Caitlin Milera

Media are invited to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch the arrival of the Orion spacecraft for Artemis I. The crew and service module stack will be offloaded from NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft after its return flight home from NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. The offloading activity will happen the morning of March 24 at the Launch and Landing Facility at Kennedy, operated by Space Florida. Arrival and offloading are dependent on favorable weather conditions and are subject to change.

Read the full article here.

At NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, four people lived and worked inside one windowless capsule for 45 days in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) to simulate a long-duration mission to Mars’ moon, Phobos. Brian Dykas of Ohio, Carrie Harris of Washington, Daniel Monlux of Utah and Osama Alian of Michigan entered the mock spacecraft on Jan. 24 and emerged on March 9 to their waiting families and friends. Researchers use HERA missions to gather data about how teams work together in close quarters for long periods. What researchers are learning is helping NASA prepare for Artemis missions to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars.

See original article on this HERA mission here.

Mars has captured our imagination for decades and decades. Sending rovers across the fourth planet from the sun hasn’t dulled that enthusiasm. It’s still as mysterious as ever, even as we learn new details from the science happening there.

This new image will only fuel that fire. NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent back a 1.8-billion pixel image of the Martian landscape. It’s the highest-resolution panorama of the Mar’s surface to date, and it’s stunning.

See the full article on the new image from Mars here.

Edgecombe Community College was the only community college in the nation to participate in a celebration of Space Grant’s 30th anniversary in Washington, DC.

Held February 25, instructors Rebecca Stamilio-Ehret and Trey Cherry attended along with four students: Emily Brake, Emilee Moore, Garrett Parker, and Harry Snell. ECC President Dr. Greg McLeod also was present.

ECC’s display highlighted the College’s success with the High Altitude Balloon Team Competition and undergraduate research program and the successes balloon team members have attained through SkillsUSA.

Read more about the Edgecombe Community College team here.

The next NASA rover headed to Mars, up to now blandly referred to as Mars 2020, is to receive its proper name on Thursday.

The selection of the winning moniker is the culmination of NASA’s “Name the Rover” essay contest, which began last summer. Volunteer judges sifted through 28,000 entries from children ranging from kindergartners to high schoolers and selected 155 semifinalists.

In January, NASA announced the final nine: Clarity, Courage, Endurance, Fortitude, Ingenuity, Perseverance, Promise, Tenacity and Vision.

Read more about the Mars 2020 Rover.

📸: New York Times – Getty Images

ASHLAND, Neb. — Over 800 K-12 Nebraska students, team leaders and math and science teachers will gather at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, Saturday, February 22, 2020 for the Nebraska Robotics Expo.

This extraordinary robotics event brings together two robotics competitions, the CEENBoT Robotics Showcase and FIRST LEGO League, and the Creative Visual Arts Expo for a day of robotics inspiration in a historical venue, according to the museum.

“The Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum continues to fulfill its mission of education in technology and engineering fields for Nebraska and Western Iowa,’ says Jeff Cannon, Executive Director of the Museum. “Having the Nebraska Robotics Expo at the Museum allows us to provide the backdrop and context of innovations in technology to inspire future generations and helps to highlight the advancements our region is making in critical technical fields.”

Read more about the Robotics competition here.

NASA lost seven of its own on the morning of Jan. 28, 1986, when a booster engine failed, causing the Shuttle Challenger to break apart just 73 seconds after launch.

In this photo from Jan. 9, 1986, the Challenger crew takes a break during countdown training at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. From left to right are Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe and astronauts Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Mission Commander Dick Scobee, astronaut Ronald McNair, pilot Mike Smith, and astronaut Ellison  Onizuka.

Read the NASA article here.

Learn more about Challenger and NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.

BOZEMAN — When Haley Ketteler reflects on how she came to study engineering at Montana State University, one moment stands out. She was 10, in her hometown of Pierre, South Dakota, at a 4-H workshop where kids could tinker with robots made of Legos.

“I was hooked, which was funny because I’d never done anything like that before,” said Ketteler, now a senior majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in mechatronics. “It was just that little spark. I knew I wanted to keep doing this.”

She found a home for her newfound robotics passion in an international nonprofit organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST, which is designed to inspire interest in science, technology engineering and math among K-12 students. When MSU hosts nearly 120 teams from across Montana and beyond for a FIRST robotics competition this Friday and Saturday, Ketteler will be there as a volunteer, supporting the activity that led her to where she is today.

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What kid doesn’t love falling asleep while listening to a captivating story? Not only is it fun, but listening to bedtime stories also help develop kids’ literacy, vocabulary, and imagination. But do parents love doing it as much as their children would like to? Well, sadly, not everyone. So, if you’re one of those who get bored reading to your kids every night, there are people who can help you out. Believe it or not, those people are real astronauts. Thanks to the Global Space Education Foundation’s special project called Story Time from Space, there are astronauts who read popular children’s books from space.

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