In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
Week of July 3 - July 7, 2023.
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NASA Rocket Flight Software for Artemis II Meets Testing Checkpoint
The first Artemis astronauts have begun crew training for their Artemis II mission around the Moon, and teams at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are testing and configuring the flight software for the mega Moon rocket that will launch them on their journey. When NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) launches NASA’s Artemis II crew aboard the Orion spacecraft, it will produce more than 8.8 million pounds of thrust. The SLS rocket’s flight software acts as the “brains” of the rocket, activating 48 hours prior to launch to command all that power and energy for the first eight minutes of the mission through the separation of its in-space propulsion stage. Inside the SLS Software Development Facility (SDF) at Marshall, software engineers recently completed the first part of formal qualification testing for the Artemis II SLS flight software.
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NASA’s Webb Identifies the Earliest Strands of the Cosmic Web
Galaxies are not scattered randomly across the universe. They gather together not only into clusters, but into vast interconnected filamentary structures with gigantic barren voids in between. This “cosmic web” started out tenuous and became more distinct over time as gravity drew matter together. Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a thread-like arrangement of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies, much like the well-known Coma Cluster in the nearby universe.
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Crew Starts Week With Experiment Preps, Daily Exercise and System Maintenance
After a weekend off-duty, the Expedition 69 crew is kicking off their week with a variety of experiment preparations and system maintenance on the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen started his day removing HICARI-2 samples from the Gradient Heating Furnace (GHF) in the Japanese Experiment Module, Kibo. Hicari is an experiment led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to investigate high-quality crystal growth of semiconductors. While Bowen separated Hicari samples for return, NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio refreshed internal computer systems on the station. The two then took turns exercising on the station’s Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System (CEVIS) bicycle and the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED), which is a machine that simulates free weights for resistive exercise to help astronauts maintain bone and muscle strength in microgravity.
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Hubble Captures a Billowing Irregular Galaxy
The galaxy NGC 7292 billows across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, accompanied by a handful of bright stars and the indistinct smudges of extremely distant galaxies in the background. It lies around 44 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. This galaxy is irregular, meaning that it lacks the distinct spiral arms or elliptical shape of some galaxies. Unusually, its core is stretched out into a distinct bar, a feature seen in many spiral galaxies. Alongside its hazy shape, NGC 7292 is remarkably faint. As a result, astronomers classify NGC 7292 as a low surface brightness galaxy, barely distinguishable against the backdrop of the night sky. Such galaxies are typically dominated by gas and dark matter rather than stars.
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Saturn’s Rings Shine in Webb’s Observations of Ringed Planet
On June 25, 2023, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope turned to famed ringed world Saturn for its first near-infrared observations of the planet. The initial imagery from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) is already fascinating researchers. Saturn itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the Webb image.
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