NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

Nov 21, 2023

Fleming's Triangular Wisp

These chaotic and tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen atoms shown in red and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop and cataloged as NGC 6979, the Veil Nebula now spans about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. The length of the wisp corresponds to about 30 light years, given its estimated distance of 2,400 light years. Often identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory, it is perhaps better named for its discoverer, astronomer Williamina Fleming, as Fleming's Triangular Wisp.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?

NASA One Step Closer to Fueling Space Missions with Plutonium-238

NOV 21, 2023

The recent shipment of heat source plutonium-238 from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory to its Los Alamos National Laboratory is a critical step toward fueling planned NASA missions with radioisotope power systems.

This shipment of 0.5 kilograms (a little over 1 pound) of new heat source plutonium oxide is the largest since the domestic restart of plutonium-238 production over a decade ago. It marks a significant milestone toward achieving the constant rate production average target of 1.5 kilograms per year by 2026.

Radioisotope power systems, or RPS, enable exploration of some of the deepest, darkest, and most distant destinations in the solar system and beyond. RPS use the natural decay of the radioisotope plutonium-238 to provide heat to a spacecraft in the form of a Light Weight Radioisotope Heater Unit (LWRHU), or heat and electricity in the form of a system such as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG).

The DOE has produced the heat source plutonium oxide required to fuel the RPS for missions such as NASA’s Mars 2020. The first spacecraft to benefit from this restart, the Perseverance rover, carries some of the new plutonium produced by DOE. An MMRTG continuously provides the car-sized rover with heat and about 110 watts of electricity, enabling the exploration of the Martian surface and the gathering of soil samples for possible retrieval.

“NASA’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program works in partnership with the Department of Energy to enable missions to operate in some of the most extreme environments in our solar system and interstellar space,” said Carl Sandifer, RPS program manager at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

For over sixty years, the United States has employed radioisotope-based electrical power systems and heater units in space. Three dozen missions have explored space for decades using the reliable electricity and heat provided by RPS.

NASA and DOE are continuing their long-standing partnership to ensure the nation can enable future missions requiring radioisotopes for decades to come.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/glenn/nasa-one-step-closer-to-fueling-space-missions-with-plutonium-238/

Tom Hanks visits Artemis 2 moon astronauts and NASA Mission Control

Nov 21, 2023

Iconic actor Tom Hanks, who once played a moon astronaut in film, met with four real-life astronauts on the verge of exploring lunar realms themselves.

"Apollo 13" actor Hanks touched down in Houston — where happily, he did not report a problem — to meet with the Artemis 2 crew. Those four astronauts posed with Hanks, in front of a mockup of the Orion spacecraft, between training for their round-the-moon mission no earlier than 2024, NASA officials reported on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday (Nov. 18).

In space circles, Hanks is best known for playing NASA astronaut Jim Lovell, the real-life commander of Apollo 13, in a 1995 Hollywood hit. The movie showed how Mission Control, the astronauts' families and the crew themselves came together to solve an emergency on the way to the moon.

Hanks not only spoke with the Artemis 2 crew, but stopped by two sections of Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) at the least: The freshly updated Apollo program mission control center that saw Apollo 13 and other missions go to the moon, along with the International Space Station's Mission Control. Hanks even spoke with some of the Expedition 70 astronauts on board the ISS, NASA reported.

NASA is now restarting human moon exploration with four astronauts that will circle the moon: NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen. NASA is leading a fast-growing coalition of international partners to lunar realms under the Artemis Accords, which also serve as a framework for peaceful space exploration norms.

Prior to meeting with Hanks, three of the Artemis 2 crew jetted to NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Nov. 16. There, they reviewed the powerful core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will bring them to Earth orbit and eventually, on to the moon. The visit also marked the one-year anniversary of the launch of Artemis 1, an uncrewed mission that successfully tested SLS and the Orion spacecraft during its own mission late in 2022.

It's been a busy few months for the Artemis 2 crew since they were named in April at a ceremony at Ellington Field, nearby JSC. The quartet are working on learning more about Orion as well as medical procedures, ahead of an expected recovery exercise at sea with NASA and the U.S. Navy.

Pieces of the Artemis 2 hardware are also under assembly at NASA centers across the U.S. At Michoud, the four RS-25 engines that will power the core stage were secured Oct. 6 after each was individually attached via "soft mates" on various dates in September.

"Engineers will perform testing on the entire stage and its avionics and electrical systems, which act as the 'brains' of the rocket to help control it during flight," NASA officials wrote in October. Once testing is through in a few months, the core stage will make its way to the launch site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center via barge.

There is other Artemis 2 construction work ongoing at KSC already. Pieces of the twin solid rocket boosters for Artemis 2 arrived by train in September and are being assembled, first starting with each booster's aft assembly for steering the rockets during flight.

Artemis 2's Orion completed its power-on test on Nov. 6 at KSC, following a crucial mate between the American-made crew module and the European Service Module. The spacecraft will soon undergo a one- or two-week "closed-loop mission" test to simulate a mission, meaning "navigation, propulsion and other subsystems are reacting correctly to maintain the mission course," Dominique Siruguet, ESM assembly integration and verification engineer at the European Space Agency, said in a Nov. 6 statement.

https://www.space.com/tom-hanks-nasa-mission-control-moon-artemis-2-astronauts