Mercury-Atlas 9

Mercury-Atlas 9
Technicians were performing pre-launch testing of the Mercury-Atlas 9 (MA9) on Launch Pad 14 at Cape Canaveral when this photo was taken on May 14, 1963. A day later on May 15, Gordon Cooper successfully piloted this his 'Faith 7' spacecraft for more than 34 hours and 22 orbits.

Cooper's flight stretched the capabilities of the Mercury capsule to the limits. His 34-hour flight lasted more than three times the longest U.S. human space flight until that time, and far exceeded the initial design capability of the capsule.

Image Credit: NASA

Expedition 18 Lands

Expedition 18 Lands
The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft, carrying Expedition 18 Commander Michael Fincke, Flight Engineer Yury V. Lonchakov and American Spaceflight Participant Charles Simonyi, lands, Wednesday, April 8, 2009, near Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Fincke and Lonchakov return after spending six months on the International Space Station, and Simonyi is returning from his launch with the Expedition 19 crew members 12 days earlier.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

A Young Pulsar Shows Its Hand

A Young Pulsar Shows Its Hand
A small, dense object only 12 miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand.

In this image, the lowest energy X-rays that Chandra detects are red, the medium range is green, and the most energetic ones are colored blue. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1,700 years old and it is located about 17,000 light years away.

Neutron stars are created when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse. B1509 is spinning completely around almost 7 times every second and is releasing energy into its environment at a prodigious rate -- presumably because it has an intense magnetic field at its surface, estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field.

The combination of rapid rotation and ultra-strong magnetic field makes B1509 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the galaxy. This generator drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the neutron star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy and create the elaborate nebula seen by Chandra.

Image Credits: NASA/CXC/CfA/P. Slane et al.

Honeycomb

Honeycomb
Technicians from Ball Aerospace inspected the honeycomb structure of the Kepler Space Telescope's primary mirror. The mirror has been 86% light-weighted; that is, it only weighs 14% of amount that a solid mirror of the same dimensions would. The mirror blank was made by Corning Glass works out of ultra-low expansion glass, or ULE. The optical polishing of the mirror was performed by Brashear LP.

Kepler launched On March 7, 2009, on a 3 1/2 year mission to survey the more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. It is expected to find hundreds of planets the size of Earth and larger at various distances from their stars.

There is now clear evidence for substantial numbers of three types of exoplanets; gas giants, hot-super-Earths in short period orbits, and ice giants. The challenge is to find terrestrial planets, especially those in the habitable zone of their stars where liquid water might exist on the surface of the planet.

Image Credit: NASA/Ball Aerospace

Hubble Finds Hidden Exoplanet in Archival Data

Hubble Finds Hidden Exoplanet in Archival Data
In 19 years of observations, the Hubble Space Telescope has amassed a huge archive of data--an archive that may contain the telltale glow of undiscovered extrasolar planets. Such is the case with this image--one of three extrasolar planets orbiting the young star HR 8799--which is 130 light-years away. The planetary trio was originally discovered in images taken with the Keck and Gemini North telescopes in 2007 and 2008. But using a new image processing technique that suppresses the glare of the parent star, scientists found the telltale glow of the outermost planet in the system while studying Hubble archival data taken in 1998. The giant planet is young and hot, but still only 1/100,000th the brightness of its parent star. By comparison, Jupiter is one-billionth the brightness of our sun.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Orion: The Next Generation Crew Exploration Vehicle

Orion: The Next Generation Crew Exploration Vehicle
Spectators gather around a mock-up of the Orion capsule that will carry astronauts back to the moon. The capsule is being displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Scheduled to make its first flights to the International Space Station early in the next decade, Orion is part of the Constellation Program to send human explorers back to the moon, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.

Image Credit: NASA/Michael Cabbage

STS-119 Comes Home

STS-119 Comes Home
With the aid of a drogue chute, space shuttle Discovery slows to a stop on Runway 15 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to complete the 13-day, 5.3-million mile journey to the International Space Station. Discovery delivered the final pair of power-generating solar arrays and the S6 truss segment.

Image Credit: NASA/Kevin O'Connell

Welcome Home, Discovery!

Welcome Home, Discovery!
Discovery touched down on Runway 15 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, completing the 13-day, 5.3-million mile journey on the STS-119 mission. Discovery delivered the final pair of power-generating solar array wings and the S6 truss segment. The mission was the 28th flight to the station, the 36th flight of Discovery and the 125th in the Space Shuttle Program, as well as the 70th landing at Kennedy.

Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Parting View

Parting View
Suspended in space and backdropped by the blackness of space and the jewel-like blue of Earth sits the International Space Station. This image of the station was taken as STS-119 performed a fly around after undocking.

Image Credit: NASA

Crescent Moon in Kazakhstan

Crescent Moon in Kazakhstan
The crescent moon rises in the early morning hours shortly before the Soyuz rocket is rolled out to the launch pad Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz is scheduled to launch on March 26, 2009, carrying Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Michael Barrett to the International Space Station, along with spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi.

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Making Preparations

Making Preparations
Astronauts Steve Swanson and Joseph Acaba (out of frame) prepared a worksite so the STS-127 spacewalkers can more easily change out the Port 6 truss batteries later this year. On the Japanese Kibo laboratory they installed a second Global Positioning Satellite antenna that will be used for the planned rendezvous of the Japanese HTV cargo ship in September. They photographed areas of radiator panels extended from the Port 1 and Starboard 1 trusses and reconfigured connectors at a patch panel on the Zenith 1 truss that power Control Moment Gyroscopes. This was the STS-119 mission's second spacewalk.

Acaba and Richard Arnold will perform the mission's third spacewalk on Monday, March 23, 2009.

Image Credit: NASA

Powering Up the Station

Powering Up the Station
During the STS-119 mission's first spacewalk, astronauts Richard Arnold and Steve Swanson (out of frame) connected bolts to permanently attach the S6 truss segment to S5. The spacewalkers plugged in power and data connectors to the truss, prepared a radiator to cool it, opened boxes containing the new solar arrays and deployed the Beta Gimbal Assemblies, containing masts that support the solar arrays.

Image Credit: NASA

The View From Above

The View From Above
This overhead view of Discovery's crew cabin, as well as part of its payload bay and docking system, was taken during the Expedition 18 crew's examination of the shuttle prior to docking with the International Space Station. Before docking, STS-119 commander Lee Archambault flew the shuttle through a Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver or backflip to allow the station crew to photograph Discovery's heat shield.

Using digital still cameras equipped with 400 and 800 millimeter lenses, the ISS crew photographed the shuttle's thermal protection system for analysis by teams on the ground. A 800 millimeter lens was used for this image.

Image Credit: NASA

Free Flight Captured

Free Flight Captured
A blended wing body aircraft model used for testing in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center now flies high at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's popular 'How Things Fly' gallery, which reopened March 18, 2009. Jon Montgomery (right) of NASA's Aeronautics Mission Support Office and his son Jack were among the visitors on opening day.

Image Credit: NASA/Maria Werries

Houston

Houston
Flight directors Richard Jones (left), Norm Knight and Tony Ceccacci monitor data at their consoles in the space shuttle flight control room in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center during the launch countdown for STS-119.

Image Credit: NASA/Devin Boldt

Discovery Lights Up the Night

Discovery Lights Up the Night
Space shuttle Discovery lit up the sky at sunset as it roared off Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on its mission to the International Space Station. The STS-119 mission is the 28th to the space station and Discovery's 36th flight. Discovery will deliver the final pair of power-generating solar array wings and the S6 truss segment. Installation of S6 will enable the station to house a six-member crew.

Image credit: NASA

Partnership

Partnership
The Expedition 18 crew photographed the Russian segment of the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

During the spacewalk, Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov installed the Exposing Specimens of Organic and Biological Materials to Open Space (Expose-R) experiment mounted on the Zvezda Service Module's the universal science platform.

Image Credit: NASA

Mars' Moon Deimos

Mars' Moon Deimos
These color-enhanced views of Deimos, the smaller of the two moons of Mars, were taken on Feb. 21, 2009, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Deimos is about 7.5 miles in diameter.

Deimos has a smooth surface due to a blanket of fragmental rock or regolith, except for the most recent impact craters. It is a dark, reddish object, very similar to Mars' other moon, Phobos.

These Deimos images combine HiRISE exposures in near-infrared, red and blue-green wavelengths. In the enhanced color, subtle color variations are visible -- redder in the smoothest areas and less red near the fresh impact craters and over ridges of topographic highs. The color variations are probably caused by exposure of surface material to the space environment, which leads to darkening and reddening. Brighter and less-red surface materials have seen less exposure to space due to recent impacts or downslope movement of regolith.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Discovery Aglow

Discovery Aglow
A nearly full Moon sets as the space shuttle Discovery sits atop Launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The USS Wally Schirra

The USS Wally Schirra
A new Navy supply ship, dedicated to Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronaut Wally Schirra, was launched into San Diego Bay on Sunday, March 8, 2009. The Wally Schirra is a 689-foot cargo ship designed to provide ammunition, food, fuel and supplies to other vessels in the fleet. Schirra's widow, Josephine, was in attendance and christened the vessel with a bottle of champagne.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/DC Agle