The Space Station’s Newest Residents on This Week @NASA – March 29, 2024

A NASA astronaut is one of the space station's newest residents planning for the upcoming total solar eclipse, and a notable award for an historic asteroid sample return mission. A few of the stories to tell you about, This Week at NASA. On March 23, NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson and two crewmates launched to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Two days later, they arrived safely to the station. Dyson will spend about six months aboard the orbiting outpost conducting a host of science and educational activities as a flight engineer for the Expedition 70 and 71 crews. We hosted a media briefing on March 26 with other government agencies at our headquarters in Washington to discuss plans to engage the public, share safety information, and conduct science during the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. Fifteen states across the U.S. could experience up to four-and-a-half minutes of darkness during the eclipse when the moon moves fully in front of the sun. We will host live coverage of the eclipse starting at 1 p.m. EDT that day on NASA+, the agency's website, and the NASA app. NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is being awarded the National Aeronautic Association's Robert J. Collier Trophy for being the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and deliver it to Earth for study. The NAA awards the trophy annually to recognize what it determines to be the year's greatest achievement in aerospace and astronautics in America. The OREx team will be celebrated at an awards dinner in June, 2024. During the Artemis II mission next year, the astronaut crew will manually test-drive the Orion spacecraft for the first time. They will command Orion through a series of moves during the so-called Proximity Operations Demonstration to evaluate how the spacecraft flies with astronauts at the controls. The demonstration is a key flight test objective that helps us reduce risk for future missions that involve rendezvous and docking operations with other spacecraft. That's what's up this week at NASA! For more about what else we're up to, check out nasa.gov.