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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch has just set a new record for the longest spaceflight by a woman! On December 28, Koch officially exceeded fellow NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson’s 2017 record of 289 days and 5 hours. Koch’s original flight was supposed to be only 6 months long, but NASA extended her stay on the International Space Station (ISS) – in part to collect more data about how human bodies function after long periods in space. “It is a wonderful thing for science,” Koch said in an interview this week from the ISS. “We see another aspect of how the human body is affected by microgravity for the long term. That is really important for our future spaceflight plans, going forward to the moon and Mars…. Having the opportunity to be up here for so long is truly an honor.”
Read more about Astronaut Christina Koch and her mission here.
📸: @NASA
With a goal of better preparing a growing commercial space workforce, the LSU National Center for Biomedical Research and Training/Academy of Counter Terrorist Education, or NCBRT/ACE, is affiliating with the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, or LaSpace.
The partnership aims to leverage the strengths of both LSU organizations as they collaborate and explore new training frontiers for Louisiana students and the workforce for the university’s role in aerospace research, education, technology and economic development in the aerospace field.
With plans to establish a permanent base on the moon’s surface in the next decade or so, NASA is one step closer to sending humans to Mars. But a mission to the red planet will likely take years to complete, begging the question: What will astronauts eat during their interplanetary voyage?
The answer: Vegetables, according to Joseph Taylor, a senior at NC State’s College of Natural Resources and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Taylor, who is double majoring in environmental science and plant biology, recently spent the summer interning at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As one of nine students selected to assist the agency’s food production team, Taylor’s main task was to identify candidate crops for missions to the moon and Mars.
Read more about Joseph Taylor’s biology work for NASA.