2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Princeton University undergraduate Kate Sheldon, doing summer work at Firebird Diagnostics, holds a prototype of the Agnostic Life Finder, or ALF, which was developed to seek life on Mars without making Earth-specific assumptions about molecular biology.Credit: Firebird Diagnostics LLC At first glance, the search [...]
Three Black Brant IX sounding rockets for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission are scheduled to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility launch range in Virginia. The launch window opens April 8, 2024, at 2:40 p.m. EDT. Launching approximately 45 minutes before, during, and after the peak local eclipse, the APEP sounding rockets [...]
The Structures Technical Discipline Team (TDT) was involved in numerous investigations this past year, but composites, fracture mechanics, and pressure vessels dominate the list. All three of these specialties are important to composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPV). One of the TDT’s most important findings this year was the exposure of an inherent vulnerability that underpredicts [...]
3 min read Harnessing the 2024 Eclipse for Ionospheric Discovery with HamSCI As the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, draws closer, a vibrant community of enthusiastic amateur radio operators, known as “hams,” is gearing up for an exciting project with the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) group. Our goal is clear [...]
Guessing your age might be a popular carnival game, but for astronomers it’s a real challenge to determine the ages of stars. Once a star like our Sun has settled into steady nuclear fusion, or the mature phase of its life, it changes little for billions of years. One exception to that rule is the [...]
4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA conducted a full-duration RS-25 hot fire April 3 on the Fred Haise Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, achieving a major milestone for future Artemis flights of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. It marked the final [...]
On April 8, 2024, North America will witness its last total solar eclipse for more than twenty years. Other parts of the world will experience the rare celestial event in the coming decade. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, blocking its disk from view but [...]
Artemis systems are ready to fly astronauts, a hot fire test of an Artemis rocket engine, and educating and inspiring the Artemis generation … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!
23 Min Read The Marshall Star for April 3, 2024 Huntsville, Marshall Preparing to Celebrate Total Solar Eclipse By Celine Smith On April 8 between 1 and 3 p.m., the Moon will pass between the Sun and Earth to create a total solar eclipse for 15 states. While Alabama will experience a partial eclipse, [...]
Dec. 11, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft reenters the atmosphere after completing a 1.4 million-mile, 25.5 day Artemis I mission to the Moon.
