SpaceX hosts training for astronauts in preparation for dragon spacecraft station berthing
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) recently conducted its first Dragon spacecraft operations training for a group of NASA astronauts and personnel at its corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, CA. The October training focused on how the crew will interface with the Dragon spacecraft while it is approaching and berthed to the International Space Station (ISS).
Photo: NASA Astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Douglas Wheelock, Megan McArthur and Shannon Walker with SpaceX’s CEO and CTO, Elon Musk. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX plans its first Dragon Flight to ISS during Expedition 24 (May to November 2010) via www.spacenews.com
Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009
3
On February 24, 2009, the Hubble Space Telescope took a photo of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. In this view, the giant orange moon Titan casts a large shadow onto Saturn’s north polar hood. Below Titan, near the ring plane and to the left is the moon Mimas, casting a much smaller shadow onto Saturn’s equatorial cloud tops. Farther to the left, and off Saturn’s disk, are the bright moon Dione and the fainter moon Enceladus. These pictures were taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion km (775 million mi) from Earth. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA) More
via boston.com
Sandtrapped Rover Makes a Big Discovery
Spirit surveys its own predicament. The bright soil pictured left is loose, fluffy sulfate material churned by the rover’s left-front wheel as Spirit, driving backwards, broke through a darker, crusty surface. At right is the least-embedded of the rover’s six wheels.
“Sulfates are minerals just beneath the surface that shout to us that they were formed in steam vents, since steam has sulfur in it. Steam is associated with hydrothermal activity – evidence of water-charged explosive volcanism. Such areas could have once supported life.”
Credit: NASA












