Beth's Archive

The Past, Powering the Future

This item was filled under [ News, science ]

All six Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne space shuttle main engines from Endeavour’s STS-134 and Atlantis’ STS-135 missions sit in test cells inside the Engine Shop at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the first time, all 15 shuttle main engines are …

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Carina Nebula

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The Carina Nebula is a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way that is 7,500 light years from Earth and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has detected more than 14,000 stars in the region. Chandra’s X-ray vision provides strong e…

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Making a Spectacle of Star Formation in Orion

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Looking like a pair of eyeglasses only a rock star would wear, this nebula brings into focus a murky region of star formation. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope exposes the depths of this dusty nebula with its infrared vision, showing stellar infants that…

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Hubble Mosaic of the Galactic Center

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This NASA Hubble Space Telescope infrared mosaic image represents the sharpest survey of the Galactic Center to date. It reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central …

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Molecular Cloud Cepheus B Is a Hot Spot for Star Formation

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This composite image, created using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, shows the molecular cloud Cepheus B, located in our galaxy about 2,400 light years from the Earth. A molecular cloud is a region containing coo…

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View of Mission Operations Control Room During the Apollo 13 Mission

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Gene Kranz (foreground, back to camera), an Apollo 13 Flight Director, watches Apollo 13 astronaut and lunar module pilot Fred Haise onscreen in the Mission Operations Control Room, during the mission’s fourth television transmission on the evening of …

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NASA’s J-2X Engine

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This image from 2008 shows NASA’s J-2X engine. NASA conducted a 40-second test of the J-2X rocket engine Sept. 28, the most recent in a series of tests of the next-generation engine selected as part of the Space Launch System architecture that will onc…

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Electrical Circuit Between Saturn and Enceladus

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This artist’s concept shows a glowing patch of ultraviolet light near Saturn’s north pole that occurs at the “footprint” of the magnetic connection between Saturn and its moon Enceladus. The footprint and magnetic field lines are not visible to the nak…

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Earth’s Moon

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Photographed by the Expedition 28 crew aboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon, the Earth’s only natural satellite, at center with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest…

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Orion Prepares for Next Round of Acoustic Testing

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The Orion MPCV ground test vehicle is lifted into the acoustic chamber at Lockheed Martin’s facilities near Denver on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011, in preparation for the Launch Abort Vehicle Configuration Test. For this test, the MPCV, or multi-purpose …

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A Quintet of Saturn’s Moons

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A quintet of Saturn’s moons come together in the Cassini spacecraft’s field of view for this portrait. Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F …

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Sikorsky Helicopter

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In this image taken in 1944, one of Langley Research Center’s Sikorsky YR-4B/HNS-1 helicopters is seen in the 30 x 60 Full Scale Tunnel. A technician sets up camera equipment for stop-action rotor-blade photos. The Sikorsky Company built hundreds of R-…

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Earth’s Horizon Viewed by the Expedition 3 Crew Aboard the Space Station

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Using a digital still camera, the International Space Station Expedition Three crew captured a setting sun and the thin blue airglow line at Earth’s horizon. Some of the station’s components are silhouetted in the foreground. This image was taken on Se…

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Expedition 28 Lands

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The Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 28 Commander Andrey Borisenko, and Flight Engineers Ron Garan, and Alexander Samokutyaev in a remote area outside of the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Friday, Sept. 16, 2011. NASA Ast…

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Herschel Mission Finds Galactic Growth Slow and Steady

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The Herschel Infrared Space Observatory discovered that galaxies do not always need to collide with each other to drive vigorous star birth. The finding overturns a long-held assumption and paints a more stately picture of how galaxies evolve. The new …

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NASA Team Receives Service to America Medal

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, right, presents the National Security and International Affairs Medal to Michael Duncan, former deputy chief medical officer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Thursday evening, Sept. 15, 2011, at the 2011 Sam…

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Artist Concept of SLS on Launchpad

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The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth’s orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for c…

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A Bright Sun and Earth’s Horizon Seen From the Space Station

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The bright sun, a portion of the International Space Station and Earth’s horizon are featured in this image photographed during the STS-134 mission’s fourth spacewalk in May 2011. The image was taken using a fish-eye lens attached to an electronic stil…

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New Supernova Remnant Lights Up

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Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are witnessing the unprecedented transition of a supernova to a supernova remnant, where light from an exploding star in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached Earth in February 1987. Nam…

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GRAIL Heads to the Moon

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Fire and smoke light up a blue sky as a United Launch Alliance Delta II Heavy rocket propels NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission into space. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 17B on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florid…

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The Moon’s North Pole

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The Earth’s moon has been an endless source of fascination for humanity for thousands of years. When at last Apollo 11 landed on the moon’s surface in 1969, the crew found a desolate, lifeless orb, but one which still fascinates scientist and non-scien…

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