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Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

Even the most ambitious plans start with a drawing. Visualizing a distant destination or an ambitious dream is the first step to getting there. For decades, artists working on NASA projects have produced beautiful images that stimulated the imaginations of the people working to make them a reality. 

Some of them offered visualizations of spacecraft that had not yet been built; others imagined what it might look like to stand on planets that had not yet been explored. This week, we look at 10 pieces of conceptual art for our missions before they were launched–along with actual photos taken when those missions arrived at their destinations.

1. Apollo at the Moon

In 1968, an artist with our contractor North American Rockwell illustrated a phase of the Apollo lunar missions, showing the Command and Service Modules over the surface of the Moon. In 1971, an astronaut aboard the Lunar Module during Apollo 15 captured a similar scene in person with a camera.

2. Ready for Landing

This artist’s concept depicts an Apollo Lunar Module firing its descent engine above the lunar surface. At right, a photo from Apollo 12 in 1969 showing the Lunar Module Intrepid, taken by Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon.

3. Man and Machine on the Moon

Carlos Lopez, an artist with Hughes Aircraft Company, created a preview of a Surveyor spacecraft landing for our Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the early 1960s. The robotic Surveyor missions soft landed on the Moon, collecting data and images of the surface in order to ensure a safe arrival for Apollo astronauts a few years later. In the image at right, Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean examines the Surveyor 3 spacecraft during his second excursion on the Moon in November 1969.

4. O Pioneer!

In missions that lived up to their names, we sent the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft to perform the first up-close exploration of the outer solar system. At left, an artist’s imagining of Pioneer passing Jupiter. At right, Pioneer 11’s real view of the king of planets taken in 1974.

5. The Grand Tour

An even more ambitious pair of robotic deep space adventurers followed the Pioneers. Voyager 1 and 2 both visited Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 went on to Uranus and Neptune. Even the most visionary artists couldn’t imagine the exotic and beautiful vistas that the Voyager spacecraft witnessed. These images were taken between 1979 and 1989.

6. Journey to a Giant

Our Cassini spacecraft carried a passenger to the Saturn system: the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe. Huygens was designed to land on Saturn’s planet-sized moon Titan. At left is an artist’s view of Cassini sending the Huygens probe on its way toward Titan, and at right are some actual images of the giant moon from Cassini’s cameras.

7. Titan Unveiled

On Jan. 14, 2005, the Huygens probe descended through Titan’s thick haze and revealed what Titan’s surface looks like for the first time in history. Before the landing, an artist imagined the landscape (left). During the descent, Huygens’ imagers captured the actual view at four different altitudes (center)—look for the channels formed by rivers of liquid hyrdocarbons. Finally, the probe came to rest on a pebble-strewn plain (right).

8. Hazy Skies over Pluto

David Seal rendered this imaginary view from the surface of Pluto, and in the sky above, an early version of the spacecraft that came to be known as our New Horizons. At the time, Pluto was already suspected of having a thin atmosphere. That turned out be true, as seen in this dramatic backlit view of Pluto’s hazy, mountainous horizon captured by one of New Horizons’ cameras in 2015.

9. Dreams on Mars, Wheels on Mars

Long before it landed in Gale Crater, our Curiosity rover was the subject of several artistic imaginings during the years the mission was in development. Now that Curiosity is actually rolling through the Martian desert, it occasionally stops to take a self-portrait with the camera at the end of its robotic arm, which it uses like a selfie stick.

10. The World, Ceres

No one knew exactly what the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt, looked like until our Dawn mission got there. Dawn saw a heavily cratered world—with a few surprises, such as the famous bright spots in Occator crater.

There’s more to come. Today we have carefully created artist impressions of several unexplored destinations in the solar system, including the asteroids Psyche and Bennu, and an object one billion miles past Pluto that’s now called 2014 MU69. 

You can help nickname this object (or objects—there may be two) by submitting your names by Dec. 1. Our New Horizons spacecraft will fly past MU69 on New Year’s Day 2019.

Soon, we’ll once again see how nature compares to our imaginations. It’s almost always stranger and more beautiful than we thought.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

This Week @ NASA

Astronauts conduct a spacewalk on the International Space Station to prepare it for future activities. Peggy Whitson became the new women’s record holder for number of spacewalks and more!

International Space Station

Work continued aboard the International Space Station. Spacewalkers Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson used the station’s robotic arm to move the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 on March 24 to move a module to accommodate U.S. commercial spacecraft carrying astronauts on future missions. They continued this work on March 30. Another spacewalk to complete the work is slated for April.

James Webb Space Telescope

Engineers at our Goddard Space Flight Center Center complete vibration and acoustic tesing on the James Webb Space Telescope, which was subjected to earsplitting noice and shaken 50-100 times per second to simulate the rigors of launch.

MAVEN

Data from our MAVEN, our Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, and published in the journal Science, concludes that solar wind and radiation are responsible for stripping Mars of its atmosphere and turning it into the frigid desert world it is today.

Most of the gas ever in the Red Planet’s atmosphere has been lost to space. The MAVEN team focused on the gas argon, estimating that 65% of it has been stripped from the planet. In 2015, the science team determined that atmospheric gas continues to be lost to space.

STEM Education

We participated in a Women’s History Month celebration and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The program feature NASA astronauts and engineers. The were also projects to get girls interested in sciene, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, education. There was also a screening of the film ‘Hidden Figures,’ which relates the story of African-American female mathematicians who were instrumental in the agency’s efforts to launch humans to space.

NASA App on Fire TV

We’ve released our latest free NASA app on a whole new platform--Amazon Fire TV! The app is already available for Apple TV, iOS, and Android.Viewers can stream NASA TV, access 16,000+, download video and more!

Download the app: www.nasa.gov/nasaapp

What the full episode of This Week @ NASA:

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

[march 26, 2016, 3:51pm] this is the third weekly i’ve ever done, but the first that i really am proud of! thanks to @studyign @studyrose and @studytildawn for inspiring me to start one! :-)

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20 - 27 Agosto/2022

The crash was sudden. Instinct brought him to his feet and took his eyes to the corners, the shadows--all empty. The world sharpened, every sound and movement painted across his senses in sudden vibrant color. Not an explosive. Ever since Ab-Tzenketh that was the first, quivering question his mind asked. Not an explosive. No steps, no voices. The walls were whole, and the silence remained undisturbed save for the quiet scrape of chair as the doctor stood. They stared suspiciously at one another across the stretch of table. “What was that?” Bashir asked finally. “You tell me, Doctor.” “You can’t seriously think it has something to do with me?” Oh, I can, Doctor. But in this case, he didn’t. The taut alertness in the doctor’s body was entirely unfeigned. “No, merely that you have the better hearing.” “It—it came from the kitchen. Sounded like crashing…or falling.” Garak’s fingers found the grip of the disruptor tucked at his hip and pushed through into the kitchen. The room stood as placid as he’d left it, a few dishes sitting innocent on the counter, a half-drunk bottle of kanar decanted and casting a long, still shadow in the moonlight. Room empty. Windows unbroken. Blinds drawn. But something—something is different— The teapot. He found her sprawled, hidden by the bulk of the counter, at the jamb of the backdoor. The door itself lay cracked on its hinges, and, outside, the nightlocusts screeched, grating across the grayscale silence all around. She’d pulled a shelf down as she fell, the ceremonial teapot scattered in jagged crumbs around her. Garak had seen plenty of corpses in his time. After a while, contrary to what most imagined, one grew inured. Eventually the glazed serenity of the eyes, the stiffness of the limbs, the eerie stillness of chest and mouth were mere details to be noted just as one might note height or eye color or symmetry of face. No, the sight of death hadn’t affected him for many years. What he’d never quite grown immune to was the sight of the dying. Shivering agony in the eyes. Fluttering, soundless lips. The clutch of hands…Loral… Every one of her gray hairs was still perfectly in place. It seemed obscene. “Garak? Is everything alright?” The human’s voice was small. “Oh, God. Is she—wait--“ Before Garak could object, the doctor was crouched beside him, finger to Loral’s ashen temple. He took two breaths, brow furrowed, then switched to her wrist. A terrible keening sound. The doctor’s voice transformed, calm and strong in a way Garak wouldn’t have thought possible for one so young. “Loral, listen to me. You may be having a heart attack.” She shook her head in silent terror. Pressed her hand to the center of her chest. “Yes, but it’s alright: I have everything necessary to handle it in the medkit downstairs.” Garak didn’t register what he was saying until the doctor’s urgent, commanding eyes pressed against his. “In the medkit downstairs.” Garak sprang to retrieve it. The medkit he found in the laboratory was Parmak’s, the rugged hide bag with the small stitching of the Hebitian sun on the corner. Garak had bought it when Parmak got his job with the Bureau. A gift. Had he left it here? Had he—

Focus, Elim.

His error didn’t occur to him until he was halfway back up the stairs. The door swept open in the moonlight. The screech of the insects… Damnit, you might as well have handed him the keys to skimmer and drawn him a map to the shuttleport. But, to his relief, the only move the doctor had made was to prop Loral’s back slightly with a tablecloth. He sat beside her talking in low, gentle tones. The boy…hadn’t taken it. As easy an out as he was like to have, and he’d stayed. Perhaps he’d believed that bit about the theta-band detonator after all… Inside he quaked with a terrible mix of adrenaline and gratitude and fear, but the hand that extended the medkit to the doctor was as steady as ever. He looked at it with detached admiration. “Thank you, Doctor.” The human didn’t respond, lost in the medical scanner. A probe’s mistake, Elim. He could hear Tain’s voice, sharp with disgust. Sentiment has dulled your wits. Trying to stay out of the doctor’s way, he sat and took the old woman’s hand. Now’s not the time, Father. The medical scanner beeped worryingly. One didn’t have to be a doctor to recognize the urgency of the alarm. Loral’s eyes lolled in fear. Make yourself useful, for the love of State. You may not be able to handle her heart as the doctor can, but you can handle it in your own way… He forced a light expression. “Loral, if you wanted a day off, all you had to do was ask.”  A tug in her cheeks. Good. “You’re not to die until you’ve finished preparing the cakes for Union Day… and, you know, thinking on it, I haven’t the first clue how to steam those K’r’rausian silk tunics. Imagine! Me on Union Day without my silk tunics, Loral! A true tragedy.” The dry exhale of what might have been a chuckle. “No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to stick around a bit longer, my dear.” For the briefest of seconds, he felt Bashir glance up from the scanner. Their eyes met and something stirred. Deep, from a place he barely recognized. He hoped the doctor saw the same respect reflected back at him.

Excerpt from AlphaCygni's Garashir AU fic "Proof"

Illustration by me, @bleuuughhh-blog

Have this thing!

I find myself doubting my ability to choose an excerpt of the appropriate size and type to best represent this story and the scene I drew for it; not so long that it impedes on AC's delicately built intrigue, nor so short that it's impossible to get one's footing in the text. I doubt my ability to represent this scene well enough not just in my excerpt but also in my artwork: I doubt if it's detailed enough, well enough composed, *legible* enough.

What I don't doubt, however, is the stunning quality of the story from which this scene comes, nor the extent to which I will endorse it and sing its praises. Hats off to you @alphacygni and your phenomenal fic from years ago lol. It's irreparably changed my brain chemistry and my standard for both romances and tragedies alike. I hope you don't mind the continuous art posts and tags because I definitely have more scenes to create and share!

Anyone feel free to ask me for Garashir scribbles BTW. I do art for a living and doing dumb lil doodles helps me relax and sometimes get out of artist's block. Still exploring and learning in this absolutely wonderful fandom 💕

Click the first image to see the hairs on Bashir's lil head better

It’s Whiskey Wednesday.

Anyone else need a glass to help them finish off the week? 

What will you be drinking?

Paleo Weekly Menu Plan

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea