Artemis II crew members (from left) CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman pose for a group photograph after their meetings with U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House on Dec. 14, 2023.
The crew will travel aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft on a 10-day mission around the Moon, testing spacecraft systems for the first time with astronauts for long-term exploration and scientific discovery.
History's second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke's orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury. Returning to its perihelion every 3.3 years, Encke has the shortest period of the Solar System's major comets. Comet Encke is also associated with (at least) two annual meteor showers on planet Earth, the North and South Taurids. Both showers are active in late October and early November. Their two separate radiants lie near bright star Aldebaran in the head-strong constellation Taurus. A faint comet, Encke was captured in this telescopic field of view imaged on the morning of August 24. Then, Encke's pretty greenish coma was close on the sky to the young, embedded star cluster and light-years long, tadpole-shaped star-forming clouds in emission nebula IC 410. Now near bright star Spica in Virgo Comet Encke p...
In the early hours of April 24 this bright Lyrid meteor flashed along the central Milky Way. For a moment, it cast a bright reflection across Lake Nian, Yunnan province, China. The annual Lyrid meteor shower, one of the oldest known, is active in late April, as our fair planet plows through dust left along the orbit of long-period comet Thatcher. The trail of the bright fireball points back toward the shower's radiant in the constellation Lyra high in the northern springtime sky and off the top of the frame. Just rising in that starry sky, light from a third quarter moon also cast a glow on the peaceful waters of the lake. via NASA https://ift.tt/i25BPoU
https://ift.tt/OqILNbm jsc2022e068730_alt (Sept. 8, 2023) — Portrait of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli in a spacesuit. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz NASA from NASA https://ift.tt/TYdQgCc