From left to right, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matais Maurer, NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron see each other on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft aboard the SpaceX Shannon lifeboat shortly after landing in the shores of Tampa, Florida, Friday, May 6, 2022. Maurer, Marshburn, Chari, and Barron return to space in 177 days as part of Expeditions 66 and 67 aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA / Aubrey Geminiani
Crew-3 astronauts return from space station …
The spacecraft for another commercial mission of the crew is in motion …
And a discussion of NASA’s budget … some of the stories to tell you – This week at NASA!
Crew-3 astronauts are returning to Earth
On May 5, astronauts from NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission ended their time aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, disembarked from the station aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft “Endurance” to begin their return trip to Earth.
They splashed safely the next day off the coast of Florida to complete a nearly six-month mission to the station, working with hundreds of experiments and technology demonstrations.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft departs from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 4, 2022, on its way to the Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Station. Credit: NASA / Glen Benson
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has been relocated to the launch pad
On May 4, teams moved the Boeing CST-100 Starliner from the Merchant Crew and Cargo Handling Facility at our Kennedy Space Center to the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Station’s 41 space launch complex. The move was in preparation for OFT-2, the company’s second unmanned orbital flight test to the International Space Station. The launch is aimed at May 19 on top of the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. The test mission will demonstrate the Starliner system’s ability to transport people and is expected to be the last unmanned flight before Starliner launches American astronauts to the station.
Nelson testified during a Senate hearing on NASA’s budget
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson testified during a Senate hearing on May 3 about the president’s request for the agency’s 2023 fiscal year budget. He cited trade partnerships as the main reason the agency was able to achieve its goals while receiving the most value from funding provided by Congress.
It’s a new day. The government can’t do everything. You all give us “x amount” of money and we have to make that money happen the way we try to achieve. And we can use that money by working with the commercial industry and through competition to reduce these NASA costs ”(Sen. Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator
This visualization shows 22 binary X-rays in our Milky Way galaxy and its closest neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud, which the host confirmed black holes with stellar mass. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Black Hole Week: Sizing black holes
One of the coolest suggestions we’ve made available this year for Black Hole Week is a visualization that includes details of the most famous black hole systems in our Milky Way galaxy and its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The visualization presents 22 X-ray binary systems that contain confirmed black holes. They are depicted as seen from Earth, with their orbital motions accelerating faster than normal. You can check it out, along with many other black hole features at nasa.gov/black-holes.
An image of a flooded basalt deposit on Mars in the Marte Wallis region, taken by the High Resolution Science Experiment Instrument (HiRISE) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Credit: NASA / University of Arizona / HiRISE
The simulation suggests that some volcanoes are warming the climate and destroying the ozone layer
A new NASA climate simulation suggests that extremely large volcanic eruptions, called “basalt eruptions from floods”, could significantly warm our climate and deplete the ozone layer, which helps protect Earth’s life from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. This contradicts previous studies showing that these volcanoes cool the climate. The study also suggests that extensive basalt eruptions may have helped not only to warm the climate of Mars and Venus, but could also doom the long-term habitat of these planets by contributing to water loss.
Here’s what’s happening this week NASA …
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