On March 18, 1978, space shuttle Enterprise arrived at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center for mated vertical ground vibration testing. via NASA https://ift.tt/2OD9Xac
Stars fill this infrared view, spanning 4 light-years across the center of the Lagoon Nebula. Visible light images show the glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds that dominate the scene. But this infrared image, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope data, peers closer to the heart of the active star-forming region revealing newborn stars scattered within, […]
Spring doesn’t just hapen on Earth. Spring also happens on some of our neighboring planets in the solar system. via NASA https://ift.tt/38TcSCb
This popular group leaps into the early evening sky around the March equinox and the northern hemisphere spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies found in the prominent constellation Leo gather here in one astronomical field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as […]
Stitched together on planet Earth, 142 separate images make up this 360 degree panorama from the floor of Jezero Crater on Mars. The high-resolution color images were taken by the Perseverance rover’s zoomable Mastcam-Z during mission sol 3, also known as February 21, 2021. In the foreground of Mastcam-Z’s view is the car-sized rover’s deck. […]
Fifty years ago this Sunday (February 7, 1971), the crew of Apollo 14 left lunar orbit and headed for home. They watched this Earthrise from their command module Kittyhawk. With Earth’s sunlit crescent just peeking over the lunar horizon, the cratered terrain in the foreground is along the lunar farside. Of course, while orbiting the […]
Apollo 14 arrived n lunar orbit on Feb. 4, 1971 to prepare for the landing in and exploration of the Fra Mauro highlands. via NASA https://ift.tt/39OY4p2
Fifty years ago this Friday, Apollo 14’s Lunar Module Antares landed on the Moon. Toward the end of the stay astronaut Ed Mitchell snapped a series of photos of the lunar surface while looking out a window, assembled into this detailed mosaic by Apollo Lunar Surface Journal editor Eric Jones. The view looks across the […]
The waning gibbous moon is pictured the day after its full Moon phase as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above China near the Mongolian border. via NASA https://ift.tt/3ayzjwL
Was the oldest known rock on Earth found on the Moon? Quite possibly. The story opens with the Apollo 14 lunar mission. Lunar sample 14321, a large rock found in Cone crater by astronaut Alan Shepard, when analyzed back on Earth, was found to have a fragment that was a much better match to Earth […]