NASA News – This Week Ending March 1, 2024

NASA NEWS – THIS WEEK ENDING MARCH 1, 2024

• An historic delivery to the Moon’s South Pole.
• A record-breaking scientific balloon flight.
• And an asteroid mission’s close pass of the Sun.

A few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

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For the first time in more than 50 years, new NASA science instruments and technology demonstrations have been operated on the Moon. A suite of six science instruments and tech demos was delivered to the South Pole region of the Moon on Feb. 22 by Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander. The mission, known as IM-1, was the first successful delivery for the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS initiative, and Artemis campaign.

The GUSTO scientific balloon mission is the new record-holder for longest flight of any NASA heavy-lift, long-duration scientific balloon mission. It recently surpassed the previous record of fifty-five days, one hour, and 34 minutes while flying high above Antarctica. GUSTO is an astrophysics mission that is mapping a large part of the Milky Way galaxy, including the galactic center, and the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud.

Preliminary telemetry indicates that our OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft, formerly known as OSIRIS-REx, recently completed an operation that brought it 25 million miles closer to the Sun than it was designed to function. The close pass of the Sun, or perihelion was the first of seven the spacecraft will make on its journey to study asteroid Apophis, which is expected to have a rare close encounter with Earth in April 2029.

The recent Carpet Determination In Entirety Measurements, or CarpetDIEM tests were aimed at helping researchers examine the quality and ruggedness of a new generation of ground recording systems. The recording equipment is needed for future flight tests with our experimental X-59 aircraft to confirm that it can fly supersonic while producing just a quiet sonic thump. The X-59 is not yet flying, so an F-15 and an F-18 aircraft were used to make supersonic passes for the recording equipment.

That’s what’s up this week @NASA. For more about what else we’re up to, check out nasa.gov.