NASA space-weather satellite launches after one-day delay
By Harrison Liao Medill Reports Due to weather and communications problems, NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer satellite (ICON), initially set to launch Wednesday, remained grounded for an extra day. At first, precipitation held back Northrup Grumman’s L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, ICON’s courier into the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere where it would launch. When weather finally cleared up […]
Freeze-casting materials in space: Meeting the challenges of vacuums and microgravity
Northwestern University’s SpaceICE team, led by Northwestern Professor David Dunand, is preparing to test freeze-casting of materials in space, in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Bradley University. Fabricating materials is essential for a journey to Mars or for future space colonies. The SpaceICE team is pioneering the freeze-casting instrumentation for the […]
Making materials in space – freeze it first
This summer a team of Northwestern University undergraduates will finalize instrumentation designs for a NASA satellite mission that will test the manufacturing of materials while in orbit. The students are building the device for SpaceICE to study freeze-casting, a process that could eventually be used to build materials on other planets in space colonies. “In terms of […]
Revolutionary weather satellite to aid in earlier warning of severe storms
By Kelly Calagna CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NOAA’s revolutionary weather satellite successfully launched Saturday from Cape Canaveral at 6:42 p.m. EST. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) means earlier warnings, expected to save lives from severe weather situations. GOES-R, called GOES-16 as soon as it detached from the booster, is the first in a series […]
Innovation on the launch pad: How media capture a NASA rocket launch
By Kelly Calagna KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – Duct tape, bubble wrap, aluminum foil, plastic bags, ground stakes, bungee cords, squares of plywood and plastic storage containers are just some of the sophisticated tools adapted by journalists and photographers as they set up their remotely activated cameras at Saturday’s GOES-R weather satellite launch site at the […]
NASA blasts off next stage of private resupply contracts
By Madison Hopkins NASA has taken the privatization of space innovation to new heights with the announcement of three new contracts for commercial resupply services. Newcomer Sierra Nevada Corp, of Sparks, Nevada, will join the ranks of incumbents SpaceX, of Hawthorne, California, and Orbital ATK, of Dulles, Virginia, to ferry cargo supplies to the International […]
Chasing nighttime thunderstorms with NOAA and NASA
By Lizz Giordano The weather research teams waited anxiously for the nighttime storms to appear over the Great Plains. Scientists know very little about how the storms form but they do know how the rainfall from these storms sustains lives, property, agriculture and water resources. So the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and […]
