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A critical milestone for commercial crew …

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Resupply spacecraft delivers to the space
station …

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And a new wide-eyed view of the southern sky
… a few of the stories to tell you about

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– This Week at NASA!

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On Nov. 4, our commercial partner Boeing successfully
completed its first flight test with its CST-100

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Starliner, as part of NASA’s Commercial
Crew Program.

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The Pad Abort Test at the U.S. Army’s White
Sands Missile Range in New Mexico was a critical

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safety milestone, designed to verify that
each of Starliner’s systems will function

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not only separately, but also together, to
carry astronauts safely away from the launch

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pad in the unlikely event of an emergency
prior to liftoff.

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With Boeing and SpaceX, our other commercial
crew partner, we are working to return human

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spaceflight launches to the International
Space Station from American soil.

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In the early hours of Nov. 4, our commercial
resupply services partner, Northrop Grumman’s

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Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived at the International
Space Station, two days after launching from

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our Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

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The unpiloted Cygnus – loaded with about
8,200 pounds of research, crew supplies, and

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hardware – was captured by our Jessica Meir
and Christina Koch controlling the Canadarm2

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robotic arm from inside the station.

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The Cygnus was later attached to the station
through commands sent by ground controllers.

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This new mosaic of the southern sky was stitched
together with 208 images taken by our Transiting

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Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS during
its first year of science operations – which

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it completed in July 2019.

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The mission divided the southern sky into
13 sectors, and imaged each sector for nearly

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a month.

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Some notable objects visible in the image
include the Milky Way – our home galaxy,

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which is seen edgewise on the left, the Orion
Nebula, seen near the top, and near the center

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is the Large Magellanic Cloud – a nearby
galaxy located about 163,000 light-years from

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Earth.

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TESS also discovered 29 exoplanets, or worlds
beyond our solar system in this scene, and

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more than 1,000 candidate planets astronomers
are now investigating.

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On Nov. 5, an untouched rock and soil sample
brought back from the Moon on Apollo 17 was

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opened in the Lunar Curation Laboratory at
our Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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This marked the first time in more than 40
years a pristine sample of rock and regolith

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from the Apollo era has been opened, and sets
the stage for scientists to practice techniques

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to study samples collected on future Artemis
missions.

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The sample, collected by astronauts Eugene
Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, was opened as

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part of an initiative to study Apollo samples
using new tools that were not available when

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the samples were originally returned to Earth.

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“Apollo never ended for lunar scientists
because of the advance of new technologies;

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the advance of ideas that people have.

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So it’s really an amazing foresight to have
preserved samples so these new analytical

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technologies can be employed.”

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Former NASA astronaut and pilot Fred Haise
gave a presentation at an event hosted by

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our Armstrong Flight Research Center in California,
to highlight our famed Apollo program and

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our plans to return to the Moon by 2024.

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Haise, once a research pilot at the center,
shared his experiences from Apollo – including

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the legendary Apollo 13 lunar mission, and
also commented on the need for future human

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space exploration efforts, such as our Artemis
program that will send the first woman and

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next man to the Moon by 2024.

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"I hope it's a - it's all a part of our psyche
that agencies like NASA or even work going

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on elsewhere, continues to look at inventing
the new things to moving out in exploration.

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I think it's a useful enterprise for humans
- the good side of humans to be in the exploration

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business.”

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That’s what’s up this week @NASA …