NASA dixit:
“Peer over the shoulders of our engineers as they build hardware for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. This 360 video transports you to the historic Spacecraft Assembly Facility at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Engineer Emily Howard narrates as you walk around the cruise stage, which will fly the 2020 rover to the Red Planet, and the descent stage, which will lower the rover to the Martian surface.”
Video credit: NASA
NASA dixit:
“In just a couple of years, NASA’s newest rover will be flying to Mars. The Mars 2020 mission will use the next generation of science and landing technology to collect rock samples for possible return by a future mission.”
Video credit: NASA
NASA dixit:
“NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is in the midst of intense environmental testing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in preparation for its journey to the Sun. These tests simulate the noise and shaking the spacecraft will experience during its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, scheduled for 2018.
Parker Solar Probe’s integration and testing team must check over the spacecraft and systems to make sure everything is still in optimal working condition after experiencing these rigorous conditions – including a check of the solar arrays, which will provide electrical power to the spacecraft.
Parker Solar Probe will explore the Sun’s outer atmosphere and make critical observations that will answer decades-old questions about the physics of stars. The resulting data will also help improve how we forecast major eruptions on the Sun and subsequent space weather events that can impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space. The mission is named for Eugene N. Parker, whose profound insights into solar physics and processes have helped shape the field of heliophysics.”
Joy Ng (USRA): Producer
Sarah Frazier (ADNET SYSTEMS): Writer
Lee Hobson (APL): Videographer
Music credit: ‘Push Away’ by Andrew Michael Britton [PRS], David Stephen Goldsmith [PRS], Mikey Rowe [PRS] from Killer Tracks.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA dixit:
“The mission of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) on the International Space Station has been, well, expanded. After more than a year and a half on orbit providing performance data on expandable habitat technologies, NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have reached agreement to extend the life of the privately-owned module. For a minimum of three more years, BEAM will be a more operational element of the station used in crew activities and on board storage, allowing time to gather more data on the technology’s structural integrity, thermal stability, and resistance to space debris, radiation and microbial growth.”
Video credit: NASA
Planetary Resources dixit:
“Built in compliance with the 6U CubeSat standard, the Arkyd-6 (A6) includes the core technology that will be used in the company’s asteroid exploration program including a mid-wave infrared sensor, second-generation avionics, power systems, communications, and attitude determination and control systems.
The A6 instrument is a broadband imager spanning 3 to 5 microns within the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. This region is sensitive to the presence of water – including that in hydrated minerals – and thermal energy, allowing it to be used as a tool to search for water on Earth and beyond. In support of our deep space exploration efforts, A6 is a part of Planetary Resources’ research and development work to create an instrument capable of detecting water on near-Earth asteroids.”
Video credit: Planetary Resources
ESA dixit:
“The teams involved in ESA’s Herschel space observatory reflect on the mission and its legacy. Herschel launched in May 2009 and studied the cool Universe in infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths for nearly four years.
Highlights included surveying the glow of cold cosmic dust embedded in interstellar clouds of gas to unlock the secrets of star formation, and peering back in time to when the Universe was less than one billion years old to study galaxy evolution. The observatory also traced out the presence of water in star-forming clouds, detected it for the first time in the seeds of future stars and planets, and identified the delivery of water from interplanetary debris to planets in our Solar System.
Although the Herschel mission has now reached retirement, its legacy continues and it will remain a primary reference for astronomers for many years to come. “
Video credit: ESA
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