Happy New Year!
📸: Orbital sunrise via the International Space Station, 261 miles above the Pacific Ocean.
Credit: NASA/Matthew Dominick
Earthrise, 1968
On this day in 1968: the iconic Earthrise image was taken on Apollo 8 by Bill Anders, with astronauts Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell on board. Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to circumnavigate the Moon.
Said Lovell: “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.”
📸: NASA
Europa Clipper Takes Flight
📸: NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft launches on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo: Sandy Marshall
Congratulations to everyone involved with yesterday’s historic Europa Clipper launch! At 12:06 pm ET on Monday, Oct. 14, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center’s historic launch complex 39A in Florida. The spacecraft is now on a 5 1/2 year, 1.8 billion mile journey to see if Jupiter’s moon Europa may have conditions suitable to support life. Learn more at europa.nasa.gov.
Golden Sky at Goldstone
Image: Sandy Marshall
Evening sunset from a recent visit to the Deep Space Network (DSN) at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in Southern California. The DSN is NASA’s international array of giant radio antennas used to communicate with spacecraft at the Moon and beyond, and has three ground stations located approximately 120 degrees apart in Australia, Spain, and California.
Good Morning
Every day, astronauts aboard the International Space Station see an orbital sunrise every 90 minutes. (Image: NASA)