“On April 22, hours arriving at the International Space Station, Orbital ATK’s Cygnus resupply ship was captured by Expedition 51 Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency and Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA using the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Later, Cygnus was installed to the Earth-facing port of the Unity module where it will reside for the next three months. Cygnus is packed with 7,600 pounds of supplies and research for the crew aboard the orbiting laboratory.”
“After launching earlier in the day in their Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 51-52 Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA arrived at the International Space Station April 20 to complete a six-hour journey, docking their vehicle to the Poisk module on the Russian segment of the complex.”
“The sun emitted a trio of mid-level solar flares on April 2-3, 2017. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured images of the three events.”
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein
Music credit: A Waltz into Darkness by Joseph Bennie
“February 21, 1997. Julie Webster, Cassini’s manager of spacecraft operations (kneeling, right), and the rest of the mission’s assembly, test and launch operations (ATLO) team pose with the spacecraft outside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Space Simulator.”
“After almost 20 years in space, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft begins the final chapter of its remarkable story of exploration: its Grand Finale. Between April and September 2017, Cassini will undertake a daring set of orbits that is, in many ways, like a whole new mission. Following a final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan, Cassini will leap over the planet’s icy rings and begin a series of 22 weekly dives between the planet and the rings.
No other mission has ever explored this unique region. What we learn from these final orbits will help to improve our understanding of how giant planets – and planetary systems everywhere – form and evolve.
On the final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back new and unique science to the very end. After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft will burn up like a meteor, becoming part of the planet itself.
Cassini’s Grand Finale is about so much more than the spacecraft’s final dive into Saturn. That dramatic event is the capstone of six months of daring exploration and scientific discovery. (And those six months are the thrilling final chapter in a historic 20-year journey.)”
Image credit: NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory – Caltech / Bob Brown
“After almost 20 years in space, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft begins the final chapter of its remarkable story of exploration: its Grand Finale. Between April and September 2017, Cassini will undertake a daring set of orbits that is, in many ways, like a whole new mission. Following a final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan, Cassini will leap over the planet’s icy rings and begin a series of 22 weekly dives between the planet and the rings.
No other mission has ever explored this unique region. What we learn from these final orbits will help to improve our understanding of how giant planets – and planetary systems everywhere – form and evolve.
On the final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back new and unique science to the very end. After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft will burn up like a meteor, becoming part of the planet itself.
Cassini’s Grand Finale is about so much more than the spacecraft’s final dive into Saturn. That dramatic event is the capstone of six months of daring exploration and scientific discovery. (And those six months are the thrilling final chapter in a historic 20-year journey.)
At times, the spacecraft will skirt the very inner edge of the rings; at other times, it will skim the outer edges of the atmosphere. While the mission team is confident the risks are well understood, there could still be surprises. It’s the kind of bold adventure that could only be undertaken at the end of the mission.
Cassini’s final images will have been sent to Earth several hours before its final plunge, but even as the spacecraft makes its fateful dive into the planet’s atmosphere, it will be sending home new data in real time. Key measurements will come from its mass spectrometer, which will sample Saturn’s atmosphere, telling us about its composition until contact is lost.
While it’s always sad when a mission comes to an end, Cassini’s finale plunge is a truly spectacular end for one of the most scientifically rich voyages yet undertaken in our solar system. From its launch in 1997 to the unique Grand Finale science of 2017, the Cassini-Huygens mission has racked up a remarkable list of achievements. “
“The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has now captured nearly seven years worth of ultra-high resolution solar footage. This time lapse shows that full run from two of SDO’s instruments. The large orange sun is visible light captured by HMI. The smaller golden sun is extreme ultraviolet light from AIA and reveals some of the suns atmosphere, the corona. Both appear at one frame every 12 hours. SDO’s nearly unbroken run is now long enough to watch the rise and fall of the current solar cycle. The graph of solar activity shows the sunspot number, a measurement based on the number of individual spots and the number of sunspot groups. In this case, the line represents a smoothed 26-day average to more clearly show the overall trend.”
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger
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