OrbitalHub

NASA dicit:

“Launched on March 2, 2019, from Kennedy Space Center aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, the SpaceX Crew Dragon successfully reached low-Earth orbit and docked autonomously to the International Space Station. This first, uncrewed demonstration flight of the Crew Dragon is an end-to-end test of all the spacecraft’s system and provides NASA valuable data toward certifying it to fly astronauts.”

Video Credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

“Crew Dragon is designed to transport up to four astronauts for NASA missions, along with critical cargo and supplies, to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The Crew Dragon features solar arrays affixed to the side of the spacecraft’s trunk, a launch escape system that will allow crew members to escape an anomaly at any point during flight, a large hatch and windows, and a redesigned outer mold line to enhance crew comfort. The first uncrewed flight is an important step in returning human launches on American rockets and spacecraft to the space station from U.S. soil since 2011.

Astronauts will board the SpaceX Crew Dragon using the Crew Access Arm, which provides a bridge to the spacecraft from the crew access tower at Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A.”

Video Credit: NASA/SpaceX

NASA dicit:

“Countdown and liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Crew Dragon onboard on Demo-1, the first uncrewed flight test of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. Launch was at 2:49 a.m. EST on March 2, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Demo-1 is the first time a commercially built and operated American spacecraft designed for humans will dock to the International Space Station.”

Video Credit: NASA/SpaceX

NASA dicit:

“New research from the up-close Grand Finale orbits of NASA’s Cassini mission shows a surprisingly powerful interaction of plasma waves moving from Saturn to its moon Enceladus. Researchers converted the recording of plasma waves into a “whooshing” audio file that we can hear — in the same way a radio translates electromagnetic waves into music. Much like air or water, plasma (the fourth state of matter) generates waves to carry energy. The recording was captured by the Radio Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument September 2, 2017, two weeks before Cassini was deliberately plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn.”

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Iowa

NASA dicit:

“New Horizons scientists created this movie from 14 different images taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shortly before the spacecraft flew past the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule (officially named 2014 MU69) on January 1, 2019. The central frame of this sequence was taken on January 1 at 5:26:54 UT (12:26 a.m. EST), when New Horizons was 4,117 miles (6,640 kilometers) from Ultima Thule, some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. Ultima Thule nearly completely fills the LORRI image and is perfectly captured in the frames, an astounding technical feat given the uncertain location of Ultima Thule and the New Horizons spacecraft flying past it at over 32,000 miles per hour.”

Video Credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

“NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover has already descended from Vera Rubin Ridge, a region of Mount Sharp that it has been exploring for more than a year. But before it left, the rover took a 360-degree panorama of the area depicting its last drill hole on the ridge (at a location called “Rock Hall”), a new region it will spent the next year exploring (the clay unit) and its last view of Gale Crater’s floor until it starts ascending in elevation again.”

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS