Stephanie Carlson

This is now more than double the NASA budget, which the White House wants to slash.

Launch window calculations are obviously more complicated than this, so take this as a primer! Other considerations were comms, spacecraft performance, and how the light would shift over the course… How to get to the Moon #shorts #history

Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of a lunar landing mission to think through: when and how do you launch?

The planet Saturn is pictured 6 times in a horizonal column, labelled by years with 2020 at the top and 2025 at the bottom. As the years progress, Saturn's ring appear less prominent. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

🔭 Equinox at Saturn

Image Credit & Copyright: Imran Sultan

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25092...

Well don't I feel stupid

She basically invented astrophysics.
She proved the laws of chemistry, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics, not just gravity, applied universally.
She determined the composition of the sun and primacy of hydrogen in the universe.
She advised the PhDs of Frank Drake and Frank Kameny.

This morning in #Pittsburgh the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was visible from the West End Overlook and it was incredible to see. The rocket and exhaust were illuminated by the rising sun just as it was centered over the city. My favorite rocket launch image to date.

Placemat with rows of rectangular clay pendants with a small hole at the top of each.

Big news, I'm making things out of clay! Some pendants for my upcoming collaboration with @sciencesocks.bsky.social ✨

Join our newsletter to be notified when we launch!

sciencesocks.co/pages/amy-ra...
#sciart #bsnm

What a great day!

Apollo 11 in Real Time A real-time interactive journey through the first landing on the Moon. Relive every moment as it occurred in 1969.

For those interested you can listen to the prelaunch activities as they occurred in real time 56 years ago on the night of 15 July 1969 leading up to the launch of Apollo 11 at 9:32 AM Eastern Time on 16 July, 1969 via "Apollo in Real Time" - apolloinrealtime.org/11/ #Apollo11

The Children Who Built Pittsburgh The stories of individuals who worked hard, dangerous jobs to build Pittsburgh — many of these individuals were children.

If you only read one column of mine, let it be this one. Children built Pittsburgh too. In our steel mills, coal mines, factories & streets where they worked 12-hour days at dangerous jobs, sometimes losing limb and life. I found some of their voices. www.pittsburghmagazine.com/dahn-memory-...

A Demonstration of Interstellar Navigation Using New Horizons As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft exits the Solar System bound for interstellar space, it has traveled so far that the nearest stars have shifted markedly from their positions seen from Earth. We demo...

New Horizons is so far away that the nearest stars have shifted markedly from where we see them on Earth. With the NH observed positions for two stars, from NH imagery alone we can figure out where the spacecraft is. This technique would be used on interstellar voyages. arxiv.org/abs/2506.21666

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

The Swan, No. 24, Group IX, by Hilma af Klint, 1914, 📸 by me

The NASA planetary science fleet chart. It shows two spirals with missions to Moon/Mars and the Solar System. I’ve crossed off all of the missions that will be cancelled in the president’s budget… and there are a lot of them.

The NASA planetary science fleet chart if the president’s budget is enacted.

Museum and Planetarium Friends,

Many of you use NASA SVS material. Right now it is critical that we are able to document SVS's impact.

Please let us know how you are using our content (use my email address at the bottom of this page: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov).

Thank you!

#BlueGhost

A Lunar Sunset Video capturing the horizon glow. The NASA science team is excited to analyze these images further and share more on the findings soon!

Credit: @firefly-aerospace.bsky.social
📷 flic.kr/p/2qSJJfR 🧪🔭 #BGM1

This sequence shows how I think a Sunset on the Earth facing side of the Moon should appear. As soon as the landscape is no longer sunlit the light of the Earth becomes noticeable. As the Sun continues to move below the horizon we see the corona near the Sun with faint radial streamer 'rays'. Beyond this extends the Zodiacal light, a wide lens shaped dim glow around the Sun that extends along the zodiac, or ecliptic plane. For a time the horizon near the vanished Sun is outlined with a 'Lunar Horizon Glow', a bright thin 'beaded' border persisting for some time. The 'Lunar Horizon Glow' was first seen by three of the 1960s Surveyor Lunar landers after Sunset. In some cases the innermost glow of the Zodiacal light, an amorphous glow extending from the Sun along the plane of the ecliptic, was seen extending beyond the horizon. The region above the vanished Sun had a thin bright 'outline' that faded over the next hour or so as well as moved with the Sun. This 'horizon glow' has been explained as due to dust being 'levitated' by electrostatic forces. I am skeptical of that, I think that we are seeing the dust covering the surface being lit from the other side by a narrowly hidden Sun and innermost corona. The grazing light on this dust is 'forward scattered' with favorable topography allowing such light to be scattered and possibly re scattered for as much as 20 miles to fit the observations. This is what photographers know as 'rim glow'. Perhaps we will soon learn the truth, ground hovering dust cloud at the day/night border or scattered light on stable scenery draping dust being carried a little ways along more elevated portions of the horizon. #SciArt

Soon the Blue Ghost lander will experience Sunset. It may obtain a sequence something like this, a sight previously recorded by the Surveyor landers almost 60 years ago. After the Sun sets a bright 'rim glow' persists for over an hour as some light still shines on the more elevated horizon scenery.

Sewerdle

“sorry, i can’t tonight. i have other plans.”

your other plans: sewerdle.neorsd.org

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured a first look at the solar eclipse as it began to emerge from Firefly’s Mare Crisium landing site on March 14 at 12:30 am CST. Credit: Firefly Aerospace

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured a first look at the solar eclipse as it began to emerge from Firefly’s Mare Crisium landing site on March 14 at 12:30 am CST. Credit: Firefly Aerospace

OMG. Last night's lunar eclipse -- as seen from the Moon!

The Blue Ghost lander got this shot. The Sun is overexposed, but in the reflection you can see it's almost fully eclipsed by the Earth. 🧪🔭

fireflyspace.com/news/blue-gh...

A total lunar eclipse, a red moon with several stars nearby, unseen when the moon is not eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow

2:37 am ✨

Saturn has 128 newly-discovered moons. Here they are color-coded by their MPEC release. Orange: MPEC 2025 E153, Purple: MPEC 2025-E154, Green: MPEC 2025-E155.

Oh hai mark

our annual Presidents’ Day lesson remembering the 3 US presidents who died of a waterborne illness.

There is no one more optimistic about what her house COULD look like than a mom of small children in the Container Store

💛

T+293: Jonathan’s Space Report Library Transition (with Jonathan McDowell) Jonathan McDowell—astrophysicist at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the namesake of the McDowell Line at 80 kilometers—joins me to talk about his fundraiser to move his epic space libr...

Did a podcast today with MECO (Anthony Colangelo) about the Big Library Move
mainenginecutoff.com/podcast/293

Sounds great! You won’t be disappointed! Happy to answer any questions 😃

And just like that, the first flight of 2025 is on its way.

This year is bound to be thriller, with Falcon 9, Atlas V, Vulcan Centaur and the brand new New Glenn all Teed up for a busy schedule.

📸 by me