Divided by continent, YOU ARE HERE represents one (idealized) orbit of the ISS. This planetary photo tour -- surprising, playful, thought-provoking, and visually delightful -- is also punctuated with fun, fascinating commentary on life in zero gravity.
Provocative, challenging, and delightfully readable, this is a game-changing look at the most basic underpinning of existence and a powerful antidote to outmoded philosophical, religious, and scientific thinking.
NightWatch has been acclaimed as the best general interest introduction to astronomy. This edition includes star charts for use in the southern hemisphere. There are also dozens of new photographs throughout the book that show the latest thrilling discoveries made by current space observatories and probes.
Before NASA’s Artemis astronauts head to the Moon, a microwave oven-sized spacecraft will help lead the way. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, is a CubeSat mission set to launch in spring of 2022. For at least six months, the small spacecraft will fly a unique elongated path around the Moon. Its trajectory—known as a near rectilinear halo orbit—has never been flown before! Once tried and tested, the same orbit will be home to NASA’s future lunar space station Gateway. Here are five things to know:
1. The 55-pound (25 kg) spacecraft is equipped with solar arrays, cameras, and antennae for communication and navigation.
2. Powerful thrusters will help propel the CubeSat toward the Moon.
3. CAPSTONE will fly a unique elongated path around the Moon for at least six months.
4. At its closest approach, it will come within 2,100 miles (3,380 km) of the Moon’s North Pole.
5. The same orbit will be home to Gateway— our future outpost for Artemis astronauts heading to the Moon and beyond.
CAPSTONE is commercially owned and operated by Advanced Space in Westminster, Colorado. NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate funds the demonstration mission. The program is based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The development of CAPSTONE’s navigation technology is supported by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program. The Artemis Campaign Development Division within NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate funds the launch and supports mission operations. The Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida manages the launch.
Cosmos is one of the bestselling science books of all time. In clear-eyed prose, Sagan reveals a jewel-like blue world inhabited by a life form that is just beginning to discover its own identity and to venture into the vast ocean of space.
NASA’s Mars Helicopter Spots Gear That Helped Perseverance Rover Land
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently surveyed both the parachute
that helped the agency’s Perseverance rover land on Mars and the
cone-shaped backshell that protected the rover in deep space and during
its fiery descent toward the Martian surface on Feb. 18, 2021. Engineers
with the Mars Sample Return
program asked whether Ingenuity could provide this perspective. What
resulted were 10 aerial color images taken April 19 during Ingenuity’s
Flight 26.
Map of the Milky Way Galaxy with the constellations that cross the
galactic plane in each direction and the known most prominent components
annotated including main arms, spurs, bar, nucleus/bulge, and notable
nebulae.
Explanation: Only twenty-five years ago, Comet Hale-Bopp rounded the Sun and offered a dazzling spectacle in planet Earth’s night skies. Digitized from the original astrophoto on 35mm color slide film, this classic image of the Great Comet of 1997 was recorded a few days after its perihelion passage on April 1, 1997. Made with a camera and telephoto lens piggy-backed on a small telescope, the 10 minute long, hand-guided exposure features the memorable tails of Hale-Bopp, a whitish dust tail and blue ion tail. Here, the ion tail extends well over ten degrees across the northern sky. In all, Hale-Bopp was reported as visible to the naked eye from late May 1996 through September 1997. Also known as C/1995 O1, Hale-Bopp is recognized as one of the most compositionally pristine comets to pass through the inner Solar System. A visitor from the distant Oort cloud, the comet’s next perihelion passage should be around the year 4380 AD. Do you remember Hale-Bopp?
I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. ― Neil deGrasse Tyson
