Put To The Test: Orion Service Module

Meet the Four Artemis Astronauts Who Will Fly Around the Moon

Today, we revealed the four astronauts who will fly around the Moon during the Artemis II mission, scheduled to launch in 2024. Get to know them:

Christina Koch

Meet the first member of our Artemis II crew: mission specialist Christina Koch. Koch visited the International Space Station in 2019, where she participated in the first all-woman spacewalk with Jessica Meir. She began her NASA career as an electrical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center.

Jeremy Hansen

Representing the Canadian Space Agency is Jeremy Hansen from London, Ontario. Col. Hansen was a fighter pilot with Canadian Armed Forces before joining the Canadian Space Agency, and currently works with NASA on astronaut training and mission operations. This will be Col. Hansen’s first mission in space.

Victor Glover

Victor Glover is our Artemis II pilot. Glover is part of our 2013 class of NASA astronauts and was the pilot for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission. He’s logged 3,000 flight hours in more than 40 different aircraft.

Reid Wiseman

...and rounding out our Artemis II crew: mission commander Reid Wiseman. Wiseman lived and worked aboard the International Space Station as a flight engineer in 2014. He also commanded the undersea research mission NEEMO21, and most recently served as Chief of the NASA astronauts.

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what is the biggest challenge in the preparation of such a mission and how do you handle it?

Say hello to the Helix Nebula 👋

In 2001 and 2002, our Hubble Space Telescope looked at the Helix Nebula and it looked right back! This planetary nebula is right in our cosmic neighborhood, only about 650 light-years away. Gigantic for this type of cosmic object, the Helix Nebula stretches across 2 to 3 light-years.

With no actual connection to planets, planetary nebulas like this one are produced when a medium-mass star dies and sloughs off its outer layers. These gaseous layers are expelled into space at astonishing speeds where they light up like fireworks. The Helix Nebula is one of the closest planetary nebulas to Earth, giving scientists an up-close view of its strange affairs.

Through Hubble’s observations, scientists have learned that the Helix Nebula isn’t doughnut-shaped as it appears. Instead it consists of two disks that are nearly perpendicular to each other — the nebula looks like an eye and bulges out like one too!

Hubble has also imaged comet-like tendrils that form a pattern around the central star like the spokes on a wagon wheel, likely resulting from a collision between gases. The dying star spews hot gas from its surface, which crashes into the cooler gas that it ejected 10,000 years before. Eventually the knots will dissipate into the cold blackness of interstellar space.

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Vice President Mike Pence visited our Kennedy Space Center in Florida today. While there, he delivered remarks to the workforce and toured our complex to see progress toward sending humans deeper into space, and eventually to Mars. He also had the opportunity to see our work with commercial companies to launch humans from U.S. soil to the International Space Station. 

Planes, Trains and Barges: How We’re Moving Our Artemis 1 Rocket to the Launchpad

Our Space Launch System rocket is on the move this summer — literally. With the help of big and small businesses in all 50 states, various pieces of hardware are making their way to Louisiana for manufacturing, to Alabama for testing, and to Florida for final assembly. All of that work brings us closer to the launch of Artemis 1, SLS and Orion’s first mission to the Moon.

By land and by sea and everywhere in between, here’s why our powerful SLS rocket is truly America’s rocket:

Rollin’ on the River

The SLS rocket will feature the largest core stage we have ever built before. It’s so large, in fact, that we had to modify and refurbish our barge Pegasus to accommodate the massive load. Pegasus was originally designed to transport the giant external tanks of the space shuttles on the 900-mile journey from our rocket factory, Michoud Assembly Facility, in New Orleans to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, our barge ferries test articles from Michoud along the river to Huntsville, Alabama, for testing at Marshall Space Flight Center. Just a week ago, the last of four structural test articles — the liquid oxygen tank — was loaded onto Pegasus to be delivered at Marshall for testing. Once testing is completed and the flight hardware is cleared for launch, Pegasus will again go to work — this time transporting the flight hardware along the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Cape Canaveral.

Chuggin’ along

The massive, five-segment solid rocket boosters each weigh 1.6 million pounds. That’s the size of four blue whales! The only way to move the components for the powerful boosters on SLS from Promontory, Utah, to the Booster Fabrication Facility and Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy is by railway. That’s why you’ll find railway tracks leading from these assembly buildings and facilities to and from the launch pad, too. Altogether, we have about 38-mile industrial short track on Kennedy alone. Using a small fleet of specialized cars and hoppers and existing railways across the US, we can move the large, bulky equipment from the Southwest to Florida’s Space Coast. With all the motor segments complete in January, the last booster motor segment (pictured above) was moved to storage in Utah. Soon, trains will deliver all 10 segments to Kennedy to be stacked with the booster forward and aft skirts and prepared for flight.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s super Guppy!

A regular passenger airplane doesn’t have the capacity to carry the specialized hardware for SLS and our Orion spacecraft. Equipped with a unique hinged nose that can open more than 200 degrees, our Super Guppy airplane is specially designed to carry the hulking hardware, like the Orion stage adapter, to the Cape. That hinged nose means cargo is actually loaded from the front, not the back, of the airplane. The Orion stage adapter, delivered to Kennedy in 2018, joins to the rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage, which will give our spacecraft the push it needs to go to the Moon on Artemis 1. It fit perfectly inside the Guppy’s cargo compartment, which is 25 feet tall and 25 feet wide and 111 feet long.

All roads lead to Kennedy

In the end, all roads lead to Kennedy, and the star of the transportation show is really the “crawler.” Rolling along at a delicate 1 MPH when it’s loaded with the mobile launcher, our two crawler-transporters are vital in bringing the fully assembled rocket to the launchpad for each Artemis mission. Each the size of a baseball field and powered by locomotive and large power generator engines, one crawler-transporter is able to carry 18 million pounds on the nine-mile journey to the launchpad. As of June 27, 2019, the mobile launcher atop crawler-transporter 2 made a successful final test roll to the launchpad, clearing the transporter and mobile launcher ready to carry SLS and Orion to the launchpad for Artemis 1.

Dream Team

It takes a lot of team work to launch Artemis 1. We are partnering with Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne to produce the complex structures of the rocket. Every one of our centers and more than 1,200 companies across the United States support the development of the rocket that will launch Artemis 1 to the Moon and, ultimately, to Mars. From supplying key tools to accelerate the development of the core stage to aiding the transportation of the rocket closer to the launchpad, companies like Futuramic in Michigan and Major Tool & Machine in Indiana, are playing a vital role in returning American astronauts to the Moon. This time, to stay. To stay up to date with the latest SLS progress, click here.

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Don’t Say “Bye, Bye, Bye” To Your Vision: Solar Eclipse Safety Tips

On Oct. 14, 2023, many people across North, Central, and South America will have an opportunity to view a “ring of fire” eclipse – an annular solar eclipse – when the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun! During an annular eclipse, it is never safe to look directly at the Sun without specialized eye protection designed for solar viewing. To spread the word, *NSYNC's Lance Bass stopped by to share some tips on how to stay safe while viewing a solar eclipse.

Check out these detailed viewing maps to see if you will be able to see the entire or partial solar eclipse. If you are, make sure your solar viewing glasses have the ISO certification 12312-2. You can also check with local libraries or science museums to see if they have safe solar viewing glasses to hand out. You can also make a simple pinhole camera at home with some paper and aluminum foil: go.nasa.gov/pinholeprojector

Everyone online can watch the eclipse with NASA. Set a reminder to watch live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlY79zjud-Q

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Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. 🌟 The final stages of a star’s life allow us a glimpse into the future of our own solar system. This image from our Hubble Space Telescope shows what’s left of a star 10,000 light-years from Earth.

A star like our Sun will, at the end of its life, transform into a red giant. The core of the star will eventually collapse in on itself, ejecting the surface layers outward. After that, all that remains of the star is what we see here: glowing outer layers surrounding a white dwarf star. In just a few thousand years they will have dissipated, and all that will be left to see is the dimly glowing white dwarf. More on this image, here. 

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Our Newest Solar Scope Is Ready for a Balloon Ride 🎈

Along with the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, or KASI, we're getting ready to test a new way to see the Sun, high over the New Mexico desert.

A balloon — which looks a translucent white pumpkin, but large enough to hug a football field — will soon take flight, carrying a solar scope called BITSE. BITSE is a coronagraph, a special kind of telescope that blocks the bright face of the Sun to reveal its dimmer atmosphere, called the corona. BITSE stands for Balloon-borne Investigation of Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the corona.

Its goal? Explaining how the Sun spits out the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that blows constantly from the Sun. Scientists generally know it forms in the corona, but exactly how it does so is a mystery.

The solar wind is important because it’s the stuff that fills the space around Earth and all the other planets in our solar system. And, understanding how the solar wind works is key to predicting how solar eruptions travel. It’s a bit like a water slide: The way it flows determines how solar storms barrel through space. Sometimes, those storms crash into our planet’s magnetic field, sparking disturbances that can interfere with satellites and communications signals we use every day, like radio or GPS.

Right now, scientists and engineers are in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, preparing to fly BITSE up to the edge of the atmosphere. BITSE will take pictures of the corona, measuring the density, temperature and speed of negatively charged particles — called electrons — in the solar wind. Scientists need these three things to answer the question of how the solar wind forms.

One day, scientists hope to send an instrument like BITSE to space, where it can study the Sun day in and day out, and help us understand the powerful forces that push the solar wind out to speeds of 1 million miles per hour. BITSE’s balloon flight is an important step towards space, since it will help this team of scientists and engineers fine-tune their tech for future space-bound missions.  

Hours before sunrise, technicians from our Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility’s field site in Fort Sumner will ready the balloon for flight, partially filling the large plastic envelope with helium. The balloon is made of polyethylene — the same stuff grocery bags are made of — and is about as thick as a plastic sandwich bag, but much stronger. As the balloon rises higher into the sky, the gas in the balloon expands and the balloon grows to full size.

BITSE will float 22 miles over the desert. For at least six hours, it will drift, taking pictures of the Sun’s seething hot atmosphere. By the end of the day, it will have collected 40 feature-length movies’ worth of data.

BITSE’s journey to the sky began with an eclipse. Coronagraphs use a metal disk to mimic a total solar eclipse — but instead of the Moon sliding in between the Sun and Earth, the disk blocks the Sun’s face to reveal the dim corona. During the Aug. 21, 2017, total eclipse, our scientists tested key parts of this instrument in Madras, Oregon.

Now, the scientists are stepping out from the Moon’s shadow. A balloon will take BITSE up to the edge of the atmosphere. Balloons are a low-cost way to explore this part of the sky, allowing scientists to make better measurements and perform tests they can’t from the ground.

BITSE carries several important technologies. It’s built on one stage of lens, rather than three, like traditional coronagraphs. That means it’s designed more simply, and less likely to have a mechanical problem. And, it has a couple different sets of specialized filters that capture different kinds of light: polarized light — light waves that bob in certain directions — and specific wavelengths of light. The combination of these images provides scientists with information on the density, temperature and speed of electrons in the corona.

More than 22 miles over the ground, BITSE will fly high above birds, airplanes, weather and the blue sky itself. As the atmosphere thins out, there are less air particles to scatter light. That means at BITSE’s altitude, the sky is dimmer. These are good conditions for a coronagraph, whose goal is taking images of the dim corona. But even the upper atmosphere is brighter than space.

That’s why scientists are so eager to test BITSE on this balloon, and develop their instrument for a future space mission. The solar scope is designed to train its eyes on a slice of the corona that’s not well-studied, and key to solar wind formation. One day, a version of BITSE could do this from space, helping scientists gather new clues to the origins of the solar wind.  

At the end of BITSE’s flight, the crew at the Fort Sumner field site will send termination commands, kicking off a sequence that separates the instrument and balloon, deploys the instrument’s parachute, and punctures the balloon. An airplane circling overhead will keep watch over the balloon’s final moments, and relay BITSE’s location. At the end of its flight, far from where it started, the coronagraph will parachute to the ground. A crew will drive into the desert to recover both the balloon and BITSE at the end of the day.

For more information on how we use balloons for high-altitude science missions, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/scientificballoons

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Our Orion space capsule is now on Tumblr! Check it out, follow, and share! http://nasaorion.tumblr.com/  

Engineers are preparing to test the parachute system for NASA’s Orion spacecraft at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona. During the test, planned for Wednesday, Aug. 26, a C-17 aircraft will carry a representative Orion capsule to 35,000 feet in altitude and then drop it from its cargo bay. Engineers will test a scenario in which one of Orion’s two drogue parachutes, used to stabilize it in the air, does not deploy, and one of its three main parachutes, used to slow the capsule during the final stage of descent, also does not deploy. The risky test will provide data engineers will use as they gear up to qualify Orion’s parachutes for missions with astronauts. On Aug. 24, a C-17 was loaded with the test version of Orion, which has a similar mass and interfaces with the parachutes as the Orion being developed for deep space missions but is shorter on top to fit inside the aircraft.

For more information, visit: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?id=182

Purple haze, all around. See Jupiter in a whole new light in this citizen scientist-created JunoCam image.