This Week In Space podcast: Episode 98 - Pam Melroy | Get a sneak peek inside the Artemis 2 spacecraft | Solar eclipse jam: How to avoid getting stuck in traffic
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This week, NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, who is also a former astronaut, commander of the space shuttle, and US Air Force test pilot, joins us for a very special episode. We discussed the recently announced delays to the Artemis lunar landing program, NASA's long-term goals on the Moon, the overall trajectory of human spaceflight, Pam's favorite memories of her time in space, and - perhaps our favorite moment - her "gentle" rejoinder to a male pilot who hadn't had much experience flying with "ladies"! Be sure to join us for this exclusive interview.
You can now get a glimpse inside the spacecraft that will take humans to the moon for the first time in half a century. NASA released new pictures of the Orion spacecraft that will fly around the moon on the Artemis 2 mission, which will lift off no earlier than September 2025 with four astronauts on board.
Buckle up — there's a total solar eclipse coming on April 8 — and everyone will be talking about traffic. Many who traveled into and within the path of totality last time around on August 21, 2017, will recall the long and tedious traffic jams on the way home after the eclipse.
Australian commercial imaging company HEO Robotics was able to capture images of the European Space Agency's (ESA) ERS-2 Earth observation satellite on Feb. 14, 2024 as the satellite made an ungraceful fall towards our planet. ERS-2, or European Remote Sensing 2, launched in 1995 and spent 16 years observing our planet from space until its mission ended in 2011.
The second time was the charm for Japan's new H3 rocket.The H3 reached orbit and successfully deployed its payloads this evening (Feb. 16), rebounding from a failure on its debut flight last year and getting back on track to becoming Japan's workhorse rocket of the future.
A new view from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) captures the abundant star-forming region at the center of the Milky Way. "The center of the Milky Way is the most prolific star-forming region in the entire galaxy," ESO officials said in a statement. "However, astronomers have only found a fraction of the young stars they expected here."
Blue Origin's next generation launch vehicle has learned to stand upright. Satellite images captured the rocket company's New Glenn booster standing tall on the launchpad during Valentine's Day (Feb. 14), its towering height visible all the way from space. The booster simulator - a physical stand-in for a flight-ready rocket was recently hoisted vertical at Blue Origin's Launch Complex 36, located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, in Florida.
The mental aspects - the feelings of loneliness, isolation and solitude that could come with a multiyear space mission - are increasingly coming under the microscope, as an award-winning new documentary shows. "Space: The Longest Goodbye," delves into the complexities of cerebral concerns to carve a pathway toward identifying and treating long-term mental health issues in space as they relate to the deprivation of normal human contact.
Beaming in from the Delta Quadrant and straight onto your bookshelf is prolific "Star Trek" author David Mack's latest sci-fi jewel, "Picard: Firewall," a 336-page hardcover coming Feb. 27, 2024
