nasa history

On this day (February 16) in 1948, Uranus’ moon Miranda, last of Uranus’ moons discovered until Voyager 2’s visit in 1986, was discovered by Gerard Kuiper. Miranda is the smallest and innermost of Uranus’s five round satellites. In fact, Miranda is one of the smallest objects in the solar system known to be spherical due to its own gravity. That being said, Miranda also has one of the most extreme topographies of any place in the solar system, with a nearly 10 km high scarp a...

On this day: 16 February 2011, ESA's second Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) was launched to the International Space Station on an Ariane 5 rocket. Named Johann...

ATV-2: Johannes Kepler

ESA's second Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) was named Johannes Kepler after the German astronomer and mathematician. Europe's unmanned logistics spacecraft was launched to the International Space Station on 16 February 2011.

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On this day (February 15) in 2010, the Cupola, the ultimate observation deck, was installed on the International Space Station (ISS). The Cupola is a panoramic control tower for the ISS, a dome-shaped module through which operations on the outside of the station can be observed and guided. Its six side windows and one top window offer a panoramic view of the station's exterior, and the Earth. Sort of looks like the flight deck of the Millennium Falcon, doesn't it?

The Cupola was built by a consortium of European aerospace contractors led by Alenia Spazio of Turin, Italy. It was provided to NASA by the European Space Agency in exchange for the delivery of other payloads to the ISS.

Here astronaut Karen Nyberg takes a moment to enjoy the view from the Cupola.

 

On this day (February 14) in 1990, Voyager 1, from a vantage point beyond the orbit of Neptune, turned its camera back toward the planets of our solar system. With 60 individual pictures Voyager created a "family portrait" of our neighborhood. From such a distance, more than 6 billion kilometers from the Sun, it was difficult to get images of all the planets. Mercury was too close to the Sun to see, Mars didn't reflect enough light to show up, and Pluto was just too dim. O...

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