Early Friday morning (March 3), SpaceX’s Dragon Endeavour spacecraft carrying the four astronauts of the Crew-6 mission approached the International Space Station (ISS). Crew-6’s dramatic meetup with the space station, which culminated with a docking at 1:40 a.m. EST (0640 GMT) on Friday, was captured in a breathtaking time-lapse video created using NASA footage. The docking maneuver had been postponed by an hour while SpaceX worked an issue with a faulty sensor associated with one of the 12 hooks on Dragon that connect the capsule to the space station. After…
Read MoreMonth: March 2023
The sounds of Kerbal Space Program 2: How an emotional real-life rocket launch transformed the game
The new Kerbal Space Program 2 has real-life rocket audio in its launches. KSP2 released in early access for PC gamers on Feb. 24 featuring numerous new features for fans of realistic space games, like an expanded tutorial system for newbie players, more rockets and more destinations. The early release doesn’t have all features yet but more are accruing in the coming weeks and months, KSP2 officials have said. Kerbal Space Program 2’s (KSP2) audio director Howard Mostrom captured footage from a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V double satellite…
Read MoreWonder at the colorful Orion nebula in the southwestern sky throughout March
Shining down upon us all winter long, Orion is the brightest and grandest of all the constellations. Dominating our winter evening skies is the Great Hunter or Celestial Warrior the most brilliant of the constellations and visible from every inhabited part of the Earth. This season, Orion can readily be found standing high in the southern sky at nightfall and doesn’t completely set until around 1:30 a.m. Throughout March, the Hunter will begin to move westward. Three bright stars in a diagonal line in the middle of a bright rectangle…
Read MoreSun unleashes powerful X2-class flare (video)
The sun blasted out a superpowerful X-class flare on Friday afternoon (March 3), and a NASA spacecraft captured footage of the dramatic event. The solar flare — an intense burst of high-energy radiation — erupted Friday at 12:52 p.m. EST (1752 GMT). It registered as an X2.1, NASA officials said (opens in new tab), meaning it was particularly intense. (Solar scientists categorize potent flares into three categories, with C being the weakest, M being medium-strength and X the most powerful.) The power of Friday’s flare is on full display in…
Read MoreNASA Awards Agencywide Contract for Communication Services
NASA has selected PCI Productions LLC of Huntsville, Alabama, to manage communication services for all agency centers including headquarters, as well as its mission directorates, to enable the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of NASA information.
Read MoreSpace Station Science Highlights: Week of Feb. 27, 2023
Crew members aboard the International Space Station conducted scientific investigations during the week of Feb. 27 that included tracking how the human body adapts to space, examining the effects of light and fertilizer on dwarf tomato plants, and testing a microscope to analyze particles on the space station.
Read MoreSee Jupiter and Venus dance across the twilight sky in this amazing photo collage
A collage of 10 images taken between Feb. 21 and March 2, 2023 showing the movements of Jupiter and Venus as they approach conjunction. (Image credit: Soumyadeep Mukherjee) Venus and Jupiter have put on quite a show for skywatchers in recent weeks. The two planets have been shining brightly in the early evening skies for several weeks, and in recent days they’ve been moving closer together in the night sky. On Wednesday (March 1), the pair made their closest approach to one another while also entering into an arrangement known…
Read MoreMoon-dust shield could help fight climate change on Earth
Astronomers are exploring solutions to mitigate climate change, one of humanity’s biggest challenges, by using some tiny players — dust particles. In recent research, they propose mining, scooping and blasting dust from the moon‘s surface and placing it between Earth and the sun, where the newly placed clouds would shade our planet for a few days before solar wind and radiation pressure dispersed them. In a year, researchers say, such dust shields could reduce Earth-bound sunlight by 1.8%, which falls within the range needed to slow our planet’s rising temperature. …
Read MoreMars helicopter Ingenuity soars between Red Planet airfields on 46th flight
Ingenuity hopped a third of a mile on the Red Planet as it shifted between airfields. Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter drone accompanying the Perseverance rover mission, racked up its 46th flight on Saturday (Feb. 25), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced (opens in new tab) yesterday (March 1). The goal of the flight was to “reposition of the helicopter and [to] scout future airfields,” agency officials wrote in a flight briefing (opens in new tab). The drone flew for about 1,460 feet (445 meters) on the Martian surface between airfields “Eta”…
Read MoreNASA to Discuss Findings from Successful Artemis I Moon Mission
NASA will hold a media teleconference at 12 p.m. EST Tuesday, March 7, to provide an update on data analyzed thus far on the agency’s Artemis I Moon mission, the first integrated flight test of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, uncrewed Orion spacecraft, and associated ground systems.
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