{"id":14893,"date":"2018-04-02T08:38:29","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T08:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=14893"},"modified":"2020-05-27T06:02:01","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T06:02:01","slug":"the-viking-the-dragon-and-the-god-of-the-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/the-viking-the-dragon-and-the-god-of-the-thunder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Viking, the dragon and the God of the thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Capcom Andreas Mogensen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scandinavian mythology stories are rich in fantastic creatures, and a Nordic astronaut is about to write a new chapter as Space Viking Andreas Mogensen monitors the arrival of the Dragon cargo vessel at the International Space Station next week. The passenger: a state-of-the-art lightning hunter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For Andreas it all started with an interesting project during his mission to the Space Station in 2015. He was tasked to capture on camera the flashes generated by electrical discharges in the upper layers of our atmosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n

The experiment was called Thor after the god of thunder, lightning and storms in Nordic mythology. His discovery of a pulsating jet shooting up into space helped to pave the way for the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next Wednesday, the Dragon supply vehicle will deliver this instrument to the orbital outpost following Monday’s launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ambassador on Earth\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Andreas will witness the launch in person and will play a crucial role at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston as lead \u2018capcom\u2019 during Dragon\u2019s rendezvous and berthing.<\/span><\/p>\n

From mission control, Andreas will be the only person allowed to speak directly to the astronauts on the Station.<\/span><\/p>\n

Andreas will draw on his experience in space for the job: \u201cI am familiar with the crew\u2019s work and needs, and the challenges they face if something has to be repaired.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dragon\u2019s arrival<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Installed on Columbus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After orbiting Earth for about two days, Dragon will position itself below the Station for the astronauts to capture it with the 16 m-long robot arm and pull it in.<\/span><\/p>\n

ESA\u2019s astronaut has spent the last two months training on rendezvous and docking procedures with the flight control teams. \u201cWe practise how to handle any problem that may take place during the arrival of the spacecraft,\u201d adds Andreas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once installed on the outside of Europe\u2019s Columbus laboratory, the scientific instrument will write its own chapter in the study of thunderstorms.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scandinavian mythology stories are rich in fantastic creatures, and a Nordic astronaut is about to write a new chapter as Space Viking Andreas Mogensen monitors the arrival of the Dragon cargo vessel at the International Space Station next week. The passenger: a state-of-the-art lightning hunter.\u00a0 For Andreas it all started with an interesting project during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium-300x168.jpg",300,168,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",95,53,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",305,171,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",96,54,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Installed_on_Columbus_medium.jpg",150,84,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}