In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
Week of September 18 - September 22, 2023.
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NASA Begins Engine Installation for Artemis II Moon Rocket
Technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have installed the first of four RS-25 engines on the core stage of the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket that will help power NASA’s first crewed Artemis mission to the Moon. During Artemis II, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen will launch on SLS and journey around the Moon inside the Orion spacecraft during an approximately 10-day mission in preparation for future lunar missions. The Sept. 11 engine installation follows the joining of all five major structures that make up the SLS core stage earlier this spring. NASA, lead RS-25 engines contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3 Harris Technologies company, and Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, will continue integrating the remaining three engines into the stage and installing the propulsion and electrical systems within the structure.
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Third Subscale Booster for Future Artemis Missions Fires Up at Marshall
Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, conducted a hot fire of a 24-inch subscale solid rocket motor Sept. 14. The test, conducted in Marshall’s East Test Area, produced more than 82,000 pounds of thrust and was part of an ongoing series of developmental tests for an upgraded booster design for future configurations of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. Beginning with Artemis IX, the SLS rocket in its Block 2 configuration will use the BOLE (booster obsolescence and life extension) booster. The more powerful solid rocket motor will give the SLS rocket the capability to send even heavier payloads to the Moon and other areas of deep space for future Artemis missions. The test was the third in the series to evaluate the alternate materials for possible use in the nozzle and motor insulation and built upon prior tests at Marshall in 2022 and 2021.
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NASA Begins Final Phase of $3 Million Deep Space Food Challenge
NASA is kicking off the final phase of a challenge to help feed the astronauts of the future. The agency’s Deep Space Food Challenge seeks to create novel food production systems that offer safe, nutritious, and delicious food for long-duration human exploration missions, while being conscious of waste, resources, and labor. And closer to home, the challenge could benefit humanity by helping to address food scarcity problems on Earth. In the third and final phase of the challenge, NASA is offering a $1.5 million prize purse to winning U.S. teams. “The International Space Station is restocked every 60 to 90 days, and we are able to manage the waste generated from those payload deliveries,” said Denise Morris, program manager for Centennial Challenges which is managed out of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “In order to get to Mars and beyond, we must adapt how we feed our crews with no resupply, little added waste and resources, and an ideal level of labor. The solutions derived from the Deep Space Food Challenge will bridge this massive technology gap, allowing us to venture further and longer than we ever have before.”
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A Fab Five: New Images with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
A new collection of stunning images highlights data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. These objects have been observed in light invisible to human eyes — including X-rays, infrared, and radio — by some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. The data from different types of light has been assigned colors that the human eye can perceive, allowing us to explore these cosmic entities. The objects in this quintet of images range both in distance and category. Vela and Kepler are the remains of exploded stars within our own Milky Way galaxy, the center of which can be seen in the top panorama. In NGC 1365, we see a double-barred spiral galaxy located about 60 million light-years from Earth. Farther away and on an even larger scale, ESO 137-001 shows what happens when a galaxy hurtles through space and leaves a wake behind it.
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A Portrait of Planet and Moon: NASA’s Juno Mission Captures Jupiter and Io Together
Just hours before NASA’s Juno mission completed its 53rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 31, 2023, the spacecraft sped past the planet’s volcanic moon Io and captured this dramatic view of both bodies in the same frame. The surface of Io, the most volcanically active world in the solar system, is marked by hundreds of volcanoes that regularly erupt with molten lava and sulfurous gases. Juno has provided scientists with the closest looks at Io since 2007, and the spacecraft will gather additional images and data from its suite of scientific instruments during even closer passes in late 2023 and early 2024. To create this image, citizen scientist Alain Mirón Velázquez processed a raw image from the JunoCam instrument, enhancing the contrast, color, and sharpness. At the time the raw image was taken on July 30, 2023, Juno was about 32,170 miles (about 51,770 kilometers) from Io, and about 245,000 miles (about 395,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops.
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