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