Hardware Testing Heats Up at Marshall Test Laboratory
Every piece of hardware flown in space is first tested rigorously on the ground to ensure that it can perform in extreme environments. Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, operate a sophisticated set of custom-built testing facilities to simulate these conditions, and recently concluded several test series for industry partners on various engine parts that could help humans explore the Moon and beyond.
Data Sonification: Sounds from Around the Milky Way
Sonification is the process that translates data into sound, and a new project brings the center of the Milky Way to listeners for the first time. Users can listen to data from this region, roughly 400 light-years across, either as “solos” from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope, or together as an ensemble in which each telescope plays a different instrument.
Cyclones of Color at Jupiter’s North Pole
Cyclones at the north pole of Jupiter appear as swirls of striking colors in an extreme false color rendering of an image from NASA’s Juno mission. The huge, persistent cyclone found at Jupiter’s north pole is visible at the center of the image, encircled by smaller cyclones that range in size from 2,500 to 2,900 miles.
OSIRIS-REx to Asteroid Bennu: “You’ve got a little Vesta on you…”
In an interplanetary faux pas, it appears some pieces of asteroid Vesta ended up on asteroid Bennu, according to observations from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The new result sheds light on the intricate orbital dance of asteroids and on the violent origin of Bennu, which is a “rubble pile” asteroid that coalesced from the fragments of a massive collision.
Space Station Crew Readies for New Space Toilet, Continues Eye Exams
The International Space Station is gearing up for an advanced bathroom set to arrive on a U.S. resupply ship early next month. Meanwhile, the Expedition 63 crew continued this week’s eye checks and more space research and life support maintenance.
For more information or to learn about other happenings at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, visit NASA Marshall. For past issues of the ICYMI newsletter, click here.