A Jan. 26 event at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans marked recently completed work by technicians there to weld together the pressure vessel for the next Orion deep space crew module. The event also was an opportunity for NASA officials to thank employees and to show the progress on Orion and the core stage of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Orion pressure vessel will be shipped to Kennedy Space Center in Florida next month, where engineers will continue to prepare it for the first flight of the SLS rocket. Also, Space station One-year crew update, New color movie of Ceres and NASA Day of Remembrance.

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Orion and SLS showcased at Michoud

A Jan. 26 event at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, marked recently completed work by technicians there to weld together the pressure vessel for the next Orion deep space crew module. The event also was an opportunity for NASA officials to thank employees and to show the progress on Orion and the core stage of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The Orion pressure vessel will be shipped to Kennedy Space Center in Florida next month, where engineers will continue to prepare it for the first flight of the SLS rocket.

Space station, One-year crew update

Even as the one-year mission aboard the International Space Station winds down, activity continues at a steady clip on the orbital laboratory. This week, those activities included an altitude correction in advance of the landing in early March of Expedition 46 – including one-year crew members Scott Kelly of NASA and Russia’s Mikhail Kornienko, work by Kelly and Flight Engineer Tim Peake to prepare for a nanosatellite deployment, and NASA astronaut Tim Kopra continued work with a fire studies experiment. The crew also is preparing for a Russian spacewalk on Feb. 3.

New color movie of Ceres

A new color animation, based on images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows a simulated flight over the surface of dwarf planet Ceres. The enhanced color movie highlights variations in the appearance of surface materials and helps emphasize the most prominent craters on Ceres. Dawn is the first mission to visit Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft is in its final and lowest mapping orbit, at about 240 miles from the surface.

NASA Day of Remembrance

Jan. 28 was NASA’s Day of Remembrance and the 30^th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger accident. During the annual Day of Remembrance, the agency pays tribute to the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and space shuttle Columbia, as well as other members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, and other agency senior officials participated in a wreath-laying observance at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Similar observances took place at the Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center and other centers around the agency.

And that’s what’s up this week @NASA.