491 posts tagged with space and NASA.
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A Christmas star
That’s a helluva lot of astronaut overtime
“spaghettification is just 12.8 seconds away”
360 Video: NASA Simulation Plunges into a Black Hole answers the question of what it would look like to fall into a black hole. If you’d rather not, NASA also released 360 Video: NASA Simulation Shows a Flight Around a Black Hole. They also released videos explaining what is going on in the visualizations for the dive into the black hole as well as the flight around it. The press release has more information.
Voyager 1 sends readable message to Earth
After 4 nail-biting months of gibberish, Voyager 1 is making sense again. Since November 2023, the almost-50-year-old spacecraft has been experiencing trouble with its onboard computers. Although Voyager 1, one of NASA's longest-lived space missions, has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, it hasn't contained any usable data. Now, there may be hope for recovery.
The Lost Universe: NASA's First TTRPG Adventure
The Lost Universe (science.nasa.gov, 03/04/2024): "A dark mystery has settled over the city of Aldastron on the rogue planet of Exlaris. Researchers dedicated to studying the cosmos have disappeared, and the Hubble Space Telescope has vanished from Earth's timeline. Only an ambitious crew of adventurers can uncover what was lost. Are you up to the challenge? This adventure is designed for a party of 4-7 level 7-10 characters and is easily adaptable for your preferred tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) system." Adventure design by Christina Mitchell. Graphic design by Michelle Belleville.
Moon landings, a wooden satellite, Tolkien on Mars, fiery descents
The Martian helicopter completed its final flight on Valinor Hills. "yeah it really could be an ocean moon" - Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space in early 2024. [more inside]
What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back?
"Space is a harsh, incredibly forbidding domain. It can play with the mind" Not everyone on a space mission is subject to the same rigorous tests as others - this assymetry between professional astronutters and mad scientists was once put to the test when one of the latter, Taylor Gun-Jin Wang, couldn't get his experiment to work - and spiralled into a deep funk... especially when the boss told him to not waste time trying to fix it...
Why did NASA build a vehicle designed to attack aircraft tires?
Why did NASA create the Tire Assualt Vehicle (TAV), a model radio-control tank with a drill?
The Space Shuttle Program had experienced some close calls with the landing and braking system, especially the tires. Hard data was desired about the response of the tires to various off-nominal situations. To obtain this data, a Convair 990 jetliner was converted into the Landing Systems Research Aircraft by adding an instrumented version of a Shuttle Orbiter landing gear.
(StackExchange, with an answer by the creator of the TAV) [more inside]
Coming in hot!
POV footage of NASA's Artemis 1's Orion spacecraft's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere: Real-time (25m); Time-lapsed 25x (1m)
Launches, landings, elements, and the fiery golden apples of the sun
NASA started work on this day in 1958. So let's mark the occasion by checking on the past month of humanity's exploration of space. [more inside]
Feeling lunar gravity
Had ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface. Let's check in on humanity's exploration of space as autumn 2023 draws nigh, starting with the Sun and working outwards from there. [more inside]
A First Glimpse of Our Magnificent Earth, Seen From the Moon
The first people to view our planet from the moon were transformed by the experience. In this film, they tell their story. Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (editor and podcast host of the ruminative Emergence Magazine) and Adam Loften created the Emmy nominated video Earthrise in 2018.
I wondered what role this image could offer us 50 years later as we face intense political, social and ecological upheaval. Could it become a symbol of remembrance that unites us?[more inside]
Hello from lunar orbit! 🌔
An eclipse, the heart of a supernova, rockets up and down the gravity well, and more missions. Here's a snapshot of humanity's exploration of space in April 2023. [more inside]
Volcano on Venus
A Martian glacier, rockets, asteroid samples, moons, and more rockets. From the fiery Sun to the search for alien civilizations, here's an update on humanity's exploration of space.
Sol
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of an immense solar flare followed by a solar tornado. [more inside]
Sol
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of an immense solar flare followed by a solar tornado. [more inside]
Is tonight the night that NASA launches its SLA rocket?
It's Full Of Stars
NASA has shared a new image, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope [previously] of the iconic Pillars Of Creation first captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.
Moon to Mars activities and asteroid crashing
NASA published its new strategic objectives. And a lot more is going on. Just past the fall equinox, we catch up with humanity's exploration of space. [more inside]
From the Earth to the Moon, to Venus, Mars, and more
A roundup of July and August 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Humans and robots explored, rockets ascended and descended, various preparations are under way, and many plans were aired. [more inside]
"What are you talking about, HAL?"
Looking into the universe in June 2022
Today NASA published the first image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. That makes this a fine day to catch up on all of the other ways people and our machines are exploring space. [more inside]
Voyage On, Voyager
Launched in 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 took advantage of.a rare planetary alignment to send a probe past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Originally designed to last four years, they are now the furthest man-made objects from Earth, now traveling in interstellar space. After 45 years, however, systems on the spacecraft are being powered down, in an effort to conserve power into the next decade. A bittersweet ending to an amazing mission.
From Ukraine to deep space
April-June 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. Stand by for rocky passengers, glitches, amazing images, a very French rocket name, Earthly politics, and lots of asteroids.
On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. [more inside]
On the Earth In the Himalayas, a liquid mirror telescope came online. France joined the Artemis accords for sustainable space exploration. BRICS nations announced a new space agreement: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. [more inside]
Rockets, photos, the sun, a space station, and a very distant star
Late March 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. The past couple of weeks saw a lot of activity in the solar system, especially with launches and images. [more inside]
The sound of 5000 exoplanets
On March 21, 2022, the number of known exoplanets passed 5,000 according to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The music is created by playing a note for each newly discovered world. The pitch of the note indicates the relative orbital period of the planet. Planets that take a longer time to orbit their stars are heard as lower notes, while planets that orbit more quickly are heard as higher notes.
Dismissal for any homosexual conduct was a "custom within the agency"
Nature: Documents reveal NASA’s internal struggles over renaming Webb telescope - which is to say, NASA ignored evidence of James Webb's culpability in purging queer people from NASA and tried to cover it up. [more inside]
That figure is far higher than NASA might have hoped.
Later in the hearing, Martin broke down the costs per flight, which will apply to at least the first four launches of the Artemis program: $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency for Orion's Service Module. NASA, Martin said, had checked and confirmed these figures.
The option of dropping a 500-ton structure on India and China
Updates from February 2022 in space. The human effort to explore space continued this month, intersecting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [more inside]
The Whole Earth Photolog, revisited
From grainy stills to gorgeous high-resolution portraits, from intimate pairings to stark contrasts, and from iconic standbys to little-known surprises, The Planetary Society's Earth gallery offers a rich collection of stunning photography and video footage of our world as seen from both planetary spacecraft and geostationary satellites. It is a vista that has inspired many a deep thought in the lucky few that have seen it firsthand [previously]. And it's just one of a number of annotated collections from the Bruce Murray Space Image Library.
to strengthen its space presence in an all-round manner
The past fortnight in space. Updates from humanity's exploration of the solar system.
On Earth's surface: using data from three satellites, scientists published a visualization of an unusually violent star. A "hard start" delayed an ABL Space Systems rocket test launch. An uncrewed SpaceX Dragon module safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. [more inside]
On Earth's surface: using data from three satellites, scientists published a visualization of an unusually violent star. A "hard start" delayed an ABL Space Systems rocket test launch. An uncrewed SpaceX Dragon module safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. [more inside]
JWST@L2
From L2 to the Moon and points elsewhere
The last two weeks of 2021 in space. Starting with the Earth area: Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, two taikonauts of the Shenzhou-13 mission on board the Tianhe space station, completed a second EVA lasting six hours. [more inside]
Good corona news
For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere — called the corona — sampling particles and characterizing magnetic fields in this dynamic environment. The second video has footage from within the corona itself.
The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.
"Now we’re going to put our zillion-dollar telescope on top of a stack of explosive material and turn things over to fate." Current scheduled launch date December 22 To look back in time at the cosmos’s infancy and witness the first stars flicker on, you must first grind a mirror as big as a house. Its surface must be so smooth that, if the mirror were the scale of a continent, it would feature no hill or valley greater than ankle height. Only a mirror so huge and smooth can collect and focus the faint light coming from the farthest galaxies in the sky — light that left its source long ago and therefore shows the galaxies as they appeared in the ancient past, when the universe was young. [more inside]
New space walks
A space exploration update for November 2021. In Earth orbit news, one crew returned from the International Space Station, while a new crew rode a SpaceX flight to board the ISS. The ISS altered its orbit by a mile to avoid incoming debris from an old Chinese launch. Members of the Shenzhou 13 team aboard China's Tiangong space station conducted a spacewalk to build out the station; colonel Wang Yaping became China's first female spacewalker. [more inside]
Jonathan's Space Report
Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Since 1989, he has self-published Jonathan's Space Report, a monthly free web-based newsletter that recaps launches of satellites, reentries and launches of manned spacecraft, and other recent spaceflight activity. [more inside]
a faint plasma "hum" scientists compared to gentle rain
Another week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Starting from the sun: the NASA and ESA Solar Orbiter hurtled around the far side of the star from the Earth and tracked a coronal mass ejection. [more inside]
The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.
This week in humanity's exploration of the solar system. Let's start at the center. The Parker Solar Probe set two new records as the fastest object ever made by humanity (330,000 miles per hour, 532,000 km/h) and the closest any spacecraft has gotten to the sun (6.5 million miles, 10.4 million km). Back on Earth, scholars published research into Venusian data Parker caught when it last hurtled past that planet (previously). [more inside]
Ingenious
"We can say human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet." On April 19th the Ingenuity copter, part of the Perseverance rover mission, took off from the Martian surface, hovered, took a photo of its shadow, then safely landed. It is the first time a human-built craft has flown on another world. [more inside]
LEGO knows where you live
The LEGO Group Joins Forces with Former Astronaut Dr. Kathy Sullivan to Launch New LEGO® NASA Space Shuttle Discovery Set (LEGO press release, March 21, 2021). The LEGO Group announces new LEGO® NASA Space Shuttle Discovery set – aimed at adults; Officially revealed by former NASA Astronaut Dr Kathy Sullivan who was part of the original NASA STS-31 mission, over 30 years ago, which launched the Hubble Telescope - capturing images of our universe, to help us understand more about the great beyond. [more inside]
NASA/JPL drop first-ever video of landing on Mars
On-board cameras catch Perseverance during entry, descent, and landing. Matt Wallace, Perseverance deputy project manager, credited having watched his daughter's GoPro-style footage of doing a backflip for the plan to put ruggedized commercial sports-POV cameras on the Perserverance rover for EDL. [more inside]
Moon Rock in the Oval Office
Apollo 17 Lunar Sample 76015,143: chipped off a lunar boulder in 1972, now sitting on a table in the White House after a long, long journey.
In and around the solar system this week
Humanity and its machines have been busy finding stuff in space. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program's Chang'e 5 landed in the Oceanus Procellarum, looked around, collected samples, and fired off a sample-laded return rocket towards an orbiter. (previously) [more inside]
Space Junk!
Since 1957, nearly 10,000 satellites have been put into earth orbit. The approximatley 2700 of them still functioning have been joined by another 26,000 catalogued pieces of space debris, along with countless pieces too small to track. There is an ever increasing risk of chain reaction collisions, especially with massive fleets of new communications satellites starting to be launched. (New Yorker) [more inside]
Good Comet... or Great Comet?
Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) is in the neighborhood this month and it's giving the best performance by a comet visible in the Northern Hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. NEOWISE — named for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the telescope which first spotted the comet on March 27th — is certainly a very good comet, though it remains to be seen if it’s what astronomers would call a ‘great comet’. There actually isn’t a settled definition for a 'great comet' aside from it having an exceptional brightness, but astronomers assure us they know one when they see one. So let’s revisit the acknowledged greats of the 21st Century so far before getting into more detail on our current, quite nice visitor. [more inside]
"We understand that the whole world is also impacted by the same crisis"
NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy, Crewmates Arrive Safely at Space Station. The NASA astronaut, Russian cosmonauts launch to the space station during a pandemic. So, ISS crew blast off after long quarantine.
We're making a few assumptions here, but
Maybe we could go to the moon using four USB chargers instead of the original Apollo 11 computers.
Goodnight Spitzer Space Telescope
On January 30th 2020, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope will complete its mission.
NASA is saying goodbye to one of its Great Observatories after a successful 16-year mission. The telescope will soon transmit the last of its science data and will be sent commands to power down. It will remain in space indefinitely, slowly drifting away from the earth. [more inside]
NASA is saying goodbye to one of its Great Observatories after a successful 16-year mission. The telescope will soon transmit the last of its science data and will be sent commands to power down. It will remain in space indefinitely, slowly drifting away from the earth. [more inside]
Accelerates great, but runs rough
Recently in space
Robots, scary galaxies, new outfits, and a lack of spots. Asteroid 1998 HL1 flew pretty close by the Earth.
The sun is spotless, and has been so for a while. (Previously) [more inside]
Lesbian Space Crime
NASA is currently looking into what may be the first instance of crime in space. Also of interest: the first protest in space (2017), the first strike in space (1973).