Today’s featured photo from NASA show the Space Station’s crew in an ordinary day of work.

The six-member Expedition 43 crew worked a variety of onboard maintenance tasks, ensuring crew safety and the upkeep of the International Space Station’s hardware. In this image, NASA astronauts Scott Kelly (left) and Terry Virts (right) work on a Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) inside the station’s Japanese Experiment Module.

For just a day or two, it would be so fun to work in weightless conditions.  Not too probable at this stage of my life, however!

 

Fifty four years ago today, on May 5, 1961, a long time before I knew anything about Cinco de Mayo, Mercury Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. blasted off in his Freedom 7 capsule atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket. His 15-minute sub-orbital flight made him the first American in space. 

His flight further fueled my love for space travel that had been building since the Sputnik and Vanguard satellites were launched a few years previously.

 

This in an advertisement from Hyundai, but it has a really cool message. Enjoy!

Forty five years ago today, the embattled crew of Apollo 13 safely returned home. Against great odds, aided by terrific ingenuity from crews on the ground and undoubtedly by divine providence, the Apollo 13 crew survived an oxygen tank explosion and resultant failure of other systems through improvisation, steely dedication and pure grit.  

I was just finishing my junior year of high school when this occurred. Apollo 13 has been an inspiration to me ever since.

 

Photo: Astronauts James Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise are shown soon after their rescue still unshaven and wearing space overalls. 

NASA astronaut Terry Virts, wearing a replica Jackie Robinson jersey in the cupola of the orbiting International Space Station, is celebrating Jackie Robinson Day, April 15, with a weightless baseball.

April 15th (Baseball’s opening day in 1947) has now come to commemorate Jackie Robinson’s memorable career and his place in history as the first black major league baseball player in the modern era. He made history with the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers) and was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Congratulations, Jackie, for your courage!  Thank you, Terry, for a memorable celebration!

I love this photo that dropped into my email box this morning.  According to the NASA News Services:

NASA demonstrated that it can land an unmanned spacecraft on a rugged planetary surface in the pitch dark in a May 28, 2014 free-flight test of the Morpheus prototype lander and Autonomous Landing Hazard Avoidance Technology, or ALHAT. 

Further explanation from NASA:

Project Morpheus tests NASA’s ALHAT and an engine that runs on liquid oxygen and methane, which are green propellants. These new capabilities could be used in future efforts to deliver cargo to planetary surfaces. The landing facility provides the lander with the kind of field necessary for realistic testing, complete with rocks, craters and hazards to avoid. Morpheus’ ALHAT payload allows it to navigate to clear landing sites amidst rocks, craters and other hazards during its descent.

Regardless of how many times I see this photo or ones like it, the view is still awe-inspiring.  To look beyond the moon’s horizon to see our beautiful planet rising in the distance must have been a moving experience for the Apollo astronauts who took the first photos from that perspective.

Thanks, NASA!

Fifty two years ago yesterday, I was sitting in my aunt’s house in Salt Lake City, UT, while John Glenn was orbiting the earth in the Friendship 7 Mercury space capsule. What an exciting, pivotal accomplishment in the history of US space travel!  Thanks to NASA for providing the photo and nostalgic reminder.

The NASA photo of the day shows Neil Armstrong with an X-15 rocket-powered airplane he test-piloted in the early 1960’s, when I was a space-loving little boy.

NASA announced today that the Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA, has renamed the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.

From the NASA Picture of the Day service:

Taking Flight at Cape Canaveral The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Mars-bound spacecraft, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.

I love this photo!