MEDIA ADVISORY
In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
Week of December 11 - 15, 2017
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New Space Policy Directive Calls for Human Expansion Across Solar System
President Donald Trump signed a change in national space policy that provides for a U.S.-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the Moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond, at the White House Space Policy Directive 1. The effort will more effectively organize government, private industry, and international efforts toward returning humans on the Moon, and will lay the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of Mars. In addition to the direction to plan for human return to the Moon, the policy also ends NASA’s existing effort to send humans to an asteroid.
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NASA Expert Takes Meteor Questions from Social Media During Geminids
The annual Geminids meteor shower peaked this week, and Huntsville had clear skies for viewing. Marshall's Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, took part in a Facebook Live Q+A, answering viewer questions about the phenomenon. The Geminids are active every December, when Earth passes through a massive trail of dusty debris shed by a weird, rocky object named 3200 Phaethon. The dust and grit burn up when they run into Earth's atmosphere in a flurry of "shooting stars."
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NASA Conducts Final RS-25 Rocket Engine Test of 2017
NASA engineers at Stennis Space Center completed a final RS-25 rocket engine hot fire on Dec. 13 near Bay St. Louis, Miss. The 400-second test on the A-1 Test Stand was a “green run” test of an RS-25 flight controller. It marked the eighth RS-25 test of the year and the sixth flight controller to be tested for use on NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle. The engine tested also included a large 3D-printed part scheduled for use on future RS-25 flight engines.
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NASA, International Partners Ready New Research Facility for Space Station
Marshall teams are working on integration and testing elements of the new Life Sciences Glovebox, an experiment facility that will be flown to the International Space Station in 2018. The primary focus of the glovebox, cousin to the Microgravity Science Glovebox, will be to aid research on the long-term impact of microgravity on human physiology -- potentially leading to innovative techniques for protecting human explorers during bold new missions into deep space, and also improving life on Earth.
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Chandra Reveals the Elementary Nature of Cassiopeia A
A new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the location of different elements in the remains of the supernova Cassiopeia A (Cas A), one of the most studied exploded stars. The Chandra data indicate that the supernova that produced Cas A has churned out prodigious amounts of key cosmic ingredients, which can be seen in the image represented in various colors: silicon (red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple).
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