Volunteers build Bay St. Louis playground

More than 650 volunteers - many of them employees at NASA's Stennis Space Center - weathered rain and cold to transform Bay St. Louis' old City Park into a playground Dec. 17. Volunteers assembled and erected a slide, swing set, jungle gym, sand box and planter benches in an eight-hour time frame. The playground was the first new structure built in the town devastated by Hurricane Katrina and the first on the Gulf Coast after the storm. The project was financed and led by nonprofit organization KaBOOM!, whose vision is to create a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.

Children anxiously anticipate the opening of a new playground at Kennedy Space Center’s Child Development Center on Aug. 10, 2023. The kids were able to enjoy the playground immediately following a ribbon cutting ceremony.

KSC Child Development Center (CDC) Playground Ribbon Cutting

Staff members at Kennedy Space Center’s Child Development Center, along with members of the NASA Exchange, cut the ribbon to officially open a new playground at the facility on Aug. 10, 2023.

KSC Child Development Center (CDC) Playground Ribbon Cutting

Dust Devil activity in this region between Brashear and Ross Craters is very common. Large regions of dust devil tracks surround the south polar region of Mars

A Dust Devil Playground

Dozens of newborn stars sprouting jets from their dusty cocoons have been spotted in images from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. This view shows a portion of sky near Canis Major.

Stars Shoot Jets in Cosmic Playground

Fluid Fantasy

Saturn's clouds are full of raw beauty, but they also represent a playground for a branch of physics called fluid dynamics, which seeks to understand the motion of gases and liquids. Saturn's lack of a solid planetary surface (as on Earth, Mars or Venus) means that its atmosphere is free to flow around the planet essentially without obstruction. This is one factor that generates Saturn's pattern of alternating belts and zones -- one of the main features of its dynamic atmosphere. Winds in the belts blow at speeds different from those in the adjacent zones, leading to the formation of vortices along the boundaries between the two. And vigorous convection occasionally leads to storms and waves. Saturn's innermost rings are just visible at the bottom and in the upper left corner. This view is centered on clouds at 25 degrees north latitude on Saturn. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 728 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 752,000 miles (1.21 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 6 degrees. Image scale is 45 miles (72 kilometers) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20503

Martian Terrain as Viewed in AI4Mars

Three images from the public tool AI4Mars show different kinds of Martian terrain as seen by NASA's Curiosity rover. By drawing borders around terrain features and assigning one of four labels to them, you can help train an algorithm that will automatically identify favorable and hazardous terrain for Curiosity's rover planners. You can visit AI4Mars here. All three images were generated by Curiosity's black-and-white Navigation Cameras. In the lower right corner of the first image on the left, the circle and checkerboard on is the Sample Playground, where samples of soil or pulverized rock can be trickled to study their physical properties. In the center are Curiosity's robotic arm and turret, a collection of science tools on the end of the arm. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23897