Videos: “Space to Ground” ISS report – June.19.2020

Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:

** Down to Earth – The Fragile Earth – NASA Johnson

In celebration of the upcoming #SpaceStation20th anniversary, European Space Agency Astronaut Luca Parmitano, who has flown two missions, shares his new awareness of how we are changing and influencing our planet in this this episode of “Down to Earth – The Fragile Earth.”

** Expedition 63 Inflight CBS News, Fox Business, CNN Business – June 16,2020 – NASA

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 63 Flight Engineers Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley of NASA discussed the progress of their mission on the orbital outpost during a series of in-flight interviews June 16 with CBS News, CNN Business News and Fox Business News. Behnken and Hurley launched on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft May 30 and arrived at the station on May 31, marking the first launch of U.S. astronauts on an American spacecraft from American soil to the station since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011.

** A Recipe for Cooling Atoms to Almost Absolute Zero – NASA JPL

NASA’s Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station cools atoms down to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, or the temperature at which atoms should stop moving entirely. Nowhere in the universe are there atoms that reach this temperature naturally. But how do scientists accomplish this feat? It’s a three-step process that starts with scientists hitting the atoms with precisely-tuned lasers to slow them down.

The colder atoms are, the slower they move, and the easier they are to study. Ultracold atoms can also form a fifth state of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Learning about the fundamental properties of atoms has laid the foundation for technologies that most of us use every day, such as computers. As the first ultracold atom facility in Earth orbit, Cold Atom Lab is opening up new avenues for investigation. You can learn more about Cold Atom Lab here: https://coldatomlab.jpl.nasa.gov/