NASA Invites Media to Expedition 70 Crew Visit at Marshall

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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)  Four Expedition 70 crew members pose for a fun portrait inside their crew quarters aboard the International Space Station’s Harmony module. Clockwise from bottom are, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli; ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen; JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa; and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. NASA NASA will host four astronauts at 10 a.m. CDT Tuesday, May 14, for a media opportunity at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA astronauts Jasmin…

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Sols 4182-4183: We Reached the South Side of Pinnacle Ridge… What’s Next?

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3 min read Sols 4182-4183: We Reached the South Side of Pinnacle Ridge… What’s Next? This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4180 (2024-05-10 03:55:37 UTC). NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, May 10, 2024 We planned quite a drive on Wednesday, with lots of twists and turns over very bumpy terrain, so the team was delighted to learn everything completed as planned when we received our downlink at ~4 am Pacific Time this morning! The successful drive means Curiosity is now parked on…

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NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will hunt for the universe’s 1st stars — or their shredded corpses, anyway

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NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope could use the grisly death of stars ripped apart by black holes to hunt the universe’s first population of stellar bodies. These early stars, referred to (somewhat confusingly) as Population III (Pop III) stars, were very different from the sun and other stars seen in the cosmos today. That’s because the universe wasn’t yet filled with “metals,” the term astronomers use to describe elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.  Pop III stars arose just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang and…

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That’s Refreshing

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An American Flamingo takes a sip of water in the Indian River at Haulover Canal on Merritt Island on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. The American Flamingos are more common in Mexico and Cuba but the winds from Hurricane Idalia relocated them to Florida in September 2023. Kennedy Space Center in Florida shares a border with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where more than 310 species of birds inhabit the refuge.

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NASA’s New Mobile Launcher Stacks Up for Future Artemis Missions 

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The foundation is set at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launching crewed missions aboard the agency’s larger and more powerful SLS (Space Launch System) Block 1B rocket in support of Artemis IV and future missions. On May 9, 2024, teams with NASA’s EGS (Exploration Ground Systems) Program and contractor Bechtel National Inc. transferred the primary base structure of the mobile launcher 2 to its permanent mount mechanisms using the spaceport’s beast-mode transporter – the crawler.   On Thursday, May 9, 2024, teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program…

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Hubble Celebrates the 15th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 4

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8 Min Read Hubble Celebrates the 15th Anniversary of Servicing Mission 4 Michael Good (on the end of the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System) works to refurbish and upgrade Hubble during Servicing Mission 4. Credits: NASA Fifteen years ago, human hands touched NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. As astronauts performed finishing tasks on the telescope during its final servicing mission in May 2009, they knew they had successfully concluded one of the most challenging and ambitious series of spacewalks ever conducted. But they couldn’t have known at the…

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NASA Glenn Looking to Lease Facilities

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3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA Glenn Research Center’s iconic Flight Research Building (hangar). Credit: NASA/Jef Janis As NASA advances its aviation and spaceflight missions, its facilities and infrastructure need to evolve along with them. NASA centers, including Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, must find ways to reduce the cost of maintaining assets they aren’t currently using. Toward this goal, NASA Glenn is offering opportunities to lease assets it no longer uses. These Enhanced Use Lease (EUL) agreements will allow space, aeronautics, and other related…

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Hubble Glimpses a Star-Forming Factory

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2 min read Hubble Glimpses a Star-Forming Factory This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope highlights the spiral galaxy UGC 9684. The celestial object showcased in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the spiral galaxy UGC 9684, which lies around 240 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Boötes. This image shows an impressive example of several classic galactic features, including a clear bar in the galaxy’s center, and a halo surrounding its disk. The data for this Hubble image came from a study of Type-II…

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