分类： 號外

SpaceX的龙飞船正在NASA位于俄亥俄州的Plum Brook站点接受关于太空推进设备的测试。这是世界上唯一一个能够在模拟的高空环境中测试全尺寸高级运载工具和火箭发动机的地方。这个实验仓将允许SpaceX和NASA验证龙飞船是否有能力经受太空的真空环境和极端的温度。

If you have ever seen a series of concentric rings of color near a mist or fog, you have likely seen a glory. This colorful optical phenomenon, bright red on the outside and blue toward the center, forms when water droplets scatter sunlight back toward a source of light.

This new composite image shows the region around the Pillars, which are about 5,700 light years from Earth. The image combines X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope optical data. The optical image, taken with filters to emphasize the interstellar gas and dust, shows dusty brown nebula immersed in a blue-green haze, and a few stars that appear as pink dots in the image. The Chandra data reveal X-rays from hot outer atmospheres from stars. In this image, low, medium, and high-energy X-rays detected by Chandra have been colored red, green, and blue.

As the International Space Station flew overhead, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold captured this photograph of a changing landscape in the heart of Madagascar, observing drainage into the sea in the Betsiboka Estuary due to decimation of rainforests and coastal mangroves.

2018年06月08日，由于遭遇火星全球范围的大规模灰尘风暴，依靠太阳能获取能源的＂机遇号＂火星车被迫停止了科学活动，随后进入了休眠状态．据NASA的预测，这次火星灰尘风暴将可能持续数周到数月的时间，＂机遇号＂火星车能否在没有足够的电力对电池进行保温的情况下度过火星上寒冷的漫漫长夜并苏醒过来，还是一个未知数．

NASA has selected six women and men to join the elite corps of flight directors who will lead mission control for a variety of new operations at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. From left to right: Marcos Flores, Allison Bolinger, Adi Boulos, Rebecca Wingfield, Pooja Jesrani, and Paul Konyha.

The Earth’s limb and the Pacific Ocean contrast segments of the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in this June 23, 2018 image. At right is a portion of the Experiment Logistics Module, Pressurized Section (ELM-PS) which is the Kibo lab’s storage facility. Next to the ELM-PS is Kibo’s 10-meter-long robotic arm, or Remote Manipulator System, which is attached to the lab module’s core component, the Pressurized Module.

NASA’s Ikhana aircraft, based at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, takes off on June 12, 2018, for the agency’s first large-scale, remotely-piloted aircraft flight in the national airspace without a safety chase aircraft. The successful flight moved the United States one step closer to normalizing unmanned aircraft operations in the airspace used by commercial and private pilots.

Posted to Twitter by @Astro_Alex, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, this image shows our planet’s Moon as seen from the International Space Station. As he said in the tweet, “By orbiting the Earth almost 16 times per day, the #ISS crew travel the distance to the Moon and back – every day. #Horizons”

This image of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on the outbound leg of a close flyby of the gas-giant planet. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager.

At 5:42 a.m. EDT Friday, June 29, 2018, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft lifts off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Dragon is carrying more than 5,900 pounds of research, equipment, cargo and supplies that will support dozens of scientific investigations aboard the International Space Station.

One of the most actively changing areas on Mars are the steep edges of the North Polar layered deposits. This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows many new ice blocks compared to an earlier image in December 2006. An animation shows one example, where a section of ice cliff collapsed. The older image (acquired in bin-2 mode) is not as sharp as the newer one.

Light from the County Fire illuminated the night skies of Northern California when the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this image overnight on July 1, 2018. With plenty of light from a nearly full Moon, the smoke was even visible streaming southwest toward San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.