Highlighting our upcoming launch of astronauts
from Florida …
Some news about our Moon to Mars effort …
And our Mars helicopter has a new name … a
few of the stories to tell you about – This
Week at NASA!
May 27 is the date NASA and SpaceX are targeting
for the return of human spaceflight launches
from American soil.
The historic mission known as Demo-2, which
will send our Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley
to the International Space Station, was highlighted
during a series of news conferences on May
1.
“Launching again on an American rocket from
the Florida coast, and generations of people
who maybe didn’t get a chance to see a space
shuttle launch, getting a chance again to
see human spaceflight in our own back yard,
if you will is pretty exciting to be a part
of.”
“It’s been a long eight-and-a-half or
nine years in a lot of ways for the folks
that have worked on this program, and then
the fact that we didn’t have capability
to go to space station from the United States,
and so once again, I think Bob and I are very
humbled to be in this position in order to
do that soon.”
It will be the first flight test of SpaceX’s
Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts
aboard.
This past week, we announced that three U.S.
companies – SpaceX, Dynetics, and Blue Origin
– have been selected to develop modern human
landing systems for our Artemis program.
Artemis will carry the first woman and next
man to the surface of the Moon by 2024, and
develop sustainable lunar exploration.
We will use the experience gained on and around
the Moon to prepare for eventual human exploration
of Mars.
The helicopter for our Mars 2020 Perseverance
rover mission has a new name – Ingenuity.
Alabama high school student Vaneeza Rupani
submitted the name as part of NASA’s "Name
the Rover" essay contest.
Her winning essay was among 28,000 submitted
from every U.S. state and territory.
Ingenuity is an experimental aircraft that
could help add an aerial component to future
Mars exploration missions.
A large near-Earth asteroid, called 1998 OR2,
safely passed by Earth April 29, giving astronomers
an opportunity to study the 1.5-mile-wide
object in great detail.
When it passed Earth, 1998 OR2 was more than
16 times farther away from us than our Moon.
Our Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking program discovered
the asteroid in July 1998, and astronomers
have been tracking it for the past two decades.
That’s what’s up this week @NASA …
For more on these and other stories, follow
us on the web at nasa.gov/twan.
