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“Here’s some of the stories trending This
Week at NASA!”

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Outside the International Space Station, Expedition
50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Flight

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Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space
Agency conducted a spacewalk on Jan. 13, to

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complete an upgrade that included installing
adapter plates and hooking up electrical connections

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for six new lithium-ion batteries, which were
delivered to the station in December.

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Kimbrough and fellow NASA astronaut Peggy
Whitson began the upgrade work during a spacewalk

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on Jan. 6.

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NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman talked
about the innovation needed to enable NASA’s

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Journey to Mars at the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech

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Forum on Jan. 10 in Grapevine, Texas.

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The agency currently is developing the technologies
and skills to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.

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Also – in recognition of Langley Research
Center’s Centennial -- center Director David

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Bowles was joined by several former Langley
directors to talk about the many contributions

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the center has made in its 100 years of research
to achieve excellence in flight.

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Those contributions continue at Langley today.

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Engineers there are using a 56-year old wind
tunnel, capable of producing winds speeds

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up to 900 mph, to understand how NASA’s
Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will behave

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at speeds just below supersonic.

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That’s the speed where shock waves can oscillate
on the rocket and apply unsteady pressures.

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Understanding how the rocket responds to these
pressures is important to the rocket's structural

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strength and guiding it on a safe flight to
orbit.

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SLS will send an Orion spacecraft to an asteroid
and other deep space destinations on the Journey

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to Mars.

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NASA will kick off three new Earth science
field experiments in 2017.

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The missions – part of the agency’s globe-spanning
Earth Expeditions research campaign – get

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underway in January and February.

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One will collect data on coral reef health
and volcanic gas emissions, another will monitor

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the diversity of oceanic phytoplankton, and
their impact on the marine carbon cycle, and

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the third is part of a multiyear effort to
determine how much water is stored in Earth’s

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terrestrial snow-covered regions.

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Earth Expeditions investigates some of the
most pressing questions about how our planet

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is changing and what impacts humans are having
on it.

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The extreme weather affecting the western
U.S. is clearly visible from space.

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The NASA/NOAA GOES project created a satellite
animation of the system that brought extreme

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rainfall to that region Jan. 6 through 9.

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Meanwhile, an image captured by NASA's Aqua
satellite showed widespread snow blanketing

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Washington, Idaho, Oregon, northern California
and Nevada.

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Predictions by the National Weather Service
included flash flooding and extremely heavy

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snowfall.

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And that’s what’s up this week @NASA …