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2023

The Marshall Star Archive

The Marshall Star is published online every Wednesday by the Office of Communications at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For earlier editions, please send email to: Marshall.Star@msfc.nasa.gov.

2022 Marshall Star Year-In-Review

January 11, 2023

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test

January 2023

James Webb Space Telescope image that shows off a star cluster with bright stars.

January 18

An engine test with a stream of blue to red flames.

January 25

February 2023

Steve Miley, associate director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, lights a memorial candle Jan. 30.

February 1

February 8

University of Puerto Rico rover team

February 15

Monica Manning MSBA 2020

February 22

March 2023

Alexander Summers, right, an engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, talks with Amber George, left, and Steven Hughes.

March 1

These images show how the team rolled out the completed core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Crews moved the flight hardware for the first Artemis mission to NASA’s Pegasus barge on Jan. 8 in preparation for the core stage Green Run test series at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Pegasus, which was modified to ferry SLS rocket hardware, will transport the core stage from Michoud to Stennis for the comprehensive core stage Green Run test series. Once at Stennis, the Artemis rocket stage will be loaded into the B-2 Test Stand for the core stage Green Run test series. The comprehensive test campaign will progressively bring the entire core stage, including its avionics and engines, to life for the first time to verify the stage is fit for flight ahead of the launch of Artemis I. Assembly and integration of the core stage and its four RS-25 engines has been a collaborative, multistep process for NASA and its partners Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, the RS-25 engines lead contractor. Together with four RS-25 engines, the rocket’s massive 212-foot-tall core stage — the largest stage NASA has ever built — and its twin solid rocket boosters will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust to send NASA’s Orion spacecraft, astronauts and supplies beyond Earth’s orbit to the Moon and, ultimately, Mars. Offering more payload mass, volume capability and energy to speed missions through space, the SLS rocket, along with NASA’s Gateway in lunar orbit and Orion, is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration and the Artemis lunar program.

March 8

graphic showing satellite, asteroid and pictures of boulders on asteroid

March 15

International Space Station crew members.

March 22

Three people jump in the air on a flight to promote disability inclusion.

March 29

April 2023

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Hammock Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen were announced Monday, April 3 as the four astronauts who will venture around the Moon on Artemis II.

April 5

This image of the Crab Nebula combines data from NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) in magenta and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in dark purple.

April 12

: Students compete during NASA’s 2019 Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The 2023 culminating event returns Friday and Saturday, April 21-22, 2023, in Huntsville, Alabama.

April 19

Marshall team members participate in a free yoga class on the south lawn of Building 4221 during the center’s Earth Day celebration.

April 26

May 2023

Marshall’s commercial crew support team posed with NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission astronauts, holding up hands of five outside the Payload Operations Center in honor of the mission. The team, which operates out of the Huntsville Operations Support Center, helped provide oversight to safety standards for the Crew-5 mission’s spacecraft, along with monitoring launch conditions.

May 3

NASA astronaut Drew Feustel and SLS (Space Launch System) employees from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, interact with racegoers during the Miami Grand Prix race weekend May 6-8.

May 10

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center Director Jody Singer, left, discusses upcoming changes at the center May 16 following the Biden-Harris Administration’s decision to end the COVID-19 public health emergency.

May 17

Artist’s concept of the Blue Moon lander.

May 24

Marshall team member Kaitlin Oliver-Butler briefs members of the 2021 astronaut candidate class on the Environmental Control and Life Support System. ECLSS is a system of regenerative life support hardware.

May 31

June 2023

June 7

Cady Coleman, retired NASA astronaut, test drives a lunar rover on Marshall’s Lunar Regolith Terrain Field during an overview of how the center is developing capabilities for mapping, navigation, mobility on the surface of the Moon. (NASA/Christopher Blair)

June 14

The second annual Juneteenth festival was held June 16 in Activities Building 4316.

June 21

Attendees explore the diverse range of engineering, science, and technology projects showcased at the annual Science, Technology, and Engineering Jamboree and Poster Expo.

June 28

July 2023

LCRD communicating over laser links to the International Space Station and Earth.

July 5

An artist’s concept depicting stars, black holes, and nebulae laid over a grid representing the fabric of space-time. Ripples in this fabric are called gravitational waves. The NANOGrav collaboration detected evidence of gravitational waves created by black holes billions of times the mass of the Sun.

July 12

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Director Jody Singer waves to a crowd of nearly 6,000 at The Wicks Family Field at Joe Davis Stadium in Huntsville on July 16.

July 19

Students from Alfred Bonnabel Magnet Academy High School in Kenner, Louisiana, visit NASAs Michoud Assembly Facility.

July 26

August 2023

A fire test for a motor that has flames coming out of the end.

August 2

The Artemis II crew is shown inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in front of their Orion crew module

August 9

A group of people stand in front of a plane in a hanger.

August 16

Ring Nebula

August 23

August 30

September 2023

A Super Blue Moon rises above the Mississippi River and the Crescent City Connection Bridge in New Orleans, Aug. 30.

September 6

Retired NASA astronaut Leland Melvin smiles in his blue fight suit next to a young boy while holding a poster of The Color of Space he signed behind a table.

September 13

Technicians at Michoud work to install the RS-25 engine Sept. 11.

September 20

Chris Honea, a NASA Marshall Space Flight Center technician supporting payloads, unwraps a payload Aug. 18 for semiconductor research that recently arrived from the International Space Station. The experiment studied crystal growth in microgravity.

September 27

October 2023

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, far left, talks to Marshall team members during a Town Hall on Sept. 18 in Activities Building 4316. Joining him on the event stage, from left, are Marshall Acting Center Director Joseph Pelfrey, NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Cabana, and NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Casey Swails.

October 4

Cyclists compete during the bicycle portion of “Racin’ the Station.”

October 11

Students from Alabama A&M University near Huntsville, Alabama, pilot their vehicle through the obstacle course at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center during NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge event on April 22, 2023. Credits: NASA

October 18

A man with an open-mouthed smile wears a balloon hat made at the Fall Family Fest alongside children who are also enjoying their balloon toys during a Bingo round.

October 25

November 2023

This release features a composite image of a pulsar wind nebula, which strongly resembles a ghostly purple hand with sparkling fingertips. A pulsar is a highly magnetized collapsed star that rotates and creates jets of matter flowing away from its poles. These jets, along with intense winds of particles, form pulsar wind nebulae. Here, the pulsar wind nebula known as MSH 15-52 resembles a hazy purple cloud set against a black, starry backdrop. Both NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) have observed MSH 15-52. Their observations revealed that the shape of this pulsar wind nebula strongly resembles a human hand, including five fingers, a palm and wrist. The bright white spot near the base of the palm is the pulsar itself. The three longest fingertips of the hand-shape point toward our upper right, or 1:00 on a clock face. There, a small, mottled, orange and yellow cloud appears to sparkle or glow like embers. This orange cloud is part of the remains of the supernova explosion that created the pulsar. The backdrop of stars was captured in infrared light.

November 1

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's Veterans Day graphic for 2023.

November 8

NASA’s Juno captured this view of Jupiter

November 15

Artemis II NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch of NASA, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen view the core stage for the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Nov. 16.

November 22

From left, Artemis II astronauts Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover listen as Commander Reid Wiseman talks during an employee event at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Nov. 27.

November 29

December 2023

Marshall team members and their family members smile cheerfully as they pose in front of the tree after it was lit. “The holiday season is such a special time for so many people,” Pelfrey said. “To see all the Marshall team members out celebrating with their kids makes for a special day. It was really great to see.”

December 6

Marshall team members gather at the center’s holiday reception Dec. 7 in Activities Building 4316. From left are Cory Brown, Leigh Martin, Lisa Watkins, Shaun Baek, and Randy Silver.

December 13

From left, Alneyadi, Hoburg, Bowen, and Rubio answer questions during the Marshall team member Q&A portion of their visit.

December 20

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