Tag: Missions

Haircut on high: Getting a trim in space | Space picture of the day for April 17, 2025

NeRD

NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers gave Takuya Onishi, her JAXA crewmate, a haircut on board the International Space Station on April 13, 2025. (Image credit: JAXA/Takuya Onishi) What is it? A month into his second long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 73 commander Takuya Onishi received a haircut from his crewmate Nichole Ayers. Onishi shared this photo on social media, commenting on how this haircut by a NASA astronaut was different from his experience with a Russian cosmonaut during his first stay on the station in 2016. “A different…

Read More

James Webb Space Telescope sees a celestial Venn diagram around a dying star

NeRD

A stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is allowing astronomers to examine the complex and turbulent final stages of a dying star’s life. The snapshot above showcases NGC 1514, a planetary nebula that resides roughly 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. Despite the term, however, NGC 1514 has nothing to do with planets. Instead, at its heart, there are two stars. These stars appear as a single point of light in the James Webb Space Telescope‘s view, and this point of light is encircled…

Read More

Navy SEAL-doctor-astronaut lifts off with cosmonauts on Russian flight to ISS

NeRD

A Navy SEAL, medical doctor and NASA astronaut lifted off for an eight-month mission on the International Space Station — and that was just one of the three crewmembers on the trip into Earth orbit. Jonny Kim of the United States, together with Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, launched on Tuesday (April 8) as the Soyuz MS-27 crew. Riding atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, they ascended from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT or 10:47 a.m. local time). “I am so proud and excited,”…

Read More

NASA’s Perseverance rover watches as 2 Mars dust devils merge into 1 (video)

NeRD

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured a giant dust devil devouring a smaller storm swirling close behind it on the rim of Jezero Crater. Martian dust devils are spinning columns of warm air that pick up dust and debris as they move across the surface of the Red Planet. Perseverance spied the two merging storms on Jan. 25, while exploring the western rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater at a location called “Witch Hazel Hill.” “Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish,” Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at…

Read More

NASA Trains for Orion Water Recovery Ahead of Artemis II Launch

NeRD

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The Crew Module Test Article (CMTA), a full scale mockup of the Orion spacecraft, is seen in the Pacific Ocean as teams practice Artemis recovery operations during Underway Recovery Test-12 onboard USS Somerset off the coast of California, Saturday, March 29, 2025. NASA/Bill Ingalls Preparations for NASA’s next Artemis flight recently took to the seas as a joint NASA and Department of Defense team, led by NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, spent a week aboard the USS Somerset off the…

Read More

SpaceX rolls out rocket for historic Fram2 astronaut flight over Earth’s poles (photos)

NeRD

The hardware that will fly a historic private astronaut mission has made it to the launch pad. On Saturday (March 29), SpaceX posted photos on X of the Fram2 mission’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule rolling out to Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The milestone keeps Fram2 on track to launch on Monday evening (March 31). Liftoff is scheduled for 9:46 p.m. EDT (0146 GMT on April 1), though there are three additional instantaneous opportunities during the 4.5-hour-long launch window. Fram2, which is…

Read More

ISS National Lab explores the future of space in new podcast ‘Between a Rocket and a Hard Space’

NeRD

It seems like everyone on Earth — and beyond — is getting into the podcast business these days. The International Space Station National Laboratory just launched “Between a Rocket and a Hard Space,” a brand-new podcast that explores the future of space innovation. The series will delve into the discoveries, innovations, projects and personalities helping to forge the future of space. Episodes can be accessed via all major platforms, including Apple Podcast, iHeartRadio, Spotify and YouTube. Key artwork for the ISS National Laboratory’s new podcast series. (Image credit: NASA/ISS National…

Read More

X-rays, mushrooms and more: The science riding on SpaceX’s Fram2 astronaut mission around Earth’s poles

NeRD

A new mission from SpaceX will soon send humans over Earth’s poles for the first time ever. Launching no earlier than Monday (March 31), the privately funded, four-day Fram2 mission has quite a few tasks to accomplish in a short timespan. The Fram2 crew will be the first people to observe the polar regions from low Earth orbit, and they’ll work on experiments and projects designed to forward our understanding of long-duration spaceflight. The mission will also mark the first time that crews have used an X-ray machine on humans…

Read More

NASA cancels cargo launch to ISS due to damaged Cygnus spacecraft

NeRD

NASA has called off a planned cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) due to a damaged spacecraft. The spacecraft is a robotic Cygnus freighter, built by the Virginia-based company Northrop Grumman. It had been scheduled to launch several tons of food, fuel and other supplies to the ISS from Florida’s Space Coast this June. On March 5, however, NASA announced that Cygnus’ shipping container sustained damage during the trip to the launch site. The agency had said mission teams would inspect the freighter over the coming days to…

Read More

NASA completes SLS core stage stacking for Artemis 2 moon mission (photos)

NeRD

NASA’s next moon rocket is coming together, piece by piece. The core stage of NASA’s next Space Launch System (SLS) rocket recently completed integration with the vehicle’s side boosters inside the agency’s Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. SLS will launch NASA’s Artemis 2 mission to fly four astronauts aboard an Orion spacecraft around the moon and back sometime next year. “Technicians joined the core stage March 23 with the stacked solid rocket boosters for the mission at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC),” NASA officials wrote in a statement Monday (March…

Read More