On this day (March 10) in 2006, The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) entered orbit around Mars. Built by Lockheed Martin under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), MRO was designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from its orbit. It has numerous instruments designed to study the Martian geology (particularly its water) and Martian weather. MRO is still helping meet the four main science goals of the Mars Exploration Program:
1) Determine
On this day (March 9) in 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was redeployed by mission STS-109 (Columbia). Initially put in orbit by Shuttle Discovery in 1990, the HST has provided us an unprecedented view of the universe. Since its launch, it has undergone five servicing missions: conducting maintenance, installing new instruments, and upgrading technology.
The HST’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will provide better resolution and sensitivity than Hubble. JWST is designed to look deeper into space to see the earliest stars and galaxies that formed in the universe, giving humanity a clearer view of how the universe began.
Who knows what fantastic discoveries lay before us with HST and with the even more powerful JWST?
On this day (March 8) in 1979, active volcanoes were discovered on Jupiter’s moon, Io, in navigation images made by Voyager 1.
Io, the innermost of the four Galilean moons was discovered on January 8, 1610, by Galileo Galilei, dealing a blow to the Ptolemaic world system model. Over the next hundred years, observations of Io helped validate Kepler’s third law of planetary motion, and helped determine the amount of time required for light to travel between Jupiter and Earth.
On this day (March 7) on 1970, 230 days after Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Richard Nixon issued his “Statement About the Future of the United States Space Program.” The Statement outlined six specific space objectives:
1. “We should continue to explore the moon.”
2. “We should move ahead with bold exploration of the planets and the universe…As a part of this program we will eventually send men to explore the planet Mars.”
3. “We should work to reduce substantially the cost ...
Ver más2. “We should move ahead with bold exploration of the planets and the universe…As a part of this program we will eventually send men to explore the planet Mars.”
3. “We should work to reduce substantially the cost ...
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Today in 1990: On its final flight, our Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird set a new speed record flying from Los Angeles, CA to Washington, DC in 1 hour, 4 minutes, 20 s...
On this day (March 6) last year, Dawn arrived at Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. Since then, it has made more than 600 orbits. Dawn utilizes a high-tech ion propulsion system which has allowed it to go into orbit around two different celestial bodies, a first for any spacecraft. The ion engine is essential to meeting the mission objectives.
Ceres, though it is the largest object in the asteroid belt, would only take about 30 hours to circumnavigate by a car moving at 60 miles an hour.
Read the latest update on Dawn here: http://dawnblog.jpl.nasa.gov/…/02/29/dawn-journal-february…/
If you're in DC on March 8, join us for a lecture by retired Langley engineer John Newcomb. For more info email: nandreas@hq.nasa.gov
Description:
A Bunch of Plumbers is the behind-the-scenes story of how NASA engineers, armed with butcher paper, slide rules, and punch card computers, accomplished two of the most successful missions of the 20th century-the Lunar Orbiter Project that placed five spacecraft in orbit around the Moon and photographed the proposed Apollo landing
A Bunch of Plumbers is the behind-the-scenes story of how NASA engineers, armed with butcher paper, slide rules, and punch card computers, accomplished two of the most successful missions of the 20th century-the Lunar Orbiter Project that placed five spacecraft in orbit around the Moon and photographed the proposed Apollo landing
On this day (March 5) in 1998, it was announced that the Lunar Prospector had found 10-300 million tons of water ice in craters at the south pole of the Moon. The mission ended on July 31, 1999, when the probe was deliberately impacted into these ice deposits in the hopes of creating a spray of water vapor that could be measured from Earth. Regrettably, no such vapor was detected.
Why are we always searching for water? In short, life (as we understand it) requires water.
On this day (March 4) in 1968, the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory (OGO) 5 launched. The objectives of OGO 5 were to conduct many diversified geophysical experiments for a better understanding of the Earth and to continue to develop and operate a standardized observatory-type spacecraft. The OGO satellites successfully studied the interactions between the Earth and the Sun through 25 experiments.
Also, on this day in 2010, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satell
On this day (March 3) in 1915, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was created by law to "supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight." Just as NASA formed in response to the rapid progress of the Soviet space program, the NACA formed in response to Europe’s advancing airplane technology. At its inception, the NACA’s mission was to coordinate aeronautic efforts already underway across the nation. However, by the late 1920s the NACA
On this day (March 2) in 1972, Pioneer 10 launched. Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and the first spacecraft to make direct observations of Jupiter, was “a pioneer in the true sense of the word… it was venturing into places where nothing built by humanity had ever gone before." After more than 30 years, its last signal was received from 7.6 billion miles away on January 22, 2003.
Bearing a gold plaque that describes what we look like,
On this day fifty years ago (March 1, 1966), the Soviet space probe Venera 3 impacted the surface of Venus, making it the first human-made object to touch the surface of another planet. Sixteen years later (on March 1, 1982), Venera 13 soft-landed on the surface of Venus and took the first color pictures of its surface. (See below)
Compared to Mars, the surface of Venus hasn't been very well explored - why is that? Venus is closer to Earth than Mars, but, to put it simply,
