A critical preflight test for Artemis I …
The first trip to space for a NASA astronaut …
And new Webb Space Telescope images of neighbors in our solar system …
a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!
On Sept. 21, teams at our
Kennedy Space Center conducted a cryogenic demonstration test
with the Space Launch System, or SLS rocket
for our upcoming uncrewed Artemis I flight test around the Moon.
The demonstration test was designed to allow teams to confirm the repair
of a hydrogen leak that cropped up during a previous launch attempt in early
September, evaluate updated procedures for loading the rocket
with propellant, and conduct additional evaluations.
Keep up with the latest Artemis I updates on NASA’s Artemis blog
at: blogs.nasa.gov/artemis.
Also on September 21st,
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio
launched to the International Space Station from Kazakhstan
with two other members of the station’s Expedition 68 crew.
Later that same day, they docked to the station’s Rassvet module
and were welcomed aboard by the Expedition 67 crew,
including NASA’s Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins.
This is Rubio’s first spaceflight.
Our Webb Space Telescope’s first image of Neptune
includes the clearest view of Neptune’s rings since the images Voyager 2
captured during its 1989 flyby of the distant planet.
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons including Triton, which orbits
Neptune in an unusual retrograde, or backward direction.
Additional studies by Webb of both Triton and Neptune
are planned in the coming year.
The Webb Space Telescope recently used its infrared
capability to capture its first images and spectra of Mars.
Images of the planet’s eastern hemisphere captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera
show surface features, such as craters and dust layers,
as well as thermal emission, or light given off by the planet as it loses heat.
Meanwhile, data from the telescope’s first near-infrared spectrum of Mars
could give astronomers additional details about the planet’s surface
and about its atmosphere.
{Sound of meteoroid impacting mars}
That strange noise
is what a space rock crashing into Mars sounds like to our InSight lander.
InSight detected seismic waves from four meteoroid impacts
on the Red Planet in 2020 and 2021.
This includes an impact on Sept. 5, 2021,
that made these craters.
Not only are these the first impacts detected by InSight’s seismometer
since the spacecraft landed in 2018, but they also mark the first time
seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.
Our DART spacecraft is on track to intentionally crash
into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26.
The views in this composite image of the Jupiter system were captured
during recent testing with the spacecraft’s imager and guidance
systems to target and track Jupiter’s moon Europa
as it emerged from behind the planet, similar to how Dimorphos
will visually separate from Didymos, the larger asteroid it orbits.
DART, the world's first planetary defense test mission,
is designed to deflect and alter the course of an asteroid
should one ever be discovered that is a threat to Earth.
Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos is a threat to Earth.
That’s what’s up this week @NASA … For more on these and other stories,
follow us on the web at nasa.gov/twan.