OrbitalHub

Wikipedia dicit:

The Lunar Gateway is an in-development mini-space station in lunar orbit intended to serve as a solar-powered communication hub, science laboratory, short-term habitation module, and holding area for rovers and other robots. It is expected to play a major role in NASA’s Artemis program, after 2024.

While the project is led by NASA, the Gateway is meant to be developed, serviced, and utilized in collaboration with commercial and international partners. It will serve as the staging point for both robotic and crewed exploration of the lunar south pole, and is the proposed staging point for NASA’s Deep Space Transport concept for transport to Mars. The science disciplines to be studied on the Gateway are expected to include planetary science, astrophysics, Earth observations, heliophysics, fundamental space biology, and human health and performance.

Gateway development includes all of the International Space Station partners: ESA, NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, and CSA. Construction is planned to take place in the 2020s. The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG), which is composed of more than 14 space agencies including all major ones, has concluded that Gateway will be critical in expanding a human presence to the Moon, Mars, and deeper into the Solar System.

Video credit: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center

NASA dicit:

Using the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument NASA has ever flown in space, scientists have made precise, detailed measurements of how the elevation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over 16 years.

The results provide insights into how the polar ice sheets are changing, demonstrating definitively that small gains of ice in East Antarctica are dwarfed by massive losses in West Antarctica. The scientists found the net loss of ice from Antarctica, along with Greenland’s shrinking ice sheet, has been responsible for 0.55 inches (14 millimeters) of sea level rise between 2003 and 2019 – slightly less than a third of the total amount of sea level rise observed in the world’s oceans.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Lead Producer: Ryan Fitzgibbons (USRA)
Lead Writer: Kate Ramsayer (Telophase)
Scientist: Thomas A. Neumann Ph.D. (NASA/GSFC)
Lead Scientists: Benjamin E. Smith (University of Washington Applied Physics Lab Polar Science Center)
Helen Amanda Fricker (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego)
Alex S. Gardner (NASA/JPL CalTech)
Lead Visualizer: Kel Elkins (USRA)
Lead Editor: Ryan Fitzgibbons (USRA)
Lead Narrator: LK Ward (USRA)
Lead Animator: Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (USRA)
Videographer: Jefferson Beck (USRA)

NASA dicit:

OSAM-1 (short for On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing mission 1) is a robotic spacecraft equipped with the tools, technologies, and techniques needed to extend satellites’ lifespans – even if they were not designed to be serviced on orbit.

During its mission, the OSAM-1 servicer will rendezvous with, grasp, refuel, and relocate a government-owned satellite to extend its life. But OSAM-1’s effect will not end there. The benefits are many. OSAM-1’s capabilities can give satellite operators new ways to manage their fleets more efficiently, and derive more value from their initial investment. These capabilities could even help mitigate the looming problem of orbital debris.

Successfully completing this mission will demonstrate that servicing technologies are ready for incorporation into other NASA missions, including exploration and science ventures. NASA is also transferring OSAM-1 technologies to commercial entities to help jumpstart a new domestic servicing industry.

Video credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

The story of Apollo 13 goes beyond a tale of survival. The mission also successfully completed a science investigation that is still helping to inform our understanding of the Moon to this day. Early in Apollo 13’s voyage, Mission Control sent the spacecraft’s empty S-IVB rocket booster on a collision course with the lunar surface, where a seismometer set up by the Apollo 12 mission would measure the tremors. This video highlights the beginning and end of that impact experiment, and shows how current data and imagery from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission helps us better interpret and analyze the results.

This video not only contains archival footage captured by the crew of Apollo 13, but also newly-uncovered audio of a humorous exchange between astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Capcom Vance Brand at Mission Control. This booster impact experiment audio had been recorded and sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in 1970, but was unplayable at that facility due to differences in audio equipment, so it sat in storage. The only machine capable of playback is located at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, but that equipment had been out of service for decades. In 2015 an effort funded by the National Science Foundation saw the equipment refurbished, and all 7,200 hours of Apollo 13 audio was digitized. This material was first made publicly available in early 2020 at ApolloInRealTime.org. Among this never-before-heard material we were able to find the conversation covered in this video.

This video also utilizes images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) as well as a data visualization of the Moon showing the locations of the booster impact experiment relative to the Apollo 12 seismometer station. The network of seismometers set up during the Apollo era, combined with data from the LRO mission, is teaching us about moonquakes and the interior structure of the Moon. This information will be useful to all future NASA missions to the lunar surface.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Video Produced & Edited by: David Ladd (USRA)/Data visualizations by: Ernie Wright (USRA)/Music Provided by Universal Production Music: “Trust” – Jose Tomas Novoa Espinosa/Apollo 13 footage and audio provided by: ApolloInRealTime.org

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 August 5, 2011 (UTC), as part of the New Frontiers program. Juno entered a polar orbit of Jupiter on July 5, 2016 (UTC; July 4 U.S. time), 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, gravity 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 618 kilometers per hour (384 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

Wikipedia dicit:

The spectrometer mapper JIRAM, operating in the near infrared (between 2 and 5 μm), conducts surveys in the upper layers of the atmosphere to a depth of between 50 and 70 km (31 and 43 mi) where the pressure reaches 5 to 7 bar (73 to 102 psi). JIRAM will provide images of the aurora in the wavelength of 3.4 μm in regions with abundant H3+ ions. By measuring the heat radiated by the atmosphere of Jupiter, JIRAM can determine how clouds with water are flowing beneath the surface. It can also detect methane, water vapor, ammonia and phosphine. It was not required that this device meets the radiation resistance requirements. The JIRAM instrument is expected to operate through the eighth orbit of Jupiter.

Video credit: NASA