月度归档： 2018 年 7 月

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.