This yr’s summer time solstice for the northern hemisphere arrives at 11:54 a.m. EDT, that means as we speak is the longest day of the yr! The variety of daylight varies by latitude, so our headquarters in Washington, D.C. will see 14 hours, 53 minutes, and 51 seconds of daylight. Quite a bit can occur in that point! Let’s discover out extra.
In the event you’re spending the day outdoors, you may be within the path of our Earth Science Satellite tv for pc Fleet (ESSF)! The fleet, made up of over a dozen Earth commentary satellites, will cross over the continental United States about 37 instances throughout as we speak’s daylight.
These missions gather knowledge on atmospheric chemistry and composition, cloud cowl, ocean ranges, local weather, ecosystem dynamics, precipitation, and glacial motion, amongst different issues. They goal to do every part from predicting excessive climate to serving to informing the general public and determination makers with the atmosphere by GPS and imaging. Right this moment, their sensors will ship again over 200 gigabytes (GB) of knowledge again to the bottom by sundown.
Because the solar units as we speak, the Worldwide House Station (ISS) shall be finishing its tenth orbit since dawn. In that point, slightly greater than 1 terabyte-worth of knowledge shall be downlinked to Earth.
That quantity encompasses knowledge from floor communications, payloads, experiments, and management and navigation indicators for the station. Roughly 330 GB of that TB is video, together with reside broadcasts and downlinks with information retailers. However as recently-returned astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor likes to level out, there’s nonetheless room for enjoyable. The astronauts aboard the ISS can request YouTube movies or motion pictures for what she likes to name “household film evening.”
Astronauts aboard the station additionally ship again pictures—LOTS of them. Final yr, astronauts despatched again a mean of 66,912 pictures per thirty days! Throughout as we speak’s lengthy hours of daylight, we count on the crew to ship again about 656 pictures. However with Expedition 59 astronauts David Saint-Jacques (CSA), Anne McClain (NASA), and Oleg Kononenko (RKA) arduous at work making ready to return to Earth on Monday, that quantity may be rather less.
Say you’re feeling not noted after seeing the household dinners and wish to be part of the crew. Would you might have sufficient daylight to journey to the ISS and again on the longest day of the yr? Sure, however provided that you’re speedy sufficient, and plan your launch good. With the present quickest launch-to-docking time of about six hours, you may full two-and-a-half flights to the ISS as we speak between dawn and sundown.
When getting back from orbit, it’s an extended ordeal. After the Expedition 59 trio arrives on Earth Monday evening, they’ll need to journey from Kazakhstan to Houston to start their post-flight actions. Their journey ought to take about 18 hours and half-hour, just some hours longer than the hours of daylight we’ll see as we speak.
Blissful solstice! Be certain to tune in with us on Monday evening for reside protection of the return of Expedition 59. Till then, benefit from the longest day of the yr!
Be certain to observe us on Tumblr on your common dose of area: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
