NASA Administrator to Travel to India, UAE; Discuss Space Cooperation

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson gives remarks after Indian Ambassador to the United States Taranjit Sandhu signed the Artemis Accords, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington. NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will travel to India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a series of meetings beginning Monday, Nov. 27, with key government officials. Nelson also will meet with space officials in both countries to deepen bilateral cooperation across a broad range of innovation and research-related areas, especially in human exploration and Earth science. The…

Read More

Grab a mesmerizing star projector for less than $20 this Black Friday

Fancy bringing the magic of the night sky inside your home? You can with this Ambience Galaxy Projector from Encalife which is currently 33% off as part of Amazon’s Black Friday sale. This is one of the cheapest star projectors around, and for just $19.97 (its RRP is $29.97)  you’re getting a solid projector with multiple color options, timer modes and even a built-in Bluetooth speaker. In fact, we featured the Encalife Ambience Galaxy Projector in our round-up of best star projectors, calling it the best in the market for…

Read More

Inside ‘Earthrise’: A historian’s take on the origins of the Apollo 8 ‘image of the century’

The recent death of Frank Borman, commander of Nasa’s Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has focused attention on that incredible first voyage to the Moon. It took place eight months before Apollo 11, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface for the first time. However, the impact of Apollo 8’s “Earthrise” picture — the sight of the Earth from the moon — now seems even greater than that of the first landing. For many years, the story behind the famous Earthrise photo, was that the crew were caught off-guard by the…

Read More

Black Friday: Save $450 on one of the best Celestron telescopes

Amazon is currently offering $450 off the RRP of the Celestron NexStar Evolution 9.25, making this the cheapest we’ve ever seen this behemoth of a telescope.  Indeed, as recently as January of this year we were celebrating its price dropping down to $2,849 — the price Amazon now lists as the NexStar Evolution’s RRP. It was a bargain then, and it’s even more of a bargain now at $2,399: this telescope is part of Celestron’s signature range, so they don’t come much more powerful than this. The Celestron brand is…

Read More

SaSa Learning Activities

1 min read SaSa Learning Activities Students of the 2022 SaSa class stand in a cockpit, learning from a NASA airman as part of a training module. Module 1 The first module starts with a two-week introductory summer workshop at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Howard University Beltsville Campus research facility in Beltsville, Maryland Immediately after the workshop, there is a one-week, hands-on training on remote sensing/satellite application to disaster monitoring (ex. smoke from forest fires, volcanic plumes, desert dust storms, chemical spills, tornadoes and hurricanes, etc.)…

Read More

This Max Black Friday deal for $2.99 will get you 6 months of streaming at 70% off

The streaming service Max is home to tons of science fiction, fantasy and some epic space TV series (“From Earth To The Moon,” anyone?) and right now, you can great a great deal for Black Friday.  You can get Max for just $2.99 a month for 6 months (with ads) for Black Friday through Nov. 27. Max, formerly HBO Max, is where you’ll find recent smash movie hits like “Barbie” alongside the spectacularly animated and deep TV series “Scavengers Reign,” which I just finished watching and can’t wait to see…

Read More

Scientists find hydrogen in Apollo moon rocks, suggesting astronauts can harvest lunar water

A fresh analysis of moon rocks brought home during the Apollo missions has, for the first time, revealed the presence of hydrogen. This finding suggests future astronauts could someday use water available right on the moon for life support and rocket fuel. Researchers with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), to whom NASA provided the lunar samples for a research study, announced last week that they discovered hydrogen in lunar soil sample 79221. The detected hydrogen is thought to have been brought into existence by incessant showers of solar wind,…

Read More

‘Sunspot archipelago’ 15 times wider than Earth could soon bombard us with solar storms

One of the largest and most densely populated sunspot regions seen in more than a decade has appeared on the sun’s nearside to Earth — and has begun to unleash a barrage of solar storms that are shaking up our home star’s surface in a big way. The sunspots’ emergence could make it an interesting few weeks for Earth, which will soon be in the firing line of these eruptive dark patches.  The first sunspot group, named AR3490, rotated onto the sun‘s nearside on Nov. 18 over the star’s northeastern…

Read More

NASA Uses Two Worlds to Test Future Mars Helicopter Designs

6 min read NASA Uses Two Worlds to Test Future Mars Helicopter Designs This video combines two perspectives of the 59th flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Video on the left was captured by the Mastcam-Z on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover; the black-and-white video on the right was taken by Ingenuity’s downward-pointing Navcam. The flight occurred Sept 16. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Engineers will go beyond the ends of the Earth to find more performance for future Mars helicopters. For the first time in history, two planets have been home to testing future…

Read More

The Marshall Star for November 22, 2023

19 Min Read The Marshall Star for November 22, 2023 Artemis II Astronauts View SLS Core Stage at Michoud Artemis II NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch of NASA, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen viewed the core stage for the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility on Nov. 16. The three astronauts, along with NASA’s Victor Glover, will launch atop the rocket stage to venture around the Moon on Artemis II, the first crewed flight for Artemis. From left, Artemis II NASA astronaut Reid…

Read More