Friends of NASA (FoN) is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to building international support for peaceful space exploration, commerce, scientific discovery, and STEM education.
China's Cargo Spacecraft Tianzhou-6 Ready for Launch | China Space Station
China's cargo spacecraft, Tianzhou-6, is ready for launch, May 10, 2023, according to the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in China's southern island province of Hainan. The Tianzhou-6 cargo ship contains a 22.5-cubic-meter cargo compartment, which has 50 lockers to place daily necessities for the taikonauts and equipment needed for in-orbit experiments.
What is prominent on the packing list this time is that about 70 kilograms of fresh fruit are to be delivered, roughly twice the weight of that carried by Tianzhou-5.
"We plan to send a large refrigerator to the space station to ensure that the supply for the taikonauts contains not only fruits but also some frozen food," Wang Ran, lead designer of cargo spacecraft systems at China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), told China Media Group (CMG). "For example, in the future if they wish to eat grilled steak, we will freeze the beef on the ground and deliver it to the space station."
"We will bolster our ability gradually to ensure a better life for the taikonauts," said Wang.
Besides food, the cargo ship will also deliver other daily necessities such as clothes, holiday supplies and sanitation supplies, as well as experimental equipment for the taikonauts.
Jia Dongyong, chief mechanical designer for the Tianzhou cargo spacecraft system at CAST, told CMG that the Tianzhou-6 cargo ship is the most capable space cargo ship currently in service.
With a maximum launch mass of 14 tonnes, the Tianzhou-6 spacecraft now has a payload ratio of 0.53, said Jia.
The payload ratio refers to the proportion of cargo weight to the total weight of the whole spacecraft. The higher
The Tianzhou-6 cargo ship contains a 22.5-cubic-meter cargo compartment.
The Tianzhou-6 cargo craft will be the first of a new batch of China's cargo ships—from Tianzhou-6 to Tianzhou-11—to boost their loading capacity from the previous 6.9 tonnes to 7.4 tonnes.
The cargo spacecraft, 10.6 meters in length, consists of two parts—a smaller lower part as its propellant module, and a larger upper part the cargo module.
The Tianzhou-6 cargo craft is the first spacecraft visiting the Shenzhou-15 crew in orbit. It will be sent by a Long March-7 carrier rocket, the country's new-generation medium liquid-propellant carrier rocket with high reliability and safety.
With a total length of 53.1 meters and a diameter of 3.35 meters, the rocket is bundled with four boosters, and has a takeoff weight of nearly 600 tonnes and a payload capacity of about 14 tonnes to low-Earth orbit.
The Tianzhou-6 mission is the 7th launch for the Long March-7 rocket.
International Space Science Projects Head to China Space Station
The China Space Station is now ready to host international science projects. It is expected to become a major platform for scientific research in outer space, and officials promise a spirit of openness and cooperation.
Shenzhou-15 Crew Members:
Fei Junlong (commander), Zhang Lu (taikonaut), and Deng Qingming (taikonaut)
NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center Supports Robotics Competition
Helping develop the next generation of engineers and technicians, volunteers from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, assisted students competing in the Aerospace Valley Regional Robotics Competition.
NASA Armstrong sponsored several Antelope Valley teams during the event March 30 through April 1, 2023, and employee volunteers served as mentors and judges, and the mobile fabrication shop helped with team repairs.
Profile of NASA Life Sciences Project Scientist Dr. Gioia Massa | NASA Kennedy
In this close-up video, Dr. Gioia Massa, Life Sciences Project Scientist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), shares her inspirations that led to her passion for studying and growing plants. Dr. Massa describes how work helps astronauts grow edible plants on the International Space Station.
Pan over Ghostly Galactic Jellyfish Galaxy JO175 | Hubble
The jellyfish galaxy JO175 appears to hang suspended in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies over 650 million light-years from Earth in the appropriately-named constellation Telescopium, and was captured in crystal-clear detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. A handful of more distant galaxies are lurking throughout the scene, and a bright four-pointed star lies to the lower right side.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team
A Day in the Life of an Astronomical Observatory | NOIRLab
CosmoView Episode 67: There is more to working at an observatory than meets the eye. Gone are the days of a lone astronomer cooped up in a mountaintop dome. Instead, a range of specialized teams work cohesively from sunrise to sunset to ensure NOIRLab facilities can continue enabling and sharing breakthrough discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics.
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/KPNO/R.T. Sparks, CTIO/T. Puzia (PUC), International Gemini Observatory/Kwon O Chul, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, T. Matsopoulos, N. Bartmann
Mysterious Material in Martian Depressions | NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter
This observation shows us enigmatic smooth material, usually occurring in depressions on Mars. It also seems to occur in strange, discrete blobs. The darker areas are colloquially referred to as “spiders” because of their shapes.
This image is located in Promethei Planum, near the South Pole of Mars. It is an an area seasonally covered with a more than 3,500 meters-thick layer of ice.
This is a non-narrated clip with ambient sound. Image is less than 5 km (3 mi) across and the spacecraft altitude was 249 km (155 mi).
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, to provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and to relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, and reached Mars on March 10, 2006.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.
Testing NASA's New Snake Robot | Jet Propulsion Laboratory
A team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is creating and testing a snake-like robot called EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor). Inspired by a desire to descend vents on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus and enter its subsurface ocean, this versatile robot is being developed to autonomously map, traverse, and explore previously inaccessible destinations on Earth, the Moon, and other worlds in our solar system.
The robot has been put to the test in sandy, snowy, and icy environments, including the Mars-like terrain at JPL’s Mars Yard, a “robot playground” created at a ski resort in the snowy mountains of Southern California, and even an indoor ice rink.
Because of the long communications lag time between Earth and deep space, EELS is designed to autonomously sense its environment, calculate risk, travel, and gather data with yet-to-be-determined science instruments. When something goes wrong, the goal is for the robot to recover on its own, without human assistance.
The project team began building the first prototype in 2019, and has been making continual revisions. They’ve been trying out white, 3D-printed plastic screws for testing on looser terrain like sand and soft snow, as well as sharper, black metal screws for ice. In its current form, the EELS 1.0 robot weighs about 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and is 13 feet (4 meters) long.
EELS is funded by the Office of Technology Infusion and Strategy at JPL in Southern California through a technology accelerator program called JPL Next. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California. The EELS team has worked with a number of university partners on the project, including Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California, San Diego. The robot is not currently part of any NASA mission.
NASA's SpaceX Crew-6: Official Portrait | International Space Station
The official SpaceX Crew-6 portrait with (from left), Mission Specialist and United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi; Pilot Woody Hoburg and Commander Stephen Bowen, both NASA astronauts; and Mission Specialist and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Russia. The foursome will also be Expedition 69 Flight Engineers during their stay aboard the International Space Station.
NASA Astronaut William Hoburg's Official Biography:
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Zooming in on a Stellar Nursery in Monoceros| European Southern Observatory
In this zoom sequence we start with a broad panorama of the Milky Way, including the familiar constellation of Orion. As we close in on part of the adjacent constellation of Monoceros we start to see faint clouds and in the final part of the video the full glory of the Monoceros R2 star-forming region is revealed in a new image from the VISTA infrared telescope. Distance: 2,700 light-years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/J. Emerson/VISTA/Digitized Sky Survey 2/A. Fujii. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit, Davide De Martin.
This video fades back and forth between views of the stellar nursery Monoceros R2 in visible and infrared light. The visible-light view was created from digitized photographs through red and blue filters forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS) and the new infrared view comes from the VISTA telescope at Paranal. In the infrared, the thick, rich, dust clouds that cover much of the image become nearly transparent and a whole host of young stars and associated outflows become apparent.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/J. Emerson/VISTA/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
Drone Footage: NASA TROPICS CubeSat Launch in New Zealand | Rocket Lab
Two NASA TROPICS CubeSats were successfully launched aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, named "Rocket Like A Hurricane," from Launch Complex 1 at Māhia, New Zealand at 9pm, May 7, 2023.
TROPICS is a constellation of CubeSats that will help us better understand tropical storms and hurricanes around the globe.
The NASA Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission is a constellation of state-of-the-science observing platforms that will measure temperature and humidity soundings and precipitation with spatial resolution comparable to current operational passive microwave sounders but with unprecedented temporal resolution (median revisit time of 50 minutes). Each SmallSat hosts a 12-channel passive microwave spectrometer. The primary mission objective of TROPICS is to relate temperature, humidity, and precipitation structure to the evolution of tropical cyclone intensity.
Rocket Lab's Electron is an expendable, vertically launched, two-stage rocket that uses liquid oxygen and kerosene as propellants. Each Electron rocket is around 60 feet (18 m) tall, with an exterior made of a carbon fiber composite, that can carry payloads weighing up to about 700 pounds (320 kilograms). Each Electron rocket uses nine Rutherford sea-level engines on its first stage, and a single Rutherford vacuum engine on its second stage. These engines use an electric turbopump powered by batteries to deliver propellants/fuel to the engines.
A payload fairing protected the spacecraft or satellite as the rocket climbed through the atmosphere. An extra stage, called a kick stage, powered by a single Curie engine, circularized the orbits of the small satellites. Previous NASA missions that launched on an Electron rocket are the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), as well as two Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) missions ELaNa 19 and 32.
Stellar Nursery Monoceros R2 (Infrared View) | European Southern Observatory
This dramatic infrared image shows the nearby star formation region Monoceros R2, located some 2,700 light-years away in the constellation of Monoceros (the Unicorn). The picture was created from exposures in the near infrared bands Y, J and Ks taken by the VISTA survey telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory. Monoceros R2 is an association of massive hot young stars illuminating a beautiful collection of reflection nebulae, embedded in a large molecular cloud.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/J. Emerson/VISTA
Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit
Mexico's Espíritu Santo Archipelago | International Space Station
The island group off Mexico’s Baja California Sur has eroded slowly, preserving evidence of past human activity. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of an island group in the Gulf of California near the southeastern edge of Baja California Sur. Sunglint reflects off the water surface, accentuating wave movement, ship wakes, and cloud shadows.
The island group comprises two large islands, Isla del Espíritu Santo and Isla La Partida, as well as several smaller surrounding islands, Isla Ballena, Gallo, Gallina, and Los Islotes. The islands appear rust-colored due to previous tectonic and volcanic activity that deposited layers of black lava and pink volcanic ash.
The Baja Peninsula acts as a natural wind and wave break that protects islands in the Gulf of California from erosion. Slowed erosion has resulted in the preservation of rock shelters and caves. Exploration and excavation of these shelters contribute to understanding the geomorphology, geology, and ancient human patterns on the islands. Archeologists have found human artifacts artifacts dating back approximately ten thousand years, providing evidence of human activity on the islands.
As part of a Gulf of California UNESCO World Heritage Site, the islands and surrounding waters are protected in order to support bird migration, endemic species, and marine life. The diverse wetlands and the preserved reef systems provide food and shelter to many species, including the endemic antelope squirrel, blue-spotted jawfish, and black-tailed brush lizard. There is also a diverse bird population in the area, including brown pelicans, great blue herons, and hummingbirds.
Astronaut photograph ISS067-E-286000 was acquired with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 400 millimeters.
Image Credit: ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center
A vast galaxy cluster lurks in the center of this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. Like a submerged sea monster causing waves on the surface, this cosmic leviathan can be identified by the distortions in spacetime around it. The mass of the cluster has caused the images of background galaxies to be gravitationally lensed; the galaxy cluster has caused a sufficient curvature of spacetime to bend the path of light and cause background galaxies to appear distorted into streaks and arcs of light. A host of other galaxies can be seen surrounding the cluster, and a handful of foreground stars with tell-tale diffraction spikes are scattered throughout the image.
This particular galaxy cluster is called eMACS J1823.1+7822, and lies almost nine billion light-years away in the constellation Draco. It is one of five exceptionally massive galaxy clusters explored by Hubble in the hopes of measuring the strengths of these gravitational lenses and providing insights into the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters. Strong gravitational lenses like eMACS J1823.1+7822 can help astronomers study distant galaxies by acting as vast natural telescopes which magnify objects that would otherwise be too faint or distant to resolve.
This multiwavelength image layers data from eight different filters and two different instruments: Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. Both instruments have the ability to view astronomical objects in just a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum using filters, which allow astronomers to image objects at precisely selected wavelengths. The combination of observations at different wavelengths lets astronomers develop a more complete picture of the structure, composition and behavior of an object than visible light alone would reveal.
Image Description: A cluster of large galaxies, surrounded by various stars and smaller galaxies on a dark background. The central cluster is mostly made of bright elliptical galaxies that are surrounded by a warm glow. Close to the cluster core is the stretched, distorted arc of a galaxy, gravitationally lensed by the cluster.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling
RD.jpg)
