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A pair of power plays aboard the space station
…

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Checking out progress of our Commercial Crew
Program …

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And studying the frontier of space … a few
of the stories to tell you about – This

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Week at NASA!

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Outside the International Space Station, our
Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan conducted

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the first two spacewalks of what Koch refers
to as, “the great @Space_Station battery

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swap” – a series of five expected spacewalks
this month to upgrade the station’s power

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system, by replacing nickel-hydrogen batteries
with new, more powerful lithium-ion batteries.

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The pair kicked off the series with a seven-hour
and one minute spacewalk on Oct. 6, followed

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by the second outing five days later.

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The third spacewalk in the great space station
battery swap series is scheduled for Oct.

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16.

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On Oct. 10, our Administrator Jim Bridenstine,
visited the Hawthorne, California headquarters

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of our commercial partner, SpaceX.

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While there, they saw progress the company
is making to fly astronauts to and from the

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space station aboard its Crew Dragon spacecraft,
as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew

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Program.

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This will help return the ability to fly American
astronauts on American spacecraft from American

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soil – an important step toward sending
the first woman and the next man to the Moon

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by 2024, as part of our Artemis program.

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Meanwhile, Bridenstine, Deputy Administrator
Jim Morhard, Associate Administrator for Science

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Thomas Zurbuchen and James Webb Space Telescope
Program Director Greg Robinson visited Northrop

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Grumman Aerospace Systems in California, where
the fully assembled Webb Telescope is undergoing

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testing, prior to its eventual mission to
seek out the first galaxies that formed in

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the early universe.

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“Pegasus away.”

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On Oct. 10 – in the skies over the Atlantic
Ocean, we air-launched the Ionospheric Connection

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Explorer, or ICON mission aboard a Northrop
Grumman Pegasus XL rocket.

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ICON will study the dynamic region of our
upper atmosphere, where terrestrial and space

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weather meet, known as the ionosphere.

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The mission could help us better understand
the physical processes at play in the ionosphere

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that are potentially detrimental to radio
communications, satellites and the physical

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health of astronauts.

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The first all-electric configuration of our
X-57 Maxwell aircraft has been delivered to

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our Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards,
California, for engineers to begin ground,

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taxi and eventually, flight tests.

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The X-57 is our first all-electric experimental
aircraft, or X-plane, and the first crewed

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X-plane in two decades.

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A goal of the X-57 project is to further advance
the design and airworthiness process for using

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distributed electric propulsion technology
in general aviation aircraft – which has

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the potential to increase efficiency while
decreasing emissions, and noise.

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Registration is open for our 2020 Human Exploration
Rover Challenge, set for April 17-18, near

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our Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama.

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The annual event is open to student teams
from high schools, colleges and universities

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around the world to design, engineer and test
a human-powered rover, on a course simulating

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terrain found on our Moon, Mars, and other
planetary bodies.

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It is one of several challenges we use to
encourage students to pursue degrees and careers

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in science, technology, engineering, and math
related fields.

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For more details go to nasa.gov/roverchallenge.

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That’s what’s up this week @NASA …