The Sinking Liberty Bell by Kale Cunningham

Gus Grissiom, an American astronaut, was in a good mood. He had just finished a flawless 15 minute flight into space. The mission called Mercury- Redstone 4, had just placed the second American in space. The Redstone rocket, which was a weapon and could kill anyone, had been recycled from the US military launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union to launching men in 1-ton spacecraft into space. The Redstone however could not make men reach orbit, only a small up and down 15 minute flight. And Grissiom’s  had gone perfectly, much like the other flight back in May had launched Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Now on this nice, clear, warm July day Grissom could let out a joyful smile. NASA now had two flawless flights between them, it would be a very important step to convince Congress to fund more space missions. The recovery ship and helicopters were flying above his capsule in the deep water, and Grissiom was proud. 

He and his spacecraft which he named Liberty Bell 7, were now on their way to be greeted by happy NASA engineers and offinals.

“Liberty Bell 7, we have your entry into the water. We will be over you in 30 seconds.” the recovery helicopter pilot informed

Grissiom heard the noise of the helicopter blades, and knew that they were close. And just seconds later the pilot called down again 

“We are around the capsule now.” 

“Roger, give me about 5 more minutes before to mark these switches here, before I call you to come in and hook up.” Grissom responded. 

Hooking up the capsule was just how it sounded, it involved the helicopter hooking up the spacecraft and pulling it onto the recovery ship, another helicopter would lower down a horse collar for Grissom and pull him up. 

But something very bad happened, the hatch which was held in by explosive bolts and would only open when the astronaut pushed a button that would make the small bolts explode and leave an opening. Grissom who was just going to get a small carry on he had brought, a survival knife. Suddenly the hatch blew and fell into the ocean leaving an opening to the cold Atlantic. Water started rushing in and the telephone booth sized spacecraft started to sink and Grissiom did the only thing he could do to survive which was tumble into the water. Now that he was in the water another problem came up, which was he was not wearing his helmet which meant that his neck collar splashed by the waves started to fill his space suit with water and Grissom was got heavy and started to sink down into the waves like his capsule which, was also going down and taking the helicopter that had a capable on it with it. Another helicopter started to fly toward Grissom but the helicopter that was going down with the casple was two close and the blades smashed into each other showering sparks everywhere. So the helicopter that was made to rescue Grissom backed off. And to add more to the drama someone spotted a 10 foot shark swimming around, most likely confused on what the heck was happening.

The sinking helicopter pilot decided that his life along with Grissom’s and his helicopter, were worth it and cut the cable to the million dollar casple. And it sank out of sight, the helicopter that had failed to save Grissom early now could come close and saved him by throwing down the horse collar. And a tired and weak Grissom grabbed on and was put into a recovery chopper. Grissom was safe, but not so much for the capsule, where it had gone was unknown. 

Grissom would suffer no injuries and would be cleared from as some people claimed, hitting the button to open the hatch by mistake. But today NASA says that it was a computer fault. Liberty Bell 7 would be recovered in 1999, and the survival knife that Grissom had lost, was still onboard. 

Image Source: National Geographic

Top Ten Weirdest Animals by Dakota Smith and Aerin Gamble

Links:  

Dumbo Octopus - Oceana

 11 Incredible Goblin Shark Facts - Fact Animal 

10 Facts About the Creatively Camouflaged Potoo Bird - Fact Animal 

14 Incredible Yeti Crab Facts - Fact Animal 

Red-lipped Batfish | Galapatours 

Red-Lipped Batfish Facts 

15 Gigantic Japanese Spider Crab Facts - Fact Animal 

10 Extraordinary Facts About the Elusive Okapi 

13 Bizarre Aye-Aye Facts - Fact Animal 

16 Spikey Thorny Devil Facts - Fact Animal 

17 Astonishing Axolotl (Mexican Walking Fish) Facts - Fact Animal 

Picture sites:

Why some fish are really bad at swimming | National Geographic

Okapi | Dallas ZooHoo!  

Dumbo Octopus - Buy Royalty Free 3D model by NestaEric (@Nestaeric) [ae6b150] 

10 Wild Facts About the Aye-Aye, a Most Improbable Animal | HowStuffWorks  

Goblin Shark 

Common Potoo - American Bird Conservancy 

14 Incredible Yeti Crab Facts - Fact Animal 

15 Gigantic Japanese Spider Crab Facts - Fact Animal 

16 Spikey Thorny Devil Facts - Fact Animal 

10 Scary Things About The Moon by Kale Cunningham

The Moon is the 5th biggest moon in the solar system stretching out 1,079.6 miles long, it controls our tides, people have explored it and mapped out around 99.8% of its surface, but this thing has some spooky things, here are the top 10 scariest things about the moon.

10: The moon is a crazy place, it has almost no atmosphere so it can’t store up heat like Earth, and can’t block out heat. If you were in lunar daylight, it boils up to 200 degrees and if you were in the shade of a rock or something else then it would be under -250 degrees. 

9: There is no Dark side of the moon, but there is a far side. All parts of the moon are exposed to sunlight, but there is a side of the moon that we never see. On this side of the moon you can’t see Earth and you can’t communicate with radio singles behind the moon, this part of the moon as some astronauts told it, has a erely dim glow. And is covered in craters. 

8: In 2011 the film Apollo 18 was released, it told a lost classified mission of astronauts who were infected by rock spiders, so when a claimed image from a rover was released of a rock that looked like a spider, the media went wild. However this was later claimed to be a fake image. 

7: In the late 1990s astronomers discovered a strange asteroid following Earth, or was it following? Some astronomers thought Earth had a second moon! But later that year it disappeared, leaving astronomers puzzled.

6: Back in medieval times people reported one night the moon flashing. What was happening? Today astronomers think that an asteroid hit the moon, but are still not sure. 

5: Some Astronauts who went to the moon have died or gotten ill from the toxic moon dust. 

4: On the mission Apollo 15, astronaut Dave Scott spotted a strange shining object on the ground. He and his fellow astronaut Jim Irwin investigated and found a 3.4 billion year old rock. Which they brought home to Earth. 

3: The Moon Is Believed To Have An Effect On Sleep, an experiment by the University of Basel found that there maybe was a link between sleep cycles and the phases of the moon. 

2: In early February of 2022, a chunk of a rocket was found flying through space on a crash course for the moon. Many people thought that it was a rocket that SpaceX had launched, but later they claimed it was China’s. But people still didn’t know if this was true. It impacted the moon in the spring and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the impact site, which left not the expected single crater but 2 craters. NASA couldn’t tell how the impact site had gotten 2 craters instead of 1. 

1: Apollo 13 on its way to the moon exploded, leaving the astronauts to return home to Earth in a damaged spacecraft. Some people at mission control had thought that the spacecraft had impacted the moon. 

What are hydrogen cars, and are they the future of transportation? by Ishaan Pareek

Karl Benz invented cars in the year of 1885/1886, and since then, they have evolved and have improved in many aspects. Automakers have always been obsessed with making faster, more luxurious, and more efficient cars. 

Hydrogen cars work by hydrogen fuel cells creating a chemical reaction between the hydrogen and oxygen from the air to create a chemical reaction that would produce electricity, with the only emission being water. 

The electricity produced would then be stored in a battery, where electricity would be used to power the motors to make the car move. Hydrogen is extracted using many methods, one of which is a process known as electrolysis, which is when you apply a current to the water so that the water molecules separate, causing hydrogen molecules to be released from the negatively charged anode, and oxygen is released through the positively charged cathode. 

The hydrogen bubbles would then be stored and transported to a hydrogen fueling station, where it would be used by cars. Another type of way to extract hydrogen is steam reforming, which is the process of combining both high-temperature steam with natural gasses. 

This process is incredibly inefficient and produces less energy in hydrogen than just burning the natural gasses used for extraction. While the actual fuel cell doesn’t make C02, the process of extracting it through steam reforming does. This technology all sounds great and futuristic, so there remains the question: why has hydrogen not caught on? Well, that is because of two major problems.

Image Source: H2 Station Maps

 #1. There are not enough hydrogen fueling stations in the United States or anywhere else in the world, for hydrogen to be feasible. In the U.S, as of January 2021, there were 45 charging stations, most of which were in California.

 #2. Getting hydrogen through the process of electrolysis and steam reforming is incredibly inefficient because of both processes and transportation. However, that may begin to change in recent years as more scientists are interested in hydrogen transportation. While someday you may see hydrogen-powered cars hitting the road, it is not the time for hydrogen power to shine.

Source: Nat Geo Kids magazine September 2022 Special Future Issue

American And Russian Space Start Working Together by Kale Cunningham

Today (September 21st, 2022) the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, launched a crewed Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).  This is the first crewed launch since the invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this March, NASA announced that they would halt their space relationship with Russia. Russia also said that they were taking a break from working with the ISS and NASA. 

Russia is responsible for launching a third of the ISS life support systems and around half of the astronauts. So NASA, SpaceX, and Northtop Grumman had to make up this gap. In May, Russia came out saying that they would quit the ISS immediately and build a new space station. But later they delayed that and now claim they plan to leave the ISS in 2024. 

In June, NASA and Roscosmos agreed that they would start working together again. For now, Russia will keep on ferrying up astronauts from Russian soil until late 2023. Then SpaceX and Boeing will be responsible for serving cargo and astronauts back up to the ISS. 

As for Russia's space station, it is planned that it will start construction in 2026.    

Image Source: NASA

Frost All Over Mars by Kale Cunningham

NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been orbiting the planet Mars for over 20 years. And in its lifetime, it has spotted frost in the morning on Mars. 

“Our first thought was (that) ice could be buried there,” Lucas Lange, a JPL intern said. “Dry ice is plentiful near Mars’ poles, but we were looking closer to the equator of the planet, where it’s generally too warm for dry ice frost to form.”  

Scientists at NASA were almost certainly puzzled, but it wasn’t just seen from orbit. Many different Mars landers and rovers had seen the frost in the morning, but by the time the sun was up they disappeared. 

And what confused people even more was the fact that they seem to disappear into thin air and then suddenly be there again in the morning. However, most recently scientists discovered something shocking. 

The ice does disappear, when the sun comes out and turns the frost into ice clouds! Then when the sun goes down the clouds float down to the surface and turn back into frost! 

This data just solved a 45 year old mystery and may help us understand what this “frost” is made out of. 

Smashed Up Backshell Discovered On Mars by Kale Cunningham

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity was flying a smooth flight, recording the surface below. The helicopter was flying over to meet up with its partner the Perseverance rover. When it flew over a smashed up body looking like it impacted the surface, it looked like it was made from Earth. Which it was! 

Over a year ago when Perseverance and Ingenuity were landing on Mars, the backshell which protected the rover through most of the trip to the red planet. The backshell opened a parachute which slowed the rover going down from a thousand miles per hour to 100 miles per hour. That was still much too fast to land so the rover and the helicopter dropped away from the backshell and were carried on a jetpack called a “Skycrane”. The vehicles were then lowered down onto the surface, then the Skycrane took off and crashed a couple hundreds feet away. Meanwhile the backshell crashed going nearly 100 miles per hour. A couple of miles away. Almost a year and 2 months later Ingenuity spotted it on its 26th flight. 

The parachute is covered in dust and the backshell is mostly intact, however some little bits have been blown around. The backshell is believed to be the last alive part of the landing system. 

(The skycrane is nothing but ash according to satellite footage from above.)

However, NASA will not investigate more about this. The goal of the mission is to return Mars samples to Earth, not look at landing systems, so even though it was a nice find it will not be studied any further.   

Solar Eclipse on Mars by Kale Cunningham

On April 20th, the Mars rover Perseverance recorded a solar eclipse on Mars with the martian moon Phobos passing by the sun for 40 seconds.

The eclipse was not like the one you see on Earth. Earth's moon is big enough to cover up the Sun completely. Mars’s lumpy shaped potato moon can only cover up less than a third of the Sun. This event is common every few years, and it is not the first time an eclipse has been seen on Mars.

But the Perseverance’s Mastcam Z camera has captured the highest definition video of an eclipse. Many people worry that the Sun may damage the camera of the rover and the camera would be nothing but dead weight, but NASA has found its way around that. They just focus the camera on Phobos, not the Sun.

This event will happen again in the next few years.

50 Years Ago… Apollo 16 by Kale Cunningham

Apollo 16 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Florida on April 16, 1972. With a very experienced astronaut John Young who flew 3 missions before and rookies: Charles Duke and Thomas Mattingly II.

After a three day journey, Young and Duke climbed into the LM (Lunar Module) named Orion. 

Orion touched down in The Descartes highlands region. Young went out of Orion first, Duke followed (Mattingly stayed in lunar orbit.)

Orion's landing was overdue, because of a thought problem with the lander’s engine that kept Young and Duke for 16 full orbits around the moon. Until mission control sorted out the problem. After landing the crew slept for a few hours and then got ready to go outside. 

Work

After a few minutes of messing around on the moon, both astronauts started getting out the instruments made to study the moon. 

Young set up a mini telescope and started looking at stars and planets. Meanwhile Duke carried the rest of the instruments in a fold out box and by mistake dropped the package onto the ground. Duke quickly grabbed the package to see if anything was damaged. It was full of dust, but nothing was broken. After that Young and Duke set up the instruments. After everything was set up Young and Duke went back to Orion for some rest. The astronauts slept for a few hours before waking up, and going outside again. 

By then it was the second day so they decided to do some driving on the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) , a battery-powered four-wheeled car. The astronauts were searching for Basalt rocks, a common form of Lava to take back to Earth. Young and Duke found some great finds with meteorites. But no Basalts were found. Scientists were very puzzled by this, it looked from orbit that there would be plenty of Basalts. This place had not been formed by Lava, meteorites are what really formed it! The scientists were wrong. 

Return 

After nearly 71 hours on the moon, Young and Duke took off again and docked with Mattingly in orbit. Before they left the crew launched a small probe into orbit around the moon. The probe sent back data for over a month before crashing into the moon. The crew splashed down in the pacific ocean on April 27, 1972. The rocks and soil brought back from the moon were studied for nearly 20 years. 

Apollo 17 flew just 8 months later as the last mission to the moon

But that is another story for another time… 

Image Source: NASA.gov

Mars Sample Return Rocket Designer Picked by Kale Cunningham

Angie Jackman – who has spent more than 35 years leading some of the agency’s most advanced propulsion and engineering projects, has been chosen to be the Mars Ascent Vehicle project manager. Set to be the first rocket ever to launch from the surface of another planet, the Mars Ascent Vehicle will play a big role in the Mars Sample Return mission, launching into low orbit around the Red Planet to deliver samples gathered by the Perseverance rover from the crater floor of Jerzo crater. 

They’ll be transferred there to ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter. The Marshall team is partnering with Lockheed Martin Space which is building the Mars Ascent Vehicle system and designing and developing the rocket’s ground support equipment, and Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation which leads development of the ascent vehicle’s propulsion system.

NASA’s New Rocket Sees The Light by Kale Cunningham

NASA's new megarocket for its Artemis 1 moon mission is on the launch pad for the first time. On Thursday March 17, with the largest doors in the world wide open at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center here on Florida's Space Coast, the rocket that will launch the next astronauts to the moon began rolling out to the launch pad. It reached its destination more than 11 hours later. For its wet dress rehearsal for launch that will happen later this May. Artemis will be an uncrewed flight to the moon and back by the Orion spacecraft. Which will carry humans back to the moon in 2024. 

Image Source: NASA

Searching For Life On Mars The Hunt With Perseverance Continues by Kale Cunningham

The Mars rover Perseverance continues to make its way to the river delta of Jezero Crater. However the hike to the delta has not been real smooth, with a rock getting stuck in the wheel.   Even with strong layers of aluminum designed to drive across the rocky Martian terrain, the sharp rocks are very problematic. The rover is expected to get to the delta early next month. 

Perseverance’s partner, a mini drone named Ingenuity has also been trying to meet up with Perseverance at the Delta. The weather has also been hard mainly because of leftover dust from a storm that ended only weeks ago. Perseverance has been making pit stops a lot and recently drilled and collected its 8th sample. 

"Stashing my latest rock core sample (#8!) and finishing up at this location. I’m packing up and making my way to the dry river delta. Off we go," the rover's Twitter account said on Monday, March 14. (Yes robot’s do Tweet)

The rover has spent over a year trekking across this 28-mile-wide crater and NASA is hoping that the delta will show signs of life. 

NASA has already planned out where the rover will drill next after that.

Image Source: NASA

ExoMars Rover May Get Delayed Again by Kale Cunningham

The European Space Agency (ESA) is planning to once again delay their Exomars rover to Mars. The Exomars rover is part of the Exomars missions which are a joint between ESA and Russia. But with the invasion of Ukraine and threats to crash the ISS. ESA is now targeting the launch for 2024 or possibly 2026.  

This is not the first time the rover has been delayed, it was due to launch in 2018 but its landing system was very incomplete. So ESA decided to delay the launch until 2020 but when Covid 19 hit they had to postpone the launch to 2022. But the really sad thing is the rover has passed all of its tests and is ready for Mars. Russia is the only thing getting in the way of this launch. 

NASA is also starting to move away from Russia partnership after the Ukraine invasion. But NASA did say that they will “continue to allow U.S.-Russia civil space cooperation.” 

As for now there is peace in space.     

Exomars rover also known as Rosalind Franklin named after an English chemist.          

Image Source: European Space Agency

Ingenuity to Fly 20th Flight by Kale Cunningham

NASA’s little drone Ingenuity is getting ready for its 20th flight on Mars nearly 11 months after its first flight on the red planet  last April. 

Flight 19 was successfully completed on February 7, 2022, Ingenuity safely landed within the designated landing at South Séítah, where it took over flights last Summer. 

Flight 20 will continue Ingenuity’s march alongside Perseverance back to Perseverance’s landing location: Octavia E. Butler Landing Site. From there, the two robotic partners will begin traveling to the Jezero Craters river delta. Although they are both headed to the same meeting point, Ingenuity and Perseverance will take different routes to get to the river delta. The Perseverance rover will have to take the long drive, and Ingenuity will be able to take many long flights over to the Delta. 

Ingenuity is planned to travel 1,280 feet at an altitude of 32.8 feet and a maximum speed of 10.1 mph. The flight is currently planned for Feb 25.   

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/where-is-the-rover/ 

Source: https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-19th-flight-success

How Snoopy Almost Crashed On The Moon by Kale Cunningham

The Apollo 10 crew had a hard order to not land on the moon. Even though they had the right equipment to land on the moon, a lander and a command module that would help land them on the moon. They couldn’t. Why? 

The Lunar Module (LM) was overweight and behind schedule. If the LM tried to land it may not be able to slow down. And if it did land on the moon it wouldn’t be more helpful because it would be too heavy to take off again. 

NASA wanted to test out how the LM would work in Lunar orbit before they tried a landing later in the summer. In March of 1969, Apollo 9 had the first test of the LM, but that was different in many ways. It was flown in low Earth orbit so it was not the same as the moon's gravity and the Apollo 9 crew couldn’t land on Earth because the LM would burn up. So NASA wanted to send Apollo 10 as a “Dress rehearsal” for Apollo 11. 

The Astronauts that were picked for this grand “Dress rehearsal” were Tom Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan. The Astronauts were able to pick the names of their Spacecraft’s. So they named the Command Module (CM): Charlie Brown and the LM: Snoopy

The crew was launched May 18, 1969 to head to the moon. 

Nothing went wrong up until the fake landing. Astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan went into Snoopy to get 9.4 miles above the surface before returning to John Young in Charlie Brown. But once Snoopy reached the 9.4 miles and started going back up, it started to tumble. It rolled and rolled. Stafford cursed and tried to get Snoopy forward again. But all that did was make it worse. 

Back on earth, mission control watched in terror as the Snoopy rolled faster and faster. This was a problem with the probe flying so low it could crash onto a mountain or possibly hit Charlie Brown waiting for Snoopy in orbit. 

John Young, who was in Charlie Brown, Young was in a black out behind the moon he knew nothing was going on. John Young also knew that if anything bad happened and the two astronauts could not fix the problem he would return home to Earth. Which neither NASA or Young wanted to do. But Snoopy was going crazy. It brought back terrible memories of the Gemini 8 mission in which the spacecraft started spinning and almost killed the astronauts. 

Snoopy kept spinning faster and faster. But luckily the astronauts saw what the problem was: Nothing was controlling Snoopy, the Autopilot had been turned off. Quickly the crew switched it back on and Snoopy stopped spinning. The crew docked with Charlie Brown and left Snoopy into an internal orbit around the sun. Charlie Brown landed in the ocean three days later. 

Gene Cernan would land on the moon on Apollo 17 and would be the last person to set foot on the moon.  

Tom Stafford would go on the Apollo-Soyuz missions which were a new allyship with the Soviet Union in space. 

John Young would also walk on the moon on Apollo 16. 

Snoopy has been claimed to be spotted many times in the 2000’s but if it is out there then Snoopy will not be visited. It would keep orbiting the sun forever in peace. 

Image Source: CollectSpace

NASA Claims Saturn Has More Moons Than Jupiter by Kale Cunningham

For the last few years, many people who work for space agencies have been debating about which planet has the most moons. 

We know that Mercury and Venus don’t have any. Earth has one, and Mars has two. But the biggest planets, Jupiter and Saturn, have so many that they are constantly being discovered. But in many observatories around the world, many people have claimed to have seen many moons. Sometimes they are just dust particles or rings around the planet. But in 2019, while searching for Planet X (A hypothetical planet thought to be about the size of Neptune), the observatory team pointed their telescope at Saturn by accident and saw a figure that looked like a moon. Later that year, the Hubble Space Telescope saw many undefined objects orbiting the planet. After adding all these possible “moons” up, the total was 82 moons. Jupiter only has 79 moons. 

However this does not mean Saturn is the king of the moons. Only 53 of the 82 moons have been confirmed. 29 moons are still left to be confirmed as moons. And Jupiter could still have more because there are a lot of moons left to be discovered.

But who knows? Maybe Neptune has the most? Or what if Earth has a hidden moon? You never know with moons…

James Webb Telescope Takes a Selfie By Mistake by Kale Cunningham

The James Webb Telescope is in orbit around the sun. And is currently looking back farther than ever. But the James Webb team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) didn’t think they would see the Telescope take a selfie of itself. 

The telescope has a camera called NIRCam which will show us the universe almost 13.5 billion years ago, and was aiming for its target which was a star group that was visible in its range. It took 18 black and white photos of the star group but when it snapped a photo of one of the stars, the light reflected and the telescope took a selfie. 

This was the first mistake selfie taken in space. Many astronauts have taken selfies in space. The first one being Buzz Aldrin on Gemini 12. Mars rovers and Satellites also take selfies too, but are ordered to do so. 

So who knows how many mistaken selfies are going to be taken in the future?       

One Year On Mars, What Perseverance Has Reached by Kale Cunningham

On February 18, 2021. NASA’s Perseverance mars rover touched down on Mars. The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover searches  for signs of ancient microbial life, The rover has a drill to collect core samples of Martian rock and soil, then store them in sealed tubes for pickup by a future mission that would ferry them back to Earth for analysis. 

It is the fastest rover on Mars driving with a top speed of 7 centimeters per second! (Okay that's pretty slow) 

The mini drone Ingenuity took its first historic flight on April 19, 2021. The helicopter has flown almost 20 times on the red planet instead of the planned 5 flights. The Perseverance rover design is largely based on the design of the previous Curiosity rover which landed in 2012. 

After landing the rover started taking full color images of Mars. The rover has collected over 5 samples of Mars. NASA wants to collect at least 18 samples in its prime mission. 

NASA recently said that the rover has almost 70% of its prime goals achieved. 

Perseverance’s prime mission ends in 2023. But hopefully it will keep on working. NASA says that the rover runs on Plutonium, (a ratio active chemical) and that Perseverance could be working past 2030

NASA hopes to return the samples that Perseverance has collected 

By 2031 with help by the European Space Agency (ESA).         

Current Space Events by Ian Updegrove

There are a ton of events happening in space right now, from black holes to what is happening in other planets and solar systems. Even though there is a lot of stuff happening in space right now, people are making more space events happen. 

THE JOURNEY TO MARS

Even though we haven’t reached Mars yet, people today are trying to get there. Such as Elon Musk and NASA. On SpaceX.com, it has geographical information about Mars, and says that it is one of Earth’s closest habitable neighbors.

NASA ENTERS THE SOLAR ATMOSPHERE FOR THE FIRST TIME

For the very first time ever in space history, NASA has successfully touched the sun using their Parker Solar Probe. They touched the sun to better understand the critical information of the sun. The Parker Solar Probe “touching the sun” is a monumental moment for solar science according to the NASA website.

NEW DISCOVERIES

The planet TOI 1338b. It was discovered by Wolf Cukier. It’s a planet that orbits two stars and the only one that is known in the system. It’s between the size of Saturn and Neptune. The planet is 1,300 light years away. Kepler-1649c is an Earth sized habitable planet. It’s star gives it 75% of the amount Earth gets from our sun. It is 300 light years away from Earth. A year on the planet is 19.5 Earth days due to the fact that its orbit is close to the planet’s star.

RECENT INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION EVENT

The 66 crew on the International Space Station split the schedule for research between space botany and life science. Thomas Marshburn, NASA Flight Engineer started watering plants around the time I’m writing this. It’s for the Veggie PONDS study.

NASA Keeps Astronauts Safe with Orion Launch Abort System by Kale Cunningham

Danger 

Orion will be launched atop the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA’s most powerful rocket, during the Artemis missions. The Orion spacecraft includes a rocket larger than the Statue of Liberty, the abort motor, the jettison motor, will work together to quickly lift the crew capsule away from the SLS to abort the flight in the event of an emergency. 

“If something goes wrong with the rocket, milliseconds make a big difference,” said Pamela Petranovich, managing director of the abort system. 

Save the Astronauts!   

If anything bad were to happen with the spacecraft carrying astronauts into space. Then the aboard system would kick in and go from zero to 405 miles per hour in two seconds. It would overall save the crew and the $23.7 billion spacecraft from death. After it is a safe distance from the rocket, it will drop the Orion spacecraft into the Atlantic ocean. Orion will deploy its parachutes. And safely splash down safely. 

The idea came from a man named Maxime Faget (1921-2004.) who also suggested the idea of the space shuttle.  

Not the First 

The Launch Abort System (LAS) is also based on the Launch Escape Tower (LET). Which was used in the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket. Although it was never used, LET may have saved the astronauts lives. However the sensors used to detect a harmful explosion on LET could have failed. But now with better technology LAS will be able to save the crew ten times faster than LET. 

“We’re making motors that we expect will never be used, however, their ability to perform is unmatched,” said Breanne Sutton, lead engineering analyst for Northrop Grumman. 

More About Orion 

Orion is a class of partially reusable crewed spacecraft to be used in NASA's Artemis program. The spacecraft is a Crew Module space capsule designed by Lockheed Martin and the European Service Module. The probe will help land the first woman and man of color on the moon by 2025. 

Artemis l, an uncrewed Orion mission will fly to the moon and back. It is due for launch in March of 2022. 

Artemis ll, the first crewed mission of the program will launch humans to orbit the moon in 2024. Orion will also help NASA carry humans to Mars one day.