In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
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NASA Opens Second Phase of $5 Million Lunar Power Prize Competition
Under Artemis, NASA plans to return to the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. This will require lunar surface systems that can deliver continuous, reliable power to support mining and construction, research activities, and human habitation. The newest phase of NASA’s Watts on the Moon Challenge offers up to $4.5 million in prizes to design, build, and demonstrate a prototype that addresses technology gaps in power transmission and energy storage.
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Crew Kicks Off Skin Aging, Cancer Research and Unloads New Cargo Craft
New human research is underway aboard the International Space Station using the microgravity environment to gain unique insights into aging skin cells and cancer tumors. The Expedition 66 crew also continues to unpack cargo from a U.S. cargo craft while keeping up with eye checks to ensure the crew stays healthy in space. Weightlessness provides scientists a unique opportunity to observe phenomena not possible in Earth’s gravity.
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Rocks and Rockets: From Alabama Rivers to Kennedy’s Florida Crawlerway
From riverbed to crawlerway, the path to space goes through a unique Alabama resource. Alabama river rocks currently pave the path for rockets on the crawlerway at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This 4.2 mile road of rocks is crucial for launching NASA’s missions, specifically the upcoming launch of Artemis I, the uncrewed test flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion Spacecraft. A massive pair of machines called crawler-transporters have carried integrated rockets and spacecraft to Pads 39A and 39B for more than 50 years at Kennedy.
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Program Manager Applies Leadership, Vision to Build SLS Moon Rocket
Large endeavors are not accomplished alone. John Honeycutt, program manager of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, often compares building his own house to leading his team that has built the world’s most powerful rocket, which will return astronauts to the Moon on the Artemis missions.
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Webb Team Brings 18 Dots of Starlight Into Hexagonal Formation
The Webb team continues to make progress in aligning the observatory’s mirrors. Engineers have completed the first stage in this process, called “Segment Image Identification.” The resulting image shows that the team has moved each of Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments to bring 18 unfocused copies of a single star into a planned hexagonal formation.
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