In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
Week of July 24 - July 28, 2023.
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Michoud Serves as Vital Resource for NASA’s STEM Engagement
NASA plays a crucial part in engaging the nation’s developing workforce to enter science, technology, engineering, and math occupations of today, and the STEM jobs of the future. At the forefront of the agency’s STEM Engagement with students and educators is NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Michoud serves as America’s “rocket factory,” where students can witness the manufacturing and assembly of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) core stages and Exploration Upper Stage, and the Orion crew module, learning about the skills required for completing those tasks and the occupations that perform them. The factory is not open to the public but special tours are available for schools and organizations on a case-by-case basis. Despite its limited access, Michoud welcomes students, educating them on SLS production, factory operations, and the higher educational institutions Michoud partners with to help develop a STEM workforce for the region.
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I am Artemis: Paul Kessler
As an undergraduate student, Paul Kessler spent several years working in a Level 1 trauma center, learning about systems and processes designed to keep humans alive in extreme situations. As lead designer for NASA’s lunar surface habitat, Kessler finds he sometimes pulls on his experiences as a pre-med student when designing habitats that will sustain human life beyond low Earth orbit. “There have been times when I’ve used my knowledge from the trauma center,” Kessler said. For example, he worked with the Exploration Medical Capability Element in NASA’s Human Research Program to develop an in-space medical room with medical supplies in easy reach. “There is some consideration in my mind for the human element.”
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Unexpectedly Calm and Remote Galaxy Cluster Discovered
The discovery of the most distant galaxy cluster with a specific important trait – as described in our press release – is providing insight into how these gigantic structures formed and why the universe looks like it does in the present day. This composite image shows SPT-CL J2215-3537 (SPT2215 for short) in X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) and a combination of ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (cyan and orange). Astronomers used Chandra to find this distant and unusually young galaxy cluster, along with NSF/DOE’s South Pole Telescope, the Dark Energy Survey project in Chile and NASA’s Spitzer Observatory. The results have been reported in a series of three papers. SPT2215 is located about 8.4 billion light-years from Earth. This means it is seen when the universe is only 5.3 billion years old, compared to its current age of 13.8 billion years. While there have been many clusters seen at this large distance, SPT2215 possesses a quality that makes its whereabouts particularly intriguing. SPT is what astronomers refer to as “relaxed,” meaning that it shows no signs of having been disrupted by violent collisions with other clusters of galaxies.
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Psyche Mission Enters Home Stretch Before Launch
Engineers and technicians at Cape Canaveral are preparing the Psyche spacecraft for liftoff, which is slated for Oct. 5. With less than 100 days to go before its Oct. 5 launch, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is undergoing final preparations at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form. The mission team recently completed a comprehensive test campaign of the flight software and installed it on the spacecraft, clearing the hurdle that kept Psyche from making its original 2022 launch date.
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Hubble Sees Boulders Escaping from Asteroid Dimorphos
The popular 1954 rock song "Shake, Rattle and Roll," could be the theme music for the Hubble Space Telescope's latest discovery about what is happening to the asteroid Dimorphos in the aftermath of NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) experiment. DART intentionally impacted Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, slightly changing the trajectory of its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Astronomers using Hubble's extraordinary sensitivity have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid when NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into Dimorphos at approximately 14,000 miles per hour. The 37 free-flung boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at little more than a half-mile per hour – roughly the walking speed of a giant tortoise.
For more information or to learn about other happenings at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, visit NASA Marshall. For past issues of the ICYMI newsletter, click here.
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