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Week of Sept. 20, 2019 | Highlighting Artemis with help from Hollywood, preparing to launch to the only laboratory in microgravity, and testing new lunar landing technology . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Duration: 4 minutes, 28 seconds Release Date: September 20, 2019
NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. Three Expedition 60 crewmembers finalized four days in a row of rodent research aboard the International Space Station this week. Meanwhile, more space science is underway as the orbiting lab residents prepare to swap crews. Astronauts living in space have shown signs of accelerated aging and scientists are looking to understand why. The crew has spent all week observing mice aboard the station since they show similar physiological changes in microgravity. Scientists are hoping results from the rodent study may provide insights and therapies for aging conditions and muscle diseases to promote healthier humans on Earth and in space. NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan conducted the rodent research this week with assistance from ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano. The trio performed the biological research using the Life Sciences Glovebox installed inside Japan’s Kibo laboratory module. Flight Engineer Nick Hague of NASA set up fluid research hardware inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module throughout Thursday. The new science gear will support the Ring Sheared Drop experiment to understand how fluids flow in the human body and other materials. Observations may lead to a deeper understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and improved production of advanced materials. Commander Alexey Ovchinin is still gathering items he will pack inside the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft for his return home in a couple of weeks. He and Hague will soar back to Earth inside the Soyuz crew ship and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan on Oct. 3. Spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori will hitch a ride back to Earth with Hague and Ovchinin after he launches to the station next week. He will join Expedition 61 crewmembers Jessica Meir of NASA and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos aboard the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft when it launches on Wednesday at 9:57 a.m. EDT. The trio will dock to the aft end of the Zvezda service module at 3:45 p.m. the same day. Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) Duration: 3 minutes, 19 seconds Release Date: September 20, 2019
Image of Saturn and its moon, Mimas, with ring shadows taken on November 7, 2004.
Mimas, also designated Saturn I, is a moon of Saturn which was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. It is named after Mimas, a son of Gaia in Greek mythology.
With a diameter of 396 kilometers (246 mi) it is the smallest astronomical body that is known to still be rounded in shape because of self-gravitation. However, Mimas is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium for its current rotation. (Source: Wikipedia)
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.
Xiamen, China at Night | International Space Station
This nighttime view shows the port city of Xiamen on China's southeast coast as the International Space Station orbited 255 miles above the South China Sea.
Xiamen is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian province, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, Haicang, and Xiang'an. Altogether, these cover an area of 1,699.39 square kilometers (656.14 sq mi) with a population of 3,531,347 as of 2010. The urbanized area of the city has spread from its original island to include parts of all six of its districts, with a total population of 1,861,289. This area connects to Quanzhou in the north and Zhangzhou in the west, making up a metropolis of more than five million people. (Source: Wikipedia)
Credit: NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC) Image Date: September 12, 2019
A Conversation with Brad Pitt, James Gray & NASA Officials
Ad Astra follows Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) on a mission across the solar system to uncover the truth about his father. Watch live as Brad Pitt, Director James Gray and two NASA officials discuss how they brought “the most realistic depiction of space travel” to the big screen.
Science for Students | In addition to planets and their moons, there are many small bodies orbiting the Sun. How did these bodies form? Learn more about comets and asteroids and the role these play in our Solar System.
NASA eClips™ are short, relevant educational video segments. These videos inspire and engage students, helping them see real world connections.
Real World connects classroom mathematics to 21st century careers and innovations and are designed for students to develop an appreciation for mathematics through real-world problem-solving.
Galaxy Messier 110: Not So Dead After All | Hubble
Many of the best-loved galaxies in the cosmos are remarkably large, close, massive, bright, or beautiful, often with an unusual or intriguing structure or history. However, it takes all kinds to make a Universe—as demonstrated by this Hubble Picture of the Week of Messier 110.
Messier 110 may not look like much, but it is a fascinating near neighbor of our home galaxy, and an unusual example of its type. It is a member of the Local Group, a gathering of galaxies comprising the Milky Way and a number of the galaxies closest to it. Specifically, Messier 110 is one of the many satellite galaxies encircling the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to our own, and is classified as a dwarf elliptical galaxy, meaning that it has a smooth and almost featureless structure. Elliptical galaxies lack arms and notable pockets of star formation—both characteristic features of spiral galaxies. Dwarf ellipticals are quite common in groups and clusters of galaxies, and are often satellites of larger galaxies.
Because they lack stellar nurseries and contain mostly old stars, elliptical galaxies are often considered ‘dead’ when compared to their spiral relatives. However, astronomers have spotted signs of a population of young, blue stars at the center of Messier 110—hinting that it may not be so dead after all.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L.Ferrarese et al. Release Date: September 16, 2019
A Long-lived Storm System on Saturn | NASA Cassini
It was one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen in late 2010, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn started larger than the Earth and soon spread completely around the planet. The storm was tracked not only from Earth but from up close by the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn.
Pictured here in false colored infrared, orange colors indicate clouds deep in the atmosphere, while light colors highlight clouds higher up. The rings of Saturn are seen nearly edge-on as the thin blue horizontal line. The warped dark bands are the shadows of the rings cast onto the cloud tops by the Sun to the upper left. A source of radio noise from lightning, the intense storm was thought to relate to seasonal changes when spring emerges in the north of Saturn. After raging for over six months, the iconic storm circled the entire planet and then tried to absorb its own tail, which surprisingly caused it to fade away.
The Cassini-Huygens mission was a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the U.S. and several European countries.
European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano took this image of the line that separates day from night, known as the terminator, during his Beyond mission. He captioned it: "To be able to observe with one’s own eyes the night coming in, that line between day and obscurity, is always an experience of surreal, inexplicable emotion."
Tropical Cyclone Nine became a tropical storm as it moved northwestward over the Southwest Atlantic Ocean, bringing strong winds and heavy rainfall to the central and northwest Bahamas, including areas recently devastated by Hurricane Dorian. Tropical storm Humberto will likely bring tropical-storm-force-winds and heavy rainfall to portions of the northwestern Bahamas today. Significant storm surge is not expected in the northwestern Bahamas from this system. The center of Humberto is now passing just east of Great Abaco Island.
The future track of this system is still uncertain, and forecasters will continue to monitor it closely.
This GeoColor-enhanced imagery was created by NOAA's partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. The GOES East geostationary satellite, also known as GOES-16, provides coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern Pacific. The satellite's high-resolution imagery provides optimal viewing of severe weather events, including thunderstorms, tropical storms, and hurricanes.
Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Image Date: September 13, 2019
An image of a sunset in East Timor captured by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano during his Beyond mission to the International Space Station.
East Timor or Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Maritime Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco, and Oecusse, an exclave on the northwestern side of the island surrounded by Indonesian West Timor. Australia is the country's southern neighbor, separated by the Timor Sea.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Credit: ESA/NASA-L.Parmitano Image Date: August 23, 2019
Inside NASA's Kennedy Space Center | Week of Sept. 13, 2019
Hurricane Dorian skirted the coast of Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 3 and 4. A few days before, the Mobile Launcher, atop the crawler-transporter, was moved from Launch Pad 39B back to the Vehicle Assembly as a precaution. Kennedy Director Bob Cabana presented awards to NASA and contractor employees during the center's annual NASA KSC Honor Awards Ceremony on Sept. 10.
Credit: NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Duration: 1 minute, 36 seconds Release Date: September 13, 2019
The European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite takes us over the region of Baja California in northwest Mexico, in this week's edition of the Earth from Space program.
We are Europe's gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out http://www.esa.int/ESA to get up to speed on everything space related.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA) Duration: 2 minutes, 52 seconds Release Date: September 13, 2019
Sept. 13, 2019: NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.
The crew of Expedition 60, consisting of Commander Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos; NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Andrew Morgan and Nick Hague; ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano; and cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, took much-needed respite on Thursday during an off-duty day aboard the International Space Station. This Friday, investigations furthering scientific research in support of crew health and extended travels to destinations deeper in the solar system are resuming.
On Earth, the Expedition 61 prime crew of cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, along with spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, are at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, finalizing pre-launch training and preparations for their launch on Sept. 25 aboard a Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft. On Wednesday, they ran through procedures and completed the necessary fit check, spacesuits donned, within the Soyuz vehicle. On Thursday, they took part in ceremonial activities, such as raising the flags of Russia, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates, along with backup crew members Tom Marshburn of NASA, Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos and spaceflight participant Sultan Al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates.
Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) Duration: 2 minutes, 4 seconds Release Date: September 13, 2019
Sept. 12, 2019: This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Saturn, taken in late June 2019, reveals the giant planet's iconic rings. Saturn’s amber colors come from summer smog-like hazes, produced in photochemical reactions driven by solar ultraviolet radiation. Below the haze lie clouds of ammonia ice crystals, as well as deeper, unseen lower-level clouds of ammonium hydrosulfide and water.
The planet’s banded structure is caused by winds and clouds at different altitudes. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 observed Saturn on June 20, 2019, as the planet made its closest approach to Earth, at about 845 million miles away.
