One Step Closer To Space: Touch the Sun, NASA’s Mars Mission, Galaxies Merging
Nexter.org prepared a list of weekly news connecting with space exploring you might have missed.
Touch the Sun
NASA’ released a promotional video starring William Shatner who played Captain Kirk on the 1960s iconic television series “Star Trek”. In the video Shatner speaks about NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission, which this summer will launch a spacecraft on an unprecedented journey to “touch the sun.”
No one will actually be aboard the car-sized craft. But it will carry a microchip bearing Shatner’s name and, as the actor says in the video, “the names of everyone who wants to join this mission of extreme discovery.”
More than 200,000 names have been submitted so far, Hill told CNN. If you’d like to send your name to the sun, be sure to do so before the April 27 deadline.
Kepler’s dying
Kepler Space Telescope mission may be coming to an end after nearly a decade as the spacecraft is out of fuel.
The engineers claim it has gar only for few months and when this runs out, the spacecraft will no longer be able to collect data or transmit it to Earth.
NASA’s Kepler has been peering deep into the Milky Way galaxy and has spotted over 2,500 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars, and over 2,500 more possible worlds are waiting to be confirmed.
Source: NASA
Galaxies merging
Hubble Space Telescope spotted the beautiful moment of two galactic located about 350 million light-years away that have just started to merge into one – the process when galactic are dying.
“This image suspends them in a single moment, freezing the chaotic spray of gas, dust, and stars kicked up by the gravitational forces pulling the two galaxies together,” the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement.
One day, our Milky Way galaxy will also merge with the Andromeda galaxy. That galactic crash is expected to happen in about 4 billion years.
Source: ESA/Hubble, NASA
Mars 2020 mission
NASA begins Mars 2020 spacecraft pre-launch phase that includes the final assembly and electrical integration of flight hardware into the spacecraft’s rocket-powered “sky crane” descent stage, Mars rover, cruise stage, and aeroshell.
The aim of the mission is to visit and study areas that were once habitable and collect and analyze soil and rock samples for chemical biosignatures.
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
See also:
- What Happens To Your Body In Space: DNA Changing and 5 Other Important Things
- What’s Up Elon: Who is Musk’s Inspiration Person, First people on Mars and Big Falcon Rocket 2019 Launch
- 4 TOP Reasons “Lost in Space” Reboot Will Be a Success – The Robot Is Here Too
