Science

A video recap of the top events at NASA this past week including three new flight directors at Mission Control in Houston, the latest on micro-gravity experiments aboard the ISS, Lifetime achievement awards for the Mars Rovers and more.

Ashwin Vasavada the Deputy Project Scientist from the NASA’s Jet Propulsions Laboratory talks about how NASA’s next Mars Rover Curiosity on how it gets it power.

During the three-year trek of NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, rover planners captured a horizon photograph at the end of each drive. 309 images taken during the 13-mile journey appear in this video. Video courtesy NASA JPL.

Scientists from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario (UWO) have partnered with researchers from the NASA Lunar Science Institute to study crater ejecta – the debris that is launched out of a crater during meteor impacts. They have developed a new theory, which will help future scientists when they examine samples of crater ejecta returned from the Moon, asteroids and terrestrial planets.

One of NASA’s goals is to send astronauts to an asteroid in the future, something that’s never been done. While the hardware is being built, namely the Orion Multi-Purpose Crewed Vehicle that will take the astronauts to an asteroid, a more immediate concern is training astronauts on how to work on the asteroid once they get there. NASA’s NEEMO 15 mission is just one of …

Canada’s two newest astronauts, Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques, have now completed their two year basic training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

This morning at 11:24 a.m. EDT an Atlas V will launch NASA’s Juno spacecraft on a five year voyage to the gas giant Jupiter to learn more about its magnetic fields. SpaceRef’s Randy Attwood was on the CBC to explain the mission.

At 5:57:54 a.m EDT the orbiter Atlantis came to a wheels stop at the Kennedy Space Center runway 15 marking the end of the Space Shuttle era.

Early Tuesday morning Atlantis undocked from the International Space Station, the last time an orbiter will do that. On Thursday morning at 5:56 a.m EDT Atlantis will land at the Kennedy Space Center marking the end of an era, the Space Shuttle era.

On July 6th The US House Appropriations Committee released the fiscal year 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill which includes NASA funding. Under the Science budget line item was the note “The bill terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management.” If the James Webb Space Telescope funding were to be terminated it …