NASA Had a Busy Year

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The introduction of the Artemis II crew, just one of many items highlighted in NASA’s new video summarizing 2023. (NASA)

This is the time of year for lists, so I wanted to highlight one of the more important lists, at least in the opinion of this writer. That’s right, we need to remember the important space milestones from this year.

Fortunately, NASA recently summed up its successes in 2023 with a new video titled NASA 2023: Nothing is Beyond Our Reach. The video highlights many of the Agency’s accomplishments this year, including the launch of the Psyche mission, the announcement of a crew for the Artemis II mission, and the OSIRIS-REx capsule retrieval.

It is quite a list. Luckily, NASA provided a list of links so you can read more about the various efforts:

Time to read up on 2023 before we dive into more activities in 2024.

Note: You can read a more detailed list of accomplishments at this NASA site.

Pic of the Week: Another Lunar View of Earth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Apollo 17’s flag on the lunar surface. (NASA)

NASA is sharing a 51-year old photo from Apollo 17 showing both the American flag placed on the lunar surface by the crew as well as their home planet. It is a great shot that gives us plenty to thing about as the U.S. plans a return to the moon (with at least one other national flag to be planted, as noted the other day by Vice President Harris).

Here is more on the image from NASA:

Fifty-one years ago, one of the Apollo 17 astronauts on the Moon took this close-up of the U.S. flag they deployed with the Earth visible in the distance.⁣
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The lunar module crew spent 75 hours on the lunar surface, deploying a U.S. flag early in EVA-1 — their mission’s first walk on the Moon. This particular flag had flown in the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) in Houston during Apollo and was noticeably larger than the flags deployed on the previous missions.⁣
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You may notice the support rod in the top part of the flag. The support rod ensured that the flag was extended and visible in photographs, despite there being no wind on the lunar surface to make the flag wave.⁣
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Six U.S. flags in total were planted on the lunar surface, one during each Apollo mission. Experts believe it’s highly unlikely the Apollo flags could have endured the decades of exposure to vacuum, temperature swings from 242 °F (117 °C) during the day to -280 °F (-173 °C) during the night, micrometeorites, radiation, and ultraviolet light.⁣
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While the flags are likely no longer there, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery taken decades later showed that the flagpoles were still standing and casting shadows.⁣

Space Stories: An International Astronaut for Artemis, Martian Eruptions, and Surprisingly Young Stars in Our Galaxy

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Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Politico: “NASA’s Moon Landing Mission will Include a Non-American, Harris Says“

NASA is hoping to send a group of astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade, and at least one of them won’t be American. During a National Space Council meeting Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that an astronaut from another country will join the U.S. team…It’s a major diplomatic move for Washington as it attempts to build an international coalition in space to counter a similar initiative being pursued by China, which the U.S. believes is gearing up for future battles in orbit. Harris didn’t specify which nation will provide the astronaut.

—University of Arizona: “Recent Volcanism on Mars Reveals a Planet More Active Than Previously Thought“

A vast, flat, “featureless” plain on Mars surprised researchers by revealing a much more tumultuous geologic past than expected, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Arizona. Enormous amounts of lava have erupted from numerous fissures as recently as one million years ago, blanketing an area almost as large as Alaska and interacting with water in and under the surface, resulting in large flood events that carved out deep channels...Mars has long been thought to be a geologically “dead” planet where not much is happening. Recent discoveries have researchers questioning this notion,

—ScienceNews: “A Bar of Stars at the Center of the Milky Way Looks Surprisingly Young“

The biography of our home galaxy may be due for some revisions. That’s because a bar-shaped collection of stars at the center of the Milky Way appears to be much younger than expected. The bar is a prominent feature of our galaxy. It spans thousands of light-years and links the galaxy’s spiraling arms of stars, making them resemble streams of water coming from a spinning lawn sprinkler.

Space Stories: Tom Hanks Returns to the Moon, Exomoons are Questioned, and Our Moon Enters a New Phase

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Image (Credit): Tom Hanks at the opening of his new show in London. (Apollo Remastered)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Reuters: “Tom Hanks Brings Love of Space to New Immersive London Show“

Archive footage of space rockets taking off beam across giant walls in a new immersive show in London, as Hollywood actor Tom Hanks narrates the story of human voyages to the moon. “The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks” looks at the first moon landings of the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 and their successor, NASA’s human spaceflight program, Artemis. The next mission – the Artemis II lunar flyby – is planned for next year and interviews with the four-member team are also projected on the walls at the Lightroom gallery space in London’s King Cross area.

—Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research: “Giant Doubts About Giant Exomoons“

Just as it can be assumed that the stars in our Milky Way are orbited by planets, moons around these exoplanets should not be uncommon. This makes it all the more difficult to detect them. So far, only two of the more than 5300 known exoplanets have been found to have moons. A new data analysis now demonstrates that scientific statements are rarely black or white, that behind every result there is a greater or lesser degree of uncertainty and that the path to a statement often resembles a thriller. In observations of the planets Kepler-1625b and Kepler-1708b from the Kepler and Hubble space telescopes, researchers had discovered traces of such moons for the first time. A new study now raises doubts about these previous claims. As scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the Sonnenberg Observatory, both in Germany, report in the journal Nature Astronomy, “planet-only” interpretations of the observations are more conclusive.

—The University of Kansas: “Scholars Say it’s Time to Declare a New Epoch on the Moon, The ‘Lunar Anthropocene’“

Human beings first disturbed moon dust Sept. 13, 1959, when the USSR’s unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface. In the following decades, more than a hundred other spacecraft have touched the moon — both crewed and uncrewed, sometimes landing and sometimes crashing. The most famous of these were NASA’s Apollo Lunar Modules, which transported humans to the moon’s surface to the astonishment of humankind. In the coming years, missions and projects already planned will change the face of the moon in more extreme ways. Now, according to anthropologists and geologists at the University of Kansas, it’s time to acknowledge humans have become the dominant force shaping the moon’s environment by declaring a new geological epoch for the moon: the Lunar Anthropocene.

A Day in Astronomy: First Operation of the International Space Station

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Image (Credit): The ISS’s Zarya module (in the image bottom to center). (NASA)

On this day in 1998, two modules, the Russian Zarya and American Unity, were joined in Earth orbit to create the International Space Station (ISS).

The ISS was built by five space agencies involving 15 nations. NASA notes that 273 people from 21 countries have visited the ISS over the years to assist with more than 3,300 research and educational investigations. The station has been busy, and pretty expensive at more than $150 billion to design and build.

Back in 2012, Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated:

If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations – as was the case with NASA, the Apollo program, and the project that became the International Space Station.

Eleven years later, the ISS continues to orbit the Earth while plans are still being made to return to the Moon and visit Mars. Maybe Dr. Tyson was right given our current race with China to the Moon. We sometimes need that extra push to move towards the stars (as least in terms of crewed flights).