Category Archives: NASA

Artemis II

Posted on by Leave a comment

I held off on this. Didn’t want to jinx it. Now that the Artemis II crew is back, safe and sound after a near perfect mission, I can write about the thrill once again of seeing humans reach the moon for the first time in 53 years. With all the divisiveness and strife of today’s world, it is nice, even if just for a moment, to reflect that somethings can still be achieved in the name of all mankind.

I still remember asking my parents for permission to stay home and the watch the flight of the first living thing America sent into space. It was 1961. The passenger inside the Mercury capsule was Ham, a chimpanzee. I was in grade school. Ham paved the route. Alen Shappard followed. Eight years later Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Read more

Jim Lovell

Posted on by 2 comments

The world lost one of its greatest space explorers with the passing of James Arthur “Jim” Lovell Jr., who died peacefully on this week at the age of 97. Lovell embodied the spirit of American exploration and the courage to venture into the unknown that defined the golden age of space exploration.

Lovell’s extraordinary career spanned four spaceflights that helped write the early chapters of humans in space. He was among the first three men to leave Earth’s orbit and journey to the moon as command module pilot of Apollo 8 in December 1968, a mission that gave humanity its first close-up view of the lunar surface and the iconic “Earthrise” photograph that forever changed how we see our home planet.

Read more

Boeing Blows Another One

Posted on by Leave a comment

Boeing’s Starliner capsule is seen docked to the International Space Station in this zoomed-in view of an image captured by Maxar Technologies’ WorldView-3 satellite on June 7, 2024. (Image credit: Maxar Technologies via NASA)

Update Sept 7, 2024

The Starliner capsule returned to Earth safely from the International Space Station last night, without the two astronauts it took up there in June. Boeing and NASA engineers will review the vehicle’s performance on reentry as they consider the future of the program.

Two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth next year on a SpaceX “Crew Dragon” vehicle, their planned eight-day test flight turned into a two-thirds of a year ordeal. It is yet another of a long list of failures by the once venerated aerospace company in recent years.

Read more

Remembering William Anders

Posted on by Leave a comment

There is a cliche that says a picture is worth a thousand words. The picture above has generated millions of words, I’m sure. Some believe this photograph, known as “Earthrise,” is the most famous and influential photograph ever taken. It is certainly one of my favorites.

Read more

It’s Back!

Posted on by Leave a comment

Right on the money. Just as planned, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx satellite dropped its sample capsule on the Utah desert where it was quickly recovered. It should contain a sample taken from the asteroid Bennu.

The NASA recovery team took the sample container from the OSIRIS-REx satellite to a temporary clean room on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range.

The clean room was set up specifically for this purpose and was ready to receive the capsule. The sample container was secured and the area around it was deemed safe before the recovery process began. The team placed the 100-pound capsule into a metal cradle and wrapped it in multiple sheets of Teflon and then a tarp. The capsule was then wrapped in a harness and secured to one end of a 100-foot cable hanging from a helicopter. The helicopter transported the capsule to the temporary clean room on base.

In the clean room, the capsule will be disassembled and packaged in parts for transport to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, its permanent home. Scientists will analyze the rocks and soil from the sample for the next two years at a dedicated clean room inside Johnson Space Center. The sample will also be divided up and sent to laboratories around the globe, including OSIRIS-REx mission partners at the Canadian Space Agency and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.

#####