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Mrs. Johnson at her desk at Langley in an undated photo. Credit...NASA #KatherineJohnson #Mathematician #Apollo11 #NeilArmstrong #NASA They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. Wielding little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday at a retirement home in Newport News, Va., calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth. A single error, she well knew, could have dire consequences for craft and crew. Her impeccable calculations had already helped plot the successful flight of Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when his Mercury spacecraft went aloft in 1961. The next year, she likewise helped make it possible for John Glenn, in the Mercury vessel Friendship 7, to become the first American to orbit the Earth. Yet th

        A photograph shared by NASA astronaut Christina Koch shows the boundary between day and night on Earth. (Image: © NASA) #Astronaut #InternationalSpaceStation #ChristinaKoch #NASA An evocative new photo from the International Space Station shows what it's like to fly along the line between darkness and daylight on planet Earth. Expedition 59 astronaut Christina Koch posted the eerie view on Twitter May 20 from one of the windows of the station; the view includes a glimpse of one the orbiting complex's solar arrays. Below, night gradually gives way to daylight as clouds streak above the Earth's surface. "A couple times a year, the @Space_Station orbit happens to align over the day/night shadow line on Earth," Koch wrote with the posted photo. "We are continuously in sunlight, never passing into Earth's shadow from the sun, and the Earth below us is always in dawn or dusk. Beautiful time to cloud watch." Koch added the hashtag #nofil

#InternationalSpaceStation #ISS  #Moon #NASA #Spacex  HOUSTON — Jim Bridenstine wants to make sure that there is never another day when humans are not in space.  "In fact," the NASA administrator said, "we want lots of humans in space." Bridenstine, who  became the space agency's chief in April , recently sat down with Space.com and other reporters during a visit to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, during which he shared what he saw as his priority for NASA going forward. [ These 9 Astronauts Will Fly the 1st Flights on SpaceX and Boeing Spaceships ] "When you look back at history, look back at the end of the Apollo program, 1972 when we didn't go back to the moon... you look back and there was a period of time thereafter Apollo and before the space shuttles when we had a gap of human spaceflight capability," Bridenstine said. "And then you go forward and look at the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011, and now we'

#Mercury #NASA #Sun #Astronomy  Mercury will transit the Sun for the first time since 2016 this coming Monday. It won’t do so again until 2032. The smallest planet’s eccentric orbit means it doesn’t often pass in front of the Sun from Earth’s vantage point. This year, part of the 5.5-hour transit will be visible to much of North America starting at 7:36 a.m. ET. The eastern half of North America and all of South America will see the whole show, which will last until 1:04 p.m. ET. Africa, Europe, and western Asia will be able to see it at Monday’s sunset. How can you see it? Well, I’d advise against staring directly into the Sun and even more strongly against staring into the Sun through binoculars or a telescope. Instead, it’s best to use a telescope with a solar filter, through which the transit will look like a small black speck passing in front of the Sun, which will appear 194 times larger than the speck. If you don’t have those tools, check if a local astronomy club will

Double Time Two NASA scientists just shared fascinating new details about the agency’s  planned Moon mission . During Wednesday’s annual meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, John Connolly and Niki Werkheiser said that NASA plans for the next two astronauts on the Moon’s surface to post up for 6.5 days, according to a new  Ars Technica   story  — twice as long as any NASA astronauts before them. Long Walks on the Moon Connolly and Werkheiser said that the astronauts may conduct as many as four spacewalks while on the Moon’s surface. During those walks, they’ll sample water ice and perform other scientific observations. The pair also shared details on an unpressurized rover NASA plans to send to the Moon’s surface ahead of the crewed mission. NASA is designing the rover so that astronauts will be able to control it remotely, according to Connolly and Werkheiser — a capability  Ars  described as “like Tesla’s ‘Smart Summon’ feature, only on the Moon.”