New Rose-Colored Glasses For The Roman Space Telescope

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Add to your electronic bookshelf with these free e-books from NASA!

1. The Saturn System Through the Eyes of Cassini

This work features 100 images highlighting Cassini's 13-year tour at the ringed giant.

2. Earth as Art 

Explore our beautiful home world as seen from space.

3. Meatballs and more 

Emblems of Exploration showcases the rich history of space and aeronautic logos.

4. Ready for Our Close Up

Hubble Focus: Our Amazing Solar System showcases the wonders of our galactic neighborhood.

5. NASA's First A 

This book dives into the role aeronautics plays in our mission of engineering and exploration.

6. See More 

Making the Invisible Visible outlines the rich history of infrared astronomy.

7. Ready for a Deeper Dive? 

The NASA Systems Engineering Handbook describes how we get the job done.

8. Spoiler Alert

The space race really heats up in the third volume of famed Russian spacecraft designer Boris Chertok memoirs. Chertok, who worked under the legendary Sergey Korolev, continues his fascinating narrative on the early history of the Soviet space program, from 1961 to 1967 in Rockets and People III.

9. Take a Walk on the Wild Side

The second volume of Walking to Olympus explores the 21st century evolution of spacewalks.

10. No Library Card Needed 

Find your own great read in NASA's free e-book library.

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@aura3700: What's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen while in space?

5 Training Requirements for New Astronauts

After evaluating a record number of applications, we will introduce our newest class of astronaut candidates on June 7!

Upon reporting to duty at our Johnson Space Center in Houston, the new astronaut candidates will complete two years of training before they are eligible to be assigned to a mission. 

Here are the five training criteria they must check off to graduate from astronaut candidate to astronaut:

1. T-38 Jets

Astronauts have been training in T-38 jets for more than 35 years because the sleek, white jets require crew members to think quickly in dynamic situations and to make decisions that have real consequences. This type of mental experience is critical to preparing for the rigors of spaceflight. To check off this training criteria, astronaut candidates must be able to safely operate in the T-38 as either a pilot or back seater.

2. International Space Station Systems

We are currently flying astronauts to the International Space Station every few months. Astronauts aboard the space station are conducting experiments benefitting humanity on Earth and teaching us how to live longer in space. Astronaut candidates learn to operate and maintain the complex systems aboard the space station as part of their basic training.

3. Spacewalks

Spacewalks are the hardest thing, physically and mentally, that astronauts do. Astronaut candidates must demonstrate the skills to complete complex spacewalks in our Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (giant pool used to simulate weightlessness).  In order to do so, they will train on the life support systems within the spacesuit, how to handle emergency situations that can arise and how to work effectively as a team to repair the many critical systems aboard the International Space Station to keep it functioning as our science laboratory in space.  

4. Robotics

Astronaut candidates learn the coordinate systems, terminology and how to operate the space station’s robotic arm. They train in Canada for a two week session where they develop more complex robotics skills including capturing visiting cargo vehicles with the arm. The arm, built by the Canadian Space Agency, is capable of handling large cargo and hardware, and helped build the entire space station. It has latches on either end, allowing it to be moved by both flight controllers on the ground and astronauts in space to various parts of the station.

5. Russian Language

The official languages of the International Space Station are English and Russian, and all crewmembers – regardless of what country they come from – are required to know both. NASA astronauts train with their Russian crew mates and launch on the Russian Soyuz vehicle, so it makes sense that they should be able to speak Russian. Astronaut candidates start learning the language at the beginning of their training. They train on this skill every week, as their schedule allows, to keep in practice.

Now, they are ready for their astronaut pin!

After completing this general training, the new astronaut candidates could be assigned to missions performing research on the International Space Station, launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, and launching on deep space missions on our new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.

Watch the Astronaut Announcement LIVE!

We will introduce our new astronaut candidates at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, June 7, from our Johnson Space Center in Houston. 

Watch live online at nasa.gov/live or on NASA’s Facebook Page. 

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Jessica Wittner

Jessica Wittner, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, hails from California. A National Outdoor Leadership School alum, Wittner enjoys riding motorcycles and off-roading. https://go.nasa.gov/49CxwUN

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Mark your calendars for summer 2018: That's when we're launching a spacecraft to touch the sun. 

In honor of our first-ever mission to the heart of the solar system, this week we’re delving into the life and times of this powerful yellow dwarf star.

1. Meet Parker 

Parker Solar Probe, our first mission to go to the sun, is named after Eugene Parker, an American astrophysicist who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. This historic mission will explore one of the last regions of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft and help scientists unlock answers to questions they've been pondering for more than five decades.

2. Extra SPF, Please 

Parker Solar Probe will swoop within 4 million miles of the sun's surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. The mission will provide new data on solar activity to help us better understand our home star and its activity - information that can improve forecasts of major space-weather events that could impact life on Earth.

3. Majorly Massive 

The sun is the center of our solar system and makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be about the size of a nickel.

4. Different Spin 

Since the sun is not a solid body, different parts of the sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.

5. Can't Stand on It

The sun is a star and a star doesn't have a solid surface. Rather, it's a ball of ionized gas 92.1% hydrogen (H2) and 7.8% helium (He) held together by its own gravity.

6. Center of Attention 

The sun isn't a planet, so it doesn't have any moons. But, the sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of thousands to trillions of comets and icy bodies.

7. It's Hot in There 

And we mean really, really hot. The temperature at the sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. However, its atmosphere, the corona, can reach temperatures of 3 million degrees. (That's as if it got hotter the farther away you got from a fire, instead of cooler!) Parker Solar Probe will help scientists solve the mystery of why the corona's temperature is so much higher than the surface.

8. Travel Conditions

The sun influences the entire solar system, so studying it helps us better understand the space weather that our astronauts and spacecraft travel through.

9. Life on the Sun? 

Better to admire from afar. Thanks to its hot, energetic mix of gases and plasma, the sun can't be home to living things. However, we can thank the sun for making life on Earth possible by providing the warmth and energy that supply Earth’s food chain.

10. Chance of a Lifetime 

Last but not least, don't forget that the first total solar eclipse to sweep across the U.S. from coast-to-coast since 1918 is happening on August 21, 2017. Our toolkit has you need to know to about it. 

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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Do you ever get to work along side people you use to look up to?

I did get a chance to work with some people that I really looked up to, and I was surprised by their generosity and giving me great advice. They’re busy people, and they spent hours giving me great advice. 

What Have We Learned About Pluto?

Earlier this year on July 14, our New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew by Pluto. During this encounter, it collected more than 1,200 images of the dwarf planet and tens of gigabits of data. The intensive downlinking of this information began on Sept. 5, and will continue for around a year. With the information being returned for the duration of a year, we still have a lot more to learn about Pluto. Here are a few things we’ve discovered so far:

Pluto’s Heart

An image captured by New Horizons around 16 hours before closest approach displays Pluto’s “heart”. This stunning image of one of the planet’s most dominate features shows us that the heart’s diameter is about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago. This image also showed us that Pluto is a complex world with incredible geological diversity.

Icy Plains

Pluto’s vast icy plain, informally called Sputnik Planum, resembles frozen mud cracks on Earth. It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs. In other areas, the surface appears to be etched by fields of small pits that may have formed by a process called sublimation, which is when ice turns directly from solid to gas, just as dry ice does on Earth. 

Majestic Mountains

Images from the spacecraft display chaotically jumbled mountains that only add to the complexity of Pluto’s geography. The rugged, icy mountains are as tall as 11,000 feet high.

Color Variations

This high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto combines, blue red and infrared images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. The surface of the dwarf planet has a remarkable range of subtle color variations. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story of the planet.

Foggy Haze and Blue Atmosphere

Images returned from the New Horizons spacecraft have also revealed that Pluto’s global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realized. The haze even creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, which makes them visible to the cameras aboard the spacecraft. Today, a new announcement was made about Pluto’s atmosphere after the most recent image returned from New Horizons showed that Pluto’s hazes are blue. The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but they way they scatter blue light has created this tint.

Water Ice

In another finding announced today, New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. Scientists are eager to understand why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places.

Stay updated on New Horizons findings by visiting the New Horizons page. You can also keep track of Pluto News on the New Horizons Blog. 

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We Worked on Apollo

On July 20, 1969, the world watched as Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the Moon. It was a historic moment for the United States and for humanity. Until then, no human had ever walked on another world. To achieve this remarkable feat, we recruited the best and brightest scientists, engineers and mathematicians across the country. At the peak of our Apollo program, an estimated 400,000 Americans of diverse race and ethnicity worked to realize President John F. Kennedy’s vision of landing humans on the Moon and bringing them safely back to Earth. The men and women of our Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley supported the Apollo program in numerous ways – from devising the shape of the Apollo space capsule to performing tests on its thermal protection system and study of the Moon rocks and soils collected by the astronauts. In celebration of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, here are portraits of some of the people who worked at Ames in the 1960s to help make the Apollo program a success.

“I knew Neil Armstrong. I had a young daughter and she took her first step on the day that Neil stepped foot on the Moon. Isn’t that something?”

Hank Cole did research on the design of the Saturn V rocket, which propelled humans to the Moon. An engineer, his work at Ames often took him to Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, where he met Neil Armstrong and other pilots who tested experimental aircraft.

“I worked in a lab analyzing Apollo 11 lunar dust samples for microbes. We wore protective clothing from head to toe, taking extreme care not to contaminate the samples.”

Caye Johnson came to Ames in 1964. A biologist, she analyzed samples taken by Apollo astronauts from the Moon for signs of life. Although no life was found in these samples, the methodology paved the way for later work in astrobiology and the search for life on Mars.

“I investigated a system that could be used to provide guidance and control of the Saturn V rocket in the event of a failure during launch. It was very exciting and challenging work.”

Richard Kurkowski started work at Ames in 1955, when the center was still part of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, NASA’s predecessor. An engineer, he performed wind tunnel tests on aircraft prior to his work on the Apollo program.

“I was 24 and doing some of the first computer programming work on the Apollo heat shield.  When we landed on the Moon it was just surreal. I was very proud. I was in awe.”

Mike Green started at Ames in 1965 as a computer programmer. He supported aerospace engineers working on the development of the thermal protection system for the Apollo command module. The programs were executed on some of earliest large-scale computers available at that time.

“In 1963 there was alarm that the Apollo heat shield would not be able to protect the astronauts. We checked and found it would work as designed. Sure enough, the astronauts made it home safely!”

Gerhard Hahne played an important role in certifying that the Apollo spacecraft heat shield used to bring our astronauts home from the Moon would not fail. The Apollo command module was the first crewed spacecraft designed to enter the atmosphere of Earth at lunar-return velocity – approximately 24,000 mph, or more than 30 times faster than the speed of sound.

“I was struck by the beauty of the photo of Earth rising above the stark desert of the lunar surface. It made me realize how frail our planet is in the vastness of space.”

Jim Arnold arrived at Ames in 1962 and was hired to work on studying the aerothermodynamics of the Apollo spacecraft. He was amazed by the image captured by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve in 1968 of Earth rising from beneath the Moon’s horizon. The stunning picture would later become known as the iconic Earthrise photo.

“When the spacecraft returned to Earth safely and intact everyone was overjoyed. But I knew it wasn’t going to fail.”

Howard Goldstein came to Ames in 1967. An engineer, he tested materials used for the Apollo capsule heat shield, which protected the three-man crew against the blistering heat of reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on the return trip from the Moon. 

“I was in Houston waiting to study the first lunar samples. It was very exciting to be there when the astronauts walked from the mobile quarantine facility into the building.”

Richard Johnson developed a simple instrument to analyze the total organic carbon content of the soil samples collected by Apollo astronauts from the Moon’s surface. He and his wife Caye Johnson, who is also a scientist, were at our Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston when the Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth so they could examine the samples immediately upon their arrival.

“I tested extreme atmospheric entries for the Apollo heat shield. Teamwork and dedication produced success.”

William Borucki joined Ames in 1962. He collected data on the radiation environment of the Apollo heat shield in a facility used to simulate the reentry of the Apollo spacecraft into Earth’s atmosphere.  

Join us in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and hear about our future plans to go forward to the Moon and on to Mars by tuning in to a special two-hour live NASA Television broadcast at 1 pm ET on July 19. Watch the program at www.nasa.gov/live.

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Is your health affected from being in outer space?

The year is 1965, and thanks to telecommunication engineers at our Jet Propulsions Laboratory, the first color version of one of our first Martian images had been created. Brought to life by hand coloring numbered strips, this image is a true blast to the past.

Fast forward to the 21st century and our Mars InSight mission now enables us to gawk at the Martian horizon as if we were there. InSight captured this panorama of its landing site on Dec. 9, 2018, the 14th Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The 290-degree perspective surveys the rim of the degraded crater InSight landed in and was made up of 30 photos stitched together.

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