SPACE reports, “On April 1, NASA announced its brand new infrared space telescope, SPHEREx, has officially opened its eyes to the cosmos as well. This first light, as it’s called, shows that all of the spacecraft’s systems are working just as expected. ‘Based on the images we are seeing, we can now say that the instrument team nailed it,’ Jamie Bock, SPHEREx’s principal investigator at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a statement.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Tag: Captures
NASA Photo Captures Boom’s XB-1 Breaking Sound Barrier
CBS News reports, “A little over a month after a civilian jet broke the sound barrier, Boom Supersonic and NASA have released a photo of one of the aircraft’s historic test flights over the Mojave Desert. The image released Monday shows the XB-1 aircraft, which Boom Supersonic said is the “first civil supersonic jet made in America,” during its second supersonic flight on Feb. 10. The company said it partnered with NASA using a technique known as Schlieren photography to visualize what can’t be seen with the naked eye.”
Full Story (CBS News)
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Stunning View of Big Mars Crater
SPACE reports, “NASA’s Perseverance rover took a break from its Mars mountaineering expedition recently to survey its old stomping grounds. The car-sized Perseverance landed on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) Jezero Crater in February 2021 to hunt for signs of past Mars life and collect dozens of samples for future return to Earth.
Full Story (SPACE)
Perseverance Rover Captures First-Ever Sound of Mars “Dust Devil”
The Washington Post reports that scientists have recorded the sound of a “dust devil” as it made “a direct hit” on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, “peppering the spacecraft with dust and whispering into a microphone that the team had smartly included in their package of instruments. The trove of data coming from the encounter has thrilled scientists, who are keenly aware of the outsize influence Martian dust has on the planet’s climate.”
Full Story (Washington Post)