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Archive for the ‘Moon’ Category

Two spacecraft engineers join a grouping of vehicles providing a comparison of three generations of Mars rovers developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The setting is JPL’s Mars Yard testing area. Front and center is the flight spare for the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which landed on Mars in 1997 as part of the Mars Pathfinder Project. On the left is a Mars Exploration Rover Project test rover that is a working sibling to Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on Mars in 2004. On the right is a Mars Science Laboratory test rover the size of that project’s Mars rover, Curiosity, which is on course for landing on Mars in August 2012. Sojourner and its flight spare, named Marie Curie, are 2 feet (65 centimeters) long. The Mars Exploration Rover Project’s rover, including the “Surface System Test Bed” rover in this photo, are 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) long. The Mars Science Laboratory Project’s Curiosity rover and “Vehicle System Test Bed” rover, on the right, are 10 feet (3 meters) long. The engineers are JPL’s Matt Robinson, left, and Wesley Kuykendall. The California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, operates JPL for NASA. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton?s X-ray images shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself. Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth?s atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the lifecycle of stars Image Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden speaks and delivers greetings from President Obama at the 44th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Service on Monday, Jan. 16, 2012 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The line of Saturn’s rings disrupts the Cassini spacecraft’s view of the moons Tethys and Titan. Larger Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across) is on the left. Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across) is near the center of the image. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing sides of Tethys and Titan. The angle also shows the northern, sunlit side of the rings from less than one degree above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible red light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 7, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) from Tethys and 1.9 million miles (3.1 million kilometers) from Titan. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel on Tethys and 12 miles (19 kilometers) on Titan. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two on-board cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Dr. Anita Sengupta and Donn Liddle of NASA are pictured in the low speed wind tunnel at Texas A&M University, which is being used for testing of a scale model of the Orion spacecraft and its parachute system. Image credit: NASA/James Blair

A NASA Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket was successfully launched this morning, Jan. 11, 2012, at 8:25 from the Wallops Flight Facility. This was a test flight of the vehicle being developed to support NASA suborbital science missions. Image Credit: NASA

President Barack Obama talks with Matthew Ritsko, the winner of the 2011 Presidential Securing Americans’ Value and Efficiency (SAVE) award, in the Oval Office, Jan. 9, 2012. Ritsko, a financial manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, proposed the space agency create a “lending library” where specialized space tools and hardware purchased by one NASA organization will be made available to other NASA programs and projects. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

This unusual image was photographed through the Cupola on the International Space Station by one of the Expedition 30 crew members. The lake just above the bracket-mounted camera at center is Egirdir Golu in Turkey, located at 38.05 degrees north latitude and 30.89 degrees east longitude. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is docked to the station at lower right and part of the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) can be seen just above it. The photo was taken on Dec. 29, 2011. Image Credit: NASA

On Jan. 5, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Dr. James C. Fletcher, NASA Administrator, discussed the proposed Space Shuttle vehicle in San Clemente, Calif. The President announced that day that the United States should proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help transform the space frontier into familiar territory. Image Credit: NASA

The Mercury space capsule undergoes testing in the Full Scale Wind Tunnel at Langley Research Center in Jan., 1959. This image was taken on Jan. 22, 1959. Image Credit: NASA/Taub