Tag: NASA

NASA astronaut Jan Davis recounts career, father’s POW experience in new book

NeRD

Davis: I was fortunate enough to be hired (at NASA) as an engineer in 1979, before the space shuttle flew in ’81. They were trying to ramp up people to work on not only the shuttle, but also things that flew on the shuttle, which is why I worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, which was amazing.  They had just selected the first group of astronauts to fly in the space shuttle in 1978: 35 astronauts, of which there were six women. So for the first time, the astronauts were…

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Radio telescope will launch to moon’s far side in 2025 to hunt for the cosmic Dark Ages

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A small mission to test technology to detect radio waves from the cosmic Dark Ages over 13.4 billion years ago will blast off for the far side of the moon in 2025. The Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment-Night mission, or LuSEE-Night for short, is a small radio telescope being funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy with involvement from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Minnesota. LuSEE-Night will blast off as part of NASA’s Commercial…

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Record-setting NASA astronaut lands with Russian crewmates after 1 year on space station

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The first American to spend a full year in space and the first two Russians to do the same on the International Space Station (ISS) have landed safely back on Earth. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos returned from the space station aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft on Wednesday (Sept. 27). Their touchdown at 7:17 a.m. EDT (1117 GMT or 5:14 p.m. local time) on the steppe of Kazakhstan ended an extended 371-day stay in space for all…

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Learn the true stories of NASA’s 1st women astronauts in new book ‘The Six’ (exclusive)

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 NASA changed forever in 1978 with the addition of new kinds of astronauts. That year, NASA accepted women and people of color into the astronaut corps for the first time, and the new book “The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts” (Scribner, 2023) by Loren Grush shares the true firsthand stories of the female pioneers in that group. Grush’s book focuses on the stories of astronauts Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid and Rhea Seddon, while also talking about the decades of discrimination…

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft releases asteroid sample capsule toward Earth in flyby, heads to Apophis

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The first asteroid samples ever collected by NASA are closing in on Earth for a historic landing in the Utah desert today (Sept. 24).  NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which collected samples of asteroid Bennu in 2020, released a capsule carrying that precious cargo at 6:42 a.m. EDT (1042 GMT) on a course to land on Earth. The spacecraft was 63,000 miles (101,388 kilometers) from Earth, about one-third the distance to the moon, when it released the sample capsule, with OSIRIS-REx itself flying past our planet to a new destination, NASA officials…

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How NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will help protect Earth against asteroid Bennu and its flyby in 2182

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The asteroid Bennu is a scientific gem, but a potentially dangerous one: No other space rock has a higher known probability of hitting Earth in the next 200 years. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling mission will help scientists better understand how to protect humankind if Bennu’s trajectory were ever to intersect with that of our planet.  Bennu, discovered in 1999, is a rare B-type asteroid that is rich in carbon material believed to contain chemical compounds from the early epochs of the solar system. On top of that, its orbit makes the…

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OSIRIS-REx probe will bring pristine asteroid samples to Earth on Sept. 24. Watch it live

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NASA’s first-ever pristine asteroid sample will come down to Earth on Sunday morning (Sept. 24), and you can watch the historic action live. If all goes according to plan, the agency’s OSIRIS-REx probe will release a capsule containing samples of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Sunday at 6:42 a.m. EDT (1042 GMT).  That capsule will touch down softly under parachutes at 10:55 a.m. EDT (1455 GMT) at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Grounds, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of Salt Lake City.…

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What time is NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return capsule landing on Sept. 24?

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It’s been seven years since the launch of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to collect and return samples of asteroid Bennu, and the long wait for the spacecraft’s homecoming is nearly over. OSIRIS-REx, short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, on September 8, 2016. The journey to rendezvous with Bennu took the spacecraft two years to complete, which were followed by another two years of scans while orbiting the asteroid. The much-anticipated collection of material from Bennu’s surface didn’t occur until October 20, 2020, and…

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How NASA’s OSIRIS-REx will bring asteroid samples to Earth in 5 not-so-easy steps

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission faces the most difficult part of its journey as it approaches Earth for atmospheric reentry and recovery. The spacecraft is on course to deliver a capsule that will touch down in a western United States desert Sept. 24, completing a seven-year journey and making it the first NASA mission to retrieve surface material from an asteroid.  OSIRIS-REx launched on Sept. 8, 2016 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, in Florida, and began a two-year trip to rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft arrived…

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After 1 year in space, what’s next for an astronaut? ‘Peace and quiet’ on Earth, Frank Rubio says (video)

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NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is about to do what no other American has done before: Celebrate an entire year in space. The record-breaking NASA astronaut spoke to reporters from the International Space Station on Tuesday (Sept. 19), just two days ahead of the 365-day mark for his current mission. The Salvadoran-American physician, born in Los Angeles, also paid tribute to the mentors in the military and at NASA that helped him reach space. “You have the opportunity to work with a tremendous breadth of great individuals (in the military), and…

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