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In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

The headshot image of Beth Ridgeway

Beth Ridgeway

Dec 30, 2022
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A Weekly Summary of Top Content from Marshall, December 26 – December 30, 2022

Week of December 26 – December 30, 2022

Three photos showing the launch of the Artemis mission on the Space Launch System, the last image of the DART program before it crashed into an asteroid, and the Pilars of Creation form the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA’s Big 2022: Historic Moon Mission, Webb Telescope Images, More

2022 is one for the history books as NASA caps off another astronomical year. The agency launched its mega Moon rocket for the first time, sending its uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon; kicked off a new era in astronomy with the Webb Space Telescope’s record-breaking new imagery from the cosmos; moved an asteroid in humanity’s first ever planetary defense demonstration, and much more.

An image from IXPE that shows a large red circle on a background with a white dot in the middle.

IXPE Quickly Observes Aftermath of Exceptional Cosmic Blast

On Oct. 9, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a high-energy blast of light from deep space. The light came from a powerful explosion called a gamma-ray burst dubbed GRB 221009A that ranks among the most luminous known. The IXPE science team had not planned to observe this gamma-ray burst, but this one created a unique opportunity, and a quick turnaround was essential.

An illustration of a new asteroid hunter with a green space background covered in stars.

Construction Begins on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter

A space telescope designed to search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that stray into Earth’s orbital neighborhood, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) recently passed a rigorous technical and programmatic review. Now the mission is transitioning into the final design and fabrication phase and establishing its technical, cost, and schedule baseline.

The final image of the Mars Insight. It is a image of the rover with Mars dust covering it.

NASA Retires InSight Mars Lander Mission After Years of Science

NASA’s InSight mission has ended after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars. Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to conclude the spacecraft’s solar-powered batteries have run out of energy.

Two photos of a intern from Puerto Rico working at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The young man stands in front of the ISS Operations Center in one photo.

Marshall Intern Overcomes Hurricane, Completes NASA Internship

Wilbert Ruperto-Hernández, a senior studying mechanical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, is known affectionately by his friends and family as “Mr. NASA.” The nickname is warranted as he completes his internship with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

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.