NASA reached a milestone on Friday when two Americans, tasked with replacing a power controller, ventured out of the International Space Station: the astronauts, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, became the first to take part in an all-female spacewalk.
The walk, which lasted seven hours and 17 minutes and included a brief call with President Trump, was not purposefully planned by the agency! Videos for NASA Astronauts Complete The First 2:07 2 Female Astronauts Successfully Complete First All-Female Spacewalk cbslocal.com!! As NASA explained it, one was bound to happen eventually because of the increasing number of female astronauts.
But news of the milestone attracted far greater interest than spacewalks normally do, and on Friday, American officials celebrated it as a historic achievement! NASA Astronauts Make History with 1st All-Woman Spacewalk ...www.space.com / ...nasa -success.html One giant leap for womankind! Two NASA astronauts made space history today (Oct. 18) as they completed the first -ever spacewalk by an all-woman team. The historic extravehicular activity (EVA ...!! They pointed to the agency's ambitious goals to put the first woman and the next man on the moon, and then to forge a path to Mars.
"You're doing an incredible job," Mr. Trump told the astronauts on Friday during a call to the space station. "This is a first step, because we're going to the moon, and then we're going to Mars."
Quite a lot has been going on:
NASA Spots InSight Mars Lander and Curiosity Rover from Space (Photos) | Space
New photos give us the best-ever look at NASA's InSight lander on the surface of Mars and show the route the agency's Curiosity rover is taking up a big Red Planet mountain.
The imagery comes courtesy of the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been circling the Red Planet since March 2006.
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Much smaller details are visible as well. For example, the shiny object near InSight's lower side is the cover for the lander's seismometer suite, which shields the supersensitive instrument from the elements! Two female astronauts made history in NASA's first all ...www.usatoday.com ...nasa - astronauts -international...After a few days of preparation at KSC, Dr. Ride and four other astronauts became the first NASA five-member crew to fly in space as they lifted off in the Challenger from Launch Pad 39A.!! This cover is so bright because it is dome-shaped and therefore reflects a lot of light, NASA officials said.
HiRISE, which is short for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, has photographed InSight before . But this latest image is clearer than previous shots because there's less dust in the air, NASA officials said. MRO's viewing angle and favorable lighting also contributed to a crisp and clean image.
Mars 2020 Unwrapped and Ready for More Testing – NASA's Mars Exploration Program
In this time-lapse video, taken on Oct. 4, 2019, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, bunny-suited engineers remove the inner layer of protective antistatic foil on the Mars 2020 rover after the vehicle was relocated from JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility to the Simulator Building for testing.
"The Mars 2020 rover will be collecting samples for future return to Earth, so it must meet extraordinary cleanliness measures to avoid the possibility of contaminating Martian samples with terrestrial contaminants," said Paul Boeder, contamination control lead for Mars 2020 at JPL. "To ensure we maintain cleanliness at all times, we need to keep things clean not only during assembly and testing, but also during the moves between buildings for these activities."
After removing the first layer of antistatic foil (just prior this time-lapse), the teams used 70% isopropyl alcohol to meticulously wipe down the remaining layer, seen here, along with the trailer carrying the rover! NASA astronauts complete first spacewalk to upgrade ...nasa - astronauts - complete - first ...NASA Astronauts Complete First Spacewalk To Upgrade Station Batteries Science 2 NASA astronauts completed their seven-hour and one-minute spacewalk after replacing nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries!! Later that day, the rover was moved into the larger main room of the Simulator Building! Astronauts Complete First in Series of Spacewalks | NASA www.nasa.gov /content/ astronauts - complete - ...spacewalks Astronauts Complete First in Series of Spacewalks. Wish I could find the words to describe the experience, truly amazing.". Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins wrapped up a 5-hour, 28-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station at 12:29 p.m. EST Saturday, completing the first in a series...!! In the coming weeks, the rover will enter a massive vacuum chamber for surface thermal testing — a weeklong evaluation of how its instruments, systems and subsystems operate in the frigid, near-vacuum environment it will face on Mars.
After Musk's Pot Escapade, NASA Paid for SpaceX's Safety Review — But Not Boeing's | Space
NASA forked out $5 million to SpaceX to help the company do a mandatory investigation of employees after CEO Elon Musk smoked weed on comedian Joe Rogan's podcast last year, according to a media report. Meanwhile, NASA ordered Boeing, SpaceX's competitor, to complete the same safety review — and to foot the bill with no help from NASA.
SpaceX and Boeing are both vying to bring astronauts to the International Space Station on commercial spacecraft in the next year or so. Politico further reported that while NASA freely gave financial assistance to SpaceX, Boeing (which was dragged into this situation only because Musk publicly smoked some weed) did not receive any help.
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Space strategist Pete Garrettson, a recently retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told Politico that the incident brings up a few issues. "As a taxpayer, why would I pay when I don't have to?" he asked. "If I was Boeing, I also would have said, 'Why am I being punished without the same compensation?'"
Many things are taking place:
News | NASA Map Reveals a New Landslide Risk Factor
JPL's ARIA team produced this Damage Proxy Map of Palu after the 2018 earthquake. The aqueduct is marked in blue; red and yellow pixels show likely damage. The terrain slopes uphill from left to right, with major damage below the aqueduct and little above it. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA
Larger view
They were startled to notice that all the landslides originated along a distinct line. When they took a closer look, they saw that the line was an aqueduct. "So we started studying why the aqueduct is clearly defining the boundary between land sliding and no sliding," Yun said.
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The Gumbasa Aqueduct was completed in 1913 to reduce the risk of famine by providing a consistent water supply for local farmers. Only land downhill from the aqueduct is irrigated; water is not pumped uphill. Farmers just below the aqueduct practice wet rice cultivation, in which fields are flooded at one point in the growing cycle. This predominant method of rice farming in tropical Asia raises the water table over time to just below the ground surface. Farther downhill, farmers grow coconut palms, which require less irrigation and don't raise the water table as much.
RIP, Van Allen Probes-- NASA Ends 7-Year Mission to Explore Earth's Radiation Belts | Space
Mission scientists sent the final command to the second Van Allen Probe today (Oct. 18) at 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT). The twin spacecraft launched in August 2012 to study space weather , the sometimes-dramatic phenomena caused by the sun's influence on Earth's environment. (The other Van Allen Probe received its last command on July 19.)
Space weather can interfere with power grids on the ground, navigation and communications satellites in orbit, and the health of astronauts. Like terrestrial weather, it ought to be predictable ; but scientists have much less data about space weather for building and fine-tuning models, and that's where the Van Allen Probes changed the game.
"The Van Allen Probes is the first radiation-belt mission designed to exist in hazardous radiation belts for such a long period of time," Sasha Ukhorskiy, project scientist for the mission at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told Space.com. "The data that we collected over this time will be the golden standard in radiation-belt physics for many generations of scientists to benefit from."
Our #AllWomanSpacewalk is happening today! Tune in to https://t.co/mzKW5uV4hS to watch @Astro_Christina &… https://t.co/j6OtVWECRN NASA Fri Oct 18 10:04:29 +0000 2019
Congratulations to @NASA astronauts and American pioneers @Astro_Christina and @Astro_Jessica for completing a hist… https://t.co/nvci3WgN0m VP (from Washington, D.C.) Fri Oct 18 18:13:55 +0000 2019
This is stellar! The first all female space walk is happenig now! Congratulations, @Astro_Christina &… https://t.co/F8rWtNPazP Kat_McNamara (from NYC/LA/KC) Fri Oct 18 13:14:53 +0000 2019
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