Nasa

The last time an astronaut in training quit NASA's space program was way back in 1968, and unfortunately, Robb Kulin is now the first in 50 years to do so.34-year-old Kulin, who joined NASA from Elon Musk's Space X, was one of the 12 selected from over 18,000 applicants in 2017. He was previously an ice driller in Antarctica and worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska. NASA said Kulin left for personal reasons, and declined to provide more information due to privacy laws, reports CBS News.Kulin was undergoing a two-year training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston before he abruptly resigned. You can check out his NASA video below on why he decided to be an astronaut. … [Read more...] about Robb Kulin is first NASA astronaut trainee to quit in 50 years

NASA needs to move a launch tower at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mobile launcher is 400 feet (122 meters) tall and weighs 11 million pounds (5 million kilograms). So how do you transport something like that? Very, very slowly.The space agency will call on the power and prowess of its crawler-transporter, a vehicle the size of a baseball infield, to move the tower out from its assembly site over to historic Launch Pad 39B, which hosted the launch of Apollo 10 in 1969.NASA on Wednesday held a live Q&A with crawler-transporter driver Sam Dove, who's preparing to help move the tower on Thursday. The mobile launcher is designed to handle NASA's next-generation Space Launch System rocket.When asked what it takes to become a crawler drive, Dove says, "You have to have an engineering degree." You also need to complete an on-the-job training program. The Kennedy Space Center currently has four certified drivers and four more in training. The crawler, one of two, has been … [Read more...] about NASA’s insane crawler will move an 11-million-pound launch tower

Though it’s still 107 million miles from its target, the New Horizons spacecraft has caught a first glimpse of Ultima Thule, a mysterious Kuiper Belt object. With Pluto now firmly in its rearview mirror, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is steadily chugging towards Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object located, on average, about 44 AU from the Sun (one AU is the average distance of the Earth to the Sun). By comparison, Pluto’s orbit is around 33.63 AU. On August 16, and at a distance of 107 million miles from Ultima Thule, New Horizons used its telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to snap four dozen images. The data was transmitted back to Earth, where NASA scientists, to their delight, managed to create a composite image and discern the dim object from all the background noise produced by stars. Happily, the location of Ultimate Thule, or (486958) 2014 MU69 as it’s officially known, was exactly where NASA scientists had predicted. That means New … [Read more...] about NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Captures Its First Photo of Ultima Thule, Its Next Target

Astronaut candidate Robb Kulin has become the first NASA astronaut-in-training to leave midway through the process in 50 years, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday. According to the AP report, Kulin recently decided to leave his training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center with an effective termination date of Friday. NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean characterized Kulin’s departure to the news agency as for personal reasons that cannot be disclosed due to privacy reasons. There hasn’t been a similar departure of an astronaut from NASA’s training program since 1968. Kulin, who hails from Anchorage, Alaska, holds a master’s degree in materials science and doctorate in engineering. He formerly worked as a senior manager for flight reliability for aeronautics giant SpaceX before he was chosen out of a pool of over 18,300 applicants to become one of the 12 members of NASA’s class of 2017. At SpaceX, he worked on the Falcon 9 rocket expected to … [Read more...] about Astronaut Candidate Is First in 50 Years to Leave Midway Through NASA’s Training Program

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft visited Pluto in 2015 and gave us Earthlings a spectacular look at the dwarf planet. How do you top that? You head deep into the mysterious Kuiper Belt and chase down an even more distant space object. NASA revealed Tuesday that New Horizons has spotted its next target, 2014 MU69, now known by the catchier nickname Ultima Thule. The spacecraft's telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager caught sight of Ultima from over 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) away.The Kuiper Belt is a region of space beyond Neptune's orbit. It's full of small icy objects and comets. New Horizon's field of vision is packed with stars, which makes its ability to locate Ultima Thule all the more remarkable. NASA compiled 48 exposures taken on Aug. 16 into an image showing the Kuiper Belt object as one dot among many others. This information will help guide the mission team as it steers New Horizons toward its history-making rendezvous. New Horizons in … [Read more...] about NASA spacecraft spots enigmatic icy object from crazy far away