Friends of NASA (FoN) is an independent non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to building international support for peaceful space exploration, commerce, scientific discovery, and STEM education.
Astrophotographer Daniele Gasparri: "The long tail of Comet ATLAS, set against the dark sky of the Atacama Desert, appears to fan out and stretch across several degrees. This image is the result of averaging 11 exposures of 30 seconds each, captured with a Sony A7s camera and a 105 mm lens stopped down to f/4.5."
C/2024 G3 ATLAS is a non-periodic comet. It reached perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on January 13, 2025, at a distance of 0.09 AU (13 million km) from the Sun. It is potentially the brightest comet of 2025, with an apparent magnitude reaching −3.8 on the day of its perihelion.
Comet C/2024 G3 was found by the automated Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on April 5, 2024, in images obtained with a 0.5-m reflector telescope located in Río Hurtado, Chile. ATLAS is funded by NASA's Planetary Defense Office. ATLAS was developed and is operated by the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy.
Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape, across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. Dusty nebulae reflecting light from embedded young stars stand out in the nearly 4 degree wide field of view. With a characteristic bluish color reflection nebula NGC 1333 is prominent near center. Hints of contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, the jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars, are scattered across the dusty expanse. Herbig–Haro objects are glowing clumps found around some newborn stars, and are created when jets of gas thrown outwards from these young stars collide with surrounding gas and dust at incredibly high speeds.
While many stars are forming in the molecular cloud, most are obscured at visible wavelengths by the pervasive dust. The chaotic environment surrounding NGC 1333 may be similar to how our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago. At the estimated distance of the Perseus molecular cloud, this cosmic scene would span about 80 light-years.
Aurora Borealis over Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence | International Space Station
A red and green aurora borealis shimmers in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River. This Gulf borders the shores of the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, plus the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, possessions of France, in North America.
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, occurs in an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere, but they typically originate with activity on the Sun. Occasionally, during explosions called coronal mass ejections, the Sun releases charged particles that speed across the solar system.
Auroras are produced when the Earth's magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by the solar wind that the trajectories of charged particles in solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, mainly in the form of electrons and protons, precipitate them into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere) due to Earth's magnetic field, where their energy is lost. The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emits light of varying color and complexity. [Wikipedia]
Solid Colored Aurora
Green is common at the upper latitudes, while red is rare. On the other hand, aurora viewed from lower latitudes tend to be red.
Element Emission Colors
Oxygen: The big player in the aurora is oxygen. Oxygen is responsible for the vivid green (wavelength of 557.7 nm) and also for a deep brownish-red (wavelength of 630.0 nm). Pure green and greenish-yellow aurorae result from the excitation of oxygen.
Nitrogen: Nitrogen emits blue (multiple wavelengths) and red light.
Other Gases: Other gases in the atmosphere become excited and emit light, although the wavelengths may be outside of the range of human vision or else too faint to see. Hydrogen and helium, for example, emit blue and purple. Although our eyes cannot see all of these colors, photographic film and digital cameras often record a broader range of hues.
Expedition 72 Crew Station Commander: Suni Williams Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, Aleksandr Gorbunov NASA Flight Engineers: Butch Wilmore, Don Pettit, Nick Hague
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) Image Date: Jan. 4, 2025
Shenzhou-19 Astronauts Conduct New Experiments | China Space Station
In the field of microgravity physical science, the crew conducted disassembly and assembly of the solid-liquid mesoscopic experiment unit within the fluid physics experiment cabinet and completed the installation of experimental sample disks.
In terms of on-orbit training, they carried out rendezvous and docking training, as well as on-orbit medical rescue training.
For equipment maintenance inside the space station, they performed several tasks, including on-orbit replacement of the fluid loop circulation pump for space applications.
China launched the Shenzhou-19 crewed spaceship on Oct. 30 last year, sending the crew of three astronauts, Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze, to the orbiting space station for a six-month mission.
Orbital Sunrise above Namibia in Africa | International Space Station
An orbital sunrise illuminates the cloud tops in this photograph from the International Space Station as it soared 262 miles above Namibia near the Atlantic coast.
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east.
Expedition 72 Crew Station Commander: Suni Williams Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, Aleksandr Gorbunov NASA Flight Engineers: Butch Wilmore, Don Pettit, Nick Hague
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) Image Date: Jan. 16, 2025
Blue Ghost Moon Mission Meets The Blue Planet | Firefly Aerospace
Firefly Blue Ghost spacecraft view of Earth released on January 25, 2025
Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Lunar Lander Pre-launch
Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 Emblem
On Wednesday, January 15, 2025, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle successfully launched Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Here is a view of planet Earth from the Blue Ghost spacecraft released on January 25, 2025.
The Blue Ghost lander is currently on its 45-day journey to the Moon. Firefly Aerospace intends to land it in Mare Crisium for NASA’s payloads to perform numerous science and technology demonstrations, including lunar subsurface drilling, sample collection, and X-ray imaging of Earth’s magnetic field to advance research for future human missions on the Moon and provide insights into how space weather impacts the planet.
The Blue Ghost lander flight will deliver ten NASA science instruments and technology demonstrations to the Moon.
Mare Crisium is a lunar mare located in the Moon's Crisium basin, just northeast of Mare Tranquillitatis. It was formed by the flooding of basaltic lava that filled an ancient asteroid impact.
Mare Crisium is 556 km (345 mi) in diameter, and 176,000 square kilometres (68,000 sq mi) in area. It has a very flat floor, with a ring of wrinkle ridges (dorsa) toward its outer boundaries.
New 39-Meter Mirror to Help Stabilize Extremely Large Telescope Images | ESO
With a 39-meter primary mirror, the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will have five mirrors in total. Two of them—M4 and M5—will work together to cancel out atmospheric turbulence and vibrations due to wind and the telescope's mechanisms.
We are now testing the sophisticated cell that will support the M5. This mirror will have to tip and tilt 10 times per second while remaining perfectly flat and rigid—a technological challenge, as the mirror weighs 500 kg!
In 2006, approval was given for the construction of the largest optical telescope on Earth. The ELT stands at Cerro Armazones in Chile's Atacama Desert and will be one of the main flagships of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for the next two decades.
The Sounds of BepiColombo’s Sixth Flight Past Mercury | European Space Agency
Listen to the European Space Agency/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency BepiColombo spacecraft as it flew past Mercury on January 8, 2025. This sixth and final flyby used the little planet's gravity to steer the spacecraft on course for entering orbit around Mercury in 2026.
What you can hear in the sonification soundtrack of this video are real spacecraft vibrations measured by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument. The accelerometer data have been shifted in frequency to make them audible to human ears—one hour of measurements have been sped up to one minute of sound.
BepiColombo is always shaking ever so slightly: fuel is slightly sloshing, the solar panels are vibrating at their natural frequency, heat pipes are pushing vapor through small tubes, and so forth. This creates the eerie underlying hum throughout the video.
However, as BepiColombo gets closer to Mercury, ISA detects other forces acting on the spacecraft. Most scientifically interesting are the audible shocks that sound like short, soft bongs. These are caused by the spacecraft responding to entering and exiting Mercury's shadow, where the Sun's intense radiation is suddenly blocked. One of ISA's scientific goals is to monitor the changes in the ‘solar radiation pressure’—a force caused by sunlight striking BepiColombo as it orbits the Sun and, eventually, Mercury.
The loudest noises—an ominous ‘rumbling’—are caused by the spacecraft's large solar panels rotating. The first rotation occurs in shadow at 00:17 in the video, while the second adjustment at 00:51 was also captured by one of the spacecraft’s monitoring cameras.
Faint sounds like wind being picked up in a phone call, which grow more audible around 30 seconds into the video, are caused by Mercury's gravitational field pulling the nearest and furthest parts of the spacecraft by different amounts. As the planet's gravity stretches the spacecraft ever so slightly, the spacecraft responds structurally. At the same time, the onboard reaction wheels change their speed to maintain the spacecraft's orientation. You can hear this as a frequency shift in the background.
This is the last time that many of these effects can be measured with BepiColombo's largest solar panels that make the spacecraft more susceptible to vibrations. The spacecraft module carrying these panels will not enter orbit around Mercury with the mission's two orbiter spacecraft.
The video shows an accurate simulation of the spacecraft and its route past Mercury during the flyby, made with the SPICE-enhanced Cosmographia spacecraft visualization tool. The inset that appears 38 seconds into the video shows real photographs taken by one of BepiColombo's monitoring cameras.
Video Credit: European Space Agency (ESA) Duration: 1 minute, 27 seconds Release Date: Jan. 24, 2025
How NASA Plans to Support Lunar Excavation Activities | Artemis Program
How does NASA plan to use resources on the surface of the Moon?
One method is the ISRU Pilot Excavator, or IPEx!
Designed by Kennedy Space Center’s Swamp Works team, the primary goal of IPEx is to dig up lunar soil, known as regolith, and transport it across the Moon’s surface.
Shenzhou-19 Strengthens Debris Protection in 2nd Spacewalk | China Space Station
Members of the Shenzhou-19 crew aboard China's Tiangong Space Station successfully completed their second series of extravehicular activities (EVAs) at 01:12 (Beijing Time) on Tuesday, January 21, 2025, after performing multiple tasks including the installation of space debris protection devices and an extravehicular inspection.
Astronauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong, and Wang Haoze worked for over eight hours to complete the tasks, with Cai and Song undertaking spacewalk duties. They were assisted by the space station's robotic arm and a team on Earth.
Song stepped out of Tiangong's Wentian lab module at 16:55 on Monday. Cai exited the module about two hours later to join Song on device installation tasks. Meanwhile, Wang stayed in the station's core module to provide support.
"The primary task is to install debris protection devices outside the module to safeguard its external cables from debris impact. Given the increasingly severe risk of space debris collisions in the orbital environment, we have carefully selected appropriate materials and made specialized designs. Additionally, the protection devices are designed to be easily and securely installed on the exterior of the space station, ensuring effective protection," said Li Zhihai, an aerospace engineer with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
During their previous extravehicular mission in December, the Shenzhou-19 crew primarily installed protective devices for the external pipelines and cables of the Tianhe core module. Their second spacewalk put a focus on strengthening the Wentian lab module.
"Since the operational area for this mission differs from the previous one, the entire path planning process for the robotic arm must take into account the specific conditions around the Wentian module. It is essential to avoid any interference or collisions with the module itself or its solar panels. This requires maintaining a safe distance, which necessitates optimization in the design phase on the ground, along with extensive testing and validation," Li said.
The crew has completed all tasks smoothly and the two astronauts conducting the EVAs have returned to the Wentian lab module safely.
"The astronauts showed exceptional efficiency and speed throughout the entire process, and all installations were done perfectly," Li said.
The Shenzhou-19 crew have completed nearly half of their space journey and are scheduled to carry out a significant number of in-orbit scientific experiments and technological tests, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
Close-up: The Tarantula Nebula's Outskirts in The Large Magellanic Cloud | Hubble
This NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.
Despite being only 10–20% as massive as the Milky Way galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud contains some of the most impressive star-forming regions in the nearby Universe. The scene pictured here is on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, the largest and most productive star-forming region in the local Universe. At its center, the Tarantula Nebula hosts the most massive stars known, which weigh in at roughly 200 times the mass of the Sun.
The section of the nebula shown here features serene blue gas, brownish-orange dust patches and a sprinkling of multicolored stars. The stars within and behind the dust clouds appear redder than those that are not obscured by dust. Dust absorbs and scatters blue light more than red light, allowing more of the red light to reach our telescopes and making the stars appear redder than they are. This image incorporates ultraviolet and infrared light as well as visible light. Using Hubble observations of dusty nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud and other galaxies, researchers will study these distant dust grains, helping to understand the role that cosmic dust plays in the formation of new stars and planets.
Image Description: A section of a nebula, made up of layers of colored clouds of gas of varying thickness. In the background are bluish, translucent and wispy clouds; on top of these are stretches of redder and darker, clumpy dust, mostly along the bottom and right. In the bottom left corner are dense bars of dust that block light and appear black. Small stars are scattered across the nebula.
Credit: European Space Agency/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
Friends of NASA Astronaut Members at SHSSP25 | International Space University
[Astronaut Panel discussion starts at 13 minute mark]
On January 22, 2025, during the International Space University's 2025 Southern Hemisphere Studies Program (SHSSP25) at the University of Southern Australia, two Friends of NASA astronaut members were interviewed: Dr. So-yeon Yi [South Korea’s first and only astronaut] and Australian Space Agency (ASA) astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg. The 45-minute discussion was moderated by Anna Cordrey of the International Space University and NASA.
Dr. Soyeon Yi was selected from among 36,000 applicants to serve as her nation’s first astronaut. She flew on Soyuz TMA-12 to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 8, 2008, returning to Earth 10 days later. While aboard the ISS, she conducted 18 scientific experiments, including one that monitored the effects of microgravity on 1,000 fruit flies that she transported into space.
Australian Space Agency employee Katherine Bennell-Pegg is the first person to be trained as an astronaut under the Australian flag. Katherine and her 5 fellow astronaut candidates graduated from basic training in April 2024. They are qualified for assignment to the International Space Station.
The Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program (SHSSP) is conducted by the University of South Australia (UniSA) in partnership with the International Space University (ISU). Since 2011, the SHSSP provides "an intensive, four-week program providing a multidisciplinary understanding of the key activities and areas of knowledge required by today’s space professionals."
The Space Studies Program (SSP) offers an "intensive nine-week course hosted each year in the timeframe June-August in different locations around the world. It provides courses in all space disciplines, as well as hands-on education through workshops and professional visits."
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
NASA "Espacio a Tierra" | Caminata Espacial: 17 de enero de 2025
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
NASA "Espacio a Tierra" | En el año 2025: 10 de enero de 2025
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
NASA’s annual Day of Remembrance pays tribute to all members of the NASA family who lost their lives in the pursuit of exploration and discovery, including test pilots, the Apollo 1 crew, and the crews of space shuttles Challenger and Columbia.
On Jan. 23, 2025, we pause to honor their memory and reflect on the importance of maintaining a strong safety culture.
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