Fall Vibes 🧡🍂 🐱 🍂🧡

Fall vibes 🧡🍂 🐱 🍂🧡

Guy Bluford Changed the Course of Space History

On Aug. 30, 1983, Guion Bluford, better known as Guy, became the first African American to fly to space. An accomplished jet pilot and aerospace engineer, Bluford became part of NASA’s 1978 astronaut class that included the first African American, the first Asian American, and the first women astronauts.

He and the other crew members of mission STS-8 were aboard the orbiter Challenger as it lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida; it was the first nighttime launch and landing of the Space Shuttle program. While aboard, he and the other crew members deployed the Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1B), operated a Canadian-built robot arm, conducted experiments with live cell samples, and participated in studies measuring the effects of spaceflight on humans.

Guy Bluford chased his childhood dream of becoming an aerospace engineer, and in doing so, changed history and encouraged other Black astronauts to follow in his footsteps.

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misscounterfactual

1 year ago

NASA Inspires Your Crafty Creations for World Embroidery Day

It’s amazing what you can do with a little needle and thread! For #WorldEmbroideryDay, we asked what NASA imagery inspired you. You responded with a variety of embroidered creations, highlighting our different areas of study.

Here’s what we found:

Webb’s Carina Nebula

hThis embroidered image shows the Carina Nebula captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The image is framed in black. At the center a circular piece of art appears outlined in white. At the top of the circle, the thread is dark blue on the left. As you travel down white stars appear in lighter shades of blue. In the middle threads turn to dark black, red and orange to signify the nebula’s gas-like structure.

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, created this embroidered piece inspired by Webb’s Carina Nebula image. Captured in infrared light, this image revealed for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Credit: Wendy Edwards, NASA. Pattern credit: Clare Bray, Climbing Goat Designs

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, first learned cross stitch in middle school where she had to pick rotating electives and cross stitch/embroidery was one of the options. “When I look up to the stars and think about how incredibly, incomprehensibly big it is out there in the universe, I’m reminded that the universe isn’t ‘out there’ at all. We’re in it,” she said. Her latest piece focused on Webb’s image release of the Carina Nebula. The image showcased the telescope’s ability to peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form.

Ocean Color Imagery: Exploring the North Caspian Sea

This image shows an embroidery piece inspired by NASA imagery. The background is white. In the middle, a brown frame appears holding an illustration of the Caspian Sea. To the bottom left, blue, green and light green sea appears showing water moving. To the top right, ice gouges are designed in brown and white.

Danielle Currie of Satellite Stitches created a piece inspired by the Caspian Sea, taken by NASA’s ocean color satellites. Credit: Danielle Currie/Satellite Stitches

Danielle Currie is an environmental professional who resides in New Brunswick, Canada. She began embroidering at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as a hobby to take her mind off the stress of the unknown. Danielle’s piece is titled “46.69, 50.43,” named after the coordinates of the area of the northern Caspian Sea captured by LandSat8 in 2019.

This is an image of the Caspian Sea. To the left, light green and dark green swirls appear in the water. To the right, ice gouges appear in white and light brown. Credit: NASA

An image of the Caspian Sea captured by Landsat 8 in 2019. Credit: NASA

Two Hubble Images of the Pillars of Creation, 1995 and 2015

This embroidery piece shows the Pillars of Creation inspired by the Hubble Telescope. The design is on a vintage embroidery frame (circa 1905) with brown yarn on each side. In the middle a white tapestry shows the galaxy. There are three towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas sitting at the center of the piece, colored in red and white. On the outside, space is blue with stars bursting in red colors. Credit: Melissa Cole, Star Stuff Stitching

Melissa Cole of Star Stuff Stitching created an embroidery piece based on the Hubble image Pillars of Creation released in 1995. Credit: Melissa Cole, Star Stuff Stitching

Melissa Cole is an award-winning fiber artist from Philadelphia, PA, USA, inspired by the beauty and vastness of the universe. They began creating their own cross stitch patterns at 14, while living with their grandparents in rural Michigan, using colored pencils and graph paper. The Pillars of Creation (Eagle Nebula, M16), released by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 when Melissa was just 11 years old, captured the imagination of a young person in a rural, religious setting, with limited access to science education.

This artistic piece shows two images of the Pillars of Creation captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. To the left, the circular art piece is on a brown background. The nebula is blue and navy with small white stitches showing stars. In the center, there are three pillars that appear colored in dark red, yellow and light green. The pillars look like arches and spires rising out of a desert landscape, but are filled with semi-transparent gas and dust, and ever changing. To the right is a closeup of one of the pillars. The image is colored in red, yellow and brown thread, felt and wool. In the middle, blue wool appears showing space. A white star appears in the upper left. Credit: Lauren Wright Vartanian, Neurons and Nebulas

Lauren Wright Vartanian of the shop Neurons and Nebulas created this piece inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2015 25th anniversary re-capture of the Pillars of Creation. Credit: Lauren Wright Vartanian, Neurons and Nebulas

Lauren Wright Vartanian of Guelph, Ontario Canada considers herself a huge space nerd. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who took up hand sewing after the birth of her daughter. She’s currently working on the illustrations for a science themed alphabet book, made entirely out of textile art. It is being published by Firefly Books and comes out in the fall of 2024. Lauren said she was enamored by the original Pillars image released by Hubble in 1995. When Hubble released a higher resolution capture in 2015, she fell in love even further! This is her tribute to those well-known images.

James Webb Telescope Captures Pillars of Creation

This rectangular piece shows another embroidered interpretation of the Pillars of Creation captured by the Webb Telescope last year. The background is blue and black with white stars scattered from top to bottom. In the middle, three pillars appear in colors of red and yellow. The pillars, which lean to the right, continue downward to the left of the art piece. Credit: Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art, created a rectangular version of Webb’s Pillars of Creation. Credit: Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art

Darci Lenker of Norman, Oklahoma started embroidery in college more than 20 years ago, but mainly only used it as an embellishment for her other fiber works. In 2015, she started a daily embroidery project where she planned to do one one-inch circle of embroidery every day for a year. She did a collection of miniature thread painted galaxies and nebulas for Science Museum Oklahoma in 2019. Lenker said she had previously embroidered the Hubble Telescope’s image of Pillars of Creation and was excited to see the new Webb Telescope image of the same thing. Lenker could not wait to stitch the same piece with bolder, more vivid colors.

Milky Way

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art was inspired by NASA’s imaging of the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: Darci Lenker

In this piece, Lenker became inspired by the Milky Way Galaxy, which is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. The Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur.

The Cosmic Microwave Background

This image shows an embroidery design based on the cosmic microwave background, created by Jessica Campbell, who runs Astrostitches. Inside a tan wooden frame, a colorful oval is stitched onto a black background in shades of blue, green, yellow, and a little bit of red. Credit: Jessica Campbell/ Astrostitches

Jessica Campbell obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto studying interstellar dust and magnetic fields in the Milky Way Galaxy. Jessica promptly taught herself how to cross-stitch in March 2020 and has since enjoyed turning astronomical observations into realistic cross-stitches. Her piece was inspired by the cosmic microwave background, which displays the oldest light in the universe.

This image shows the oldest light in the universe, the cosmic microwave background, captured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, also known as WMAP. At the center of the image is a colorful oval that is speckled with the seeds of galaxies, which appear as blobs of dark blue, light blue, green, yellow, and a little bit of red.

The full-sky image of the temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) in the cosmic microwave background, made from nine years of WMAP observations. These are the seeds of galaxies, from a time when the universe was under 400,000 years old. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

GISSTEMP: NASA’s Yearly Temperature Release

This image shows an embroidered art piece based on NASA’s yearly temperature release. To the bottom left, two fingers hold up the circular piece. A round wooden frame holds it in place. In the center, a map appears of the different content. It’s outlined in black. Most of the map is covered in yellow stitching to show a warming pattern. To the left and right, the stitches change to an orange color and are scattered on the map. In the top left- and right-hand corners, the color changes to a dark red to signify another temperature change.

Katy Mersmann, a NASA social media specialist, created this embroidered piece based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global annual temperature record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Credit: Katy Mersmann, NASA

Katy Mersmann is a social media specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She started embroidering when she was in graduate school. Many of her pieces are inspired by her work as a communicator. With climate data in particular, she was inspired by the researchers who are doing the work to understand how the planet is changing. The GISTEMP piece above is based on a data visualization of 2020 global temperature anomalies, still currently tied for the warmest year on record.

In addition to embroidery, NASA continues to inspire art in all forms. Check out other creative takes with Landsat Crafts and the James Webb Space telescope public art gallery.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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misscounterfactual

2 months ago

Arches National Park, Utah photo: Elliot McGucken

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misscounterfactual

1 year ago

Brings back childhood memories of studying NASA concept art for my Space Lego projects

Behold—the space station of the future! (…from 1973)

An artist's concept illustrating a cutaway view of the Skylab 1 Orbital Workshop (OWS). The OWS is a circular space with several vertical layers with floors that look like golden honeycombs. Different parts of the workshop are labeled, like the control and display panel where an astronaut in an orange jumpsuit works, film vaults, experiment support system, and the shower. Credit: NASA

This artist’s concept gives a cutaway view of the Skylab orbital workshop, which launched 50 years ago on May 14, 1973. Established in 1970, the Skylab Program's goals were to enrich our scientific knowledge of Earth, the sun, the stars, and cosmic space; to study the effects of weightlessness on living organisms; to study the effects of the processing and manufacturing of materials in the absence of gravity; and to conduct Earth-resource observations.

Three crews visited Skylab and carried out 270 scientific and technical investigations in the fields of physics, astronomy, and biological sciences. They also proved that humans could live and work in outer space for extended periods of time, laying the groundwork for the International Space Station.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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misscounterfactual

1 year ago

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The body of the rocket is orange, and it has two white boosters and a white spacecraft sitting on top. As the boosters ignite, they illuminate the launch pad, the water towers, and the lightning towers. The night sky is black in the background. Credits: NASA/Keegan Barber

Moonbound: One Year Since Artemis I

On this day last year, the Artemis I rocket and spacecraft lit up the sky and embarked on the revolutionary mission to the Moon and back. The first integrated flight test of the rocket and spacecraft continued for 25.5 days, validating NASA’s deep exploration systems and setting the stage for humanity’s return to the lunar surface.

On Nov. 16, 2022, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket met or exceeded all expectations during its debut launch on Artemis I. The twin solid rocket booster motors responsible for producing more than 7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff reached their performance target, helping SLS and the Orion spacecraft reach a speed of about 4,000 mph in just over two minutes before the boosters separated.

The interior of the Orion spacecraft, bathed in a soft blue light. The back of Commander Moonikin Campos’ head can be seen from behind the commander’s seat. He is wearing an orange Orion Crew Survival System spacesuit and is facing the display of the Callisto payload, Lockheed Martin’s technology demonstration in collaboration with Amazon and Cisco. A Snoopy doll can be seen floating in the background. Credit: NASA

Quite a few payloads caught a ride aboard the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission: In addition to a number of small scientific satellites called CubeSats, a manikin named Commander Moonikin Campos sat in the commander’s seat. A Snoopy doll served as a zero-gravity indicator — something that floats inside the spacecraft to demonstrate microgravity.

On flight day 13 of the Artemis I mission, Orion captured this view of Earth and the Moon on either sides of one of the spacecraft’s four solar arrays. The spacecraft is white and gray and stands out against the blackness of space. Credit: NASA

During the mission, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles from our home planet, more than 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station orbits Earth. This surpassed the record for distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans, previously set during Apollo 13.

After splashing down at 12:40 p.m. EST on Dec. 11, 2022, U.S. Navy divers help recover the Orion Spacecraft for the Artemis I mission. NASA, the Navy and other Department of Defense partners worked together to secure the spacecraft inside the well deck of USS Portland approximately five hours after Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

The Orion spacecraft arrived back home to planet Earth on Dec. 11, 2022. During re-entry, Orion endured temperatures about half as hot as the surface of the Sun at about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Within about 20 minutes, Orion slowed from nearly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for its parachute-assisted splashdown.

Inside the Multi-Payload Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers and technicians opened the hatch of the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission after a 1.4-million mile journey beyond the Moon and back. Technicians extracted nine avionics boxes from the Orion, which will subsequently be refurbished for Artemis II, the first mission with astronauts. Contents include a video processing unit, GPS receiver, four crew module phased array antennas, and three Orion inertial measurement units. Credit: NASA

Recovery teams successfully retrieved the spacecraft and delivered it back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for de-servicing operations, which included removing the payloads (like Snoopy and Commander Moonikin Campos) and analyzing the heat shield.

Artemis II astronauts, from left, NASA astronaut Victor Glover (left), CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman stand on the crew access arm of the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as part of an integrated ground systems test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 20. The test ensures the ground systems team is ready to support the crew timeline on launch day. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

With the Artemis I mission under our belt, we look ahead to Artemis II — our first crewed mission to the Moon in over 50 years. Four astronauts will fly around the Moon inside Orion, practicing piloting the spacecraft and validating the spacecraft’s life support systems. The Artemis II crew includes: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

As we look ahead to Artemis II, we build upon the incredible success of the Artemis I mission and recognize the hard work and achievements of the entire Artemis team. Go Artemis!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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misscounterfactual

2 years ago