Oct 19 2017
From The Space Library
MEDIA ADVISORY M17-124 Georgia Students to Speak with NASA Astronauts on Space Station he six Expedition 53 crew members gather together in the Destiny laboratory module for a group portrait. The six Expedition 53 crew members gather together in the Destiny laboratory module for a group portrait. From left are astronauts Joe Acaba, Paolo Nespoli, and Mark Vande Hei, Commander Randy Bresnik and cosmonauts Sergey Ryazanskiy and Alexander Misurkin. On Monday, Acaba, Vande Hei and Bresnik will speak with students from New Prospect Elementary School in Alpharetta, Georgia. Credits: NASA
Students at New Prospect Elementary School in Alpharetta, Georgia, will speak with the NASA astronauts living, working and doing research aboard the International Space Station at 10:50 a.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 23. The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
Twenty Georgia elementary school students will be invited to ask Randy Bresnik, Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei questions about living in space aboard the space station, NASA’s deep space exploration plans, or any other topic that interests the students.
This is the second mission to the International Space Station for Expedition 53 commander Bresnik, who launched to the space station on July 28 and is scheduled to return to Earth in December. Acaba and Vande Hei arrived at the space station Sept. 12. It’s the third mission to space for Acaba and the first for Vande Hei.
Media interested in covering the event should contact Donna Lowry or Susan Hale at 470-254-6830 or via email communications@fultonschools.org. New Prospect Elementary School is at 3055 Kimball Bridge Road in Alpharetta.
Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides unique, authentic experiences designed to enhance student learning, performance and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of NASA’s Year of Education on Station which provides extensive space station-related resources and opportunities to students and educators.
CONTRACT RELEASE C17-035 NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Sentinel-6A Mission
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the Sentinel-6A mission. Launch is currently targeted for November 2020, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The total cost for NASA to launch Sentinel-6A is approximately $97 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs.
The Sentinel-6A mission, also known as Jason Continuity of Service (Jason-CS), is a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the European Space Agency, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). This mission provides operational ocean altimetry to provide continuity of ocean topography measurements and continues the long-term global sea surface height data record begun in 1992 by the Topography Experiment (TOPEX)/Poseidon and Jason 1, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 and Jason-3 missions. A secondary objective of the mission is to collect high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature, using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio-Occultation sounding technique, to assess temperature changes in the troposphere and stratosphere and to support numerical weather prediction.
NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service. The Sentinel-6 Project office is located at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
CONTRACT RELEASE C17-036 NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Landsat 9 Mission
NASA has selected United Launch Services LLC (ULS) of Centennial, Colorado, to provide launch services for the Landsat 9 mission. The mission is currently targeted for a contract launch date of June 2021, while protecting for the ability to launch as early as December 2020, on an Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex 3E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The total cost for NASA to launch Landsat 9 is approximately $153.8 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs.
Landsat 9 is a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to continue the Landsat program’s critical role in monitoring, understanding, and managing the land resources needed to sustain human life. Today’s increased rates of global land cover and land use change have profound consequences for weather and climate change, ecosystem function and services, carbon cycling and sequestration, resource management, the national and global economy, and human health and society. Landsat is the only U.S. satellite system designed and operated to repeatedly make multi-spectral observations of the global land surface at a moderate scale that shows both natural and human-induced change.
NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the ULS launch service. The Landsat 9 Flight Project office is located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and manages spacecraft development for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in partnership with USGS in Washington.
