(Video 8:50) NASA Successfully Tests an Engine Controller for SLS Core Stage
Watch as a powerful RS-25 engine roars to life at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. This week, engineers conducted the third in a series of RS-25 flight controller tests for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. The more than 8.5-minute test signaled another step toward launch of the powerful SLS rocket, that with NASA’s Orion spacecraft will take astronauts on a new era of exploration beyond Earth’s orbit into deep space.
(Video 1:58) Looking at Vision Loss in Space
More than half of American astronauts experience some vision changes and anatomical alterations to their eyes during and after long-duration space flight. This video explains the current on-orbit investigations, in which scientists are studying changes in the eye’s structure and function. The results of these studies won’t just help astronauts living and working in space, but could also help others here on Earth.
First SLS Flight Hardware Moves to Space Station Processing Facility
The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, the first flight hardware for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket to arrive at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, was moved into the Space Station Processing Facility this week. During Exploration Mission-1, NASA’s first test mission of the SLS rocket and Orion, the ICPS, will give NASA’s Orion spacecraft the big in-space push needed to fly beyond the moon before returning to Earth.
Saturn Surprises as Cassini Continues its Grand Finale
As NASA’s Cassini spacecraft makes its unprecedented series of weekly dives between Saturn and its rings, scientists are finding — so far — that the planet’s magnetic field has no discernible tilt. This surprising observation, which means the true length of Saturn’s day is still unknown, is just one of several early insights from the final phase of Cassini’s mission, known as the Grand Finale.
NASA Invites You to Become a Citizen Scientist During US Total Solar Eclipse
NASA invites eclipse viewers around the country to participate in a nationwide science experiment by collecting cloud and air temperature data and reporting it via their phones. The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment Program is a NASA-supported research and education program that encourages students and citizen scientists to collect and analyze environmental observations.
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