Bean was the lunar pilot on the Apollo 12 mission and he and mission commander Pete Conrad explored the Moon’s Ocean of Storms in November 1969.
Bean became an accomplish artist after retiring from the astronaut corps. See galleries of his works at Alan Bean Art. He had been allowed to keep the name patch from his Apollo EVA suit and it turned out to be saturated with space dust. He would crush a tiny bit of the patch into the paints used for his lunar renderings.
The Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft launched on Monday made its scheduled rendezvous with the International Space Station this morning. NASA astronaut Scott Tingle controlled a robotic arm on the station to capture the craft and bring it up to the Unity module where it was attached.
A brief overview of some of the research payloads delivered to the station:
This diagram shows where the Cygnus is berthed on the station as well as where other vehicles are located:
May 24, 2018: International Space Station Configuration. Four spaceships are attached to the space station including the Orbital ATK Cygnus resupply ship, the Progress 69 resupply ship and the Soyuz MS-07 and MS-08 crew ships.
Two launches by US commercial rocket companies took place this week:
** A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched on Tuesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the coast of California with seven satellites. First released after reaching a low earth orbit were the two GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on) research spacecraft sponsored by NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). After a coast period and a brief firing of the upper stage engine, five Iridium NEXT communications satellites were deployed successfully.
The GRACE-FO spacecraft
will continue a study begun by the original GRACE mission, which proved that water movement can be tracked with high precision by its effect on Earth’s gravitational field. GRACE-FO will continue the record of regional variations in gravity, telling us about changes in glaciers, ground water, sea levels and the health of our planet as a whole.
The five NEXT satellites join 50 others launched previously by SpaceX, ten at a time. There will be two more F9 launches of NEXT satellites this year to complete the constellation.