On May 5, 2018, NASA launched its latest Mars lander, called InSight, ahead of further missions to explore the Red Planet.Photo: Robyn Beck (AFP via Getty Images)Wiki WormholeWe explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 5,664,405-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

We explore some of Wikipedias oddities in our 5,993,858-week series, Wiki Wormhole.

This weeks entry: Mars 2020

What its about: Mars! The Angry Red Planet. The Show Me Planet. Land Of Lincoln. 2020 is going to be a big year for everyones favorite non-gas-giant non-Earth planet, as NASA is launching the next in its increasingly ambitious series of Mars rovers.

Biggest controversy: Were almost certainly going to have another Boaty McBoatface on our hands. Last fall, NASA had a naming contest, because no one seems to ever learn the lesson that you shouldnt let the public decide anything. They were at least smart enough to include a judging period, so some cooler head will weed out entries like Dr. Roverpants, DDS and Marz Nutz before presenting the finalists to the public. (Which happens later this month according to NASAs website).

Strangest fact: Were not just sending a rover, were also sending a helicopter. Dr. Roverpants will carry with it Mars Helicopter Scout, a solar-powered drone that can scout ahead to look for easier routes for the rover to drive. Before you dust off the spec script for Airwolf In Space you wrote in the late 80s, you should know the helicopter only plans to fly for three minutes a day. Because Mars atmosphere is thin (0.628% Earths average surface air pressure), its not clear helicopter rotors will even work, so the Scouts primary function is to let NASA see what goes wrong so they can build a better drone next time.

Thing we were happiest to learn: The rover will look both to the past and the future. While most of 2020s time will be spent studying soil and rock samples to look for signs of past Martian life, part of its mission will be storing and preserving those samples as if they were going to return to Earth. Doing so lays the groundwork for a future mission that does in fact return samples to Earth, which in turn paves the way for sending and returning astronauts to Earth. A small step for roverkind, but one firmly in the direction of a manned Mars mission.

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Mars 2020 isnt going to land until 2021. Summer 2020 is the launch date, but the eight-to-nine-month journey means the rover wont land until early next year. The planned mission is nearly two years (669 days, or one Mars year), but given that Curiositys mission was scheduled to end on 2014 and its still going strong, NASA must have high-hopes for a longer run for 2020 as well.

Also noteworthy: For those of you who read the article but dont click through to the Wikipedia page, make an exception this time, as theres a terrific set of photos showing NASAs rover assembly room, the testing and construction of the rover, and the landing site. Theres also a topographic map of the planet, with landing sites for Mars missions going back to 1971 and the Soviet Unions Mars 2.

After that, scroll down to the very bottom and the Future spaceflights tab for a comprehensive schedule of every mission to leave Earth in the next 15 years. 2020 includes manned missions from Russia, China, SpaceX, Boeing, Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos spaceflight company), and Virgin Galactic. 2021 will see the launch of Gaganyaan, Indias first manned space mission, (although not Indias first astronaut, as Rakesh Sharma was part of Russias Soyuz T-11 mission in 1984.)

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: Mars 2020 wont be the only Mars rover launched this summer. A joint European-Russian mission is launching Rosalind Franklin (formerly ExoMars), on a similar mission to look for past signs of life on the red planet. The ESA/Roscomos mission also held a naming contest, which chose Dr. Franklin, an English scientist whose work on the molecular structure of everything from DNA to coal to viruses is slightly more significant than that of her American counterpart, Dr. Roverpants.

The United Arab Emirates is also launching the Hope Mars Mission during that same summer launch window, the first from any Middle Eastern country. Hope plans to spend two years modeling the Martian atmosphere, in part to try and understand why the planet shed so much of its atmosphereat some point in the past, Mars had an Earth-like atmosphere able to sustain liquid waterand why it continues to bleed atmosphere into space to this day.

Further down the wormhole: NASA doesnt just have a space helicopterit also has its own TV station. NASA TV is a public-domain TV channel broadcast by satellite and over the internet, which some local cable companies also opt to carry. It airs science and educational programming, as well as live footage of space launches, and footage from the International Space Station. The NASA TV page has a tab for U.S. broadcast TV networks, of which there are a surprising number. Besides the five major networks, PBS, and retro channels like Ion and MyNetworkTV, there are over-the-air classic movie networks, home shopping, and international channels reaching out to the U.S. market, like Deutsche Welle.

The DW is a state-run (think the BBC, not Russian state TV) German network that broadcasts worldwide in 30 languages. DW airs under the banner of ARD, originally a West German network of public broadcasters that produced series like Raumpatrouille (a 1966 Star Trek-like show that was the first sci-fi on German TV), Sesamstrasse (Germanys edition of Sesame Street), and Beat-Club. The later was a music show that ran from 1965 to 1972 and featured everyone from Chuck Berry to Bowie to the Grateful Dead to the MC5 to a quartet of young skiffle musicians who left Liverpool to play in Hamburg, the Liverbirds. Well look at the Beatles largely forgotten female contemporaries next week.

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Its 2020 and were going back to Mars - The A.V. Club

AN asteroid that threatens to blast Earth with fiery debris will skim past our planet this weekend.

The space rock is the size of a blue whale and will zip past at 14,000 miles per hour during its nerve-shredding flyby, according to Nasa.

The US space agency has dubbed the asteroid "2019 YB4" and says it will pass at around 10:30am GMT on Saturday.

It's classed as a "near-Earth object" (NEO) by Nasa, tens of thousands of which are tracked by scientists to ensure they don't collide with our planet.

Just a small change to YB4's trajectory would be enough to send it crashing into us, though at 86ft long it's not large enough to reach Earth's surface.

Instead, the rock would likely explode with the force of 30 nuclear bombs as it hit our atmosphere, reports IBTimes.

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While most of the force would be absorbed by the heavens, debris would likely shower from the sky following the blast.

A similarly-sized asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 reportedly shattered windows and injured 1,500 people.

Fortunately, YB4 is expected to soar past Earth from a safe distance during its upcoming approach.

According to Nasa, the asteroid will pass within 780,000 miles of our planet about three times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

Astronomers are currently tracking nearly 2,000 asteroids, comets and other objects that threaten our pale blue dot, and new ones are found every day.

Earth hasn't seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66million years ago.

However, smaller objects still capable of flattening an entire city crash into Earth every so often.

What's the difference between an asteroid, meteor and comet?

Here's what you need to know, according to Nasa...

One a few hundred metres across that devastated 800 square miles of forest neat Tunguska in Siberia on June 30, 1908.

Luckily, Nasa doesn't believe any of the NEOs it keeps an eye on are on a collision course with our planet.

However, that could change in the coming months or years as the space agency constantly revises objects' predicted trajectories.

"Nasa knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small," Nasa says.

"In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years."

Even if they were to hit our planet, the vast majority of asteroids would not wipe out life as we know it.

"Global catastrophes" are only triggered when objects larger than 3,000 feet smash into Earth, according to Nasa.

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In other news, it recently emerged that an asteroid obliterated early human civilisations ina catastrophic collision with Earth 13,000 years ago.

Scientists recently discovered a "Super-Earth" 31 light-years away thathumans could one day colonise.

And, distant planets may host even more life than we have here on Earth,according to one shock study.

Are you worried about an asteroid strike? Let us know in the comments!

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

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Asteroid that could cause violent sky explosion as powerful as 30 nukes approaching Earth tomorrow, Nasa war - The Sun

NASAS Parker Solar Probe has shed new light on the previously unknown and only theorised characteristics of the sun. The probe, launched in August 2018 to study the sun up close and unlock the mysteries of its atmosphere, is designed to use Venus gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the sun. (The average distance of the earth to the sun is about 150 million km.)

Parker is currently in its fourth orbit around the sun, and its present distance from the sun is about 126 million km. The closest to the sun that the spacecraft went during its initial flybys was 24.1 million km on November 6, 2018. This is already closer to the sun than Mercury is. The spacecraft will get even closer in the future, as it travels at more than 343,000 km/h, faster than any previous spacecraft.

The first results were published in a series of four papers in a recent issue of Nature. The four papers reveal new insights into the processes that drive solar windthe constant outflow of hot, ionised gas that streams outward from the sun and fills up the solar systemand how the solar wind couples with solar rotation. The mission has also examined the dust of the coronal environment and spotted particle acceleration events so small that they are undetectable from the earth.

Seen near the earth, the solar wind plasma appears to be a relatively uniform flow, one that can interact with our planets natural magnetic field and cause space weather effects that interfere with technology. Instead of that flow, near the sun, Parkers observations reveal a dynamic and highly structured system, similar to that of an estuary that serves as a transition zone as a river flows into an ocean. For the first time, scientists are able to study the solar wind from its source, the suns corona (the outermost part of its atmosphere), similar to how one might observe the stream that serves as the source of a river. This provides a different perspective compared with studying the solar wind where its flow impacts the earth.

The information Parker has uncovered about how the sun constantly ejects material and energy will help scientists rewrite the models they use to understand and predict the space weather around the earth and understand the process by which stars are created and evolve. This information will be vital to protecting astronauts and technology in space, according to NASA.

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NASA probe sheds new light on the sun - Frontline

On Earth and in space, NASA had a busy decade in the 2010s.

In its human spaceflight program, the agency retired the space shuttle and is now close to launching humans to space again, this time on commercial crew vehicles. NASA also changed its long-term destination for humans a few times; currently the agency is targeting the moon and Mars.

Meanwhile, NASA robots flew through interstellar space, imaged thousands of planets and sent reams of scientific data back to researchers. Here are some of the agency's milestones over the last 10 years.

The decade started with turmoil for NASA's human spaceflight program when President Barack Obama's administration canceled the plans from President W. George Bush's administration to bring astronauts to the moon under the Constellation program. (In 2009, a NASA advisory commission that had gathered to evaluate Constellation noted that the then-5-year-old program was over cost and behind schedule.)

Also in this year, the space shuttle program began its last full year of operations, focusing on large payloads such as the cupola, a large window for Earth observations. NASA requested one last extra shuttle flight, which was approved in 2011.

Meanwhile, the Deep Impact spacecraft flew by Comet Hartley, becoming the first spacecraft to visit two comets. The Spirit rover on Mars fell silent about six years past its initial 90-day expiration date. The scientists behind the orbital Mars Odyssey mission released a global map of the Red Planet based on eight years of data from the spacecraft, which is still operating today.

The shuttle program made its final bow this year carrying cargo to the International Space Station. One of the last shuttle flights delivered a $2 billion astrophysics experiment called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer in May. (Astronauts have been conducting spacewalks in 2019 to repair that instrument, which studies dark matter.) Finally, in July, the space shuttle made its last flight, wrapping up 30 years of operations and 131 flights (including two fatal accidents, in 1986 and 2003).

From then on, NASA astronauts would fly to space aboard Russian Soyuz capsules; discussions about how many seats to buy, and how often, would dominate much of the 2010s. The Obama administration chose to retain the planned Orion spacecraft, originally envisioned for the now-defunct Constellation program, recruiting it for other planned deep-space missions, including to an asteroid around 2025 and Mars in the 2030s.

Meanwhile, because of the soaring cost and numerous launch delays of the James Webb Space Telescope, which was then slated to launch in 2018, NASA said that the instrument would need to pull money from other planned science missions. But the ongoing NASA/European Hubble Space Telescope mission discovered a previously unknown moon around Pluto, Kerberos. (When the same instrument found a second, Styx, in 2012, NASA personnel began to worry that these moons meant the New Horizons probe might run into unexpected debris during its flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015.)

NASA also braved the inner solar system, as the Messenger spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mercury after a seven-year journey. In the other direction, the Juno spacecraft launched toward Jupiter on Aug. 5, 2011. In Earth orbit, NASA's Glory observatory failed to reach orbit during launch, in an issue eventually traced back to the instrument's aluminum manufacturer. NASA launched the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) to examine Earth weather and climate.

The International Space Station entered a new era of cargo support when SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft made the first private flight to the space station. NASA began construction on the massive Space Launch System rocket to bring astronauts across the solar system. (That craft's first flight, originally expected in 2017, was delayed until at least 2021.

NASA survived 7 minutes of terror when the Curiosity rover safely landed on Mars in August, stepping up the agency's search for habitability on the Red Planet; within weeks of landing, the spacecraft had found an ancient streambed and evidence that water had flowed in the craft's landing area. Meanwhile, the Dawn probe bid goodbye to the large asteroid Vesta in September 2012, after characterizing the object's iron core and finding large craters on its surface.

At the space station, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano (who will ring in the new year in space) nearly drowned during a spacewalk when a water leak in the cooling system filled his helmet with fluid. Parmitano made it safely back to the space station, and NASA soon redesigned spacewalk procedures to improve astronaut safety. NASA began to contemplate extending the space station's tenure beyond its believed expiration date of 2020.

At Mars, damaged wheels on the Curiosity rover forced NASA to seek smoother terrain. The NASA/European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission watched Comet ISON plunge into the sun over Thanksgiving, belying predictions that the comet could be one of the brightest in recent memory.

So many gyroscopes failed on the Kepler space telescope, by now long past its prime planet-hunting mission, that NASA pioneered a new technique that used the pressure of the sun to hold the instrument stable. This allowed Kepler to continue work under an extended mission, known as K2.

In other mission milestones, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft launched for the Red Planet on Nov. 18. Meanwhile, NASA announced an Asteroid Redirect Mission to snag a boulder off an asteroid in order to begin testing planetary defense techniques. And NASA launched a Landsat satellite, which continued an Earth-observation program that has been running since the early 1970s.

In September, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX for multi-billion-dollar contracts to eventually bring astronauts to the International Space Station. Originally, those flights were scheduled to launch by 2017, but programmatic and technical delays have pushed back the first crewed launch to at least 2020. NASA successfully tested the deep-space Orion spacecraft; at the time, the agency thought a second uncrewed launch would follow in 2017; that flight is now scheduled for no earlier than 2020.

NASA extended the space station's scheduled mission to 2024. NASA and Russia's Roscosmos space agency quibbled over their shared human spaceflight plans when a senior Russian official sarcastically suggested that NASA send astronauts to space by trampoline. However, the partnership continued with no delays to human spaceflight.

On Mars, the Curiosity rover arrived at its ultimate destination, Mount Sharp, about two Earth years after landing; critics at NASA had said that controllers were taking too long to reach the destination as the rover sampled other scientific sites en route. Curiosity also spotted its first signs of methane on the Red Planet; in the coming years, the rover found other possible signs of life, including oxygen and organic molecules.

Meanwhile, the NASA/European Cassini mission found signs of 101 water geysers at the Saturn moon Enceladus. Scientists studying the activity wondered whether the plumes could represent the sort of activity that might power microbial life. MAVEN arrived at the Red Planet to study the loss of Martian atmosphere over time.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko began a nearly yearlong mission in space, the first such long-duration flight since the Mir space station missions of the 1990s. Two cargo ships in a row failed to reach the space station, sparking speculation about how long a crew could survive without more supplies, but a third flight arrived as expected.

Two mission arrivals made headlines. The New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto in July and revealed a surprisingly complex world of ancient lakes and large mountains, prompting more cries from the astronomical community to give Pluto its planethood status back. The Dawn spacecraft arrived at dwarf planet Ceres in March for several years of investigation, including figuring out the nature of mysterious bright spots visible en route. These turned out to be salts.

Meanwhile, the long-running NASA and European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory discovered its 3,000th comet. The Messenger spacecraft impacted Mercury on April 30, wrapping up a four-year orbital mission that imaged the entire surface of that planet for the first time. NASA received approval to launch a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, later called Europa Clipper, which is scheduled to launch early next decade.

Astronauts began installing new docking ports for commercial crew vehicles to arrive at the International Space Station. Bigelow Aerospace launched an "inflatable room" to the space station for testing in April that was inflated in May and remains operational as of this writing. President Donald Trump was elected, and his first space priorities after assuming office in January 2017 included canceling the Obama administration's plans to send humans to visit an asteroid.

Meanwhile, on Mars, Curiosity's drill encountered problems that took about two years to address. NASA delayed the launch of the InSight mission to join Curiosity on the Red Planet after a seismometer vacuum leak forced engineers to pull the instrument for a fix. The agency toyed with the idea of canceling the mission, but a subsequent review identified InSight as a high priority for life-seeking missions, and it was rescheduled, launching in 2018.

The Juno spacecraft arrived at Jupiter on July 4, beginning its mission to study the atmosphere of the giant planet to gain more insight into the Jovian weather. NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission passed a key design milestone.

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson captured the U.S. record for most overall time in space, landing in September with a total tally of 665 days in orbit.

Meanwhile, the NASA/European Cassini spacecraft wrapped up 13 years of investigations at Saturn by conducting a "grand finale" series of sweeps through the planet's rings. Then, controllers deliberately threw the machine into the atmosphere of the planet, to protect icy, potentially habitable moons in the neighborhood from any possibility of contamination.

Two missions faced hurdles: NASA delayed the James Webb Space Telescope launch from 2018 to 2019; that schedule has now slipped even further, to 2021. President Trump's new administration filed a budget request aiming to cancel the planned Asteroid Redirect Mission, which was officially canceled in 2018.

The Trump administration released its first space policy directive in December, ordering NASA to fly astronauts to the moon in 2028. The plans rely on NASA's massive Space Launch System, which was the subject of a report on development and funding issues conducted by NASA's Office of Inspector General.

Two astronauts survived an aborted launch on a Soyuz rocket on Oct. 11. The International Space Station partners successfully adjusted the Expedition 58 launch date three weeks earlier to accommodate the missing crew rotation; a new launch went off without a hitch on Dec. 3.

Voyager 2, a spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets, crossed out of the bubble surrounding our sun and into interstellar space, continuing to send back data about its environment.

Two venerable missions ended when they ran out of fuel: Dawn, which had been studying the dwarf planet Ceres, and the Kepler space telescope, which showed that exoplanets are common in our universe.

Three new missions joined the NASA roster. InSight finally launched to Mars in May and made a safe landing in November, accompanied by the first interplanetary cubesats. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched to seek planets orbiting nearby, bright stars. The Parker Solar Probe launched in August to get the first close-up views of the sun.

Preparations for NASA's commercial crew program entered the final stretches, with both SpaceX's Crew Dragon and Boeing's Starliner launching their first test flights. NASA's Office of Inspector General, however, warned that ongoing delays in the program are expected to lead to smaller space station crews for at least the first half of 2020.

NASA is also working to send astronauts safely back to the moon in 2024, after Vice President Mike Pence announced a four-year acceleration of the previous deadline. However, critics say the new timeline might not be realistic. NASA also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, marking the occasion with numerous events.

In space, astronauts began tricky repairs on a dark-matter detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. NASA classified the missions as the most difficult spacewalk work since the Hubble Space Telescope upgrade conducted in 2009. NASA astronauts also performed the first all-woman spacewalk, and the agency announced that crewmember Christina Koch would stay in space three extra months, putting her on track to make the second longest spaceflight in NASA history.

NASA and other government agencies began the year during what would become the longest-ever government shutdown, prompting agency concerns about the long-term effects on astronomy.

Also in January, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Kuiper Belt asteroid 2014 MU69, making that space rock the most distant object ever explored. The object is now formally known as Arrokoth. The New Horizons team began considering yet another, more distant destination to visit later in its mission.

Mars was particularly prominent in the agency's year. The Opportunity mission formally ended in February after the rover stopped responding to commands in 2018, following a dust storm. The InSight lander deployed its instruments on Mars; its seismometer has sent home intriguing results even as the lander's heat probe struggles to dig into the Martian surface. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marked 60,000 laps of the Red Planet; the orbiter's observations have helped with spacecraft landings and for observing change (such as new craters) on the Martian surface. And the agency continued launch preparations for its most advanced Mars rover yet, called Mars 2020, to search out habitable environments.

NASA prepared to say goodbye to the Spitzer Space Telescope, which finished its last year of operations of observing the universe in infrared light. Meanwhile, the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter celebrated 10 years at the moon, which included numerous observations of water ice and old spacecraft landing or crash sites. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory marked its 20th anniversary of observing the universe in X-ray wavelengths.

And NASA looked ahead as well, as the ambitious Europa Clipper mission survived its latest funding challenge en route to a launch in the mid 2020s.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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NASA's Decade in Space: The Highs and Lows of the US Space Agency's 2010s - Space.com

A high-tech space capsule malfunctioned Friday morning during its first NASA test mission, temporarily stranding the unmanned spacecraft in the wrong place and dealing a blow to Boeing, its developer.

The failed launch is a setback for NASA as it scrambles to finish work on a pair of new spacecraft that the space agency wants for carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. The new capsules could finally end the American space programs long reliance on Russian capsules.

Boeings CST-100 Starliner transport launched atop a two-stage Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 6:36 a.m.

The initial phase of the mission went according to plan. A few minutes after launch, NASA announced that the Atlas had completed its burn. United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin consortium that provided the rocket, went on social media to boast of its success.

We had a successful launch and initial indications are that we demonstrated the launch-vehicle test objectives, performance enhancements and the mission-unique modifications developed for the safety of human spaceflight, ULA president Tory Bruno said.

NASA expected the Boeing capsule to rendezvous with the International Space Station at its orbit some 250 miles above Earth on Saturday. A successful meet-up could have cleared the way for NASA to use the Starliner to carry astronauts to the space station beginning in mid-2020.

But it was soon apparent that the 15-foot-diameter Starliner had screwed up. Starliner has an off-nominal insertion, but Boeing has spacecraft control, NASA announced. The guidance and control team is assessing their next maneuver.

It turned out that the 15-ton capsule, which is designed to operate mostly autonomously with very little interaction with a human crew, mistimed the firing of its maneuvering thrusters. The ill-timed burn gobbled up precious fuel.

Now short on gas, the Starliner wasnt able to maneuver its way to the space station, NASA determined. "It's safe to take off the table at this point, given the amount of fuel that we burned," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a hastily-called news conference.

The good news for Boeing and NASA is that the Starliner, which has been in development since 2010 at a cost of more than $4 billion, is safe where it is, orbiting around 120 miles over Earth. Mission controllers expect to be able to land the capsule at a military missile range in White Sands, New Mexico as early as Sunday.

In the meantime, Boeing and NASA can still conduct some trials with the temporarily stranded capsule. The team is assessing what test objectives can be achieved, NASA stated.

Chicago-based Boeing tried to put on a happy face. We are proud of the team for their professionalism and quick action to protect the vehicle and enable a safe return, the company stated. We look forward to reviewing and learning from the data that has been generated from this mission so far.

But further root-cause analysis is needed, Boeing conceded.

SpaceX, which scored a $2-billion NASA contract to develop its own Dragon capsule, remained silent on social media while the Starliner fiasco unfolded. The Hawthorne, California-based rocket company stands the benefit the most from the Starliners stranding.

Starliner and Dragon are broadly similar and, under NASAs plan, would perform the same kinds of missions. Having access to two separate capsule designs, each backing up the other, could help NASA wean itself off of Russias Soyuz capsules. The Russian capsules have been the only way to get to and from the International Space Station since NASA retired its last Space Shuttle back in 2011.

SpaceX actually beat Boeing to the station. An unmanned, passenger-capable Dragon docked with the orbital lab back in March. SpaceX expects to carry astronauts for the first time in 2020. If Fridays mishap delays Starliners transition to routine, manned missions, Dragon could in theory take up the slack.

But Dragon has suffered its own accidents. The same capsule that completed the initial hook-up with the International Space Station back in March was destroyed a few weeks later during a botched ground test of its thrusters.

At the Friday press conference, NASA administrator Bridenstine urged calm. The Starliners stranding wouldnt have endangered the crews lives had anyone actually been on board, Bridenstine explained. In fact, he said, an on-board crew might have been able to troubleshoot the thruster problem, correcting the capsules course before it wasted its fuel.

The NASA administrator declined to say whether Boeing would be able to meet its 2020 deadline for manned flights with Starliner. I think it's too early for us to make that assessment.

The U.S. Air Force put an optimistic cap on an anxious day for the American space program, in the form of a social-media post from the 45th Space Wing, which manages the Cape Canaveral launch site. Trial and error are building blocks to great success, the wing stated.

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NASA Mission to Space Station Goes Horribly Wrong - The Daily Beast

KEY POINTS

NASA warned that three asteroids with Earth-crossing orbits will approach the planet during the weekend. The biggest asteroid from the group is about as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 747 plane.

The first Earth-intersecting asteroid arriving on the weekend has been identified by NASAs Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) as 2019 YS2. According to the agency, this asteroid is currently moving towards Earth at a speed of almost 13,000 miles per hour. It has an estimated diameter of about 69 feet.

Trailing behind 2019 YS2 is an asteroid known as 2019 YX. CNEOS estimated that this asteroid is about 180 feet wide and is currently flying across space at speeds of up to 13,100 miles per hour.

The last asteroid that will visit Earths vicinity this weekend is called 2019 YT2. According to CNEOS, this asteroid is traveling at an average speed of almost 19,000 miles per hour and has an estimated diameter of about 220 feet.

All three approaching asteroids have been classified by NASA as members of the Apollo family of space rocks. Like other Apollo asteroids, 2019 YS2, 2019 YX and 2019 YT2 have very wide orbits within the Solar System. As they travel across space, they occasionally intersect the orbits of other planets such as Earth.

If these asteroids end up hitting the planet their Earth-intersections, none of them will most likely cause a major impact event due to their size and current speed. Instead, these asteroids will most likely cause powerful explosions in the atmosphere.

According to CNEOS, all three asteroids are expected to cross Earths orbit this weekend. As noted by the agency, 2019 YS2 will approach the planet on Dec. 28 at 7:09 p.m. EST. During this time, the asteroid will be about 0.00569 astronomical units or roughly 530,000 miles away from the planets center.

2019 YX, on the other hand, will fly past the planet on Dec. 29 at 5:49 p.m. EST from a distance of 0.04725 astronomical units or about 4.4 million miles away.

As for 2019 YT2, this asteroid will debut in Earths vicinity on Dec. 29 at 11:05 p.m. EST. It will approach the planet from a distance of 0.03629 astronomical units or around 3.4 million miles away.

Image of two different asteroids captured by NASA. Photo: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL

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NASA Asteroid Alert: 3 Earth-Intersecting NEOs Approaching This Weekend - International Business Times

KEY POINTS

NASA has warned that the biggest asteroid to approach Earth this month will enter the planets vicinity tomorrow. If the asteroid were to hit Earth, it could cause a major impact event that can destroy an entire city.

According to NASAs Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the approaching asteroid has been identified as 310442 (2000 CH59). This massive space rock is currently moving towards Earth at speeds of over 27,000 miles per hour. As indicated in CNEOS database, this asteroid has an estimated diameter of about 2,034 feet.

The 310442 (2000 CH59) asteroid is officially classified as an Aten asteroid, which means it follows a wide orbit within the Solar System. As the asteroid flies across space, it occasionally intersects the orbits of various planets including Mercury, Venus and Earth.

Due to the asteroids imposing size and natural orbit, it has been labeled by NASA as potentially hazardous. According to the agency, potentially hazardous asteroids are space rocks that are capable of dangerously approaching Earth during their flybys.

Potentially hazardous asteroids are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroids potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth, NASA explained in a statement.

Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance of 0.05 astronomical units or less and an absolute magnitude of 22.0 or less are considered [potentially hazardous asteroids], the agency continued.

If forces in space such as gravitational keyholes alter the path of 310442 (2000 CH59), it might find itself on a direct collision course with Earth. If this happens, Earth would experience a major impact.

Given 310442 (2000 CH59)s size, an impact from this asteroid would leave a crater thats about 4 to 6 miles wide. The explosion that would be created by the asteroid strike would generate blast waves that are powerful enough to destroy and incinerate everything in their path. The energy from the impact would be enough to destroy a large area such as a major city.

Currently, 310442 (2000 CH59) is not in danger of hitting Earth during its upcoming visit. According to CNEOS, the asteroid is expected to approach the planet on Dec. 26 at 2:54 am EST. During this time, the asteroid will be about 0.04874 astronomical units or roughly 4.5 million miles away.

Over 17,000 near-Earth asteroids remain undetected in our solar neighborhood. Pictured; an artistic illustration of an asteroid flying by Earth. Photo: NASA

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Massive Asteroid That Could Cause Impact Event Approaching Earth Tomorrow, NASA Warns - International Business Times

We love our sunshine in California and on Dec. 21, we will have the least daylight in 2019. The winter solstice has a mere 9 hours, 55 minutes of light so we had the bright idea to give you a sun fix with a look at NASAs latest solar mission.

NASAs Parker Solar Probe has gone closer to the sun than any man-made object and is capable of withstanding temperatures up to 3,000 degrees (volcanic lava is between 1,300-2,200 degrees).

Its thermal protection is provided by a 4.5 inch thick carbon composite shield. Other instruments outside the shield are made from tungsten, a metal with the highest known melting point of 6,192 degrees.

Even the instruments wires are a modern technological feat most cables would melt at such close proximity to the Sun. The mission team solved the problem by growing sapphire crystal tubes to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium, an extremely hard metal.

The science of the Sun-Earth connection is called Heliophysics and is a relatively young science.

In August 2018, NASA launched the probe on a seven-year mission that will bring the probe within 4 million miles of the sun. The probe has completed three of 24 planned passes through the Suns atmosphere, the corona. This month, four papers in the journal Nature describe what scientists have learned from this unprecedented exploration.

Sun Weather monitoring is becoming more and more important as the Suns flares and storms can cause blackouts due to surges in power grids as well as knock out satellites. The probe is measuring the solar wind which carries the Suns magnetic field and flows out from the Sun at around 1 million mph.

The probe is named for a living scientist: Dr. Eugene Parker, who theorized the existence of the solar wind. It is one of several spacecraft dedicated to monitoring the sun, most notably the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which monitors the suns energy 24 hours a day.

JOURNEY TO THE SUN

Follow the line from the Earth to the Sun.

SIZED UPIf the Earth was the size of a nickel, the suns diameter would be about the height of an average house door. The sun is 864,000 miles across, 109 times the diameter of Earth.

Sources: NASA, Spaceweather.com, Space.com, NOAA

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On the winter solstice heres what NASAs learning about the sun - OCRegister

If science fiction flicks have taught us one thing, its that when aliens eventually discover our planet theyll be arriving in flying discs that seem to defy gravity. These mythical flying saucers are a well-worn sci-fi trope, but NASAs trusty Hubble Space Telescope just spotted a flying saucer of its own, only this one is far larger than anything wed want to see visiting Earth.

The image you see above, which was captured by Hubble, shows a galaxy known as IC 2051. As NASA explains in a new blog post, the galaxy is located in the constellation Mensa, and is situated some 85 million light-years from Earth.

The galaxy is huge, stretching its long arms out into space, but its the very center of the galaxy in the image above that reminds us most of a flying saucer.

NASA explains:

This galaxy was observed for a Hubble study ongalactic bulges, the bright round central regions of spiral galaxies.Spiral galaxieslike IC 2051 are shaped a bit like flying saucers when seen from the side; they comprise a thin, flat disk, with a bulky bulge of stars in the center that extends above and below the disk. These bulges are thought to play a key role in how galaxies evolve, and to influence the growth of thesupermassive black holeslurking at the centers of most spirals.

Its observations like this that can teach astronomers a great deal about how other galaxies grow and die. Our understanding of the types of galaxies that are out there in the universe isnt as robust as we might like to believe, and theres still a lot we dont know. Spotting and categorizing different types of galaxies can help us learn more about them while also revealing things about our own home, the Milky Way.

Image Source: ESA/Hubble & NASA, P. Erwin et al.

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NASAs Hubble spots flying saucer, but not the alien kind - BGR

SAN FRANCISCO (WPB) Once there was an asteroid that flew too close to the sun. It was small and dark and rocky, too fragile to withstand such scorching conditions. The asteroid cracked, releasing a burst of dust and debris. Though it continued traveling along its orbit, it dropped millions of fragments in its wake.

Humans named the asteroid Phaethon, for the child of the Greek sun god who couldnt handle his fathers chariot and nearly destroyed the world. Each December, when our planet plunges through Phaethons wake, we can see bits of the broken asteroid burn up in our atmosphere. Researchers call the light flashes the Geminid meteor shower. Children call them shooting stars.

Scientists have struggled for years to photograph Phaethons debris trail until a NASA spacecraft serendipitously stumbled upon it.

Mystery solver

Parker Solar Probe, which took flight in 2018, was designed to solve the enduring mystery of how our star gives off energy. Swooping closer to the suns surface than any earthly object has before, the spacecraft measures magnetic fields, scoops up energetic particles and snaps images of the suns atmosphere and its streaming solar wind.

While retreating from its third close approach to the sun in November, the probe captured something curious with its wide-field imager. Just to the left of the Milky Way, there was a faint line of dust.

Karl Battams, an astrophysicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, compared the position of the dust trail to Phaethons known orbit. It was a perfect match.

Were very confident that were seeing the Geminid meteor shower, Battams said last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The segment of the trail captured by Parker Solar Probe is 60,000 miles across and 12 million miles long, though the dust in fact suffuses the entire length of Phaethons 524-day orbit. Astronomers estimate it contains a billion kilograms of material.

Messy habits

Phaethons messy habits make it unusual among asteroids. Some researchers even refer to it as a rock comet, though it spews dust instead of gas. By studying this debris trail, scientists hope to learn more about what caused Phaethon to splinter several thousand years ago.

The asteroids history may one day be deeply relevant to Earths future; NASA has classified the Mount Kilimanjaro-size rock as a potentially hazardous Near-Earth Object (but no collisions are predicted for at least 400 years).

Astronomers have tried several times to capture Phaethons trail with the Hubble Space Telescope. But because its so close to the sun, its light is swamped by our stars glow, and theyd never been successful until Solar Probe went soaring past.

Weve seen something in the data that weve never seen before, and in fact no one has ever seen before, Battams said. Solar Probe has given us answers to questions that we werent even asking.

Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to perform at least 21 more loops around the sun, giving it 21 additional chances to capture Phaethons dust. If NASAs luck holds, Battams said, this wont be our last look at the trail of shooting stars.

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NASA spacecraft stumbles upon trail of shooting stars - Herald and News

NASAs Apollo 8 in 1968 saw the first-ever humans venture into deep space and reach the Moon. The monumental achievement on December 24, Christmas Eve, was broadcast around the world from lunar orbit.

NASA astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders took turns during the broadcast to read from the Book of Genesis.

Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament and describes Gods creation of the universe and Earth.

NASA said: As one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history drew to a close, millions around the world were watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit another world.

As their command module floated above the lunar surface, the astronauts beamed back images of the Moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis, closing with a wish for everyone on the good Earth.

The astronauts ended their broadcast saying: And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you all of you on the good Earth.

READ MORE: Can you see the 'Ring of Fire' solar eclipse from the UK?

On the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission, Mr Borman recalled the iconic moment.

He said: We were told that on Christmas Eve we would have the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice.

And the only instructions that we got from NASA was to do something appropriate.

Mr Lovell, who later commanded the doomed Apollo 13 flight, said Genesis was fitting piece of scripture to read.

The astronaut said: The first ten verses of Genesis is the foundation of many of the world's religions, not just the Christian religion.

There are more people in other religions than the Christian religion around the world, and so this would be appropriate to that and so that's how it came to pass.

The Book of Genesis is divided into the creation of the world and the creation of man.

God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

NASAs Apollo 8 is also famous for a monumental photograph snapped by Mr Anders.

The iconic image dubbed Earthrise features our blue, marbled home planet rising over the Moons pockmarked surface.

Mr Bornan later recalled the experience of seeing the Earth from deep space during a press conference.

He said: I dont think its changed anything in me but it certainly has amplified the feeling, the basic, feeling Ive had for many years about the Earth.

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Christmas on the Moon: How NASA astronauts read the Bible while barreling over the Moon - Express.co.uk

This Christmas season, astronauts aboard the International Space Station got into the holiday spirit by baking cookies for Santa in microgravity. Yet neither Santa nor the astronauts will be able to enjoy the baked cookies, since making them was part of a science experiment, designed to test a new oven on the orbital lab. Instead, the cookies will remain sealed and uneaten, only to be returned to Earth later on for analysis.

The cookies were made possible thanks to a newly developed space oven sent to the ISS in early November, aboard a Cygnus cargo spacecraft made by Northrop Grumman. The blue, cylindrical oven is the product of a New York-based startup called Zero G Kitchen and space technology developer Nanoracks, with ingredients provided by DoubleTree by Hilton.

The goal of the seemingly cruel experiment was to see if baking in a space environment is even possible. Here on Earth, turning cookie dough into a finished cookie is pretty straightforward. You put the dough on a pan in an oven, while hot air within the oven rises and fans circulate the heat throughout the tiny space. This causes the heat to be evenly distributed all over the cookie, causing it to puff upward and outward. But in space, heating gets tricky. Hot air doesnt rise like it does here on Earth, and theres no guarantee your cookie will stay on that pan; instead, it might just float away.

The Zero G Oven, as its named, is designed to combat these problems. It doesnt just work like your oven on the ground, Mary Murphy, senior internal payloads manager at Nanoracks, said during a press conference before the ovens launch in November. We actually have to pretty substantially change the design of the oven, from what you thought about to what it actually is. To evenly heat the dough within, the oven is shaped like a cylinder with heaters lining every side; that way, the cookie is heated evenly all over. And to make sure the cookie doesnt float away within the oven, the dough must be loaded in via a special tray that traps the ingredients inside a tight pouch.

Luca Parmitano, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, tried baking samples on December 12th, 13th, and 17th with some success. The oven is very, very simple to use, and I think it worked as expected, Parmitano said in a statement provided by NASA. We were able to bake the samples, but it took a few attempts to figure out how long they had to stay in the oven.

Parmitano said the first three cookies he tried to bake came out pretty doughy, but the last two were nice and brown, with melted chocolate chips. The samples are now stored in a freezer to be returned to the Earth for analysis. Well see how well it worked! he said.

Since this is all very experimental, the researchers didnt want the astronauts eating any improperly baked cookies, which is why the astronauts only get to pose for pictures with their treat. The samples will head back to Earth on an upcoming cargo trip home so that researchers on the ground can get a better look at the finished products. But ultimately, the idea of having the astronauts bake cookies they cant eat is to see if its possible to have such small comforts of home when people go on multi-year trips to deep-space destinations in the future.

What are we going to do when were in those experiences, and what are we going to need for those people to have a good experience and to be able to perform all these tasks that were going to ask of them to do all this amazing science research, said Murphy. So one of the things that that came to us as an opportunity was looking at baking in space.

But dont fear for the astronauts appetites. DoubleTree sent up a few pre-baked cookies to the station along with the raw dough, in case making the treats triggered some sugar cravings.

Originally posted here:

For the holidays, astronauts baked cookies in space that they wont actually eat - The Verge

The line "E.T. phone home" from the 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial may become a commonly pronounced sentence within the next decade. All because NASA scientists are of the firm belief that they will find alien life in the next 10 years.

Several plans for space and planet exploration are in motion, and one of the main searches will indeed be centered around extraterrestrial life.

RELATED: ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS MAY HAVE VISITED EARTH MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO, STUDY SAYS

NASA scientists, engineers, astronauts, and personnel have their work cut out for them over the next decade:

The aerospace company has plans to launch a rover to Mars next year in order to collect rock samples on the Red Planet. Two of its spacecraft will be visiting the faraway ocean worlds onJupiterand Saturn's moons. Moreover, new space telescopes are going to be used to observe planets outside of our solar system.

Big plans that may prove extraterrestrial life exists out there.

These are not new plans, as NASA has been forging its alien life search forward for years, but recently its scientists believe they are on the brink of finally discovering it.

For instance, in 2017 former NASA administrator, Thomas Zurbuchentold Congress "With all of this activity related to the search for life, inso many different areas, we are on the verge of one of the most profound discoveries ever."

Furthermore, NASA's former chief scientist, Ellen Stofan said in 2015 that she believed they would "get strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years."

Stofan added, "We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases, we have the technology."

It seems it's just a matter of time.

Astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner, Didier Queloz, summed it all up perfectly when he said "I can't believe we are the only living entity in the universe. There are just way too many planets, way too many stars, and the chemistry is universal. The chemistry that led to life has to happen elsewhere."

Mars is the first stop next year, as the rover will be launched with the hope of it landing on the Red Planet in 2021. The realistic view of finding life on Mars is more linked to past signs of life on the planet, as its current state is inhabitable. The rover's job is to look for fossils of past life.

From then on NASA's plans keep accelerating in its quest for signs of alien life. Only time will tell what will be found.

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We Will Find Alien Life in the Next Decade, NASA Scientists Say - Interesting Engineering

(KMOX) - New stunning images from NASA show how holiday lights brighten the nights of cities all over the globe.NASA researchers found that nighttime lights in the United States shine 20 to 50 percent brighter in December due to holiday light displays and other activities during Christmas and New Years.

The maps above were created with the data sent from two satellites and it's showing thechanges in lighting intensity and location around many major cities. It's comparingthe nighttime light signals December, to the average light output through the rest of the year.

Related:10 best home holiday lights displays in the St. Louis area

U.S. cities, particularly Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, plus Houston and Dallas really show off their Christmas cheer at night, become 30 to 50% brighter during the Christmas holidays. Atlanta looks like its own city of lights during the holidays, too.

Phoenix, Arizona saw the biggest change in light during the holidays while Miami, Florida saw only slight change.

On the other side of the world, the Middle East sparkled from space during Ramadan with night lights twinkling especially bright from Cairo, Egypt and Amman, Jordan. Some Saudi Arabian cities were even 100% more brighter during Ramadan.

Click here to see the full "Earth at Night"report from NASA.

2019 KMOX (Entercom). All rights reserved

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NASA releases images of holiday lights brightening the night across the globe - KMOX

NASA's nextMars rover has passed its first driving test. A preliminary assessment of itsactivities on Dec. 17, 2019, found that the rover checked all the necessaryboxes as it rolled forward and backward and pirouetted in a clean room at NASA'sJet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The next time the Mars 2020rover drives, it will be rolling over Martian soil.

"Mars 2020has earned its driver's license," said Rich Rieber, the lead mobilitysystems engineer for Mars 2020. "The test unambiguously proved that therover can operate under its own weight and demonstrated many of the autonomous-navigationfunctions for the first time. This is a major milestone for Mars 2020."

On Dec. 17, 2019, engineers took NASA's next Mars rover for its first spin. The test took place in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This was the first drive test for the new rover, which will move to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the beginning of next year to prepare for its launch to Mars in the summer. Engineers are checking that all the systems are working together properly, the rover can operate under its own weight, and the rover can demonstrate many of its autonomous navigation functions. The launch window for Mars 2020 opens on July 17, 2020. The rover will land at Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

Scheduled to launchin July or August 2020, the Mars 2020 mission will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars' climate andgeology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for humanexploration of the Red Planet. It is scheduled to land in an area of Mars knownas Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.

"Tofulfill the mission's ambitious science goals, we need the Mars 2020 rover tocover a lot of ground," said Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 deputy projectscientist.

Mars 2020 isdesigned to make more driving decisions for itself than any previous rover. Itis equipped with higher-resolution, wide-field-of-view color navigation cameras,an extra computer "brain" for processing images and making maps, andmore sophisticated auto-navigation software. It also has wheels that have been redesigned for added durability.

All theseupgrades allow the rover to average about 650 feet (200 meters) per Martianday. To put that into perspective, the longest drive in a single Martian daywas 702 feet (214 meters), a record set by NASA's Opportunity rover. Mars 2020 isdesigned to average the current planetwide record drive distance.

In a 10-plus-hourmarathon on Tuesday that demonstrated all the systems working in concert, therover steered, turned and drove in 3-foot (1-meter) increments over small rampscovered with special static-control mats. Since these systems performed well underEarth's gravity, engineers expect them to perform well under Mars' gravity,which is only three-eighthsas strong. The rover was also able to gatherdata with the Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX).

"A roverneeds to rove, and Mars 2020 did that yesterday," said John McNamee, Mars2020 project manager. "We can't wait to put some red Martian dirt under itswheels."

JPLis building and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for NASA. NASA'sLaunch Services Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida,is responsible for launch management.

Mars 2020 is part of a larger program that includes missionsto the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish asustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemis lunar exploration plans.

Formore information about the mission, go to:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

News Media Contact

Jia-Rui CookJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-354-0724jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Alana JohnsonNASA Headquarters, Washington202-358-1501alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

2019-251

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NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Completes Its First Drive - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Boeing's first Starliner spacecraft will return to Earth Sunday (Dec. 22) to cap a rocky test flight that, despite some successes, left the capsule in the wrong orbit and unable to reach the International Space Station for NASA as planned.

If all goes according to the revised plan, the uncrewed Starliner which Boeing designed to eventually fly astronauts for NASA will land at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico at 7:57 a.m. EST (1257 GMT), six days earlier than its original Dec. 28 target. The spacecraft will rely on a heat shield to withstand the searing heat of reentry, three parachutes to slow its descent back to Earth and airbags to cushion its landing. And all of that gear needs to work perfectly for a safe touchdown.

"Tomorrow is a big day," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said of Starliner's landing in a teleconference with reporters today (Dec. 21). "We have to be on our 'A' game."

You can watch Boeing's Starliner landing live on Space.com Sunday, courtesy of NASA TV, beginning at 6:45 a.m. EST (1145 GMT).

Video: How Boeing's Starliner Spacecraft Will LandMore: Boeing's 1st Starliner Flight Test in Photos

"Entry, descent and landing is not for the faint of heart..."

A smooth, successful landing will be a redemption of sorts for Boeing's Starliner, which was left in its unplanned orbit due to a timing error with the spacecraft's mission clock. The glitch meant Starliner, which launched early Friday (Dec. 20), was unable to rendezvous with the space station to demonstrate its automated docking system, a vital capability for future astronaut missions.

But just as vital is landing safely. And that's what Boeing will attempt to show on Sunday.

"Entry, descent and landing is not for the faint of heart, and this vehicle has not entered," said Jim Chilton, senior vice president of Boeing's Space and Launch Division. "We have not gone from space to the atmosphere."

Starliner's return to Earth will occur in stages, each of which must go right for the spacecraft to land safely. First, Starliner will have to leave its current orbit, which is about 155 miles (250 kilometers) above Earth.

To do that, Starliner's service module will fire its thrusters in a so-called "deorbit burn" at 7:23 a.m. EST (1223 GMT) that will last 50 seconds. That should slow the spacecraft to about 25 times the speed of sound, Steve Stich, deputy manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said in the teleconference. Mach 25 is about 19,181 mph (20,870 km/h).

After the deorbit burn, the cylindrical service module should separate from the Starliner crew capsule and perform its own maneuver to fall safely out space and into the Pacific Ocean, Stich said.

The rest of the landing scenario relies on Starliner's crew capsule, which will plunge through the atmosphere on a trajectory that flies over the Pacific Ocean and crosses Baja California and Mexico, and then just west of El Paso, Texas, to reach a landing zone at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

When the gumdrop-shaped Starliner slams into the Earth's atmosphere, its heat shield will heat up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), according to a Boeing mission description. The spacecraft will then jettison that heat shield and prepare to deploy its parachutes.

"By the time we get to 30,000 feet [9,100 meters], we'll deploy parachutes; the vehicle will be going less than the speed of sound, less than Mach 1," Stich said.

Starliner is equipped with three main parachutes to slow its descent back to Earth. During a pad abort test in November, only two of those parachutes deployed during a Starliner landing, a glitch Boeing pegged to a misaligned pin in the parachute rigging system.

Chilton said both Boeing and NASA have checked and double-checked that the pins in the current Starliner's parachutes were installed correctly.

"We did have a NASA team go in and look at all the closeout photos," Stitch added. "The parachutes on this spacecraft were rigged correctly."

At 3,000 feet (900 m), air bags should inflate on Starliner's base. Those airbags are designed to cushion the impact of landing on astronauts inside the spacecraft.

While there are no human astronauts on this Starliner, the spacecraft is carrying "Rosie the Rocketeer," a spacesuit-clad anthropomorphic test dummy equipped with sensors to measure what astronauts will feel.

"We're going to be able to measure how the human would receive the Gs during entry, and also as the parachutes deploy and as we land," Stich said. "We can measure that environment on Rosie and then extrapolate how a human would do in that environment."

Related: Boeing's CST-100 Starliner Space Capsule (Infographic)

After landing, teams from Boeing and NASA will arrive to recover the vehicle (and its Rosie dummy) to see how Starliner and its systems performed during the trip home.

About the only thing Starliner will not have done during its test flight is the actual docking with the space station. Timing issue aside, the spacecraft fared well during launch and its major systems performed as expected in orbit, Chilton said. Engineers were also able to to deploy and retract Starliner's docking system to make sure it would work during actual dockings.

But just like launch, landing is a test that stands apart, Chilton said.

"Not all objectives are created equal,"he added. "Make no mistake. We still have something to prove here on entry tomorrow."

Visit Space.com Sunday, Dec. 22, for complete coverage of Starliner's OFT landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico.

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.

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Starliner Spacecraft's Landing on Sunday a Critical Moment for Boeing and NASA - Space.com

Liquid Instruments, led by Daniel Shaddock (far left) and Danielle Wuchenich (far right), has a ... [+] sleek solution to help companies test their electronics faster and cheaper.

When Danielle Wuchenich hatched the idea for measurement startup Liquid Instruments, she was not chasing worldly success but a faster process for discovering the secrets of space. Her solutiona tool which jams 12 different electrical signal and frequency instruments into a single deviceended up being useful on Earth, with Apple, NASA and Texas Instruments employing the tool to ensure that the electronics theyre developing work.

Now Liquid Instruments chief strategy officer, Wuchenich was a graduate student at Australian National University, working on creating a tool called a phasemeter to measure gravitational waves in space, something only of use to high-level researchers. But in conducting the routine electrical measurements required for her research, she encountered a problem: Every time she wanted to measure voltage over time, signal frequency or signal transmission, Wuchenich had to rely on separate devices with separate software and user interfaces, each with hefty price tags. To avoid this headache, Wuchenich programmed the high-tech phasemeter to do multiple kinds of measurements. In so doing, Wuchenich landed on a universally viable application for an otherwise esoteric product.

Over three years, a twelve-person founding teamconsisting of Wuchenich, her lab mates and principal investigator CEO Daniel Shaddockturned prototype into product. Liquid Instruments began selling its device, dubbed Moku:Lab, in 2017, an 8-inch tool the company argues is not only more efficient than the competition, but cheaper. Moku:Lab costs $6,500, whereas all the tools the device replaces cost up to $60,000, the company estimates. Shaddock says the product has the potential to fundamentally change the test and measurement industry.

In the old days you had a typewriter for writing letters and a calculator for calculating. And they did the job pretty well. Then along came the computer, and it can write letters, it can calculate things, but it can do a whole lot more,says Shaddock. Weve stumbled upon the formula for the computer for the test and measurement industry.

So far, investors and scientists are buying it. The startup has raised $10.1 million from Anzu Partners, ANU Connect Ventures and Australian Capital Ventures Limited at a valuation of $33.7 million, with its 2018 revenue coming to around $750,000, according to Wuchenich. And Liquid boasts some big-name customers, including NASA, Texas Instruments, Apple and Nvidia.

Despite this early success, Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Richard Eastman says Liquid Instruments faces a tough challenge breaking into an oligopoly dominated by five major companiesKeysight, Rohde & Schwarz, Tektronix, National Instruments and Anritsu. With several of these large players also selling single pieces of hardware that can make multiple measurements, Eastman is skeptical Liquid Instruments can make a dent. Im not sure it looks disruptive, Eastman says.

Also, Liquid Instruments will need to prove it offers comparable precision to its rivals. J. Max Cortner, president of the Instrument & Measurement Society, says while Liquid Instruments offers a unique product, its specs are in mainstream ranges, which may not be good enough for its customer base of highly trained researchers. Thats going to be their dividing line, their frontier. How do they expand this easy-to-use concept into the physical extremes? Cortner says.

Wuchenich is hoping Moku:Labs ready-to-use software and a specialized computer chip called FPGA will separate it from the competition. She notes whatever Liquid Instruments loses on precision, it more than compensates with its low price point. Bottom linecustomers don't want/can't afford to overpay for specs they dont need, she wrote in an email.

Itll be an uphill battle for a small startup like Liquid Instruments to compete with behemoths whose customers have been loyal for decades. But for Colonel Brian Neff, who heads the department of electrical engineering at the U.S. Air Force Academy and uses Moku:Lab to train his students, Liquid Instruments is a formidable challenger.

There are advantages to this new way of thinking that Id love to see some of the other players adopt, and if they dont adopt, then I think its thats just more promising for a company like Liquid Instruments to be able to come in and innovate a solution that hasnt really been done to this point, Neff says.

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Why NASA And Apple Are Using This Startup To Test Their Electronics More Efficiently - Forbes

We love our sunshine in California and on Dec. 21, we will have the least daylight in 2019. The winter solstice has a mere 9 hours, 55 minutes of light so we had the bright idea to give you a sun fix with a look at NASAs latest solar mission.

NASAs Parker Solar Probe has gone closer to the sun than any man-made object and is capable of withstanding temperatures up to 3,000 degrees (volcanic lava is between 1,300-2,200 degrees).

Its thermal protection is provided by a 4.5 inch thick carbon composite shield. Other instruments outside the shield are made from tungsten, a metal with the highest known melting point of 6,192 degrees.

Even the instruments wires are a modern technological feat most cables would melt at such close proximity to the Sun. The mission team solved the problem by growing sapphire crystal tubes to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium, an extremely hard metal.

The science of the Sun-Earth connection is called Heliophysics and is a relatively young science.

In August 2018, NASA launched the probe on a seven-year mission that will bring the probe within 4 million miles of the sun. The probe has completed three of 24 planned passes through the Suns atmosphere, the corona. This month, four papers in the journal Nature describe what scientists have learned from this unprecedented exploration.

Sun Weather monitoring is becoming more and more important as the Suns flares and storms can cause blackouts due to surges in power grids as well as knock out satellites. The probe is measuring the solar wind which carries the Suns magnetic field and flows out from the Sun at around 1 million mph.

The probe is named for a living scientist: Dr. Eugene Parker, who theorized the existence of the solar wind. It is one of several spacecraft dedicated to monitoring the sun, most notably the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which monitors the suns energy 24 hours a day.

JOURNEY TO THE SUN

Follow the line from the Earth to the Sun.

SIZED UPIf the Earth was the size of a nickel, the suns diameter would be about the height of an average house door. The sun is 864,000 miles across, 109 times the diameter of Earth.

Sources: NASA, Spaceweather.com, Space.com, NOAA

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On the winter solstice heres what NASAs learning about the sun - Silicon Valley

Using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed a new class of planets that have the density of cotton candy.

Because their hydrogen-helium atmospheres balloon out, these planets are nearly as big as Jupiter, but have 100 times less mass. That's why scientists are calling the new planets "super-puffs."

Until recently, astronomers had only known about the three types of planets that we see in our own solar system: terrestrial planets like Earth, ice giants like Neptune, and gas giants like Jupiter. So scientists group the worlds they find around other stars based on these categories.

But on Thursday, NASA confirmed that three exoplanets (the term for worlds that orbit distant stars) fall into the new super-puff grouping. The planets circle a sun-like star 2,600 light-years away. Hubble data revealed their mass and size, but thick clouds prevented researchers from learning more detail about the super-puffs' chemistry.

Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder described the findings in a new studyset to appear in The Astronomical Journal.

"They're very bizarre," Jessica Libby-Roberts, the graduate student who led the research, said in a press release. "When you picture a Jupiter-sized ball of cotton candythat's really low density."

Nobody knows why the planets' lightweight atmospheres are so bloated.

An artist's illustration shows the three giant planets orbiting the sun-like star Kepler 51 as compared to some of the planets in our solar system. NASA, ESA, and L. Hustak and J. Olmsted (STScI)

The Kepler space telescope found this group of three super-puffs in 2012, and some of the scientists behind the recent discovery figured out just how mysteriously lightweight these planets were in a 2014 study.

The discovery was "straight-up contrary to what we teach in undergraduate classrooms," Zachory Berta-Thompson, an assistant professor of planetary sciences and co-author of the study, said in the release.

The group recently took a closer look at the planets with Hubble, NASA's most powerful space telescope. They used Hubble's infrared lens to peer at star light passing through two of the planets' atmospheres. By measuring the light's intensity, they could determine which chemicals make up the planets' atmospheres.

To their surprise, the researchers couldn't see any chemical signatures. They were totally blocked by thick clouds.

"It definitely sent us scrambling to come up with what could be going on here," Libby-Roberts said. "We expected to find water, but we couldn't observe the signatures of any molecule."

Three views of Saturn's moon Titan, taken by the Cassini spacecraft, show its thick haze of methane clouds. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Instead of water, the researchers think the clouds might be made of salt crystals or methane, which would cause a hazy interaction with the telescope's ultraviolet light. That could mean the planets are similar to Saturn's moon Titan, which is clouded in a thick methane atmosphere.

"If you hit methane with ultraviolet light, it will form a haze," Libby-Roberts said. "It's Titan in a nutshell."

Under that methane, lighter gases like hydrogen and helium could be puffing up the planets' atmospheres.

The primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, consisting of 18 hexagonal mirrors, in the clean room of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, October 28, 2016. NASA/Chris Gunn

Our best hope of learning more about these super-puffs is NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, which could peer through the smog and find out what the Kepler-51 planets are truly made of. The new telescope's 21-foot-wide beryllium mirror and new infrared technology make it sensitive to longer wavelengths of infrared light.

The telescope is slated to launch on March 30, 2021.

Both of the planets the researchers observed seemed to be rapidly losing their gases. One was spewing tens of billions of tons into space each second.

If the leakage continued at that rate, the researchers calculated that the planet would shrink to a size smaller than Neptune in 1 billion years, losing all its puffiness in the process.

Small, hot Neptune-like planets are common throughout the Milky Way, unlike these rare super-puffs.

Neptune, photographed by Voyager 2 from 4.4 million miles away, has an atmosphere made of hydrogen, helium, and methane. NASA/JPL

The cotton-candy planets' state of transition could explain why we don't have anything like them in our own solar system. The Kepler-51 star they orbit is relatively young 500 million years old, compared to our 4.6-billion-year-old sun. So its system of planets may not have settled down yet.

"This is an extreme example of what's so cool about exoplanets in general," Berta-Thompson said. "They give us an opportunity to study worlds that are very different than ours, but they also place the planets in our own solar system into a larger context."

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NASA has confirmed a new class of huge 'super-puff' planets that have the density of cotton candy - Business Insider

The former NASA astronaut and STEM advisor to President Obama focuses his energies on his greatest passion: prepping todays students for Mars.

A recurring thought crosses Leland Melvins mind sometimes when he looks up at the night sky. As he peers into the stars from his Virginia home, and sees the darkness of space he has twice visited, he recalls the the sky is the limit sentiment of his childhood, and wonders how to make it equally magical for students.

Kids might look at the night sky, but then they look down at their devices and tablets and kind of get stuck there, he says. I want to be sure they continue to look up, and get geared into their environment, their universe. I also want them to understand we might have to gear up and look at another body, a planet, an exoplanet. I want them to have this vision.

In a sense, Melvin sounds like thousands of teachers: how do we bring vision into our students education? Unlike those teachers, he is coming at it as a NASA astronaut, NASA Head of Education, and, for five years, co-chair of the White Houses Federal Coordination in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) Education Task Force. His job? To come up with a five-year STEM plan for national education and regularly advise then-President Obama. The federal guidelines and standards that inform all STEM teachers today came from Melvin and his team.

Melvin is also coming at it as the author of two books (includingChasing Space: An Astronauts Story of Grace, Grit and Second Chances), and technical advisor on the National Geographic Channel seriesMARS, created in 2017 byApollo 13director Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Prior to that, Melvin and seven other astronauts co-starred in NatGeosOne Strange Rock, sharing experiences of Earth from the rare perspective of being a space traveler.

Meanwhile, the pieces of humankinds greatest exploration are falling into place quickly. In late November, NASAs InSight robotic lander touched down on Mars for the first-ever deep core and underground exploration of the planet. Space X, NASA, and soon Virgin Galactic are launching both satellites and early prototype machinery for a Mars mission. In the meantime, kids from coast to coast are engrossed in STEM curriculum, robotics, and related classes. Throw in that 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, and Melvin feels the time is now to inject vision, creativity, and purpose into the way we present STEM with a serving of astronautics included.

When I was a kid, growing up in the late 60s and 70s, going to school was a lot of fun, he recalled. Look at what we aspired to in the classroom. We were sending astronauts into Earth orbit and to the moon. Even then, we were drawing pictures of flying cars and landing on Mars on our school folders, and the experts were talking matter-of-fact about Mars being the natural extension of walking on the moon. The things everyone is talking about today, we talked about then. Since we didnt have devices and couldnt go online to Google and look at footage from our telescopes, or deep space vehicles, we had to imagine it. Envision it. So my generation was a generation of dreamers. The difference is, technology is catching up to us now so we can focus on truly sending manned missions to Mars. Im confident it can happen in my lifetime.

Melvins work onMARS, on which he is one of two astronaut advisors (Dr. Mae Jemison being the other), cuts to the areas hes most passionate about: matching STEM education with real and imagined space duties, enhancing creativity and vision by throwing the all important A into STEAM arts curriculum and focusing on the day-to-day of not only fulfilling experiments and tasks, but also existing as a tiny family or community. That, Melvin points out, is particularly critical.

What we need to understand going into this is that the first mission or two may be a one-way trip, with the astronauts colonizing and staying there, Melvin says. We do a lot of things inMARS, from blending documentary with live-action, science with drama, but we also look at the dynamics of the group as they work together, and get used to their newer, much more hostile environment. So while Season 1 was about the novelty of being there, Season 2 focuses on the dynamics of the colonists, along with a major challenge will it be a private or public operation to mine the resources from beneath the surface? Earth challenges will become Mars challenges at times; we need to show that. Working together is going to be critical, but so is living together.

To that end, Melvin was thrilled to see Howard and Grazer create and cast a female commander for the mission (played by Korean-American actress Jihae). He felt that sent the proper message not only for the global diversity it represents, but also empowering girls and young women to focus more on science, tech and potentially astronautic careers.

I love the fact theres a female Asian commander running things with empathy and love, Melvin said. This whole thing about representation matters. Through that commander, more kids can see themselves being the commander of a Mars mission, or being on a Mars mission.

Were seeing more and more girls involved with STEM, with STEAM, and looking at the four components of STEM in making their continuing education and career choices. Everything from engineering to robotics, geology to astronautics matters a lot, but so does empowering students to feel like they can get us to Mars because the actual build-up and manned mission to Mars will happen under their watch, and these kids will be performing jobs that dont even exist yet.

Most of all, Melvin lauded the way Howard, Grazer, and the rest of the team dove deeply into his and other advisors direct experiences and threaded some of them into the shows. Consequently, he feelsMARSwill serve as a catalyst to further focus younger viewers on a space component in their STEM-based careers.

When I was in space, I experienced this shift called the overworld perspective, which happens to a lot of astronauts when they spend considerable time in orbit, like I did or who explored a foreign body, like the Apollo astronauts did fifty years ago, he explained.

I realized that to bring kids fully into the space experience, we needed to match the science and exploration with some form of entertainment and inMARS, we have it. We have edutainment, where we have experts talk about it, but also this dramatic show that entertains the kids, so they can see what it might be like to live there. There are babies, dogs, fighting, bars but a lot of the time, they dont think astronauts working and living in space is really like that.

Leland Melvin looks a lot more like a retired NFL receiver than one of the worlds greatest STEM and STEAM influencers who holds five honorary Ph.D.s plus the doctorate he earned in school. Hes big, powerful, an avid participant in many sports, and a mover and shaker wherever he goes. He finds time in his life for photography, playing piano, reading, music, cycling, tennis, and snowboarding. He undertakes every mission like a player breaking down film, whether an interview or writing a book, and comes out having empowered adults and students alike. It makes sense: he was a star student and athlete in high school, the son of teachers who emphasized developing diverse interests, and deeply inspired by his personal hero, the late tennis great Arthur Ashe.

It was Arthur Ashe, what he had to put up with to become a great tennis player, the issues of race at the time, and how he maintained his focus and his integrity that really inspired me, Melvin said. I grew up wanting to be a great tennis player like Arthur, to follow in his footsteps, but life has a funny way of redirecting us. I learned then that when it redirects you, and the redirection feels right and leads to an outcome youd love to see, that you go in that direction.

Related: U.S. HERstory Has Been Made As Two Female NASA Astronauts Made First-Ever All-Female Spacewalk

His first redirection was onto the football field. Melvin took his near-perfect high school transcript, walked on at the University of Richmond and became a fine wide receiver, good enough to be drafted in the 7th round by the Detroit Lions in 1986. The Lions were good then, and he craved the opportunity to be on the same field as their superstar running back, Barry Sanders. I felt like I had a chance, Melvin recalled, but I injured my leg twice in a short period of time, during camp, and if youre a 7th round draft choice with a blown-out leg, its not going to work out.

Disappointed but armed with vision, determination, and an acute scientific and creative mind, Melvin decided to try something hed never thought about as a kid: becoming an astronaut. In 1989, NASA hired Melvin to work in nondestructive testing, creating optical fiber sensors for measuring damage in aerospace vehicles.Twenty years later, Melvin flew two shuttle missions on Atlantis in 2008 and 2009 as a payload specialist, logging 565 hours in space a little over three weeks. Today, the only American astronaut to ever sign a professional sports contract is the proud owner of the NFL Players Associations Award for Excellence for inspiring academic achievement and excellence among current and former players.

While Melvin, a masterful storyteller, can spend days engrossed in space station stories, he prefers to focus on what happened after he returned to earth. A long-held desire to educate younger people to the mystery and opportunity of space travel, exploration, and research found its vital missing piece: his three-week experience on the International Space Station. By 2010, he was sitting with President Obama, writing federal STEM guidelines, heading up NASAs Education program including Space Camp and turning his love of science, the arts, exploration, and learning into something that helped explode the STEM curriculum. Through it all, he has written books and taken on high-profile projects to emphasize how todays educational tracks are well-poised to deliver tomorrows explorers.

When kids sign up for robotics, or IT, or their STEM classes, and when they play on their mobile devices, theyre doing things that feed right into what we need moving forward on Mars and deep space exploration, Melvin said. They have no problem switching to new programs, apps, technologies when they come out, and they know how to put things together and problem solve difficult challenges. What they could be a part of is the next chapter in our history as human beings.

What often is forgotten about the Apollo years is that, from 1961 to 1969, we went from a seemingly impossible pipe dream of a young, new President to landing on the Moon. While I doubt we will see a government effort like that again, we did put 400,000 people to work on the space program, and we still use technologies today that were developed for those missions. Since only a very few will get the chance to fly to Mars, I like to focus on the STEM students who are literally going to create the next set of new technologies, new ways of doing things. And if they bring in the creative piece, the A in STEAM, their arts piece whatever it may be will give us the story, creative problem-solving, vision, and perspective to help others wrap themselves around future space exploration.

The beat goes on and so do the accolades. Melvin was chosen as an ICON MANN with Quincy Jones, Forrest Whitaker, Steve Harvey, and 24 other men selected for their ability to inspire people of all ages through their vision and commitment to creating positive change throughout the world. He also served on the prestigious International Space Education Board.

My life turned out a lot differently than I imagined, Melvin said. I never thought of being an NFL player, really, but when I was drafted, I definitely thought I had a good chance to make the Lions and have that kind of career. It didnt work out, but because I had a good education and a pretty good idea that I would work in something that combines science and this vision of a better world, I was open to opportunities and I ended up at NASA.

So did the hopes of countless thousands of STEM students and teachers who have been touched by Melvins work throughout this decade, whether or not they know it.

The articleFormer NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin on Prepping the Next Generation for Marsfirstappearedon Innovation & Tech Today.

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Former NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin on Prepping the Next Generation for Mars - Grit Daily