Day: May 28, 2024

Apollo 10 Ends Successfully

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NASA Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, lunar module pilot for the Apollo 10 mission, exits the spacecraft during recovery operations on May 26, 1969. He and the other two crew members already in the raft, Thomas P. Stafford (left) and John W. Young, were brought to the prime recovery ship, USS Princeton after splashdown. The Apollo 10 mission was the first flight of a complete, crewed Apollo spacecraft to operate around the Moon. It encompassed all aspects of an actual crewed lunar landing, except the landing. See more photos from the…

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Earth Science Information Partners Celebrate 25 Years of Collaboration

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Earth Observer Earth and Climate Earth Observer Home Editor’s Corner Feature Articles News In Memoriams Science in the News More Meeting Summaries Archives 13 min read Earth Science Information Partners Celebrate 25 Years of Collaboration Allison Mills, Earth Science Information Partners, allisonmills@esipfed.orgSusan Shingledecker, Earth Science Information Partners, susanshingledecker@esipfed.org Photo 1. Photo of some of the in-person participants of the July 2023 ESIP Meeting. ESIP celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2023. Founded as a knowledge sharing space, the nonprofit has grown as a collaborative data hub. Photo credit: Homer Horowitz/ Homer…

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Discovery Alert: Spock’s Home Planet Goes ‘Poof’

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Artist’s concept of a previously proposed possible planet, HD 26965 b – often compared to the fictional “Vulcan” in the Star Trek universe. Credit: JPL-Caltech The discovery A planet thought to orbit the star 40 Eridani A – host to Mr. Spock’s fictional home planet, Vulcan, in the “Star Trek” universe – is really a kind of astronomical illusion caused by the pulses and jitters of the star itself, a new study shows. Key facts The possible detection of a planet orbiting a star that Star Trek made famous drew…

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NASA to Provide Coverage of Progress 88 Launch, Space Station Docking

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The Progress 85 cargo craft is seen shortly after undocking from International Space Station on Feb. 12 as it was orbiting 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean. NASA will provide live launch and docking coverage of a Roscosmos cargo spacecraft carrying about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 71 crew aboard the International Space Station. The unpiloted Progress 88 spacecraft is scheduled to launch at 5:43 a.m. EDT (2:43 p.m. Baikonur time) Thursday, May 30, on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Live…

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The Milky Way’s heart shines over construction site of world’s largest telescope

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Construction of the Extremely Large Telescope has reached another milestone, with the completion of the dome’s steel skeleton.  The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) — the world’s largest visible- and infrared-light telescope — is under development on the Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert and is expected to see its “first light” by 2028.  ESO recently shared a stunning new nighttime photo taken from inside of the dome on April 3. The photo captures the telescope’s progress with the Milky Way‘s heart overhead and the rest…

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Colossal X-class solar flare suggests return of sunspot group that fueled May’s epic auroras (video)

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The colossal sunspot group AR3664 responsible for the epic May 2024 solar storms and widespread auroras is back — well, almost. Yesterday (May 27), a powerful X-class solar flare erupted from the sun‘s southeastern limb, peaking around 3:08 a.m. EDT (0708 GMT).  Solar flares are energetic eruptions of electromagnetic radiation from the sun’s surface that occur when magnetic energy accumulating in the solar atmosphere is released. They are categorized by size into lettered groups, with X-class being the most powerful. Within each class, numbers from 1-10 (and beyond for X-class…

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Astronomy has a bullying and harassment issue: ‘Results presented in this report are bleak’

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After surveying 661 employees affiliated with astronomy and geophysics professions, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) has stressed an “urgent” need to address bullying and harassment across the fields.  In short, 44% of respondents reported suffering in the workplace during the two years preceding the survey, and 65% of those respondents said reported concerns were either “ignored” or that their reports were unsatisfactorily handled. To be clear, the survey was conducted in 2020, and a soft-launch of the data was released in 2021. However, a full-fledged analysis of the results that…

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Johnson Celebrates AA and NHPI Heritage Month: Britney Tang

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When you think about personal property, your home, clothes, and electronic devices probably come to mind. For NASA, personal property comprises government-owned government-held assets ranging from laptops to spacecraft and space station components. Managing the financial records for these assets is the responsibility of the Property Accounting Team, which includes Personal Property Accountant Britney Tang. Tang sits within the Accounting Services Office of Johnson Space Center’s Office of the Chief Financial Services Officer (OCFO). She works with her colleagues to determine which NASA-held assets must be tracked over time versus…

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