NASA’s ORCA, AirHARP Projects Paved Way for PACE to Reach Space

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It took the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission just 13 minutes to reach low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in February 2024. It took a network of scientists at NASA and research institutions around the world more than 20 years to carefully craft and test the novel instruments that allow PACE to study the ocean and atmosphere with unprecedented clarity. In the early 2000s, a team of scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, prototyped the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment (ORCA) instrument,…

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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is ‘go’ for May 6 astronaut launch

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Boeing’s new spaceship has been cleared for its first-ever crewed liftoff. Over the past two days, NASA and Boeing held a flight readiness review (FRR) for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, which will send agency astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to and from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule. The FRR found no serious issues, meaning CFT is go for launch on May 6 as previously planned, NASA announced today (April 25). “I can say with confidence that the teams have absolutely done their due…

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Russian cosmonauts make quick work of space station spacewalk

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Two Russian cosmonauts completed a spacewalk at the International Space Station, wrapping up all of their tasks with time to spare, including the deployment of a radar that they began last year. Expedition 71 crewmates Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub successfully unfolded and latched the fourth of four panels for a synthetic radar communications system on the Russian Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM) at 11:44 a.m. EDT (1544 GMT) on Thursday (April 25), 47 minutes after the spacewalk began.  “I will try first manually,” said Chub, who used his gloved…

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Curiosity rover may be ‘burping’ methane out of Mars’ subsurface

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Since 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has repeatedly detected methane on Mars, specifically near its landing site inside the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater.  But that Mars methane is behaving erratically. It only appears at night, it fluctuates seasonally and it spikes unexpectedly to levels 40 times higher than usual. To make things more puzzling, the gas isn’t present in appreciable amounts high in the Martian atmosphere, and it hasn’t been detected near the surface in other Red Planet locales. So what’s going on at Gale Crater? A group of NASA…

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NASA’s Optical Comms Demo Transmits Data Over 140 Million Miles

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6 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 8, 2022. DSOC’s gold-capped flight laser transceiver can be seen, near center, attached to the spacecraft. NASA/Ben Smegelsky NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment also interfaced with the Psyche spacecraft’s communication system for the first time, transmitting engineering data to Earth. Riding aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, the agency’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration…

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Navigating the Moon with Art

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NASA An artist uses an airbrush to recreate the lunar surface on one of the four models comprising the LOLA, or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach, simulator in this November 12, 1964, photo. Project LOLA was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface. In “Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center From Sputnik to Apollo,” James Hansen wrote: “This simulator was designed to provide a pilot with a detailed visual encounter with the lunar surface; the machine consisted primarily of a cockpit, a…

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Washington State High Schooler Wins 2024 NASA Student Art Contest

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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) A 12th grade artist with a passion for NASA and space took home the top prize for the 2024 NASA Student Art Contest, a nationwide competition hosted by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Esther Lee, of Washington State, was selected as the grand prize winner for her submission “Beyond Imagination,” which depicts a young girl and her dog in a cardboard box exploring the universe. Lee said she was inspired by memories of her adventurous childhood. “Beyond…

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Watch China launch 3 astronauts to Tiangong space station today

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China will launch its latest set of crewmembers to Tiangong space station today (April 25), and you can watch the action live. The three-astronaut Shenzhou 18 mission is scheduled to lift off atop a Long March 2F rocket from China’s Jiuquan spaceport at 8:59 a.m. EDT (1259 GMT; 8:59 p.m. Beijing time) on April 25. Watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of Chinese broadcaster CCTV. Coverage is expected to begin around 5:45 a.m. EDT (0945 GMT). Related: China rolls out rocket for next astronaut mission to Tiangong space station…

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Sols 4166-4167: A Garden Full of Rocks

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3 min read Sols 4166-4167: A Garden Full of Rocks This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4164 (2024-04-23 16:43:09 UTC). NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Wednesday April 24, 2024 Here on Earth (in Toronto, specifically), it’s a very typical April which can’t quite make up its mind about whether or not it wants to be spring. On Mars (in Gale Crater), we’re well into spring, and Curiosity is enjoying the (relatively) warmer weather. As the days get longer and the weather gets…

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