(From the OSIRIS-REx mission site) Captured on April 14, 2020, this image shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s sampling arm – called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) – and asteroid Bennu during the mission’s Checkpoint Rehearsal. The chosen sample site “Nightingale” is visible in the left of the image frame, located in the relatively clear, dark patch….
Author: Jason Major
Jason is a Rhode Island-based graphic designer, photographer, nature lover, and space exploration fanatic.
Why Are Pluto’s Moons So Weird?
(Updated post from 2016) Whether you call it a planet, a dwarf planet, or a Kuiper Belt or Trans-Neptunian Object—or all of the above—there’s no denying that Pluto and its family of moons are true curiosities in the Solar System. Not only does little Pluto have one moon, Charon, that’s so massive in comparison that they…
This is the First Picture Taken on the Moon
At 18:45:30 UTC on February 3, 1966 the Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft made the first successful robotic soft landing on the Moon. Seven hours later it began to transmit images from the lunar surface down to Earth. The image above comprise the first two frames of the first of three panoramas captured by Luna 9’s cycloramic…
Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars
This is an image of Earth and the Moon captured from Mars by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor on May 8, 2003. It was the first time an image had been captured from another planet—i.e., by a spacecraft in orbit—showing both bodies as discernible planetary disks, in phases. At that time Mars…
Nine Reasons to be Grateful to Live on Earth
(Via NASA) Earth can sometimes feel like the last place you want to be. Many forward thinkers and sci-fi authors have devised inventive ways we could move civilization off this planet. Sure, the promise of a better life in the mysterious beyond can be seductive. But the fact is the more we learn about “out there,”…
Miranda Just Looks All Wrong
This is a mosaic of Uranus’ moon Miranda made from images acquired by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on January 25, 1986. Color added as an approximation to natural color (from what I could determine online.) The incredible ~20km-high Verona Rupes cliff can be seen at lower left along the moon’s limb. The rest of the…
NASA CubeSat Will Shine a Laser Light on the Moon’s Darkest Craters
(Via NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory | JPL) To support the next wave of human exploration, the Lunar Flashlight mission will look for potential ice hidden at the Moon’s South Pole. As astronauts explore the Moon during the Artemis program, they may need to make use of the resources that already exist on the lunar surface….
Hubble Marks 30 Years in Space with a Tapestry of Blazing Starbirth
(Via NASA) A colorful image resembling a cosmic version of an undersea world teeming with stars is being released to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30 years of viewing the wonders of space. In the Hubble portrait above, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a…
Newly Reprocessed Images of Europa Show ‘Chaos Terrain’ in Crisp Detail
(Via NASA) The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa features a widely varied landscape, including ridges, bands, small rounded domes and disrupted spaces that geologists call “chaos terrain.” Three newly reprocessed images, taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s, reveal details in diverse surface features on Europa. Although the data captured by Galileo is…
Scientists Use “Sunglasses” to See Bands of Clouds on a Brown Dwarf
(News via Caltech) Astronomers have detected what appear to be bands of clouds streaking across the surface of a cool star-like body known as a brown dwarf. The bands, resembling those that stripe the surface of Jupiter, were discovered using polarimetry, a technique that works in the same way that polarized sunglasses block out the…
Astronomers Find the Closest Black Hole to Earth
(Via ESO) A team of astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other institutes has discovered a black hole lying just 1000 light-years from Earth. The black hole is closer to our Solar System than any other found to date and forms part of a triple system that can be seen with the naked…
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Mission Getting in Shape for Launch
(Via NASA) Engineers working on NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission at Kennedy Space Center in Florida have begun the process of placing the Mars-bound rover and other spacecraft components into the configuration they’ll be in as they ride on top of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Stacking spacecraft components on top of each…
Lights in the Dark 