| In this week’s newsletter, meet NASA’s 10 new astronaut candidates; discover the new online tool helping communities across the nation foresee and prepare for what follows after a wildfire; and explore ways to participate in International Observe the Moon Night on Oct. 4. Plus, more stories you might have missed. |
| HUMANS IN SPACE Meet NASA’s New Astronaut Candidates  |
| NASA’s 10 new astronaut candidates were introduced Monday following a competitive selection process of more than 8,000 applicants from across the United States. The class will now complete nearly two years of training before becoming eligible for flight assignments supporting future science and exploration missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. The candidates reported for duty at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in mid-September and immediately began their training. Their curriculum includes instruction and skills development in robotics, land and water survival, geology, foreign language, space medicine and physiology, and more, while also conducting simulated spacewalks and flying high-performance jets THE 24TH ASTRONAUT CLASS |
 | PODCAST Houston We Have a Podcast In the latest episode of Houston We Have a Podcast, NASA’s new class of astronaut candidates share a little about themselves while playing the “desert island game.” LISTEN |
| THE SOLAR SYSTEM Observe the Moon Saturday, Oct. 4, is International Observe the Moon Night, a time to come together with fellow Moon enthusiasts and curious people worldwide. Everyone is invited to learn about lunar science and exploration, take part in celestial observations, and honor cultural and personal connections to the Moon. WAYS TO PARTICIPATE |  |
 EARTH A Glimpse of Things to Come The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Earth-observing radar satellite’s first images of our planet’s surface are in, and they offer a glimpse of things to come as the joint mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation approaches full science operations later this year. Images from the spacecraft display the level of detail with which NISAR scans Earth to provide unique, actionable information to decision-makers in a diverse range of areas, including disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and agricultural management. LEARN MORE |  THE UNIVERSE Stars, Gas and Cosmic Dust The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a colorful array of massive stars and glowing cosmic dust in the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, the most massive and active star-forming region in our Milky Way galaxy. Sagittarius B2 is located only a few hundred light-years from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy called Sagittarius A*, a region densely packed with stars, star-forming clouds, and complex magnetic fields. The infrared light that Webb detects is able to pass through some of the area’s thick clouds to reveal young stars and the warm dust surrounding them. LEARN MORE |
| More NASA News |
 | The twin ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft are back in Florida in preparation for launch this fall. The two spacecraft are destined to orbit Mars, where they will study the structure of the Martian magnetic field, how it interacts with space weather, and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape. |
 | When wildfires scorch a landscape, the flames are just the beginning. Using a new online tool called HydroFlame, NASA is helping communities across the nation foresee and prepare for what can follow: mudslides, flash flooding, and contaminated surface water supplies. |
 | On Wednesday, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched three new missions to investigate the Sun’s influence across the solar system. NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 spacecraft, will study the Sun and its energy. |
| ARTEMIS Orion Gets a Name On Wednesday, the crew of Artemis II officially named their Orion spacecraft Integrity. The name embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor, and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners, and dreamers required for mission success. Integrity is also a nod to the extensive integrated effort—from the more than 300,000 spacecraft components to the thousands of people across the world—that must come together to venture to the Moon and back. MISSION UPDATES |  |
| Do You Know? |
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| Friday marks the third anniversary of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos. Data from this mission demonstrated the ability to change an asteroid’s path by hitting it with a spacecraft—a valuable finding that could be used to protect Earth in the case of an asteroid impact threat. But DART was not the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid. |
| Which of the following missions was the first? A. Deep Impact B. Galileo C. Voyager 1 D. NEAR Shoemaker |
| Find out the answer in next week’s NASA newsletter! |
 | Last week, we asked which piece of equipment you would not have found in the survival kits for NASA’s early human spaceflight missions in the 1960s. The answer? An emergency blanket, sometimes also known as a space blanket. The thin, shiny material used for emergency blankets was developed by NASA in the early 1960s to protect spacecraft and astronauts from the harsh temperature extremes of space, but it wasn’t until 1970 that the reflective emergency blankets were first included in a crew survival kit. Shark repellent was part of the agency’s early survival kits but was minimally effective at best and eventually phased out. |
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| Do you have a telescope? Would you like to see some of the same night sky objects from the ground that Hubble has seen from space? We invite you to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 35th anniversary by accepting our yearlong stargazing challenge! New challenge objects will be featured weekly. This week’s object is the Saturn Nebula, Caldwell 55, located about 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1782, Caldwell 55 holds a dying star at its heart. As this star exhausted its nuclear fuel, it swelled and shed its outer layers, leaving behind the star’s hot core, a white dwarf, and the colorful kaleidoscope of clouds surrounding it. In smaller telescopes, Caldwell 55 looks like a star, but larger telescopes reveal more detail, including two extended lobes on either side of the nebula that resemble Saturn’s rings, giving the nebula its nickname. Using high magnification along with averted vision (looking away from the center of the object) provides the best views of the nebula’s fainter exterior region. JOIN THE CELEBRATION |
NOTE: This is a NASA publication. Used with permission and formatted to fit this screen,
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