Month: June 2024

Boeing’s 1st Starliner astronaut mission return delayed to June 22

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Boeing’s first crewed Starliner mission, that ferried astronauts to the International Space Station, will need to wait a little longer before returning its crew to Earth.  On June 5, the Crew Flight Test (CFT) for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft launched with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board; the spacecraft docked at the International Space Station (ISS) the next day. The mission’s objective was to complete a full on-orbit shakedown of the spacecraft, and it was originally set to last about a week. Now, the pair won’t return home…

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How China’s Chang’e 6 minirover snapped its epic photo on the moon’s far side

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China has revealed details about a miniature rover tucked away on the country’s pioneering Chang’e 6 lunar far side sample-return mission. Chang’e 6 launched on May 3 on a Long March 5 rocket. While being a repurposed backup to the successful 2020 Chang’e 5 mission, it was revealed after launch that the new spacecraft also packed a surprise rover.  The Chang’e 6 lander touched down in Apollo crater with the South Pole-Aitken basin on June 1. The rover was deployed around two days later, after sampling operations on the moon…

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Johnson Celebrates LGBTQI+ Pride Month: Meet Margaret Kennedy

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Although surrounded by the big and bold missions of human spaceflight, Margaret Kennedy, an aerospace systems engineer on the Human Health and Performance Contract, still appreciates the little things. Ask about her favorite NASA experience to date and she will tell you it is getting to show her badge to the gate guards at Houston’s Johnson Space Center every day. “Knowing I get to be a part of things that can change the world – that I’m helping to make it possible for astronauts to do their job safely, which…

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Sea Ice Swirls

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Floating fragments of sea ice spun into intricate patterns as ocean currents carried them south along Greenland’s east coast in spring 2024. The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a moment of this dizzying journey on June 4, 2024.

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Flag Day – One Small Flag’s Incredible Journey

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4 Min Read Flag Day – One Small Flag’s Incredible Journey This article is for students grades 5-8. This story tells the tale of one small American flag fortunate enough to embark on an incredible journey. It wasn’t the first flag to ride into space, or the most famous flag that went into space — that honor probably goes to the Stars and Stripes planted on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969. So what makes this one little flag so special? Let’s let the flag tell its own…

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Scientists find a surprise ingredient in exoplanet cake mix — sulfur dioxide

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A ‘hot Neptune’ exoplanet has been found to contain sulfur dioxide in its atmosphere — an atmosphere that’s also gushing into space as the planet loops over its star’s poles on a steeply inclined orbit every three-and-a-third days. The existence of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, dubbed GJ 3470b and located 96 light-years from Earth, came as a shock when it was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “We didn’t think we’d see sulfur dioxide on planets this small, and it’s exciting to see this…

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Hubble Telescope maps high-speed ‘burps’ from nearby feeding supermassive black hole for 1st time

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Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have, for the first time ever, mapped the plasma “burps” of a feeding supermassive black hole-powered quasar that dwells relatively close to Earth.  While supermassive black holes with masses millions or billions of times that of the sun are thought to dwell at the heart of all galaxies, not all of these cosmic titans power quasars. Some, like the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*, are relatively quiet because they are not greedily feeding on matter around…

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Secrets of radioactive ‘promethium’ — a rare earth element with mysterious applications — uncovered after 80-year search

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For the first time, scientists have revealed crucial properties of the mysterious, radioactive substance promethium — nearly eight decades after the elusive rare earth element was discovered. Promethium is one of the 15 lanthanide elements at the bottom of the periodic table. Also known as the rare earths, these metals exhibit a number of useful properties, including strong magnetism and unusual optical characteristics, making them particularly important in modern electronic devices.  “They are used in lasers; they are part of the screens of your smartphone. They are also used in…

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Sols 4212-4214: Gearing up to Drill!

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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Science Instruments Science Highlights News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Mars Resources Mars Exploration All Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets 2 min read Sols 4212-4214: Gearing up to Drill! This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4210 and captures the block which hosts our potential drill target, “Mammoth Lakes.” NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Monday, June 11, 2024 Curiosity is gearing up…

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Ames Research Center Democratizes Space Biosciences Research with First Commercial Astronaut Data

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Background: To protect astronauts from spaceflight health risks like solar radiation and microgravity, scientists develop countermeasures by studying model organisms exposed to the space environment. For the first time, commercial astronaut data from the Inspiration4 (I4) mission has been collected for open-access research in an effort led by Weill Cornell Medicine. ARC’s Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) hosts this data for public use. Facilitated by the OSDR, data from the all-civilian crew enables researchers to validate decades of model organism research and make vital discoveries from biospecimens of humans. The…

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