July 21, 2014 - High-Energy Mission

High-Energy Mission The STS-93 mission, launched fifteen years ago this week with Eileen Collins at the helm, was the first shuttle mission commanded by a woman. During the five-day mission, the crew of Columbia deployed the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, one of NASA’s four Great Observatories. This image, combining data from Chandra and Hubble, shows N49, the aftermath of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud. High-energy X-ray data from Chandra, shown in blue, reveals evidence for a bullet-shaped object (at bottom) being blown out of a debris field left over from an exploded star. Optical data from Hubble (yellow and purple) shows bright filaments where the shock wave generated by the supernova is interacting with the densest regions in nearby clouds of cool, molecular gas.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / Penn State / S.Park et al; Optical: NASA / STScI / UIUC / Y.H.Chu & R.Williams et al

Weekly Calendar

July 21-27, 2014

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

 

Monday 21

Saturn appears stationary

1961: Liberty Bell 7 suborbital flight; capsule sinks in Atlantic Ocean
1969: Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle lifts off from Moon

Tuesday 22

Uranus appears stationary

1784: Friedrich Bessel born
1994: Last fragment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts Jupiter

Wednesday 23

1972: Landsat 1 launched
1999: STS-93 Columbia launched, deploys Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Thursday 24

Venus 4° north of Moon
Jupiter in conjunction with Sun

1950: First rocket launched from Cape Canaveral
1969: Apollo 11 crew returns to Earth
1975: Apollo-Soyuz crew returns to Earth, last US splashdown
2009: Canaries Great Telescope dedicated

Friday 25

1978: Viking 2 orbiter ceases operation
1984: Svetlana Savitskaya becomes first woman to walk in space
2000: Zvezda Service Module docks with International Space Station

Saturday 26

New Moon 6:42 PM ET

1958: Explorer IV launched
1971: Apollo 15 launched, fourth lunar landing mission, first mission to use lunar rover
2005: STS-114 Discovery launched

Sunday 27

Moon at apogee