~ Send Your Name to the Moon with NASA’s Viper Mission ~
Deadline is March 15th 2024
 
NASA VIPER Mission
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/viper/
 
Add your name here to have it fly aboard VIPER.
https://www3.nasa.gov/send-your-name-with-viper/
 
NASA's Artemis lunar rover, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, will explore the relatively nearby but extreme environment of the Moon in search of ice and other potential resources.
 
This mobile robot will land at the South Pole of the Moon in late 2024 on a 100-day mission. The critical information it provides will teach us about the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and help determine how we can harvest the Moon's resources for future human space exploration.
 
NASA is inviting people to send their names to the surface of the Moon aboard the agency’s first robotic lunar rover, VIPER. NASA will accept names received before 11:59 p.m. EST, March 15, 2024. Once collected, the agency will take the names and attach them to the rover.
 
VIPER will be NASA's first robotic Moon rover. It will embark on a mission to the lunar South Pole region to trek into permanently shadowed areas and unravel the mysteries of the Moon’s water.
 
VIPER is planned for delivery to the lunar surface in late 2024 under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. During its 100-day mission VIPER will travel several miles, over crater rims and occasionally into permanently shadowed craters – which are one of the coldest places in our solar system – to sample different kinds of lunar soils and environments.
 
VIPER represents the first resource mapping mission on another celestial body and will deepen our understanding of how frozen water and other volatiles are distributed on the Moon, their cosmic origin, and what has kept them preserved in the lunar soil for billions of years.

NEWS: JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) 26th January 2024
 
On April 19, 2021, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history when it completed the first powered, controlled flight on the Red Planet. It flew for the last time on January 18, 2024.
 
Designed to be a technology demonstration that would make no more than five test flights in 30 days, the helicopter eventually completed 72 flights in just under 3 years, soaring higher and faster than previously imagined.
 
Ingenuity embarked on a new mission as an operations demonstration, serving as an aerial scout for scientists and rover planners, and for engineers ready to learn more about Perseverance’s landing gear debris.
 
In its final phase, the helicopter entered a new engineering demonstration phase where it executed experimental flight tests that further expanded the team’s knowledge of the vehicle’s aerodynamic limits.

For more information on Ingenuity, go to:
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#
 
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; WATSON images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS; Mastcam-Z images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

​There were two very interesting large sunspot groups on the surface of the Sun today. The one to the north AR3559 is huge and comprises of two active areas, the other group AR3561 that is heading toward the western limb has lots of these little sunspots breaking out, it may even be interacting with AR3555…. quite unusual to see ☺ ☺ ☺
 
The images were taken with a Skywatcher 80mm refractor telescope with a glass solar filter attached and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens. 25 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS…. exposure time 1/640th second & ISO200.

Story Credit: Spaceweather.com 24th February 2024
https://www.spaceweather.com
 
HYPERACTIVE SUNSPOT: The sun is crackling with solar flares, and almost all of them are coming from hyperactive sunspot AR3561. There have been more than a dozen M-class eruptions in the past day and a half:

After so much stormy weather this was the first clear morning since the New Year began to observe and take some images of the Sun….As you can see from the picture there was an active Hedgerow prominence on the eastern limb and to the north an interesting surge/spray prominence that was shooting out into space!
 
My images taken with a 60mm Lunt solar telescope and Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. Two sets of images were captured one set for the solar surface and one set for the faint prominences, then images stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS.

After so much stormy weather this was the first clear morning since the New Year began to observe and take some images of the Sun. There were a sprinkling of sunspots scattered from the east to west on the solar surface with AR 3545 and AR 3549 heading toward the western limb.
 
The image was taken with a Skywatcher 80mm refractor telescope with a glass solar filter attached and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens.

30 images were captured with exposures of 1/500th second and ISO200, then images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.