NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is set to embark on its 12-year tour, traveling almost four billion miles, to visit eight asteroids near Jupiter during its mission to reveal the Solar System’s origins.

The 14-meter probe is due to launch on Saturday 16 October at 0934 (UTC) atop Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The $981m mission is the first of its kind; no asteroid mission has ever ventured beyond the large asteroid belt, a region containing millions of space rocks between Mars and Jupiter.

Lucy will flyby a Main Belt object and then go on to study seven Trojans, asteroids that share the same orbit as Jupiter by its interaction with the Sun’s gravity. These are remnants of the Solar System’s early materials and may include a surprise moon.

Read the full article here.

📸: Lockheed Martin & Southwest Research Institute

NASA Langley Intern Brings Teaching Expertise to Earth Science Project

NASA interns join the agency for cutting edge, on-the-job training that will shape their future careers, but they also shape the agency with the experiences they bring to the job. One NASA intern used her skills as a teacher to amp up the agency’s Earth science outreach to kids.

“One of the best parts of this experience is being able to raise awareness to our educators and scientists that students may need additional support to learn,” said NASA intern Maria Royle. “Science does not need to be intimidating for students and there are ways to make learning about STEM topics more engaging and accessible.”

Royle, from Charleston, South Carolina, used her skills as a high school English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and science educator to help revamp My NASA Data teacher resources this summer.

Read the full article here.

The 90-year-old actor William Shatner, best known for his leading role as Captain James Tiberius Kirk of Star Trek: The Original Series, is headed to space, for real this time. Shatner will be launched off this Wednesday by on-again-off-again richest man in the world Jeff Bezos’s private aerospace company Blue Origin.

The entire premise of Star Trek was utopian: it pushed the limits of diversity, progressivism and inclusion on television and the science fiction genre. That Shatner would be affiliated with Bezos feels like a contradiction. And yet, colonialism and capitalism are too embedded within the culture of the United States for even sacred projects like space travel or Star Trek to remain unsullied.

Read the full article here.

Image credit: BLUE ORIGIN/AFP/Getty Images

ter completing graduate school at the University of Michigan in 2016, Lisa Dion cast about for a summer internship before taking up her duties as a lecturer at UVM. Then an ad for a program called Girls Who Code caught her eye.

“Women are definitely underrepresented in computer science and working toward gender parity is something close to my heart,” Dion said.

She had never heard of Girls Who Code but was intrigued enough to apply for a summer position. She was accepted and soon found herself in Atlanta receiving a week of intensive training. As a newly minted Girls Who Code instructor, she taught a seven-week course that summer to 20 girls.

Read the full article here.

NC Space Grant proudly presents the 13 teachers selected as the second class of the North Carolina Space Education Ambassadors (NCSEA) program, offered in collaboration with NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The NCSEA program is building a statewide network of master teachers who deliver NASA educational content to their local students, schools and communities.

NC Space Grant partners with NASA education specialists from NASA Langley and other NASA field centers to provide NCSEA educators with intensive professional development in current NASA Next Gen STEM education themes. The teachers will participate in professional development and earn NASA digital badges.

Read the full article, including quotes of all 13 selected educators, here.

During Hispanic Heritage Month, TODAY is sharing the community’s history, pain, joy, and pride. We are highlighting Latino and Hispanic trailblazers and rising voices. TODAY will be publishing personal essays, stories, videos, and specials throughout the month of September and October. For more, head here.

As astronaut Ellen Ochoa prepared to rocket into space as part of a nine-day journey aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1993, she was so focused on her mission that the enormity of the moment would not sink in until she was safely back on Earth.

“At the time, it was really a personal thing,” Ochoa told TODAY as part of Hispanic Heritage Month. “It was something I was very excited to participate in, and I loved working with the team and with my crew and doing work that was important to understanding changes in the atmosphere.”

Read the full article here.

Image Credit: Katty Huertas / TODAY

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Sept 15 (Reuters) – A billionaire e-commerce executive and three less-wealthy private citizens chosen to join him blasted off from Florida on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket ship and soared into orbit, the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space.

The quartet of amateur astronauts, led by the American founder and chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments Inc (FOUR.N), Jared Isaacman, lifted off just before sunset from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A SpaceX webcast of the launch showed Isaacman, 38, and his crewmates – Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42 – strapped into the pressurized cabin of their gleaming white SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, wearing their helmeted black-and-white flight suits.

Read the full article here.

Image credit: REUTERS/Steve Nesius

HASP launched this morning with student experiments from across the country. Watch the livestream across multiple video streams.

Flight Stream #1: https://www.youtube.com/c/LouisianaSpaceGrant/live
Flight Stream #2: https://www.youtube.com/user/LaACESProgram/live
CSBF Tower Cam: https://video.ibm.com/channel/nasa-educational?fbclid=IwAR2s0d0kHG1-Kfx9s6P4RUwVGdCJAi4EESi-vNf4bpMbHAZwfENoM5U84C0

Check out Louisiana Space Grant’s detailed Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/LaSPACEandEPSCoR/photos/a.595030580508878/6399567483388463/

Learn more about the HASP program: https://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp/

Throwback Thursday to one cool news article from this summer!

BOZEMAN — For five of the last six years, middle schoolers from across the state have gathered at Montana State University in the name of science and exploration.

They come to campus with curiosity in their minds and spend five days at the MSU Explore: Earth and Space Science Camp in search of answers. Most leave with more than just that, namely the idea college is possible and their futures are bright.

The camp, hosted by MSU Academic Technology and Outreach, aims to engage students from underserved communities in hands-on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and inspire them to go to college and pursue degrees in those subjects. This year’s camp was held July 11-16 on the MSU campus. Last year’s camp was canceled due to the pandemic.

Read the full article here.

Read the full article here.