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This visualization shows the Moon's phase and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2024, as viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. Each frame represents one hour. In addition, this visualization shows the Moon's orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, and distance from the Earth at true scale. Craters near the terminator are labeled, as are Apollo landing sites, maria, and other albedo features in sunlight.
NASA's "Espacio a Tierra": Lanzamiento nocturno: 10 de noviembre 2023
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
Farther & Faster: NASA's Journey to The Moon with Artemis I
At 1:47 a.m. EST (6:47 UTC) on Nov. 16, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft launched atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from historic Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a path to the Moon, officially beginning the Artemis I mission.
Over the course of 25.5 days, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles (129 kilometers) of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles (435,000 kilometers) from our home planet. On Dec. 11, 2023, NASA’s Orion spacecraft successfully completed a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 9:40 a.m. PST (12:40 p.m. EST) as the final major milestone of the Artemis I mission.
Artemis I set new performance records, exceeded efficiency expectations, and established new safety baselines for humans in deep space. This is a prelude to what comes next—following the success of Artemis I, human beings will fly around the Moon on Artemis II.
We have demonstrated our ability to go farther and faster than ever before, opening the door to explore Mars and other destinations throughout the solar system. This is the story of Artemis I.
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
New NASA Artemis V Moon Rocket Engine Test: Preparing for Crewed Missions
NASA has conducted the second hot fire in a final 12-test certification series paving the way for production of new RS-25 engines to help power NASA's Space Launch System rocket for future Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond. An Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 rocket engine (RS-25 developmental engine E0525) was tested on the Fred Haise Test Stand (formerly A-1 Test Stand) at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, on November 15, 2023, at 15:45 EST. This was the second hot fire test out of the 12 planned in the final round of certification testing ahead of production of an updated set of engines for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) that will be used beginning with Artemis V. The test had a planned duration of 500 seconds with the RS-25 engine running up to 113% power level—more than the level needed to power SLS.
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Meet the Perseverance Rover's Mars Samples: "Otis Peak" | NASA/JPL
Meet the 20th Martian sample collected by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover—“Otis Peak,” the first rock core sample taken from a conglomerate rock, that consists of pebbles cemented together.
This sample is referred to as a “treasure box” because the pebbles are believed to have been carried by a fast-moving river from places the rover may never explore. Scientists believe studying this sample may yield information about the formation and environmental evolution of Jezero Crater.
As of early November 2023, the Perseverance rover has collected and sealed 23 scientifically selected samples inside pristine tubes as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. The next stage is to get them to Earth for study.
Considered one of the highest priorities by the scientists in the Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032, Mars Sample Return would be the first mission to return samples from another planet and provides the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for ancient life. NASA is teaming with the European Space Agency (ESA) on this important endeavor.
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, as well as be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
NASA Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli Talks to Students | International Space Station
[Event starts at 1 minute mark] Aboard the International Space Station, NASA Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Jasmin Moghbeli discussed living and working in space during an in-flight event Nov. 12, 2023, with students attending the Creative Learning Academy in Pensacola, Florida. Moghbeli is in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies. Such research benefits people on Earth and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through the agency’s Artemis missions, that will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
Astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli Official NASA Biography:
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
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.
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
How Your Name Can Fly Aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper to Jupiter | JPL
Go behind the scenes in the Microdevices Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to see how your name could be sent to Jupiter’s moon Europa as part of NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign. Names will be stenciled in tiny letters on special microchips that will ride aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft as it journeys 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) to the icy moon.
See how technicians will use an electron beam to stencil names onto microchips, where each line of text is smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair. The microchips will be attached to a metal plate engraved with the original poem “In Praise of Mystery,” written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to celebrate the mission. That plate will then be attached to the exterior of the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission aims to determine whether Europa has conditions that could support life. Once spacecraft assembly has been completed at JPL, the orbiter will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for launch in October 2024.
You can add your name to the “Message in a Bottle” campaign through Dec. 31, 2023.
NASA's CRS-29 SpaceX Dragon Cargo Vehicle Arrival | International Space Station
Thrusters on the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft fire automatically while adjusting the vehicle's slow, methodical approach toward the International Space Station for a docking to the Harmony module's forward port.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo craft, on the company's 29th commercial resupply mission for NASA, approaches the International Space Station while orbiting 261 miles above Indonesia's Savu Sea.
The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, on the company's 29th commercial resupply mission for NASA, approaches the International Space Station while orbiting 261 miles above the Lesser Sunda Islands.
While the International Space Station was traveling more than 262 miles over central Brazil, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft autonomously docked to station’s Harmony module on Nov. 11, 2023, at 5:07 a.m. EST, with NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara monitoring operations from the station.
The Dragon launched on SpaceX’s 29th contracted commercial resupply mission for NASA at 8:28 p.m. EST, Nov. 9, from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After Dragon spends about one month attached to the space station, the spacecraft will return to Earth with cargo and research.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
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.
Earth Cities: Night View with Moon | International Space Station
Earth's airglow outlines the planet's horizon with the Moon above in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the midwestern United States. At lower right, the city lights of Denver. Colorado, and its suburbs shine, including the city lights all the way to Chicago, Illinois (at top), and surrounding metropolitan areas.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
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.
Planet Mars: Exploring Aram Chaos | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Aram Chaos is an eroded impact crater on Mars, about 280 kilometers in diameter. The floor of Aram Chaos also contains huge blocks of collapsed (chaotic) terrain that formed when water or ice was catastrophically removed. The crater was also filled in with sediments over time. This observation was acquired to fill in High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) coverage where Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) data already exists. CRISM is another instrument onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The saying Λάθε βιώσας (“live hidden”) is attributed to Epicurus. Aram Chaos would be a good place to hide. (We used Modern Greek pronunciation to render the transliteration in the title card as “láthe viósas.”)
This is a non-narrated clip with ambient sound. Enhanced color image is less than 1 km (under a mi) across and the spacecraft altitude was 272 km (169 mi). For full images including scale bars, visit the source link.
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.
The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE instrument, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
“For 17 years, MRO has been revealing Mars to us as no one had seen it before,” said the mission’s project scientist, Rich Zurek of JPL.
Blooming of The "Spare Tire" Nebula: IC 5148 | Gemini South Telescope
IC 5148, nicknamed the Spare Tire Nebula, is a beautiful planetary nebula located about 3,000 light-years away near the ‘neck’ of the southern constellation Grus (The Crane). This image, captured with the Gemini South telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, showcases the looming cloud of gas of IC 1548 and the central stellar remnant from which the gas radiates. It is one of the fastest expanding planetary nebulae, pushing out into space at 180,000 kilometers per hour (112,000 miles per hour).
With small telescopes, this nebula looks like a bright central star with an outer ring. The mesmerizing layers of gas are faint. They are almost undetectable without the use of larger telescopes, and not with the clarity captured in this image using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South. Around the time IC 5148 was discovered by astronomers in 1894, researchers coined the term planetary nebula to refer to these giant gaseous balls that looked like giant planets. Today we know that these balls are in fact stellar remnants.
At the center of IC 5148 is a white dwarf, the hot core of the dying star, surrounded by asymmetrical gaseous ‘blooms’ and a faint halo ring. The predecessor of the white dwarf was likely a star of a similar mass to our Sun. At the end of that star’s life, the internal pressure imbalance resulted in the star swelling up into a red giant. As it grew, the outer layers of the gas and stellar material were pushed into space to form the nebula we see today. The central hole—the dark patch surrounding the star—is due to the pressure of the radiation from the star that pushes the surrounding gas away from the core and leaves a vacant space. The formation of the ring and the bow-like structures of gas are marks of the evolutionary history of IC 5148—but the mechanisms that created them remain a mystery to astronomers.
The International Gemini Observatory consists of twin 8.1-meter diameter optical/infrared telescopes located on two of the best observing sites on the planet. The Gemini South telescope is located on a mountain in the Chilean Andes called Cerro Pachón, where very dry air and negligible cloud cover make this another prime telescope location. Both of the Gemini telescopes have been designed to excel in a wide variety of optical and infrared capabilities. By incorporating technologies such as laser guide star adaptive optics and multi-object spectroscopy, astronomers in the Gemini partnership explore the universe in unprecedented depth and detail.
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Rodriguez (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), & M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab)
NASA's Artemis Moon Rocket Powerhouse: The SLS | Marshall Space Flight Center
At 212 feet tall, the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is the backbone and powerhouse of the mega rocket that will power NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon. Its two massive propellant tanks provide more than 733,000 gallons of propellant to the four RS-25 engines at the base of the rocket stage, producing more than 2 million pounds of thrust for the first eight minutes of flight. NASA and Boeing, the lead SLS core stage contractor, manufacture the core stage which is built at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
Watch this video to learn more about the capability of the SLS rocket and its dynamic core stage.
Panning across "The Dancer in Dorado": Spiral Galaxy NGC 1566 | Hubble
This vibrant and dynamic-looking image features the spiral galaxy NGC 1566. This is sometimes informally referred to as the ‘Spanish Dancer Galaxy’. NGC 1566 is a weakly-barred or intermediate spiral galaxy, meaning that it does not have either a clearly present or a clearly absent bar-shaped structure at its center. The galaxy owes its nickname to the vivid and dramatic swirling lines of its spiral arms. This could evoke the shapes and colors of a dancer’s moving form. NGC 1566 lies around 60 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado, and is also a member of the Dorado galaxy group.
Galaxy groups are assemblages of gravitationally bound galaxies. Groups differ from galaxy clusters in size and mass: galaxy clusters may contain hundreds of galaxies and groups may contain several tens of galaxies. Nevertheless, there is not a precise delineation between the definition of a galaxy group and a galaxy cluster. Astronomers have proposed that the definitions be sharpened up, with one suggestion that galaxy aggregations with less mass than 80 trillion Suns should qualify as galaxy groups.
The Dorado group has had a fluctuating membership over the past few decades, with scientific papers changing its list of constituent galaxies. To understand why it is so challenging for astronomers to pin down members of groups such as the Dorado group, we can imagine a photograph of an adult human and a large oak tree. We have foreknowledge of the approximate size of the person and the tree, so if we were to see a photo where the person appeared roughly the same size as the tree, then we would be able to guess that, in reality, the person was positioned much closer to the camera than the tree was, giving the false impression that they were the same size. When working out members of a galaxy group, astronomers are not necessarily equipped with the knowledge of the size of the individual galaxies, and so have to work out whether galaxies really are relatively close together in space, or whether some of them are actually much closer or much further away. This has become easier with more sophisticated observation techniques, but still sometimes presents a challenge.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, D. Calzetti and the LEGUS team, R. Chandar
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1385: Two Views, Two Filters | Hubble
This luminous tangle of stars and dust is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1385. It lies about 30 million light-years from Earth. The same galaxy was captured by Hubble before but the two images are notably different. This more recent image has far more pinkish-red and umber shades, whereas the former image was dominated by cool blues. This chromatic variation is not just a creative choice, but a technical one, made in order to represent the different number and type of filters used to collect the data that were used to make the respective images.
It is understandable to be a bit confused as to how the same galaxy, imaged twice by the same telescope, could be represented so differently in two different images. The reason is that—like all powerful telescopes used by professional astronomers for scientific research—Hubble is equipped with a range of filters. These highly specialized components have little similarity to filters used on social media. Those software-powered filters are added after the image has been taken, and cause information to be lost from the image as certain colors are exaggerated or reduced for aesthetic effect. In contrast, telescope filters are pieces of physical hardware that only allow very specific wavelengths of light to enter the telescope as the data are being collected. This does cause light to be lost, but means that astronomers can probe extremely specific parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is very useful for a number of reasons. For example, physical processes within certain elements emit light at very specific wavelengths, and filters can be optimized to these wavelengths.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy. It has several arms that are mixed together and an overall oval shape. The center of the galaxy glows brightly. There are bright pink patches and filaments of dark red dust spread across the center.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team Release Dates: Nov. 13, 2023 & Aug. 16, 2021
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