This Week at NASA | This Week @ NASA: Launching a Mission to Study Earth’s Water
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Tracking the movement of Earth’s water… Resupplying the International Space Station … And our Administrator testifies about the agency’s proposed budget – a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Launch of GRACE-FO Mission Launch Commentator: The twin satellites for the GRACE Follow-On, or GRACE-FO mission, launched May 22 from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. A joint mission with the German Research Centre for Geosciences, GRACE-FO will observe the continuous movement of water and other changes in Earth’s mass, on and beneath the planet’s surface to help us to better understand our planet. This mission will continue the work of the original GRACE mission which ended science operations in October 2017. GRACE-FO launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with five Iridium NEXT communications satellites, as part of a commercial rideshare arrangement. NASA Sends New Research on Orbital ATK Mission to Space Station Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station May 24 with about 7,400 pounds of equipment, cargo and supplies to support dozens of the more than 250 investigations underway on the orbital laboratory. The Cygnus – which launched three days earlier from our Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia – also delivered new experiments, ranging from investigations on emergency navigation to ultra-cold atom research. This is Orbital ATK’s ninth contracted cargo resupply mission to the station. Bridenstine Testifies at Senate Hearing on NASA’s FY 2019 Budget On May 23, our Administrator Jim Bridenstine testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies about the Fiscal Year 2019 funding request and budget justification for NASA. NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine: The President’s request of almost $20 billion for NASA provides resources to advance exploration of the Moon and deep space and pursue the cutting-edge science and aeronautics technology breakthroughs at the core of our mission. More Than 1.1 Million Names Installed on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe The names of more than 1.1 million Earthlings will travel aboard our Parker Solar Probe on its upcoming mission to travel closer to our Sun than any spacecraft ever has before. A memory card with the names is mounted on a plaque dedicated to the mission’s namesake, heliophysicist Eugene Parker, who first theorized the existence of the solar wind. The mission is scheduled to launch July 31, from our Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That’s what’s up this week @NASA … (c)2018 NASA | SCVTV
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