Space Exploration Technologies

Images of NASA's Morpheus lander and other space technologies being tested, including competitions for student-designed rovers and spacecraft assemblies.

Father Josset's telescope with his restorer in observatory
Father Josset's telescope with his restorer in observatory
156 assets in this story
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The BARREL team inflates their second balloon just before its launch on Aug. 13, 2015, from Kiruna, Sweden. The day before this launch, the BARREL team successfully recovered the payload from the first balloon launch on Aug. 10. Payload recovery is especially important for this second launch, which carries an instrument and recorded data from a University of Houston team of student scientists. The NASA-funded BARREL - which stands for Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses - measures electrons in the atmosphere near the poles. Such electrons rain down into the atmosphere from two giant radiation belts surrounding Earth, called the Van Allen belts. For its third campaign, BARREL is launching six balloons from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden. BARREL is led by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
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2016 ROVER CHALLENGE EVENTS AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COME TOGETHER TO TEST THEIR ENGINEERING SKILLS OVER A SIMULATED OUTER PLANET OBSTACLE COURSE.
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. Tyler Willhite, sitting, and Derek Abramson and Justin Link, prepare for an Alta-X aircraft flight. Behind them are Jennifer Fowler, from left and Grady Kock. The Alta-X flight was part of the Advanced Exploration of Reliable Operation at Low Altitudes: Meteorology, Simulation and Technology campaign. The campaign was at NASA Armstrong to study wind from the ground to 2,000 feet to provide data to assist future drones to safely land on rooftop hubs called vertiports and to potentially improve weather prediction.
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. Jennifer Fowler talks to Red Jensen prior to a flight for the Advanced Exploration of Reliable Operation at Low Altitudes: Meteorology, Simulation and Technology campaign. Tyler Willhite completes some equipment checks for the research in the background. The weather study was at NASAs Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The focus was to study wind from the ground to 2,000 feet to provide data to assist future drones to safely land on rooftop hubs called vertiports and to potentially improve weather prediction.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Media representatives check the lighting at Press Site 1 near Space Launch Complex 17B on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during preparations to photograph the launch of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission. Liftoff aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II Heavy rocket is scheduled for 8:37:06 a.m. EDT.GRAIL will fly twin spacecraft in tandem around the moon to precisely measure and map variations in the moon's gravitational field. The mission will provide the most accurate global gravity field to date for any planet, including Earth. This detailed information will reveal differences in the density of the moon's crust and mantle and will help answer fundamental questions about the moon's internal structure, thermal evolution, and history of collisions with asteroids. The aim is to map the moon's gravity field so completely that future lunar vehicles can safely navigate anywhere on the moons surface.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Tourists check out the Orion launch abort system mock-up, called pathfinder, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. The nearly 45-foot-long mock-up traveled from the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico aboard a flatbed trailer, making stops at museums and science centers in Denver, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia along the way. Before its cross-country journey, the mock-up was used to practice lifting and stacking operations for the Pad Abort-1 flight test at White Sands. Next, it will be used at Kennedy for similar operations.
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High School and College students from around the U.S. came together at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama for the 2019 Student Launch Initiative. The students launched their rockets to their own predetermined altitude with various payloads including remote rovers and unmanned aerial vehicles.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Media from around the globe gather at the Press Site in their respective tents at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to photograph and cover the prelaunch activities and lift off of space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-135 mission to the International Space Station.Atlantis began its final flight, with Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim on board, at 11:29 a.m. EDT July 8 to deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module packed with supplies and spare parts to the station. Also in Atlantis' payload bay is the Robotic Refueling Mission experiment that will investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing satellites in orbit. In addition, Atlantis will return with a failed ammonia pump module to help NASA better understand the failure mechanism and improve pump designs for future systems. STS-135 is the 33rd flight of Atlantis, the 37th shuttle mission to the space station, and the 135
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A781123 PLANET RANCH, AZ MISER'S BLUFF TOM TAKAHASHI (Project Engineer) AUG 29 78 EG&G/NTS PHOTO LAB Publication Date: 8/29/1978 EDGERTON, GERMESHAUSEN & GRIER; EG&G; MALE; MAN (ADD MALE MODIFIER); MISER'S BLUFF; MISER'S BLUFF #1; NEVADA TEST SITE; NTS; NUCLEAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGY; NUCLEAR SIMULATION TESTING; PLANET RANCH; PLANET RANCH TEST VALLEY; PLANET RANCH, AZ; STAIRCASES; STAIRS; TAKAHASHI, TOM; TESTS; TRAILERS; PLANET RANCH-MISER'S BLUFF historical images. 1972 - 2012. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Photographs Related to Nuclear Weapons Testing at the Nevada Test Site.
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jsc2018e097776 - At their Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Expedition 58 crewmembers David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency (left), Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos (center) and Anne McClain of NASA (right) plant a tree in Saint-Jacques name Nov. 27 as part of traditional pre-launch activities. They will launch Dec. 3 on the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a six-and-a-half month mission on the International Space Station...NASA/Victor Zelentsov.
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2016 ROVER CHALLENGE EVENTS AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COME TOGETHER TO TEST THEIR ENGINEERING SKILLS OVER A SIMULATED OUTER PLANET OBSTACLE COURSE.
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High School and College students from around the U.S. came together at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama for the 2019 Student Launch Initiative. The students launched their rockets to their own predetermined altitude with various payloads including remote rovers and unmanned aerial vehicles.
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Rocket University - Balloon Launch at KARS 1
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NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center showcased it's various projects for the public in Huntsville, Alabama's Big Spring Park. Exhibits were displayed by all of the various directorates of the Center with employee volunteers explaining all aspects of their projects. Adding to the festivities was the attendance of retired NASA astronaut Robert "Hoot" Gibson. Northrup Grumman employees fire a tethered miniature rocket at NASA Day in the Park.
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STUDENTS FROM COMMUNITY COLLEGES THROUGHOUT THE SOUTH CAME TOGETHER AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER FOR THE BALLOONSAT LAUNCH EVENT. EACH COMMUNITY COLLEGE TEAM ASSEMBLED ITS OWN PAYLOAD, DESIGNED TO DOWNLOAD SCIENTIFIC AND ATMOSPHERIC INFORMATION, AND THEN 2 WEATHER BALLOONS WERE SENT ALOFT TO APPROXIMATELY 100,000 FEET WITH THE PAYLOADS. THE PAYLOADS WERE RECOVERED IN N. GEORGIA AND TAKEN BACK TO THE INDIVIDUAL SCHOOLS FOR DOWNLOADING.
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2016 ROVER CHALLENGE EVENTS AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COME TOGETHER TO TEST THEIR ENGINEERING SKILLS OVER A SIMULATED OUTER PLANET OBSTACLE COURSE.
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Young tourist woman standing on building rooftop looking through telescope
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LOUISVILLE, Colo. - An Erickson Air-Crane helicopter lifts Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems Dream Chaser full-scale test vehicle to verify proper aerodynamic flight performance near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County, Colo. This captive-carry test is one of several milestones the company is meeting during its partnership with NASAs Commercial Crew Program CCP. Data from this test will provide SNC an early opportunity to evaluate and prove hardware, facilities and ground operations in preparation for approach and landing tests scheduled for later this year.In 2011, NASA selected Sierra Nevada during Commercial Crew Development Round 2 CCDev2) activities to mature the design and development of a crew transportation system with the overall goal of accelerating a United States-led capability to the International Space Station. The goal of CCP is to drive down the cost of space travel as well as open up space to more people than ever before by balancin
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Fixing the "Fish"On July 19, 2014, Wayne Slade of Sequoia Scientific, and Allen Milligan of Oregon State University, made adjustments to the "fish" that researchers used to hold seawater collected from a depth of about 3 meters (10 feet) while the ship was underway. NASA's Ship-Aircraft Bio-Optical Research (SABOR) experiment is a coordinated ship and aircraft observation campaign off the Atlantic coast of the United States, an effort to advance space-based capabilities for monitoring microscopic plants that form the base of the marine food chain. Read more: http://1.usa.gov/WWRVzj
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The arnual conference for the Educator Resource Center Network (ERCN) Coordinators was held at Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio. The conference included participants from NASA's Educator Resource Centers located throughout the country. The Microgravity Science Division at Glenn sponsored a Microgravity Day for all the conference participants. This image is from a digital still camera; higher resolution is not available.
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2016 ROVER CHALLENGE EVENTS AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COME TOGETHER TO TEST THEIR ENGINEERING SKILLS OVER A SIMULATED OUTER PLANET OBSTACLE COURSE.
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Workers in the Defense Satellite Communications Systems Processing Facility (DPF) at Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS) make adjustments while installing the ion propulsion engine on Deep Space 1. The first flight in NASA's New Millennium Program, Deep Space 1 is designed to validate 12 new technologies for scientific space missions of the next century, including the engine. Propelled by the gas xenon, the engine is being flight-tested for future deep space and Earth-orbiting missions. Deceptively powerful, the ion drive emits only an eerie blue glow as ionized atoms of xenon are pushed out of the engine. While slow to pick up speed, over the long haul it can deliver 10 times as much thrust per pound of fuel as liquid or solid fuel rockets. Other onboard experiments include software that tracks celestial bodies so the spacecraft can make its own navigation decisions without the intervention of ground controllers. Deep Space 1 will complete most of its missi
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A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers geophysicist operates equipment used to detect and classify metal objects in the subsurface as potentially a target of interest, such as a munition. The U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center Huntsville's Environmental Munitions Center of Expertise hosted a technical training seminar for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers geophysicists focused on familiarization of simultaneous location and mapping, or SLAM, technology that will increase mapping production rates in thick vegetation where previously only tape measures or line-of-site robotic total station (RTS) technologies were available.
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Using the ball for thermographic measurementsFrance
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After eight months of designing, building and testing, the middle school, high school and college and university teams launched their rockets as part of NASA Student Launch on Sunday, April 8. The rockets and their payloads are designed to fly to 1-mile in altitude before deploying recovery systems that brings them safely to the ground.
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OSIRIS-REx Sample Return. The sample return capsule from NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission is lowered into the parking lot in front of the cleanroom hangar by helicopter, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, shortly after the capsule landed at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASAs OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
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K-10 (red) robot operations tests at Marscape (Ames Mars Yard) with remote operations from Ames Future Flight Centeral (FFC) Simulator, with Terry Fong and Ken Ford.
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2016 ROVER CHALLENGE EVENTS AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COME TOGETHER TO TEST THEIR ENGINEERING SKILLS OVER A SIMULATED OUTER PLANET OBSTACLE COURSE.
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Weather balloons provide Becky Dickson the data she needs to make a "go or no-go" call on a detonation at the Utah Test and Training Range in Oasis, Utah. This image was used in the April 2000 AIRMAN Magazine article "No Boom Becky". Base: Oasis State: Utah (UT) Country: United States Of America (USA)
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SPLASH BTA Phase 2 Vertical Tests 9: Documentation of preparation, set up and results of full scale BTA (Boilerplate Test Article) vertical drop test series performed in 2012 at the LaRC Hydro Impact Basin (HIB)
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A boy launches a model rocket.
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - This Central Florida team works on its robot before a match in the 2004 Florida Regional FIRST competition in the University of Central Florida Arena. The event hosted 41 teams from Canada, Brazil, Great Britain and the United States. Among observers at the annual event were Center Director Jim Kennedy and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who both spoke at the event luncheon. FIRST is a nonprofit organization, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, that sponsors the event pitting gladiator robots against each other in an athletic-style competition. The FIRST robotics competition is designed to provide students with a hands-on, inside look at engineering and other professional careers, pairing high school students with engineer mentors and corporations.
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Using the ball for thermographic measurementsFrance
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Office of the Administrator (Lisa P. Jackson) - Venice, Lousiana (BP Oil Spill) - Natanael Mavarro, Contractor with Weston Solutions, verifies instalation of air sampeling bollle on remote station. USEPA photo by Eric Vance , Environmental Protection Agency
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - On Launch Pad 17-B, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., another Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) arrives for attachment to the Boeing Delta II launch vehicle for launch of the Deep Impact spacecraft. A NASA Discovery mission, Deep Impact will probe beneath the surface of Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, when the comet is 83 million miles from Earth, and reveal the secrets of its interior. After releasing a 3- by 3-foot projectile to crash onto the surface, Deep Impacts flyby spacecraft will collect pictures and data of how the crater forms, measuring the craters depth and diameter, as well as the composition of the interior of the crater and any material thrown out, and determining the changes in natural outgassing produced by the impact. It will send the data back to Earth through the antennas of the Deep Space Network. Deep Impact project management is handled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch Dec. 30,
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OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Training. Recovery teams participate in helicopter training in preparation for the retrieval of the sample return capsule from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASAs OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and will return to Earth on September 24th, landing under parachute at the Utah Test and Training Range.
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TEST FLIGHT OF THE LANDER PROTOTYPE MIGHTY EAGLE” OVER A SIMULATED LUNAR LANDSCAPE. SEPTEMBER 20, 2013
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At the Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Expedition 59 crewmember Christina Koch of NASA (right) waters a tree March 7 originally planted last October by crewmate Alexey Ovchinin (center). Ovchinin and crewmate Nick Hague of NASA (left) launched together last October 11, but their flight was cut short two minutes after launch by an abort triggered by a first-stage booster rocket separation problem. They are set to launch again March 14, U.S. time, this time with Koch on the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a six-and-a-half month mission on the International Space Station...NASA/Victor Zelentsov.
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2016 ROVER CHALLENGE EVENTS AT THE U.S. SPACE AND ROCKET CENTER IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA. NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS COME TOGETHER TO TEST THEIR ENGINEERING SKILLS OVER A SIMULATED OUTER PLANET OBSTACLE COURSE.
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A BARREL payload sits on the launch pad at Esrange Space Center near Kiruna, Sweden. The BARREL team is at Esrange Space Center launching a series of six scientific payloads on miniature scientific balloons. The NASA-funded BARREL - which stands for Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses - primarily measures X-rays in Earths atmosphere near the North and South Poles. These X-rays are produced by electrons raining down into the atmosphere from two giant swaths of radiation that surround Earth, called the Van Allen belts. Learning about the radiation near Earth helps us to better protect our satellites. Several of the BARREL balloons also carry instruments built by undergraduate students to measure the total electron content of Earths ionosphere, as well as the low-frequency electromagnetic waves that help to scatter electrons into Earths atmosphere. Though about 90 feet in diameter, the BARREL balloons are much smaller than standard football stadium-sized scien
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The 2019 Lunar Rover Challenge Competition was hosted by the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This annual event celebrated the 25th anniversary of what began as the Great Moonbuggy Race in 1994. High school and College teams from the United States and foreign countries competed. The awards ceremony was held at the adjacent Marriott on Saturday evening.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Invited guests enjoy a tribute to astronaut Alan Shepard during a celebration at Complex 5/6 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.The celebration was held at the launch site of the first U.S. manned spaceflight May 5, 1961, to mark the 50th anniversary of the flight. Fifty years ago, astronaut Alan Shepard lifted off inside the Mercury capsule, "Freedom 7," atop an 82-foot-tall Mercury-Redstone rocket at 9:34 a.m. EST, sending him on a remarkably successful, 15-minute suborbital flight. The event was attended by more than 200 workers from the original Mercury program and included a re-creation of Shepard's flight and recovery, as well as a tribute to his contributions as a moonwalker on the Apollo 14 lunar mission.
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A830676 UE16B HEGF JERRY CUDERMAN (Project Engineer) APR 27 83EG&G/NTS PHOTO LAB Publication Date: 4/27/1983 CUDERMAN, JERRY; EDGERTON, GERMESHAUSEN & GRIER; EG&G; HARD HATS; HEGF; HIGH ENERGY GAS FRAC; INSTRUMENTATION; INSTRUMENTS & EQUIPMENT; NEVADA; NEVADA TEST SITE; NTS; NUCLEAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGY; PIPES; TEST SITES; TUNNELS; TUNNELS BY USAGE; UGT; UNDERGROUND TESTING; WIRE & CABLES historical images. 1972 - 2012. Department of Energy. National Nuclear Security Administration. Photographs Related to Nuclear Weapons Testing at the Nevada Test Site.
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The day before the launch of mission STS-95, the Press Site was inundated with 40 trailers, 75 trucks and RVs, 8 stages and 8 risers to accommodate the 3,750 media requests to cover the launch and return to space of John H. Glenn Jr., a senator from Ohio. Glenn flew aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962, and was the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn is one of a crew of seven on board Space Shuttle Discovery for the nine-day mission
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CAMILLE WILLIAMS, CS20, AND FAMILY VIEW THE MOON THROUGH TELESCOPE PROVIDED BY VON BRAUN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY AT INTERNATIONAL OBSERVE THE MOON” NIGHT EVENT - USSRC DAVIDSON CENTER
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After eight months of designing, building and testing, the middle school, high school and college and university teams launched their rockets as part of NASA Student Launch on Sunday, April 8. The rockets and their payloads are designed to fly to 1-mile in altitude before deploying recovery systems that brings them safely to the ground.
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ORION Project-(SPLASH) Structural Passive Landing Attenuation for Survivability of Human Crew (BTA) Boiler Plate Test Article Water Impact Test-Pot Phase"0" Test Tested at the Hydro Impact Basin at the Landing and Impact Research Facility (Gantry)
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Octavia Spencer, who portrays Dorothy Vaughan in the upcoming motion picture "Hidden Figures," looks at a display near Launch Pad 14 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The pad, seen in the background, was the location of the launch of John Glenn and three other astronauts who flew orbital missions during Project Mercury. The movie is based on the book of the same title, by Margot Lee Shetterly. It chronicles the lives of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, three African-American women who worked for NASA as human "computers. Their mathematical calculations were crucial to the success of Project Mercury missions including Glenn’s orbital flight aboard Friendship 7 in 1962. The film is due in theaters in January 2017.
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Command Module of Model Saturn V
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NASA successfully launched a super pressure balloon from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, on Tuesday, May 17, on a potentially record-breaking, around-the-world test flight! The purpose of the flight is to test and validate the super pressure balloon technology with the goal of long-duration flight (100+ days) at mid-latitudes. In addition, the gondola is carrying the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) gamma-ray telescope as a mission of opportunity. Two hours and 8 minutes after lift-off, the 532,000-cubic-meter (18.8-million-cubic-foot) balloon reached its operational float altitude of 33.5 kilometers (110,000 feet) flying a trajectory taking it initially westward through southern Australia before entering into the eastward flowing winter stratospheric cyclone. NASA estimates the balloon will circumnavigate the globe about the southern hemispheres mid-latitudes once every one to three weeks, depending on wind speeds in the stratosphere.
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Space Farm 7 Program; NASA Day at the Dell'osso Family Farm, Lathrop,CA for the opening of the Kepler Corn Maze. Lots of fun activities were available and Kepler scientists gave talks and hands on demos to the audience of kids and adults alike to better understand Kepler and it's mission.
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Researchers conduct underwater acoustic research in the Launch Complex 39 turn basin. Several government agencies, including NASA, NOAA, the Navy, the Coast Guard, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission are involved in the testing. The research involves demonstrations of passive and active sensor technologies, with applications in fields ranging from marine biological research to homeland security. The work is also serving as a pilot project to assess the cooperation between the agencies involved. Equipment under development includes a passive acoustic monitor developed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and mobile robotic sensors from the Navys Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -This aerial view shows a rock and crater-filled planetary scape that has been built at the north end of the Kennedy Space Centers Shuttle Landing Facility. The site will allow engineers to test the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology, or ALHAT system on the Project Morpheus lander. Testing will demonstrate ALHATs ability to provide required navigation data negotiating the Morpheus lander away from risks during descent.Checkout of the prototype lander has been ongoing at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston in preparation for its first free flight. The SLF site will provide the lander with the kind of field necessary for realistic testing. Project Morpheus is one of 20 small projects comprising the Advanced Exploration Systems, or AES, program in NASAs Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. AES projects pioneer new approaches for rapidly developing prototype systems, demonstrating key capabilities and validating operational con
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - At KARS Park 1 on Merritt Island in Florida, a group of Tweetup participants prepare to watch the United Launch Alliance Delta II Heavy rocket launch from Space Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASAs Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to the moon. The tweeters will share their experiences with followers through the social networking site Twitter. GRAIL will fly twin spacecraft in tandem around the moon to precisely measure and map variations in the moon's gravitational field. The mission will provide the most accurate global gravity field to date for any planet, including Earth. This detailed information will reveal differences in the density of the moon's crust and mantle and will help answer fundamental questions about the moon's internal structure, thermal evolution, and history of collisions with asteroids. The aim is to map the moon's gravity field so completely that future moon vehicles can safely nav