So as of yesterday I am retired, had a 37+ year career working in #NASA human spaceflight, Space Shuttle and then the #Orion spacecraft. I set my retirement date in the hope that the #Artemis 2 mission, Orion’s first crewed flight, would have completed by then but Feb launch was delayed and by “cosmic coincidence” Artemis 2 finally launched yesterday - my final day. Very proud of all my colleagues and all the hard work we’ve done to get to this point. Onward to the #moon - and beyond. Ad astra.
nasa
Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman took this picture of Earth from the Orion spacecraft after completing the translunar injection burn. There are two auroras (top right & bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) is visible as the Earth eclipses the Sun.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/
#Earth #Artemis #Artemis2 #Orion #Integrity #OrionIntegrity #spacecraft #NASA #Moon #space #aurora
New point of view, looking toward the Moon
Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3kR2KK8TEs
#Artemis #Artemis2 #Orion #Integrity #OrionIntegrity #spacecraft #NASA #Moon #space #news
Home, Seen from Orion.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon.
#ReidWiseman #Earth #Artemis #astronaut #Artemis2 #Orion #Integrity #OrionIntegrity #spacecraft #NASA #space #photography
It's no secret that I've been struggling, and my therapist said I need to find things to keep me busy, so I created the @cdnspace Artemis II dashboard.
I reverse-engineered the Unity Engine powering the NASA AROW visualization and found an absolute treasure trove of data to display.
Little did I expect that it's now being seen by anywhere from 200 to 600 people at any given time with 130,000 people having looked at it in the last 24 hours. People are even building projects around my API.
Yesterday, I received a message on LinkedIn from someone working in Mission Control in Houston... and they're using my dashboard! He even sent me a photo, but I can't share it until after the crew has splashed down.
Mind blown, and an absolute pick-me-up. The best part? It's being served from my basement.
Bonus #TrekJokes
Q: How many #Klingons does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Klingons do not fear the dark.
Q: How many #Ferengi does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It depends how much Latinum you are willing to pay.
Q: How many #Starfleet officers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It depends if it would violate the Prime Directive.
Q: How many #Cardassians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. They just try to convince you that there are five lights.
(It's #HootinTootinTuesday again! Post some jokes or funny memes under this hashtag today, and bring lots of smiles to #Mastodon.)
#Humor #Humour #FunnyMeme #Space #Jokestodon #Artemis #MoonMission #SpaceMission #NASA #Astronauts #ArtemisII #Artemis2 #StarTrekTNG #StarTrek #StarTrekTheNextGeneration #DadJokes #LightBulbJokes
The astros obviously saw a giant cat back-side of the moon (waiting for mice to go for the cheese, doubtless) and NASA is not telling us.
Lovely Peeps! Your cool #history for the day! 🚀
(You might want to watch with sound off. The music has words & I found it difficult to hear the music, read the text, AND focus on the signing.)
If you want to just enjoy the signing, the full text is within this post. 😊
"Everyone’s talking about Artemis II. The first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years. Historic mission.
But nobody’s talking about the #Deaf men who made it possible.
In the late 1950s, #NASA had a problem. They needed to understand what weightlessness does to the human body. But every test subject kept getting violently motion sick.
So they came to #Gallaudet.
Eleven Deaf men. Most of them had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children, which also damaged their vestibular system. Their inner ears couldn’t be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.
NASA put them in centrifuges. Zero-gravity flights. A rotating room for twelve straight days. One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters. The researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.
Their bodies gave NASA the data it needed to send humans into space.
No #Gallaudet_Eleven — no Mercury. No Mercury — no Apollo. No Apollo — no Artemis II.
Sixty years later, four astronauts just flew 252,000 miles from Earth & came home safely.
They stood on the shoulders of eleven Deaf men most people have never heard of.
Now you know!"
Edited 213d ago
IF WE CAN SURVIVE ON MARS,
WE CAN THRIVE ON EARTH 💎
I've just watched a fascinating video about something that doesn't get nearly as much attention as getting humans to Mars.
GETTING SAFELY HOME AGAIN.
Mars isn't the Moon. A return journey means launching a substantial spacecraft from the Martian surface, which means an enormous amount of fuel. Carrying all that fuel from Earth adds enormous mass. Making fuel on Mars means sending machinery capable of producing rocket fuel, along with a large, extraordinarily reliable power supply, and having the whole system operate autonomously before the astronauts even arrive.
Then there is what a multi-year Mars mission might do to the human body. Months in weightlessness. Long exposure to radiation. More than a year potentially living in 38% of Earth's gravity. Then another long journey home to Earth.
And you can't simply leave Mars whenever you've had enough. The useful alignment between Earth and Mars comes around only about every 26 months.
This is difficult stuff.
But towards the end, the video makes the familiar argument for doing it anyway.
HUMANITY NEEDS A BACKUP PLANET.
An asteroid crashing into Earth. A nuclear war. A supervolcano darkening the skies. Another pandemic. Some unforeseen catastrophe that makes Earth uninhabitable.
SO WE ESTABLISH A SELF-SUSTAINING CIVILISATION ON MARS.
And that's where something occurred to me.
HAVE WE GOT THIS BACKWARDS?
Mars is already catastrophically hostile to human life.
It is freezing. Its atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide and less than 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure. There is dangerous radiation at the surface. No breathable air. No forests or plants of any kind. No oceans, lakes or rivers. No farms.
And no functioning biosphere is waiting for us.
To establish a genuinely independent civilisation there, we would have to become extraordinarily good at creating and maintaining habitable, fully enclosed environments.
We'd need to recycle our water and air and grow all of our food. We'd need to generate enormous amounts of reliable energy, protect ourselves from radiation, manufacture what we need and keep a closed human ecosystem functioning for generations.
So here's the question I can't get past.
IF WE BECOME GOOD ENOUGH AT KEEPING HUMAN BEINGS ALIVE ON MARS, HOW BADLY WOULD WE HAVE TO DAMAGE EARTH BEFORE MARS BECAME THE EASIER PLACE TO LIVE?
Even a badly damaged Earth still starts with something Mars doesn't have.
A BIOSPHERE.
Perhaps Mars really will become humanity's second home one day. I hope we go. Exploration is one of the things human beings do magnificently.
But I'm not convinced Mars is our lifeboat.
Perhaps the technologies required to survive there will teach us something considerably more urgent.
How to look after the astonishing planet we're already standing on.
https://youtu.be/ahrj83jWl-I?si=xCpgTx42MVXZFs_l
@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek
#Mars #SpaceExploration #Science #Climate #Environment #SpaceX #NASA
Edited 81d ago
"Scientific evidence continues to show that human activities -- primarily the human burning of fossil fuels -- have warmed Earth's surface and its ocean basins, which in turn have continued to impact Earth’s climate." (NASA)
#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #StopFossils #CleanEnergy #ProtectNature #BeTheChange #ResetSociety #FireSeason #SaveThePlanet #NASA
X-Plane!!!! Lockheed Martin X-59 Quesst at FL378 and 704 knots doing high altitude supersonic testing, September 15, 2026 #X59 #NASA #supersonic #Edwards #EdwardsAFB #milair #nikon #aviationphotography #photography #AvGeek #cvvhrn
Albania signs the Artemis Accords https://www.byteseu.com/2387154/ #Albania #ArtemisAccords #NASA #SN
https://www.europesays.com/3267448/ NASA Planned for 10 Years. The Roman Space Telescope May Keep Going for 22 #astronomy #nasa #NASAGoddardSpaceFlightCenter #RomanSpaceTelescope #space
Space Shuttle landing 1992 in Edward's Airforce Base.
Minolta Xe1
#photo #photos #photography #aviation #Nasa
Cargo ship reportedly on fire after being hit in Strait of Hormuz
Another cargo ship has come under fire in the Strait of Hormuz, according to the British maritime security…
#EuropeSays #Headlines #News #Europe #Europa #EU #StraitofHormuz #cargoship #Hormuz #NASA #NationalAeronauticsandSpaceAdministration #satellitepicture
https://www.europesays.com/iran/303667/
https://www.europesays.com/3268692/ SpaceX Crew-13 mission scheduled for Oct. 1 launch #CentralFlorida #Channel9 #Crew13Mission #DragonSpacecraft #Falcon9Rocket #FalconNineRocket #Florida #InternationalSpaceStation #nasa #Orlando #space #SpaceX #wftv #WftvChannel9
https://www.europesays.com/3271924/ Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta patients meet NASA astronaut to hear space stories #atlanta #health #nasa #space
RE: https://tech.lgbt/@Natasha_Jay/117382397216266564
that’s why #NASA hired teams of #embroidery #knitting #beading #fiberArts experts who all so happened to be not just women but mostly Native American, African American and Latinas. they were nicknamed the Little Old Ladies and without them there would be no Apollo program.
they won't even teach you in school that the LOLs were preceded by women who ―if they wanted a chance to enter college, a privilege only for men― they did so by being computers (mathematicians) for “real” scientists.
🧵…
US National Archives (NARA) are beginning to move records from facilities slated for closure.
And they buried the notice from September 30 *below* the notice from September 29 which shows at the top of their "Researcher Updates" page.
So scroll down past "NARA Tribal Listening Session Invitation" to find
* Move of Records of the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB), Record Group (RG) 184
* Move of Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Record Group (RG) 255
#NARA #USnationalArchives #Access #Chicago #RRB
#RailroadRetirementBoard
#NASA #SanFrancisco
#Research #Genealogy
Vale Margaret Hamilton.
She was a Software Engineer.
She was the _first_ Software Engineer because she defined the term, Software Engineering:
"When I first came up with the term, no one had heard of it before, at least in our world. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. It was a memorable day when one of the most respected hardware gurus explained to everyone in a meeting that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. Not because of his acceptance of the new 'term' per se, but because we had earned his and the acceptance of the others in the room as being in an engineering field in its own right."
Margaret Hamilton led the Software Engineering team at MIT that created the software that ran NASA's Apollo Guidance Computer. The photo of her standing next to a stack of source code printouts — that's her work, and she was essential to NASA's mission of landing people on the Moon for the first time ever and getting them back to Earth again safely.
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
#MargaretHamilton #SoftwareEngineer #SoftwareEngineering #ComputerScience #NASA #MIT #Apollo #MoonLanding
The full sky in the ultraviolet
https://menard.pha.jhu.edu/uvmap/
"This is the whole sky in ultraviolet light — the first detailed version with no holes in it. Most of it was photographed by NASA’s GALEX space telescope between 2003 and 2013; the parts no ultraviolet telescope ever saw were filled in by a statistical model, and every such pixel is labelled. The top of this page is for anyone curious about the sky; the bottom is for astronomers who want the numbers, the files and the paper. …"
Using Claude Science to produce the first complete map of the sky in UV light \ Anthropic
https://www.anthropic.com/research/the-missing-map-of-the-sky
#AI #Anthropic #astronomy #Claude #GALEX #MilkyWay #NASA #science
Edited 33d ago