NASA astronaut Robert Behnken works during the Wednesday, July 1, 2020, six-hour and one-minute spacewalk to swap an aging nickel-hydrogen battery for a new lithium-ion battery on the International Space Station’s Starboard-6 truss structure. NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Behnken concluded […]
Hitching a ride on the Mars Pathfinder mission, the Sojourner rover arrived at the Red Planet on July 4, 1997. The mission was designed to demonstrate a low-cost method for delivering a set of science instruments to Mars, and served as the foundation for the Mars rovers of today. Pathfinder landed t
On June 26, 2020, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy conducted the first of two spacewalks to swap batteries and upgrade power systems on the International Space Station’s Starboard-6 truss structure. Behnken is pictured here during the six-hour and seven-minute excursion. The two a
June 30 is Asteroid Day. Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. The current known asteroid count is 958,967. This image was taken using the 200-inch Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain
On June 26, 2020, spacewalkers Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy completed the first of two scheduled spacewalks to replace batteries on one of two power channels on the far starboard truss (S6 Truss) of the International Space Station. In this image posted by @AstroBehnken on Twitter, he said: “Y
The galaxy known as NGC 5907 stretches wide across this image. Appearing as an elongated line of stars and dark dust, the galaxy is categorized as a spiral galaxy just like our own Milky Way. In this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, we don’t see the beautiful spiral arms because w
This composite image, made from six frames, shows the International Space Station, with a crew of five on board, in silhouette as it transits the Sun at roughly five miles per second, Wednesday, June 24, 2020, from Fredericksburg, Va. On board are Expedition 63 NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy, Douglas
As nuclear fusion engines, most stars live placid lives for hundreds of millions to billions of years. But near the end of their lives they can turn into crazy whirligigs, puffing off shells and jets of hot gas. In this image NGC 7027 resembles a jewel bug, an insect with a brilliantly colorful meta
NASA astronauts (from top) Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken work on U.S. spacesuits inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock. The two are slated to conduct spacewalks on Friday, June 26, and Wednesday, July 1, to begin the replacement of batteries for one of the power channels on
Astronomers have discovered evidence for thousands of black holes located near the center of our Milky Way galaxy using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This black hole bounty consists of stellar-mass black holes, which typically weigh between five to 30 times the mass of our Sun. T
