Friday, July 1, 2011: This image, taken by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), features several star-forming regions. There are five distinct centers of star birth in this one image alone. Star-forming nebulae are clouds of gas and dust that have been heated up by nearby stars recently formed from the same cloud. The largest, brightest cloud, in the upper right is known as Gum 22. Going counter-clockwise from Gum 22, the other catalogued nebulae in the image are Gum 23 (part of same cloud as 22), IRAS 09002-4732 (orange cloud near center), Bran 226 (upper cloud of the two at lower left), and finally Gum 25 at far lower left.
—Tom Chao
Tuesday, July 5, 2011: Space shuttle Endeavour appears to fly past flags in the foreground on its way to the International Space Station. Launch of the STS-134 mission took place at 8:56 a.m. EDT on May 16, 2011.
—Tom Chao
Wednesday, July 6, 2011: On June 10, 2011, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter angled its orbit 65° to the west, allowing the spacecraft's cameras to capture a sunrise view of the moon's Tycho crater. Tycho is located at 43.37°S, 348.68°E, and is about 51 miles (82 kilometers) in diameter. The summit of the central peak is 1.24 miles (2 kilometers) above the crater floor. The distance from Tycho's floor to its rim is about 2.92 miles (4.7 kilometers). Tycho crater's central peak complex, shown here, is about 9.3 miles (15 km) wide, left to right (southeast to northwest in this view).
—Tom Chao
Thursday, July 7, 2011: At Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Atlantis' payload bay doors close around the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module (MPLM) payload for Atlantis' STS-135 mission to the International Space Station. Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim are slated to lift off on July 8, 2011, taking with them the MPLM packed with supplies and spare parts to the station. STS-135 will be the 33rd flight of Atlantis and the 135th and final mission of NASA's Space Shuttle Program.
—Tom Chao
Friday, July 8, 2011: In Firing Room 4 in the Launch Control Center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launch team members sit at their consoles preparing for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-135 mission to the International Space Station. Atlantis and its crew of four are scheduled to lift off on July 8, 2011, to deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module packed with supplies and spare parts to the station. STS-135 will be the 33rd flight of Atlantis, the 37th shuttle mission to the space station, and the 135th and final mission of NASA's Space Shuttle Program.
—Tom Chao
Monday, July 11, 2011: In honor of the final space shutle flight, STS-135, here's an image of astronauts John W. Young (left), commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, the prime crew members for NASA's first space shuttle flight, STS-1, way back in 1981. Here they are seen logging time in the shuttle orbiter Columbia in the orbiter processing facility (OPF) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
—Tom Chao
Tuesday, July 12, 2011: Space shuttle Atlantis floats serenely above the Earth in this image taken by one of the crew members from the aft flight deck during the mission's second day of activities in Earth orbit. Earth's horizon and aft sections of the shuttle are visible, while the orbiter boom sensor system (OBSS) sits on the starboard side of the spacecraft shortly before the OBSS was remotely maneuvered into position to start survey of the spacecraft's thermal protection system (TPS). The OBSS later checked for damage caused by ascent debris or anything that might endanger the shuttle's ability to return to Earth safely.
—Tom Chao
Wednesday, July 13, 2011: A huge storm on Saturn has developed from a small spot that appeared 12 weeks earlier in Saturn's northern mid-latitudes. This storm, still active, is the largest and most intense observed on Saturn by NASA’s Voyager or Cassini spacecraft. As seen in these and other Cassini images, the storm encircles the planet — whose circumference at these latitudes is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). From north to south, it covers a distance of about 9,000 miles (15,000 kilometers), which is one-third of the way around the Earth. It encompasses an area of 1.5 billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers), or eight times the surface area of Earth. The frames at top are enlargements from the middle mosaic consisting of 84 separate images.
—Tom Chao
Thursday, July 14, 2011: The Seyfert galaxy NGC 1097, in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is seen in this image taken by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). A tiny elliptical companion galaxy, NGC 1097A, is also visible at the top left. There is evidence that NGC 1097 and NGC 1097A have interacted in the recent past. NGC 1097, the larger galaxy, also has four faint jets — too faint to be seen in this image — that emerge from its center, forming an X-shaped pattern, and are the longest visible-wavelength jets of any known galaxy.
—Tom Chao
Friday, July 15, 2011: NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta on July 9, 2011. The image was taken from a distance of about 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) away from Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it is a large body that almost became a planet.
—Tom Chao
Monday, July 18, 2011: The International Space Station has space shuttle Atlantis docked to it at right, and a Russian Soyuz docked to Pirs, below the sun at far left. In the center foreground sits the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment installed during the STS-134 mission. AMS is a state-of-the-art particle physics detector designed to use the unique environment of space to advance knowledge of the universe and lead to the understanding of the universe's origin by searching for antimatter and dark matter, and measuring cosmic rays.
—Tom Chao
Tuesday, July 19, 2011: The WISE team, who operates NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), suggests that cloud CG4 might be seen as a cosmic alligator or a giant red-nosed slug (but not bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air). The open jaws of the alligator appear poised to chomp down on a red star. This red source is the young stellar object, called Spitzer 073425.3-465409. Young stellar objects are exactly what they sound like: stars that are in their early stages of formation. The reddish color of this star occurs due to surrounding dust that glows in infrared light.
—Tom Chao
Wednesday, July 20, 2011: The Zenith-3M rocket with a Fregat-SB upper stage and the Russian astrophysical observatory Spectrum-R lifted off from Baikonur’s pad 45 on July 18, 2011.
—Tom Chao
Thursday, July 21, 2011: Space shuttle Atlantis gleamed in the darkness at it touched down on the Shuttle Landing Facility's Runway 15 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the final time. Atlantis' wheels came to a stop at 5:57:54 am on Thursday, July 21, 2011. Crew of the final STS-135 mission included Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim. STS-135 represented the 33rd and final flight for Atlantis, having spent 307 days in space, orbited Earth 4,848 times and traveled 125,935,769 miles.
— Tom Chao
Friday, July 22, 2011: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows an elongated stream of stars, gas and dust called IC 755, actually a spiral galaxy seen edge-on. In 1999 a star within IC 755 exploded as a supernova and named SN 1999an. The Beijing Astronomical Observatory Supernova Survey discovered the supernova, and three years later Hubble studied the environment in which the explosion took place. The inclination of the galaxy made the supernova a challenging target as many other intervening objects obscured the view. Valuable data was obtained, and suggested that before detonation the star may have been around 20 times more massive than our Sun, and that it was likely to have been in the region of 14 million years old.
—Tom Chao
Monday, July 25, 2011: NASA employees at Johnson Space Center in Houston celebrated the end of the shuttle program on Friday, July 22 with a special cake conceived by JSC employee Debbie Hawkins and produced by Lisa Newlin and Steve Copsey of "Create It With Cake" in Houston.
—Tom Chao
Tuesday, July 26, 2011: Scientist John Sarkissian captured this never-to-be-seen-again image of space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station streaking through the Australian sky with the The Parkes 64 meter radio telescope in the foreground. Atlantis's trail moves right to left behind the radio telescope, while the space station follows arcing from the lower right corner of the frame, about two minutes behind Atlantis in low Earth orbit. The Parkes 64 meter radio telescope has a long connection to human spaceflight, having supplied television images from the moon to Earth during Apollo 11. Also visible in the night sky of New South Wales, Australia, are southerly constellations Vela, Puppis, and Hydra. Atlantis made its final landing on July 21, 2011, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
—Tom Chao
Wednesday, July 27, 2011: An image of the moon composed by Andy Strappazzon from Belgium took fourth place in ESO's Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition. Strappazzon searched through ESO's archive and identified datasets acquired by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile, which he then used to compose his image of the moon. Here, the crescent moon shows sunlight skimming across the heavily pocked surface.
— Tom Chao
Thursday, July 28, 2011: Young stars shine brilliantly even through nebulae in the Milky Way, as seen by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The nebulae, giant molecular clouds, collapse and form stars in one part of the evolution cycle of matter in galaxies. These new stars will join the giant whirl of the galaxy in only a matter of millions of years.
— Tom Chao
Friday, July 29, 2011: Apollo 15 launched 40 years ago this week on July 26, 1971. In this photograph, Apollo 15 lunar module pilot Jim Irwin loads the lunar rover with gear in preparation for the first lunar spacewalk at the Hadley-Apennine landing site. The lunar module "Falcon"stands at the left in this image. The undeployed Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector lies on top of Falcon's Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly.
— Tom Chao
