The Expedition 48/49 crew that launched July 7 from Kazakhstan arrived as scheduled at the International Space Station July 9 Eastern time. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency were welcomed aboard by station Commander Jeff Williams of NASA and Flight Engineers Jeff Williams and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos. In the coming months, the crew is scheduled to receive supplies and experiments from several cargo spacecraft. These include a Russian Progress scheduled to launch July 16 Eastern time and a SpaceX Dragon – scheduled for lift off July 18 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Also, ISS Research and Development Conference, NASA Gets Green Light to Build Mars 2020 Rover, Juno’s First In-Orbit Views of Jupiter, Innovative Light Jet Visits Langley, Moon Photobombs Earth, Again and New Horizons’ “Landing” Video.

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New Crew Arrives Safely to ISS

The Expedition 48/49 crew that launched July 7 from Kazakhstan arrived as scheduled at the International Space Station July 9 Eastern time. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency were welcomed aboard by station Commander Jeff Williams of NASA and Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos. In the coming months, the crew is scheduled to receive supplies and experiments from several cargo spacecraft. These include a Russian Progress scheduled to launch July 16 Eastern time and a SpaceX Dragon – scheduled for lift off July 18 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

ISS Research and Development Conference

The fifth annual ISS Research and Development Conference took place July 12-14 in San Diego. The event, hosted by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), in cooperation with NASA, featured leaders from NASA and the government community, industry, and academia discussing how use of the International Space Station is helping to push research to new heights. Attendees explored innovations and breakthroughs in microgravity research, life sciences, materials development, technology development, human health and remote sensing, the potential applications for space-based research, and the economic benefits of increased commercial activity in low-Earth orbit.

NASA Gets Green Light to Build Mars 2020 Rover

The team developing NASA’s next rover mission to Mars has received a go-ahead from the agency to proceed with building the rover for launch in 2020. A July 15 Facebook Live event from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory featured updated news about the Mars 2020 rover and its mission. It will be almost identical to the Curiosity rover currently on Mars, but will have enhanced landing technology, the ability to prepare soil and rock samples for return to Earth and microphones to capture sound. The rover will look for signs of past life in a region of the Red Planet where the ancient environment was favorable for microbial life.

Juno’s First In-Orbit Views of Jupiter

This color view from NASA’s Juno spacecraft is made from some of the first images taken by JunoCam after the spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 5. The image was taken on July 10, when the spacecraft was 2.7 million miles from Jupiter on the outbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit. The image shows atmospheric features on Jupiter, including the Great Red Spot, and three of Jupiter’s four largest moons. The first high-resolution images of the planet will be taken on August 27 when the Juno spacecraft makes its next close pass to Jupiter.

Innovative Light Jet Visits Langley

NASA’s Langley Research Center hosted a rare flying visitor July 12 when a HondaJet flew into the Hampton, Virginia facility. The HondaJet is one of a relatively new class of airplanes called light jets, designed to carry up to seven passengers and be fast, safe, reliable and able to use very small airports. Light jets were developed in part with the help of research done by NASA’s Advanced General Aviation Transportation Experiments alliance and its follow-on, the Small Aircraft Transportation System project, both led out of Langley.

Moon Photobombs Earth, Again!

For only the second time in a year, NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured views of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. The series of lunar photobombing images show the moon moving over the Indian and Pacific oceans July 4 and July 5.

DSCOVR conducts real-time solar wind monitoring of Earth for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

New Horizons’ “Landing” Video

A new video released on July 14, one year after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first ever flyby of Pluto, shows what a spacecraft might see during an actual landing on Pluto. Made from more than 100 New Horizons images taken over six weeks, the video goes from a distant view of the dwarf planet all the way in to a simulated “landing” near Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum. New Horizons currently is headed to the Kuiper Belt to explore an object that is much smaller than Pluto but about one billion miles farther out. It is scheduled to arrive there in early 2019.

And that’s what’s up this week @NASA.