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Student Rockets Blast Off During Annual 2017 #StudentLaunch Challenge
Fifty middle and high school, college and university teams from 23 states launched their student-built rockets at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Student Rockets Blast Off During Annual 2017 #StudentLaunch Challenge
Fifty middle and high school, college and university teams from 23 states launched their student-built rockets at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Student Rockets Blast Off During Annual 2017 #StudentLaunch Challenge Fifty middle and high school, college and university teams from 23 states launched their student-built rockets at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA/MSFC Image Date: April 8, 2017
Student Rockets Blast Off During Annual 2017 #StudentLaunch Challenge
Fifty middle and high school, college and university teams from 23 states launched their student-built rockets at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Student Rockets Blast Off During Annual 2017 #StudentLaunch Challenge
Fifty middle and high school, college and university teams from 23 states launched their student-built rockets at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Student Rockets Blast Off During Annual 2017 #StudentLaunch Challenge
Fifty middle and high school, college and university teams from 23 states launched their student-built rockets at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
May 12, 2017: In this 229th edition of "Earth from Space", Sentinel-2 takes us over the border of the U.S. states Utah and Colorado—presented by Kelsea Brennan-Wessels from the ESA Web-TV virtual studios.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA) Duration: 2 minutes, 31 seconds Release Date: May 12, 2017
May 10, 2017: NASA helped the town of Mars, Pennsylvania ring in the Martian New Year, May 5-6. Citizens of the town, just north of Pittsburgh, invited the agency to help celebrate Mars New Year, which happens about every two Earth years. Activities included two days of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics or (STEAM) activities, to encourage young people to pursue careers in these fields of study, which are critical to NASA's journey to Mars. Website: www.MarsNewYear.com
Credit: NASA Duration: 2 minutes Release Date: May 10, 2017
"Color mosaic of pancam images acquired by NASA's Opportunity rover on May 10, 2017 (mission sol 4726). Opportunity is at the head of 'Perseverance Valley,' located on the rim of Endeavour Crater. This view is made from raw uncalibrated images and has been color-adjusted to approximately the type of color you'd see on Mars. Note: The right side of the image was a bit overexposed in the raw images so that is why it seems a bit lighter there."
ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of France: "Sardinia and its little sister Corsica"
"La Sardaigne et la Corse - une photo dont je suis plutôt fier"
Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily and before Cyprus) and an autonomous region of Italy. It is located in the Western Mediterranean, just south of the French island of Corsica. (Source: Wikipedia)
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 13 regions of France. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia. A single chain of mountains make up two-thirds of the island. (Source: Wikipedia)
In this photo, the James Webb Space Telescope has just arrived at Ellington Field, in Houston, Texas from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The telescope was safely ensconced in a special transporter case (called the Space Telescope Transporter for Air, Road, and Sea, or STTARS) which attaches to a truck. Webb telescope was first driven from NASA Goddard to Andrews, and then put in a C-5 cargo plane. The plane flew to Ellington, and then the telescope was transported by truck to NASA's Johnson Space Center for an end-to-end cryogenic test. Webb will undergo 100 days in a freezer (the huge test Chamber A), which mimics the extremely cold temperature at which the telescope will operate in space. Light will be passed through the telescope to ensure its optics are correctly aligned.
Friday, May 12th, 2017 marks the 200th spacewalk at the station for assembly and maintenance. To celebrate, here is a look back at a view taken during Extravehicular Activity (EVA) 1 on December 8, 1998. Astronauts James H. Newman (left) and Jerry L. Ross work between Zarya and Unity (foreground) during the first of three scheduled spacewalks on the STS-88 mission. Newman is tethered to the module, while Ross is anchored at the feet to a mobile foot restraint mounted on the end of the remote manipulator system (RMS) arm.
Zarya (FGB) provided electrical power, storage, propulsion, and guidance to the International Space Station (ISS) during the initial stage of assembly. With the launch and assembly in orbit of other modules with more specialized functionality, Zarya is now primarily used for storage, both inside the pressurized section and in the externally mounted fuel tanks. The Zarya is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft designed for the Russian Salyut program. The name Zarya, which means sunrise, was given to the FGB because it signified the dawn of a new era of international cooperation in space. Although it was built by a Russian company, it is owned by the United States. (Source: Wikipedia)
Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center Image Date: December 8, 1998
Friday, May 12th, 2017 marks the 200th spacewalk at the station for assembly and maintenance. To celebrate, here is a look back at a view taken during Extravehicular Activity (EVA) 1 on December 8, 1998. NASA Astronaut Jerry L. Ross takes a picture during a 7-hour, 21 minute spacewalk. Astronauts Ross and James H. Newman went on to mate 40 cables and connectors running 76 feet from the Zarya control module to Unity, with the 35-ton complex towering over Endeavour's cargo bay. The photo was taken with an electronic still camera (ESC) at 00:35:05 GMT, Dec. 8.
Zarya (FGB) provided electrical power, storage, propulsion, and guidance to the International Space Station (ISS) during the initial stage of assembly. With the launch and assembly in orbit of other modules with more specialized functionality, Zarya is now primarily used for storage, both inside the pressurized section and in the externally mounted fuel tanks. The Zarya is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft designed for the Russian Salyut program. The name Zarya, which means sunrise, was given to the FGB because it signified the dawn of a new era of international cooperation in space. Although it was built by a Russian company, it is owned by the United States. (Source: Wikipedia)
Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center Image Date: December 8, 1998
Friday, May 12th, 2017 marks the 200th spacewalk at the station for assembly and maintenance. To celebrate, here is a look back at a view taken during Extravehicular Activity (EVA) 1 on December 7, 1998. Astronaut James H. Newman, waves at camera as he holds onto one of the hand rails on the Unity connecting module during the early stages of a 7-hour, 21-minute spacewalk. Astronauts Newman and Jerry L. Ross, both mission specialists, went on to mate 40 cables and connectors running 76 feet from the Zarya control module to Unity, with the 35-ton complex towering over Endeavour's cargo bay. This photo was taken with an electronic still camera (ESC) at 23:37:40 GMT, Dec. 7.
Zarya (FGB) provided electrical power, storage, propulsion, and guidance to the International Space Station (ISS) during the initial stage of assembly. With the launch and assembly in orbit of other modules with more specialized functionality, Zarya is now primarily used for storage, both inside the pressurized section and in the externally mounted fuel tanks. The Zarya is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft designed for the Russian Salyut program. The name Zarya, which means sunrise, was given to the FGB because it signified the dawn of a new era of international cooperation in space. Although it was built by a Russian company, it is owned by the United States. (Source: Wikipedia)
Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center Image Date: December 7, 1998
U.S. Astronaut Jack Fischer: "My 1st real Moon pic—Lady Luna sure is pretty from up here, but she’s difficult to take a picture of...I’ll keep trying."
Image: Supermassive black holes are generally stationary objects, sitting at the centers of most galaxies. However, using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers recently hunted down what could be a supermassive black hole that may be on the move. | May 11, 2017: This possible renegade black hole, which contains about 160 million times the mass of our Sun, is located in an elliptical galaxy about 3.9 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers are interested in these moving supermassive black holes because they may reveal more about the properties of these enigmatic objects. This black hole may have “recoiled,” in the terminology used by scientists, when two smaller supermassive black holes collided and merged to form an even larger one. At the same time, this collision would have generated gravitational waves that emitted more strongly in one direction than others. This newly formed black hole could have received a kick in the opposite direction of those stronger gravitational waves. This kick would have pushed the black hole out of the galaxy’s center, as depicted in the artist’s illustration. The strength of the kick depends on the rate and direction of spin of the two smaller black holes before they merge. Therefore, information about these important but elusive properties can be obtained by studying the speed of recoiling black holes. Astronomers found this recoiling black hole candidate by sifting through X-ray and optical data for thousands of galaxies. First, they used Chandra observations to select galaxies that contain a bright X-ray source and were observed as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Bright X-ray emission is a common feature of supermassive black holes that are rapidly growing. Next, the researchers looked to see if Hubble Space Telescope observations of these X-ray bright galaxies revealed two peaks near their center in the optical image. These two peaks might show that a pair of supermassive black holes is present or that a recoiling black hole has moved away from the cluster of stars in the center of the galaxy. If those criteria were met, then the astronomers examined the SDSS spectra, which show how the amount of optical light varies with wavelength. If the researchers found telltale signatures in the spectra indicative of the presence of a supermassive black hole, they followed up with an even closer examination of those galaxies. After all of this searching, a good candidate for a recoiling black hole was discovered. The left image in the inset is from the Hubble data, which shows two bright points near the middle of the galaxy. One of them is located at the center of the galaxy and the other is located about 3,000 light years away from the center. The latter source shows the properties of a growing supermassive black hole and its position matches that of a bright X-ray source detected with Chandra (right image in inset). Using data from the SDSS and the Keck telescope in Hawaii, the team determined that the growing black hole located near, but visibly offset from, the center of the galaxy has a velocity that is different from the galaxy. These properties suggest that this source may be a recoiling supermassive black hole. The host galaxy of the possible recoiling black hole also shows some evidence of disturbance in its outer regions, which is an indication that a merger between two galaxies occurred in the relatively recent past. Since supermassive black hole mergers are thought to occur when their host galaxies merge, this information supports the idea of a recoiling black hole in the system. Moreover, stars are forming at a high rate in the galaxy, at several hundred times the mass of the Sun per year. This agrees with computer simulations, which predict that star formation rates may be enhanced for merging galaxies particularly those containing recoiling black holes. Another possible explanation for the data is that two supermassive black holes are located in the center of the galaxy but one of them is not producing detectable radiation because it is growing too slowly. The researchers favor the recoiling black hole explanation, but more data are needed to strengthen their case. A paper describing these results was recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The first author is Dongchan Kim from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations. Image Credit: Illustration: CXC/M. Weiss X-ray: NASA/CXC/NRAO/D.-C. Kim; Optical: NASA/STScI Release Date: May 11, 2017
