September 2016 just as InSight is descending through the atmosphere and landing on the surface. MarCO is a technology demonstration to relay communications from InSight to Earth during InSight's descent and landing. InSight communications during that critical period will also be recorded by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for delayed transmission to Earth. InSight -- an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- will study the interior of Mars to improve understanding of the processes that formed and shaped rocky planets, including Earth. Note: After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair a leak in a section of the prime instrument in the science payload. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19671

Engineers for NASA's MarCO technology demonstration display a full-scale mechanical mock-up of the small craft in development as part of NASA's next mission to Mars. Mechanical engineer Joel Steinkraus and systems engineer Farah Alibay are on the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, preparing twin MarCO (Mars Cube One) CubeSats for a March 2016 launch. MarCO is the first interplanetary mission using CubeSat technologies for small spacecraft. The briefcase-size MarCO twins will ride along on an Atlas V launch vehicle lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with NASA's next Mars lander, InSight. The mock-up in the photo is in a configuration to show the deployed position of components that correspond to MarCO's two solar panels and two antennas. During launch, those components will be stowed for a total vehicle size of about 14.4 inches (36.6 centimeters) by 9.5 inches (24.3 centimeters) by 4.6 inches (11.8 centimeters). After launch, the two MarCO CubeSats and InSight will be navigated separately to Mars. The MarCO twins will fly past the planet in September 2016 just as InSight is descending through the atmosphere and landing on the surface. MarCO is a technology demonstration mission to relay communications from InSight to Earth during InSight's descent and landing. InSight communications during that critical period will also be recorded by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for delayed transmission to Earth. InSight -- an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- will study the interior of Mars to improve understanding of the processes that formed and shaped rocky planets, including Earth. After launch, the MarCO twins and InSight will be navigated separately to Mars. Note: After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair a leak in a section of the prime instrument in the science payload. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19389

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, twin communications-relay CubeSats, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) are prepared for installation on an Atlas V rocket. MarCO constitutes a technology demonstration being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena in California. They will launch in on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft to land on Mars. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. InSight is the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. InSight is scheduled for liftoff May 5, 2018. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes. InSight will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will provide a better understanding of how other rocky planets, including Earth, were created. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Several European partners, including France's space agency, the Centre National d'Étude Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center, are supporting the mission. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is providing the Atlas V launch service. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for laun

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, twin communications-relay CubeSats, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) are prepared for installation on an Atlas V rocket. MarCO constitutes a technology demonstration being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena in California. They will launch in on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft to land on Mars. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. InSight is the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. InSight is scheduled for liftoff May 5, 2018. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes. InSight will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will provide a better understanding of how other rocky planets, including Earth, were created. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Several European partners, including France's space agency, the Centre National d'Étude Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center, are supporting the mission. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is providing the Atlas V launch service. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for laun

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, twin communications-relay CubeSats, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) are prepared for installation on an Atlas V rocket. MarCO constitutes a technology demonstration being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena in California. They will launch in on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft to land on Mars. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. InSight is the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. InSight is scheduled for liftoff May 5, 2018. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes. InSight will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will provide a better understanding of how other rocky planets, including Earth, were created. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Several European partners, including France's space agency, the Centre National d'Étude Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center, are supporting the mission. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is providing the Atlas V launch service. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for laun

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, twin communications-relay CubeSats, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) are prepared for installation on an Atlas V rocket. MarCO constitutes a technology demonstration being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena in California. They will launch in on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft to land on Mars. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. InSight is the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. InSight is scheduled for liftoff May 5, 2018. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes. InSight will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will provide a better understanding of how other rocky planets, including Earth, were created. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Several European partners, including France's space agency, the Centre National d'Étude Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center, are supporting the mission. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is providing the Atlas V launch service. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for laun

At Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, twin communications-relay CubeSats, called Mars Cube One (MarCO) are prepared for installation on an Atlas V rocket. MarCO constitutes a technology demonstration being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena in California. They will launch in on the same United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, spacecraft to land on Mars. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. InSight is the first mission to explore the Red Planet's deep interior. InSight is scheduled for liftoff May 5, 2018. InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface. It will study the planet's interior by measuring its heat output and listen for marsquakes. InSight will use the seismic waves generated by marsquakes to develop a map of the planet’s deep interior. The resulting insight into Mars’ formation will provide a better understanding of how other rocky planets, including Earth, were created. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver. Several European partners, including France's space agency, the Centre National d'Étude Spatiales, and the German Aerospace Center, are supporting the mission. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, is providing the Atlas V launch service. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for laun

Workers in a clean room in Cannes, France, load the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite into a container in preparation for shipping the spacecraft to the U.S. SWOT is an international mission led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) that will survey water on more than 90% of Earth's surface. The spacecraft will view water in Earth's lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the ocean in higher definition than ever before. The information that SWOT gathers will help inform water management decisions and prepare communities for rising seas and changing coastlines. It will also help researchers better understand the exchange of heat and carbon between the ocean and atmosphere, an important component of the role that Earth's ocean plays in the planet's climate. SWOT will launch out of the Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California no earlier than Dec. 5, 2022. SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the United Kingdom Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA is providing the KaRIn instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES is providing the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the platform, and ground control segment. CSA is providing the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA is providing the launch vehicle and associated launch services. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24910

NASA's two MarCO CubeSats will be flying past Mars in September 2016 just as NASA's next Mars lander, InSight, is descending through the Martian atmosphere and landing on the surface. MarCO, for Mars Cube One, will provide an experimental communications relay to inform Earth quickly about the landing. This illustration depicts a moment during the lander's descent when it is transmitting data in the UHF radio band, and the twin MarCO craft are receiving those transmissions while simultaneously relaying the data to Earth in a different radio band. Each of the MarCO twins carries two solar panels for power, and both UHF-band and X-band radio antennas. As a technology demonstration, MarCO could lead to other "bring-your-own-relay" mission designs and also to use of miniature spacecraft for a wide diversity of interplanetary missions. MarCO is the first interplanetary use of CubeSat technologies for small spacecraft. CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardized small size and modular use of off-the-shelf technologies to streamline development. Many have been made by university students, and dozens have been launched into Earth orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft. The two briefcase-size MarCO CubeSats will ride along with InSight on an Atlas V launch vehicle lifting off in March 2016 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. MarCO is a technology demonstration aspect of the InSight mission and not needed for that mission's success. InSight, an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will investigate the deep interior of Mars to advance understanding of how rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved. After launch, the MarCO twins and InSight will be navigated separately to Mars. Note: After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair a leak in a section of the prime instrument in the science payload. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19388

Astronaut Chiaki Mukai conducts the Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) experiment inside the International Microgravity Laboratory-2 (IML-2) mission science module. Dr. Chiaki Mukai is one of the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) astronauts chosen by NASA as a payload specialist (PS). She was the second NASDA PS who flew aboard the Space Shuttle, and was the first female astronaut in Asia. When humans go into space, the lack of gravity causes many changes in the body. One change is that fluids normally kept in the lower body by gravity shift upward to the head and chest. This is why astronauts' faces appear chubby or puffy. The change in fluid volume also affects the heart. The reduced fluid volume means that there is less blood to circulate through the body. Crewmembers may experience reduced blood flow to the brain when returning to Earth. This leads to fainting or near-fainting episodes. With the use of the LBNP to simulate the pull of gravity in conjunction with fluids, salt tablets can recondition the cardiovascular system. This treatment, called "soak," is effective up to 24 hours. The LBNP uses a three-layer collapsible cylinder that seals around the crewmember's waist which simulates the effects of gravity and helps pull fluids into the lower body. The data collected will be analyzed to determine physiological changes in the crewmembers and effectiveness of the treatment. The IML-2 was the second in a series of Spacelab flights designed by the international science community to conduct research in a microgravity environment Managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center, the IML-2 was launched on July 8, 1994 aboard the STS-65 Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia mission.

To show the kind of imagery that data from the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite mission will be used to produce, researchers pointed to a 2013 image of flooding extent in the Pacaya-Samaria National Reserve that used data from the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), an airborne system. In the image of this flood-prone area of the Amazonian jungle in Peru, black indicates open water, grayish-green is tropical forest, dark green is low-lying or floating vegetation, and red and pink are two different types of flooded vegetation. NISAR will offer detailed insights into the flooding patterns of the planet's wetland ecosystems, which will help researchers understand how these areas are being affected by climate change and human activity and the role they play in the global carbon cycle. NISAR is a joint mission of the U.S. and Indian space agencies. When in orbit, its sophisticated L- and S-band radar systems will scan nearly all of Earth's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days with exquisite precision. Scheduled to launch in early 2024, NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission's L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO's U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26112

To show the kind of imagery that data from the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite mission will produce, researchers pointed to this composite image of a portion of the so-called "arc of deforestation," a region on the southeast edge of the Amazonian jungle in Brazil where forests are being cleared at a fast pace through human activity. This three-color image shows change to the land cover in the Xingu River basin between 1996 (red) and 2007 (blue/green), using data from the Japanese L-band SAR satellites JERS-1 and ALOS-1, respectively. Black indicates areas converted from rainforest to agricultural land prior to 1996, and red shows the additional areas that had been cleared by 2007. NISAR will offer detailed insights into how the planet's forest ecosystems are changing over time, which will help researchers understand regional and global dynamics of deforestation and study the role of wooded areas in the global carbon cycle. NISAR could also help improve accounting of forest loss and growth, as countries that rely on logging try to shift toward more sustainable practices. NISAR is a joint mission of the U.S. and Indian space agencies. When in orbit, its sophisticated L- and S-band radar systems will scan nearly all of Earth's land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days with exquisite precision. Scheduled to launch in early 2024, NISAR is an equal collaboration between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation and marks the first time the two agencies have cooperated on hardware development for an Earth-observing mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission's L-band SAR. NASA is also providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. ISRO's U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, which is leading the ISRO component of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band SAR electronics, the launch vehicle, and associated launch services and satellite mission operations. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26111

Caption: A NASA Super Pressure Balloon with the COSI payload is ready for launch from McMurdo, Antarctica. Credit: NASA More info: NASA’s globetrotting Balloon Program Office is wrapping up its 2014-2015 Antarctic campaign while prepping for an around-the-world flight launching out of Wanaka, New Zealand, in March. After 16 days, 12 hours, and 56 minutes of flight, operators successfully conducted a planned flight termination of the Suborbital Polarimeter for Inflation Dust and the Epoch of Reionization (SPIDER) mission Saturday, Jan. 18, the final mission of the campaign. Other flights in the 2014-2015 Antarctic campaign included the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA-III) mission as well as the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) payload flown on the developmental Super Pressure Balloon (SPB). ANITA-III successfully wrapped up Jan. 9 after 22 days, 9 hours, and 14 minutes of flight. Flight controllers terminated the COSI flight 43 hours into the mission after detecting a small gas leak in the balloon. Crews are now working to recover all three instruments from different locations across the continent. The 6,480-pound SPIDER payload is stationary at a position about 290 miles from the United Kingdom’s Sky Blu Logistics Facility in Antarctica. The 4,601 pound ANITA-III payload, located about 100 miles from Australia’s Davis Station, and the 2,866 pound COSI payload, located about 340 miles from the United States McMurdo Station both had numerous key components recovered in the past few days. Beginning in late January, the Balloon Program Office will deploy a team to Wanaka, New Zealand, to begin preparations for an SPB flight, scheduled to launch in March. The Program Office seeks to fly the SPB more than 100 days, which would shatter the current flight duration record of 55 days, 1 hour, and 34 minutes for a large scientific balloon. “We’re looking forward to the New Zealand campaign and hopefully a history-making flight with the Super Pressure Balloon,” said Debbie Fairbrother, NASA’s Balloon Program Office Chief. Most scientific balloons see altitude variances based on temperature changes in the atmosphere at night and during the day. The SPB is capable of missions on the order of 100 days or more at constant float altitudes due to the pressurization of the balloon. “Stable, long-duration flights at near-space altitudes above more than 99 percent of the atmosphere are highly desirable in the science community, and we’re ready to deliver,” said Fairbrother. In addition to the SPB flight in March, the Balloon Program Office has 10 more balloon missions planned through September 2015 to include scheduled test flights of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator, which is testing new technologies for landing larger, heavier payloads on Mars. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility manages the agency’s Scientific Balloon Program with 10 to 15 flights each year from launch sites worldwide. The balloons are massive in volume; the average-sized balloon could hold the volume of nearly 200 blimps. Previous work on balloons have contributed to confirming the Big Bang Theory. For more information on NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program, see: <a href="http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820/index.html" rel="nofollow">sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820/index.html</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility is located on Wallops Island, Va. and is the site of tonight's moon mission launch. Satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-East satellite shows that high pressure remains in control over the Mid-Atlantic region, providing an almost cloud-free sky. This visible image of the Mid-Atlantic was captured by NOAA's GOES-East satellite at 17:31 UTC/1:31 p.m. EDT and shows some fair weather clouds over the Delmarva Peninsula (which consists of the state of Delaware and parts of Maryland and Virginia - which together is &quot;Delmarva&quot;) and eastern Virginia and North Carolina. Most of the region is cloud-free, making for a perfect viewing night to see a launch. NOAA operates GOES-East and NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. creates images and animations from the data. NOAA's National Weather Service forecast for tonight, Sept. 6 calls for winds blowing from the east to 11 mph, with clear skies and overnight temperatures dropping to the mid-fifties. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, known as LADEE (pronounced like &quot;laddie&quot;), launches tonight at 11:27 p.m. EDT from Pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, at NASA Wallops and will be visible along the Mid-Atlantic with tonight's perfect weather conditions. LADEE is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. This will be the first launch to lunar orbit from NASA Wallops and the first launch of a Minotaur V rocket – the biggest ever launched from Wallops. NASA's LADEE is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. A thorough understanding of these characteristics will address long-standing unknowns, and help scientists understand other planetary bodies as well. LADEE also carries an important secondary payload, the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, or LLCD, which will help us open a new era of space communications by becoming NASA's first high rate, two-way, space laser system. Live coverage of the launch can be seen beginning at 9:30 p.m. EDT on NASA-TV at: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/ntv" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/ntv</a> For more information about LADEE, visit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/ladee" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/ladee</a> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>