OrbitalHub

SpaceX dicit:

On March 3, Starship serial number 10 (SN10) completed SpaceX’s third high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype as it successfully ascended, transitioned propellant, and reoriented itself for reentry and an active aerodynamic controlled descent. SN10’s Raptor engines reignited to perform the vehicle’s landing flip maneuver immediately before successfully touching down on the landing pad.

Test flights such as SN10’s are about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.

Video credit: SpaceX

NASA dicit:

Expedition 64 Commander Sergey Ryzhikov of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos took a short ride away from the International Space Station March 19, undocking their Russian Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft from the Rassvet module on the Earth-facing port of the station’s Russian segment and redocking to the Poisk module on the station’s space-facing side.

The relocation maneuver cleared the Rassvet port for the April 9 arrival of three additional crew members, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei of NASA, who will dock their Soyuz MS-18 vehicle after their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Video credit: NASA

Wikipedia dicit:

Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. It was built by Lockheed Martin and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 5 August 2011 UTC, as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on 5 July 2016 UTC, to begin a scientific investigation of the planet. After completing its mission, Juno will be intentionally deorbited into Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Juno’s mission is to measure Jupiter’s composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep winds, which can reach speeds up to 620 km/h (390 mph).

Juno is the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after the nuclear powered Galileo orbiter, which orbited from 1995 to 2003. Unlike all earlier spacecraft sent to the outer planets, Juno is powered by solar arrays, commonly used by satellites orbiting Earth and working in the inner Solar System, whereas radioisotope thermoelectric generators are commonly used for missions to the outer Solar System and beyond. For Juno, however, the three largest solar array wings ever deployed on a planetary probe play an integral role in stabilizing the spacecraft as well as generating power.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS/ULiège/Bonfond

NASA dicit:

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter has made an unexpected discovery about a different planet – Mars. Juno scientists discovered that Martian dust may be the source of a sky phenomenon known as the zodiacal light.

Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That glow is the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun.

Astronomers have long thought that the dust is brought into the inner solar system by asteroids and comets. But now, a team of Juno scientists argues that the planet Mars may be the source. The discovery resulted from dust particles slamming into the Juno spacecraft during its journey from Earth to Jupiter. Juno’s expansive solar panels unintentionally became the biggest and most sensitive dust detector ever built. Impacts on the solar panels provided important clues to the origin and orbital evolution of the dust, resolving some of the mysterious variations observed in the zodiacal light.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher (USRA): Lead Producer/Michael Lentz (USRA): Lead Animator/Kel Elkins (USRA):Lead Data Visualizer/Lonnie Shekhtman (ADNET): Writer/Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC): Public Affairs Officer/John Connerney (NASA/GSFC): Scientist/David Agle (JPL): Support/Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support/Original musical score by Vangelis, used with permission.

NASA dicit:

NASA’s newest rover captured this rover descent camera POV footage of its February 18 touchdown on Mars.

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA dicit:

NASA’s newest rover captured first-of-its kind footage of its February 18 touchdown on Mars. From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater.

Video credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory