OrbitalHub

Blue Origin dixit:

“New Shepard flew again for the eighth time on April 29, 2018, from Blue Origin’s West Texas Launch Site. Known as Mission 8 (M8), the mission featured a reflight of the vehicle flown on Mission 7. The Crew Capsule reached an apogee of 351,000 feet (66 miles, 107 kilometers) – the altitude we’ve been targeting for operations.

For the second time, Blue Origin’s test dummy Mannequin Skywalker flew to space conducting astronaut telemetry and science studies. The flight also carried research payloads for NASA, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and commercial customers.”

Video Credit: Blue Origin

ESA dixit:

“Don’t be scared of space debris. ESA’s Clean Space initiative is carrying out preparatory activities to build a test mission to take a single, large and heavy item of debris out of orbit.”

Video Credit: ESA

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s Juno mission has provided the first view of the dynamo, or engine, powering Jupiter’s magnetic field. The new global portrait reveals unexpected irregularities and regions of surprising magnetic field intensity. Red areas show where magnetic field lines emerge from the planet, while blue areas show where they return. As Juno continues its mission, it will improve our understanding of Jupiter’s complex magnetic environment.”

Video Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA dixit:

“In this animation the viewer is taken low over Jupiter’s north pole to illustrate the 3-D aspects of the region’s central cyclone and the eight cyclones that encircle it. The movie utilizes imagery derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno mission during its fourth pass over the massive planet. Infrared cameras are used to sense the temperature of Jupiter’s atmosphere and provide insight into how the powerful cyclones at Jupiter’s poles work. In the animation, the yellow areas are warmer (or deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere) and the dark areas are colder (or higher up in Jupiter’s atmosphere). In this picture the highest “brightness temperature” is around 260K (about -13°C) and the lowest around 190K (about -83°C). The “brightness temperature” is a measurement of the radiance, at 5 µm, traveling upward from the top of the atmosphere towards Juno, expressed in units of temperature.”

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

NASA dixit:

“TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is NASA’s newest exoplanet mission. Led by MIT, TESS will find thousands of new planets orbiting nearby stars. During its two year survey, TESS will watch a wide variety of stars, looking for signs of planets ranging from Earth-size to larger than Jupiter.

Each of TESS’s cameras has a 16.8-megapixel sensor covering a square 24 degrees wide — large enough to contain an entire constellation. TESS has four of these cameras arranged to view a long strip of the sky called an observation sector. TESS will watch each observation sector for about 27 days before rotating to the next. It will cover the southern sky in its first year, and then begin scanning the north.

TESS will study 85 percent of the sky — an area 350 times greater than what NASA’s Kepler mission first observed — making TESS the first exoplanet mission to survey nearly the entire sky. Because TESS’s observation sectors overlap, it will have an area near the pole under constant observation. This region is easily monitored by the James Webb Space Telescope, which allows the two missions to work together to first find, and then carefully study exoplanets.”

Music Credit: “Drive to Succeed” from Killer Tracks

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA dixit:

“Take a virtual tour of the Moon in all-new 4K resolution, thanks to data provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. As the visualization moves around the near side, far side, north and south poles, we highlight interesting features, sites, and information gathered on the lunar terrain.”

Music Provided By Killer Tracks: “Never Looking Back” – Frederick Wiedmann. “Flying over Turmoil” – Benjamin Krause & Scott Goodman.

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/David Ladd