Month: March 2024

NASA to Send Research to Station Aboard 30th SpaceX Resupply Mission

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, on the company’s 29th commercial resupply services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Credits: SpaceX New research and technology demonstrations for NASA are set to launch aboard the agency’s SpaceX 30th commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. Launch is targeted for 4:55 p.m. EDT Thursday, March 21, lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral…

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Hubble Telescope spies stormy weather and a shrinking Great Red Spot on Jupiter (video)

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The gas giant Jupiter steals the show in these two new portraits of the planet’s opposing faces, showing the swirling storms and tumultuous cloud bands blown by winds raging at hundreds of miles per hour. The Hubble Space Telescope took these images on Jan. 5-6, 2024. Jupiter rotates once every 10 hours, Hubble was able to image one hemisphere with the famous Great Red Spot visible, and wait for the other hemisphere to come into view before imaging that. The latest images show that Jupiter is currently experiencing some action.…

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Artemis 2 moon astronauts celebrate engine test for future lunar missions (video)

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NASA’s next moon mission commander raised his hands in celebration during a powerful rocket engine test. Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman, a NASA astronaut, was caught on video during the recent testing of the RS-25 engine that will power future versions of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for moon missions. NASA captured Wiseman and his Artemis 2 crewmate Christina Koch in Mississippi at NASA’s Stennis Space Center on March 6, and shared the astronauts enjoying the dramatic view on X (formerly Twitter) a few days later. The dramatic, 10-minute…

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NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare “Active Asteroids”

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2 Min Read NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare “Active Asteroids” NASA’s Active Asteroids project Credits: Henry Hsieh Some extraordinary asteroids have “activity”—comet-like tails or envelopes of gas and dust.  NASA’s Active Asteroids project announced the discovery of activity on fifteen asteroids, challenging conventional wisdom about the solar system. To find these fifteen rare objects, more than 8000 volunteers combed through 430,000 images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile. A paper about the results, now published in the Astronomical Journal, includes nine volunteers…

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FAA to oversee investigation of SpaceX Starship’s 3rd test flight

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For the third time in 11 months, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a flight of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket. Starship launched for the third time ever on Thursday (March 14), roaring into the skies from SpaceX‘s Starbase site in South Texas. The company aimed to bring both of Starship’s elements — its first-stage Super Heavy booster and its Starship upper stage — down to Earth for ocean landings, but both vehicles ended up breaking apart in the atmosphere. The test flight therefore qualifies as a mishap, and the…

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Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff Participates in Women in Space Roundtable

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1 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff and Deputy Center Director Laurie Grindle shake hands as they meet before the National Space Council’s Women in Space Roundtable in Hawthorne, California, on Monday, March 12, 2024. Grindle, from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards California, moderated a discussion with the Second Gentleman on a wide range of topics related to women in space. White House/Katie Ricks The National Space Council hosted the Women in Space Roundtable on Monday, March 12, and Deputy…

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NASA Delivers Science Instrument to JAXA’s Martian Moons Mission

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3 min read NASA Delivers Science Instrument to JAXA’s Martian Moons Mission On March 14, NASA delivered its gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer instrument to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) for integration onto JAXA’s MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission spacecraft and final system-level testing.   U.S. and Japanese team members gather around and discuss the gamma-ray spectrometer portion of the MEGANE instrument during its development at Johns Hopkins APL. NASA/JAXA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman NASA’s Mars-moon Exploration with Gamma Ray and Neutrons (MEGANE) instrument, developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)…

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NASA Announces Semifinalists of Power to Explore Challenge

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NASA selected 45 student essays as semifinalists of its 2024 Power to Explore Challenge, a national competition for K-12 students featuring the enabling power of radioisotopes. Contestants were challenged to explore how NASA has powered some of its most famous science missions and to dream up how their personal “superpower” would energize their success on their own radioisotope-powered science mission. The competition asked students to learn about Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS), “nuclear batteries” that NASA uses to explore the harshest, darkest, and dustiest parts of our solar system. RPS have…

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Women’s History Month: Meet Sarah Mann

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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Sarah Mann NASA Graphics In honor of Women’s History Month, we recently sat down with Sarah Mann, public affairs specialist and member of the Women’s Networking Group (WNG) at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, to learn more about her role and working at NASA. What do you do at NASA and how do you help support Armstrong’s mission? I get to tell the story about the exciting developments that happen with various programs and projects happening…

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