International Space Station on EARTH Magazine

Students send experiments to the International Space Station

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 11:14:57 -0400

Three fifth graders from New York City's NEST+m School describe their bread mold experiment, which is aboard the Orb-2 mission, seen on the screen behind them. Credit: Harvey Leifert.

As Orb-2, the latest mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), lifted off on July 13, no one at NASA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va., was more thrilled than 16 elementary and high school students whose scientific experiments were on board the Cygnus spacecraft. The fifth through 12th graders represented 15 teams totaling 99 students from across the United States whose proposals had survived a rigorous screening program.

Undergraduates build and launch a satellite to measure atmospheric drag

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:39:19 -0400

In 2000, the International Space Station (ISS) was the victim of a severe geomagnetic storm: a wave of solar particles hit Earth’s atmosphere, warming it, expanding it, and increasing its density. In just a few days, the space station's elevation dropped several kilometers. The incident received a lot of attention in the media, but thousands of satellites experience changes in altitude during solar storms. Their controllers — including NASA and the Air Force’s Space Command — rely on imperfect models to predict the satellites' locations, and it costs time and money to reposition these devices.

Hazardous Living: Discovery's emotional final voyage

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

The space shuttle Discovery lifted off Feb. 24 at 4:53 p.m. ET for the final time. NASA TV

Robonaut 2 is a humanoid robot designed to help astronauts on boring or dangerous tasks. The Discovery crew is delivering Robonaut 2 to the International Space Station. NASA

Megan Sever (pictured at Yellowstone) writes Hazardous Living for EARTH. Megan Sever

Today, at 4:53 p.m. ET, the space shuttle Discovery launched for the last time. When it returns to Earth in 11 days, the shuttle will be retired.