July 2019

The only visual record of the historic Apollo 11 landing is from a 16mm time-lapse (6 frames per second) movie camera mounted in Buzz Aldrin's window (right side of Lunar Module Eagle or LM).

Astrophysicists know that iron (chemical symbol: Fe) is one of the most abundant elements in the universe, after lightweight elements such as hydrogen, carbon and oxygen.

Leafy greens are pictured growing inside the Columbus laboratory module's VEGGIE botany research facility.

Flying 268 miles above New Zealand, the International Space Station's docked Progress 72 resupply ship is silhouetted over a wispy aurora australis, or "southern lights," the Earth's atmospheric glow and a starry orbital nighttime sky.

Astronomers obtained the first detailed face-on view of a gaseous disk feeding the growth of a massive baby star.

The International Space Station is gearing up for a pair of spaceships launching next weekend to deliver a new crew and more science and supplies.

Each black hole's mass is more than 800 million times that of our sun. As the two gradually draw closer together in a death spiral, they will begin sending gravitational waves rippling through space-time.

NASA's award-winning website Space Place has created a new interactive map of the United States that lets you find NASA connections in your state and beyond.

Using Earth's most powerful array of radio telescopes, astronomers have made the first observations of a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust like the one that is believed to have birthed the moons of Jupiter.

Half a century ago we went to the Moon. We went from no human spaceflight capability to the ability to land people on another world in 8 years. "Eight Years To The Moon" by Nancy Atkinson chronicles the behind the scenes efforts required to accomplish this improbable task.

A virtual glimpse into our Artemis 1 mission, a key piece of hardware arrives for our Orion spacecraft, and a testing milestone for our Space Launch System rocket.


The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Mount Fuji, Japan's highest mountain standing at 3776 metres tall. In this spring image, the mountain can be seen coated in pure white snow.

The International Space Station is a unique orbiting laboratory that helps NASA and its partners explore what happens to humans living off the Earth.

The moon is photographed in its first quarter phase just above the Earth's limb as the International Space Station orbited 255 miles above the Pacific Ocean south of the Hawaiian island chain.

The supermassive black hole at the centre of jellyfish galaxy JO201 is stripping away gas and throwing it out into space, accelerating suppression of star formation and effectively 'killing' the galaxy.

Techniques developed by astronomers could help in the fight against breast and skin cancer.

The state-of-the-art heat shield, measuring roughly 16 feet in diameter, which will protect astronauts upon re-entry on the second mission of Artemis, arrived this week at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for assembly and integration with the Orion crew module.

The Expedition 60 crew configured a variety of science hardware today monitoring the brain and radiation exposure. The orbital residents also had a steady day of safety gear checks and lab maintenance on the International Space Station.

Virgin Orbit, Sir Richard Branson's small satellite launch company, announced today that it has successfully completed a key drop test of its LauncherOne vehicle, the last major step in the development program of the company's novel launch service.

Lakes Erie and St. Clair and the cities of Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio are pictured as the International Space Station orbited 257 miles over North America.

Researchers using the radio telescope ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) observed signals of oxygen, carbon, and dust from a galaxy in the early Universe 13 billion years ago.

This mesh-based model of Europe's future Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I) satellite has helped select the optimal location of the radio frequency antennas used to send it commands and downlink mission telemetry.

Robots can drive on the plains and craters of Mars, but what if we could explore cliffs, polar caps and other hard-to-reach places on the Red Planet and beyond?

Biomedical research and space agriculture dominated the Expedition 60 crew's schedule today. The investigations aboard the International Space Station are helping scientists, doctors and engineers plan human missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Damage from two strong earthquakes that rattled Southern California on July 4 and July 5 - a magnitude 6.4 and a magnitude 7.1, respectively - can be seen from space.

It took three sky surveys -- conducted at telescopes in two continents, covering one-third of the visible sky, and requiring almost 1,000 observing nights -- to prepare for a new project that will create the largest 3D map of the universe's galaxies and glean new insights about the universe's accelerating expansion.

The atmospheric glow and a wispy aurora australis, also known as the "southern lights," frame a cloud-covered Earth as the International Space Station orbited 254 miles above the Indian Ocean due east of the territory of French Southern and Antarctic Lands.

Europe's massive heat wave is on its way out -- and it's leaving a slew of broken temperature records in its wake.

On 30 June, a wildfire broke out at a military training site in Lübtheen, in northern Germany.

Astronomers using National Science Foundation (NSF) radio telescopes have demonstrated how a combination of gravitational-wave and radio observations, along with theoretical modeling, can turn the mergers of pairs of neutron stars into a "cosmic ruler" capable of measuring the expansion of the Universe and resolving an outstanding question over its rate.

Three Expedition 60 crewmembers are orbiting Earth supporting a variety of biology research and spacesuit servicing today.

The Volga River is the longest river in Europe and runs through Russia with its delta flowing into the Caspian Sea just south of the Kazakhstan border.

Twenty-five years ago, humanity first witnessed a collision between a comet and a planet.

Heatwave conditions catapulted Greenland into an early Arctic summer in June, prompting widespread melting across its icesheet surface, according to researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute.


With careful planning and dashes of creativity, engineers have been able to keep NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft flying for nearly 42 years - longer than any other spacecraft in history.

Astronomers have spotted an unusual asteroid with the shortest "year" known for any asteroid.

The Murghab river flows into the oasis city of Mary in the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows bright, colorful pockets of star formation blooming like roses in a spiral galaxy named NGC 972.

This week ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer is refreshing his rock classification, as well as acting as test subject during dry runs for a new session of Pangaea geology field training, that is preparing space farers for lunar exploration.

A milestone test for our Artemis Program, an update on our Commercial Lunar Payload Services project, and more honors for a NASA icon ... a few of the stories to tell you about - This Week at NASA.



The Expedition 60 crew explored space biology and radiation exposure aboard the International Space Station today. The orbital residents also filmed a virtual reality experience and oversaw the deployment of a set microsatellites.

ESA's Mars Express has been keeping an eye on local and regional dust storms brewing at the north pole of the Red Planet over the last month, watching as they disperse towards the equator.

This image was combined of many exposures and captures 'totality' during the 2 July 2019 total solar eclipse.

The International Space Station flies 255 miles above Indonesia as the sun's glint beams off the Celebes Sea in southeast Asia.

Unlike some of its perpetually active neighbors on the Kamchatka Peninsula, Raikoke Volcano on the Kuril Islands rarely erupts. The small, oval-shaped island most recently exploded in 1778 and 1924.

When massive stars die at the end of their short lives, they light up the cosmos with bright, explosive bursts of light and material known as supernovae.

Earth's atmospheric glow, highlighted by the Moon and a starry orbital nighttime background, are pictured as the International Space Station orbited 256 miles above the Pacific Ocean, southeast of the Hawaiian island chain.

The UN's Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.

Snow-capped mountain tops are pictured as the International Space Station orbited 257 miles above the Andes mountain range along the western coast of South America.

Like whirlpools in the ocean, spinning black holes in space create a swirling torrent around them. However, black holes do not create eddies of wind or water. Rather, they generate disks of gas and dust heated to hundreds of millions of degrees that glow in X-ray light.

The three Expedition 60 crewmembers aboard the International Space Station focused primarily on keeping the orbiting lab in tip-top shape today. At the end of the workday, the trio split up for some space gardening and Earth photography.

Two NASA space telescopes have teamed up to identify, for the first time, the detailed chemical "fingerprint" of a planet between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. No planets like this can be found in our own solar system, but they are common around other stars.


NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites passed over the Eastern Pacific Ocean after Tropical Storm Barbara strengthened into the first hurricane of the season. Barbara intensified rapidly into a major hurricane.

NASA successfully demonstrated Tuesday the Orion spacecraft's launch abort system can outrun a speeding rocket and pull astronauts to safety during an emergency during launch.

The Expedition 60 crew is configuring more CubeSats for deployment and working on space plumbing aboard the International Space Station today. Back on Earth, three crewmembers from the U.S., Italy and Russia are in training for their launch to the station on July 20.


Mount Shasta in California is pictured from the International Space Station as the orbital complex orbited 256 miles above the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the United States.

Galaxies grow by accumulating gas from their surroundings and converting it to stars, but the details of this process have remained murky.

A satellite deployer ejected a CubeSat into Earth orbit last night from outside the International Space Station's Kibo laboratory module. Today, the three Expedition 60 crewmembers explored microgravity's effect on humans and plants to support longer spaceflight missions.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a world between the sizes of Mars and Earth orbiting a bright, cool, nearby star. The planet, called L 98-59b, marks the tiniest discovered by TESS to date.


Now available is the June 26, 2019 Future In-Space Operations (FISO) telecon material. The speaker was Brent Ziarnick (USAF Air Command and Staff College), who spoke on "Developing National Power in Space: Organizational Options."