NASA and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) across the United States are teaming up to bring untapped talent and diverse perspectives to several of the agency’s top priorities: understanding and monitoring global ocean health, returning humans to the Moon through the Artemis program, and helping build a more inclusive workforce.
Read MoreMonth: August 2021
The Lagoon Nebula Gives Birth to Stars
Known as NGC 6523 or the Lagoon Nebula, Messier 8 is a giant cloud of gas and dust where stars are born.
Read MoreMars Perseverance Rover Hits a Snag on First Sampling Attempt
Perseverance came up empty on its first attempt to grab and stow a sample of Mars. The post Mars Perseverance Rover Hits a Snag on First Sampling Attempt appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Read MoreDon’t Worry About Bennu (Yet)
Careful measurements using the OSIRIS-REX spacecraft have refined astronomers’ predictions for how likely it is that this potentially hazardous asteroid will strike Earth. The post Don’t Worry About Bennu (Yet) appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Read MoreWatch NASA fire up its SLS rocket engines to test far-out mission technologies (video)
While NASA has yet to launch an Artemis mission to the moon, the agency is already doing engine testing for far-future missions. NASA finished its sixth RS-25 engine hot-fire test on Thursday (Aug. 5), demonstrating advanced capabilities of an engine type that was used for decades during the space shuttle program that ran from 1981 to 2011. Engineers fired the RS-25 engine, made by the California-based aerospace company Aerojet Rocketdyne, at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for 500 seconds (more than eight minutes) to duplicate the time it will…
Read MoreMercury-bound spacecraft snaps selfie with Venus in close flyby (photo)
A European-Japanese BepiColombo probe headed to Mercury zoomed past Venus on Tuesday (Aug 10), beaming back selfies and other measurements that might reveal new facts about the cloudy planet’s atmosphere. The European Space Agency (ESA), which cooperates on this mission with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), released the first Venus flyby image, taken shortly after BepiColombo’s closest approach to the planet, on Tuesday evening (Aug. 10). During the encounter, the probe zipped within 340 miles (552 kilometers) of Venus. More images are expected to follow, ESA has said. The…
Read MoreNASA Spacecraft Provides Insight into Asteroid Bennu’s Future Orbit
NASA researchers used precision-tracking data from the agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to better understand movements of the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu, significantly reducing uncertainties related to its future orbit, and improving scientists’ ability to determine the total impact probability and predict orbits of other asteroids.
Read MoreWatch auroras paint the sky above Earth in these stunning astronaut photos and video
It’s aurora season on the International Space Station and astronauts living and working in orbit are sharing some of their finest views of the stunning phenomenon with those of us on the ground. Auroras paint the sky with eerie shades of greens and reds and occur when charged particles from the sun slam into Earth’s atmosphere. Circling the North Pole, the spectacle is dubbed the aurora borealis or northern lights; the southern equivalent is the aurora australis. The latter has been particularly prolific for the past week or so, according…
Read MoreLearn to Star-hop in the August Sky
Learn to star-hop your way to celestial treasures in the August sky. The post Learn to Star-hop in the August Sky appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Read MoreMeet ISAAC, Integrating Robots with the Space Stations of the Future
A simulated fault scenario marked the end of the first phase of testing for software designed to enable autonomous operations of a spacecraft’s operating and robotic systems. The software’s name is ISAAC – the Integrated System for Autonomous and Adaptive Caretaking system.
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