Apollo 11 was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56...
Seems like Mount Meeker is posing a challenge for
Perseverance's coring drill. This timelapse from yesterday shows the rover is trying to drill into the rock, but the drill assembly appears to slip away.
Power to the Voyager spacecraft!
Over the 45.6 years since launch, Voyager instruments have gradually been shut off as power from the RTG has reduced.
It is almost time for Voyager 2 to shut off another instrument, but #NASA engineers have found a way to keep it going for another 2-3 years. A voltage regulator circuit, that keeps the voltage within limits, will be shut off instead.
See graphic below for Voyager power levels and instrument status. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-will-do-more-science-with-new-power-strategy #Voyager#Space
1/n
#Ingenuity is flying #Flight65 AND 😯 #Flight66. That's right, two flights one after the other, the first today (in about 15 minutes), and the second on Thursday.
They are both short distance flights to reposition the heli, one 7m to the west, and the other 0.5m to the south. Can't even guess why those would be necessary 🤔. Feel free to speculate 😀
What's really exciting about the drive down the slope of the Neretva riverbank is that at some point along the way, maybe within a week or two from now, the rover will be visible by #Ingenuity's RTE camera, at the top right corner of an RTE image, as seen in this graphic by @stim3on where I marked a possible appearance with "future Perseverance".
While Mars is now out of occultation, the signal coming from there is apparently still noisy. 5 out of 6 images captured earlier tosol and received a few moments ago, still show problems:
Trying to get all of the website access that I need before the government shuts down so that I can continue to work on my essential project of certifying spacecraft to carry humans after the government shuts down. 🤦♀️
I'm testing a new tool that helps do quick trips back in time and see the future in fresh images of that past sol 🤔 😀. It makes it easy to show future places from what was 'present' at that time, by searching through the whole database of (checks numbers) 484,569 images.
Here is one from April 26 of 2022, showing June 30 of 2023. We were all one year younger back then 🥴.
NASA’s pioneering Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment will be the first demonstration of laser, or optical, communications from as far away as Mars.
This Memorial Day added an interesting twist to the daily grind of #Perseverance 🙂 Not only did it clear the rest of the rego-ripples it had to the north, but took advantage of the holiday to go on a picnic at a nice hill to the northeast 😀 🙃. Apparently the hill has a geological story to tell and the team's geologists are eager to hear it.
The Perseverance rover captured this scenic panorama a week ago on the afternoon of Sol 999 with the left Navigation camera.
In front of the rover lies Neretva Vallis and the Jezero Crater Rim where the mission is heading to in the future.
The first images from #Perseverance after the Mars solar occultation reached Earth today, Nov 27, 2023 at 07:37:23 UTC. The communication hiatus caused by the occultation lasted 13 days, 16 hours, and 11 minutes. Current separation between Earth and Sun, as seen from the surface of Mars, is approximately 1° 35'.
Along with the HELI_NAV images we saw the other day (https://mastodon.social/@65dBnoise/111823678117141860) #Ingenuity also captured a series of early morning HELI_RTE images, showing the damaged blade shadow procession as the sun rose in the Martian sky.
Notice the slight change in focus and the moving reflection.
14 processed, undistorted, leveled images captured from RMC 72.0001/0
Sol 1043, LMST: 06:06:22
• It invented a Mars Helicopter Scout program that doesn't exist
• It accepted as fact my statement that Ingenuity can fly as high as 50m
• It then detected I was contrdicting myself and making things up, but gave an old max altitude of 10m (it's 18m)
• It deactivated the account
On Sol 1100 #Perseverance drove 33m to a new location, 18m WSW, apparently trying to avoid a sandy patch south of the rocky top in front of it. It's now 373m away from #Ingenuity, but the #MarsHelicopter is still not in view.
Map follows.
Processed, undistorted, leveled, cropped NAVCAM_LEFT mosaic
looking from RMC 51.0644
Sol 1100, LMST: 15:52:25
Buzz Aldrin on the 54th Anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 (i.redd.it)
Apollo 11 was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56...
Scientists Want to Melt the Moon to Make Lunar Roads (www.syfy.com)
Dozens of lunar-landing missions are in the works, so we might need a way to manage Moon traffic. See how we're planning on building Moon roads.