Gratititude

Before Jessica Watkins was an astronaut, she was a geologist. Now working on the International Space Station, Jessica and her fellow astronauts are preparing to explore the Moon and beyond. But collecting and investigating rocks on other worlds is very different from digging dirt here on Earth. That’s where tools engineer Adam Naids comes in. Tools designed for Earth geologists may not work in the lower gravity and extreme temperatures of the Moon, and that’s before you bring in the bulky spacesuits! NASA Explorers come together at space school to train astronauts to conduct science on the Moon. Series Executive Producers: Katy Mersmann/Lauren Ward Season Producers: Lonnie Shekhtman/Stephanie Sipila/James Tralie/Molly Wasser Explorers: Jessica Watkins/Adam Naids/Kelsey Young Music: a. “Iced Planet” by Anthony Edwin Phillips and Samuel Karl Bohn b. “The Deep” by Paul Werner c. “Carpe Diem” by Michael James Burns d. “State of Matter” by Markus Gleissner e. “A Grand Enterprise” by Daniel Marantz and Dave Carr f. “Optimistic Attitude 1" by Joel Goodman and Vicente Julio Ortiz Gimeno g. “Dawn Beauty” Laurent Dury h. “Take it Lightly” by Carl David Harms i. “Imaginary Travel” by Claude Pelouse and Olivier Grim Credit: NASA #NASAExplorers#Artemis #NASA

Dragon Freedom spacecraft undocks with the four crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission aboard: NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Undocking from the International Space Station (ISS) is targeted for Friday, Oct. 14. Splashdown is targeted several hours later at 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 UTC) Friday off the coast of Florida. During their stay of nearly six months on the ISS, Crew-4 members contributed to ongoing and new scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, work that is helping to prepare humans for future space exploration missions and generating innovations and benefits for humanity on Earth

A’s Perseverance Mars rover is filling sample tubes with rocky material on the Red Planet as the agency works on the next steps to get them safely back to Earth. The Mars Sample Return campaign would bring samples collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth for detailed study. The campaign involves an international interplanetary relay team, including the European Space Agency (ESA). These samples could answer a key question: did life ever exist on Mars? Aaron Yazzie, who works on the Mars Sample Return campaign, explains the work being done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to ensure the safe return of the sample tubes. For more information on Mars Sample Return, visit

aul Smith is a night-sky fanatic and photographer. His obsession is sprites: immense jolts of light that flicker high above thunderstorms. Last October, he guided NASA scientist Dr. Burcu Kosar through the backroads of Oklahoma to catch one herself. Although she’d studied sprites for more than 15 years, she hadn’t yet chased one. Read more about chasing sprites with Paul and Bur

This video chronicles solar activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system. With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 133-day time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona. Compiling images taken 108 seconds apart, the movie condenses 133 days, or about four months, of solar observations into 59 minutes. The video shows bright active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates. The Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days. The loops extending above the bright regions are magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma. These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, which appear as bright flashes as magnetic fields snap together in a process called magnetic reconnection. While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed toward the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. Some of the dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. Other blackouts are caused by instrumentation being down or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground every day. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments. SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun in the years to come, providing further insights about our place in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe. The music is a continuous mix from Lars Leo n hard’s “Geometric Shapes” album, courtesy of the artist.