Astronauts Capture Rare Photograph of a Red Sprite

The shuttle Atlantis had its water tanks removed in May also for future use on the ISS, according to NASA’s Steve Lighthill. It has a flat panel light bank that includes red, blue and green LEDs for plant growth and crew observation.

But while the most recent harvest is the first to be eaten, they’re not the first to be successfully grown. Having a basic knowledge of radio transmitters, and being able to build one powerful enough to reach the space station are obvious prerequisites, but you also must be able to identify where overhead the station is flying in order to find a window of opportunity for contact.

As a result, NASA recently extended its contract with Roscosmos, the Russian federal space agency, informing Congress that it plans to spend another $490 million to secure six more Soyuz seats for U.S. and partner astronauts through 2018 and landing support into 2019.

Towards the end of last week, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and the other cosmonauts now aboard the worldwide Space Station got to feast their eyes on the Northern Lights from high up in our planet’s orbit. She says she was one of fifteen participants to be allowed to ask the ISS astronauts a question via video conference.

“Note the tendrils (purple) rising from the thunderstorm (bright white/blue) up toward the flash of the sprite (red), sort of like an electrical puppeteer and marionette”.

NASA was successful in their study of growing vegetables in space that started in May 2014.

The seeds are contained in rooting pillows, and were “activated” by Kelly on July 8, Nasa said.

In a letter to Congress August 5, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said “for five years now, the Congress, while incrementally increasing annual funding, has not adequately funded the commercial crew program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned”.

The project that won the grant is called “Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food, Nutraceuticals, and Materials: Closing the Loop for Long-Term Space Travel”, and is led by Mark Blenner of Clemson University, South Carolina.