Stepping out on the front porch. Astronaut David Scott opens the hatch to check out the view during Apollo 9, March 1969. In this pic taken by fellow astronaut Rusty Schweickart, ‘Gumdrop’, the Command Service Module is docked with ‘Spider’, the Lunar Module. A9 was the 1st flight incorporating all Apollo spacecraft components. The 10 day mission was the 2nd launched by a Saturn V rocket.
Orbiter Columbia OV-102 had a unique external feature the "SILTS" pod (Shuttle Infrared Leeside Temperature Sensing), it was located on the top of her vertical stabilizer. It was installed after STS-9 (1984) to acquire infrared and other thermal data on the vehicle’s environment. The instruments were removed after several missions but the pod remained.
NASA named a huge moon landmark after a prominent Black mathematician who worked during at the agency the "Hidden Figures" era.
The name of Melba Mouton (1929–1990) will be designated by NASA on a Delaware-size flat moon mountain near the water-rich lunar south pole. The moon's south pole is a target of Artemis program astronauts, who are expected to land as soon as 2025.
The mountain is one of 13 candidate landing sites for Artemis 3, and is adjacent to where the agency's ice-hunting VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) lunar rover will touch down in 2024 or so upon Astrobotic's Griffin lunar lander. It was the VIPER team who proposed Mons Mouton's name, NASA officials stated(opens in new tab) Wednesday (Feb. 15).
Spectacular view of the Space Shuttle ATLANTIS just after launch, heading for space. I know you've seen it many times. There's only one problem with it.
It's upside-down.
Here's how it actually should look.
I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the Shuttle rolls heads-down immediately after liftoff and stays like that for the next six minutes. The heads-down orientation caused less stress on the stack, allowed the crew use the horizon as an attitude reference as they climbed, kept the crew under positive G loads, and provided for better radio communications by giving antennas on the top of the vehicle line-of-sight paths to ground stations.
Past the 6-minute mark, the vehicle is above the thickest part of the atmosphere and rolls heads-up to allow communication through TDRS satellites in orbit.
Still, people keep posting the Shuttle flying heads-up because "it looks better".
March 1, 1924... remembering Donald “Deke” Slayton
Would be 100th birthday for USAF pilot/astronaut Donald "Deke Slayton, selected a NASA astronaut in 1959, USAF Captain Donald Slayton became one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. However centrifuge training electrocardiodiagrams pointed out he had a heart condition, so he became chief of the astronaut office, deciding on crew planning for the Gemini and Apollo programs.
In March 1972, NASA announced that Slayton had returned to flight status and in this way he became DMP - Docking Module Pilot for the historic Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in July 1975.
Wristwatch-wise, Donald Slayton wore a lot of watches (Accutron, Breitling, Bulova, Omega,...) and he was the first of the NASA astronauts to be spotted wearing an Omega Speedmaster CK2998-4 in December 1962. By June 1963, three NASA astronauts (Donald Slayton, Walter Schirra & Leroy Cooper) had a personal Speedmaster CK2298. Although bezelless since June 1963, Slayton kept wearing his Speedmaster CK2298 untill June 1965.
Note in this 1991 portrait, Donald Slayton wore his Gold "Apollo 11" tribute Omega Speedmaster BA 145.022-69 n° 27 chronograph on yellow Gold bracelet awarded in November 1969.
(Photo: Pam Francis portraits)
Edit: if I may add something, I'm not referring to their ground control when I say Spirit and Oppy are controlled by Macbooks. I mean the actual computer brains inside the rovers - as well as those for most of the 1990s-2000s Mars missions - were the same computers that were used in Macbooks. Enjoy!
The Space Shuttle Discovery completes its roll to heading and begins its pitchover maneuver about 30 seconds after liftoff from Pad B of Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39.
Artists Note: It's actually T-Plus 23, but T-Plus 30 was decided on for the painting's title. Discovery is about 5,000 feet AGL, has completed 179 degrees of roll to heading and is pitched over about 20 degrees. The vehicle is gaining altitude at 500 feet per second while accelerating at 1.8g