NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins, Crewmates Safely Return From the Space Station
NASA astronaut and Expedition 49 crew member Kate Rubins, who became the first person to sequence DNA in space, returned to Earth Saturday after a successful mission aboard the International Space Station. Rubins and her crewmates Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, touched down in their Soyuz MS-01 at 11:58 p.m. EDT (9:58 a.m. Oct. 30, Kazakhstan time)...
A Dead Star’s Ghostly Glow
The eerie glow of a dead star, which exploded long ago as a supernova, reveals itself in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Crab Nebula. But don’t be fooled. The ghoulish-looking object still has a pulse. Buried at its center is the star’s tell-tale heart, which beats with rhythmic precision. The “heart” is the crushed core of the exploded star. Called a neutron star, it has about the same mass as...
NASA’s Juno Mission Exits Safe Mode, Performs Trim Maneuver
Mission Status Report NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter has left safe mode and has successfully completed a minor burn of its thruster engines in preparation for its next close flyby of Jupiter. Mission controllers commanded Juno to exit safe mode Monday, Oct. 24, with confirmation of safe mode exit received on the ground at 10:05 a.m. PDT (1:05 p.m. EDT). The spacecraft entered safe mode on Oct. 18 when a software performance monitor...
Third Lettuce Crop Begins Growing Aboard Station
By Anna Heiney, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Just as farmers on Earth are planting leafy greens for the fall growing season, astronauts aboard the International Space Station are planting their third on-orbit crop of red romaine lettuce. Early this morning, NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough initiated the Veg-03 experiment, one of his first science assignments as a new crew member aboard the orbiting laboratory. As Kimbrough worked,...
Fluid Fantasy
Saturn’s clouds are full of raw beauty, but they also represent a playground for a branch of physics called fluid dynamics, which seeks to understand the motion of gases and liquids. Saturn’s lack of a solid planetary surface (as on Earth, Mars or Venus) means that its atmosphere is free to flow around the planet essentially without obstruction. This is one factor that generates Saturn’s pattern of alternating belts...
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