our newest mission to Mars is on its way
Vice President Pence visits our Jet Propulsion Laboratory
and observing our
planet's ever-changing water cycle
a few of the stories to tell you about this
week at NASA
Liftoff of the Atlas V ...
our InSight mission to Mars
launched May 5th from California's
Vandenberg Air Force Base.  Set to land on
Mars in November,  InSight will be the
first mission ever to probe deep beneath
the surface of Mars
to learn more about how all rocky
planets and cosmic bodies including
Earth and its Moon first formed.
Also making the trip is the first of its kind
deep space technology experiment that
will use a pair of CubeSats to test new
communications and navigation
capabilities for future missions and may
even aid communications for the InSight mission.
Following the launch our new
administrator Jim Bridenstine called to
congratulate the InSight team for a job
well done
"This is a big day.  We're going
back to Mars.  We did it from the West
Coast which is a first ever.
This is an extraordinary mission with a whole host
of firsts.  It's important for our country,
It's also important for the world, and it
really establishes  American
leadership in a lot of ways
Vice President Mike Pence and his family got
a first-hand look at InSight's former
home on Earth -- our Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California, during
a tour on April 28th.  During a stop at
the center's mission control, the Vice
President's daughter,  Charlotte sent a
command to the Mars Curiosity rover 80
million miles away. Other tour stops
included JPL's Mars yard and a building
where hardware for the next Mars rover,
Mars 2020, is coming together.
The Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment Follow-On, or GRACE-FO, mission is gearing up for a launch May 19th from
California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.
The mission's pair of new spacecraft will
observe our planet's ever-changing water
cycle, ice sheets, and crust continuing
the work of the first GRACE mission
which ended 15 years of operations in 2017
On May 2, we announced the successful demonstration of a new nuclear reactor power system
designed for space. The prototype for the Kilopower
Reactor Using Stirling Technology
experiment converts heat from a reactor
core into electricity and could
potentially produce enough electrical
power to enable long-duration crewed
missions to the moon Mars and
destinations beyond. The experiment was
conducted in collaboration with the
Department of Energy from November 2017 through March 2018.
our Galileo mission ended in 2003  but newly resurrected
data from the missions first flyby of
Jupiter's moon Ganymede show that plasma rain impacts the moon's icy surface and
strong flows of plasma are pushed
between Jupiter and Ganymede due to an
explosive magnetic event occurring
between the two bodies magnetic
environments. Scientists think these
observations could be key to unlocking
the secrets of Ganymede such as why
Aurora s on the moon are so bright
that's what's up This Week @NASA.
For more on these and other stories
follow us on the web at nasa.gov/twan
