Technicians with Orbital ATK perform a black light test on the Pegasus XL fairing inside Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) is being prepared at Vandenberg, and then will be transported to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket which will be attached to the Orbital ATK L-1011 Stargazer aircraft. CYGNSS will launch on the Pegasus XL rocket from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. CYGNSS will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds throughout the life cycle of tropical storms and hurricanes. The data that CYGNSS provides will enable scientists to probe key air-sea interaction processes that take place near the core of storms, which are rapidly changing and play a critical role in the beginning and intensification of hurricanes.

Technicians with Orbital ATK install the first half of the Pegasus XL fairing around NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) in Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. CYGNSS is being prepared at Vandenberg, and then will be transported to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket which will be attached to the Orbital ATK L-1011 carrier aircraft. CYGNSS will launch on the Pegasus XL rocket from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. CYGNSS will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds throughout the life cycle of tropical storms and hurricanes. The data that CYGNSS provides will enable scientists to probe key air-sea interaction processes that take place near the core of storms, which are rapidly changing and play a critical role in the beginning and intensification of hurricanes.

Technicians with Orbital ATK have installed the first half of the Pegasus XL fairing around NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) in Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Work is underway to install the second half of the fairing. CYGNSS is being prepared at Vandenberg, and then will be transported to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket which will be attached to the Orbital ATK L-1011 carrier aircraft. CYGNSS will launch on the Pegasus XL rocket from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. CYGNSS will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds throughout the life cycle of tropical storms and hurricanes. The data that CYGNSS provides will enable scientists to probe key air-sea interaction processes that take place near the core of storms, which are rapidly changing and play a critical role in the beginning and intensification of hurricanes.

Technicians with Orbital ATK have installed the first half of the Pegasus XL fairing around NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) in Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The second half of the fairing is being installed. CYGNSS is being prepared at Vandenberg, and then will be transported to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket which will be attached to the Orbital ATK L-1011 carrier aircraft. CYGNSS will launch on the Pegasus XL rocket from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. CYGNSS will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds throughout the life cycle of tropical storms and hurricanes. The data that CYGNSS provides will enable scientists to probe key air-sea interaction processes that take place near the core of storms, which are rapidly changing and play a critical role in the beginning and intensification of hurricanes.

Test subjects performing subjective assessment of supplemental lighting during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Test subjects performing subjective assessment of supplemental lighting during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Engineer Jordan Rupp is shown at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in September 2022 with the optical bench for the Coronagraph Instrument on NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Light from the telescope is directed to the optical bench and passes through series of lenses, filters, and other components that ultimately suppress light from a star while allowing the light from orbiting planets to pass through. Mirrors redirect the light and keep it contained within the optical bench. In this image, the bench is partly assembled at the start of the integration and testing period for the instrument. The large black circles are surrogate components that are standing in for the actual instrument hardware. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25439

Test subjects performing mission-relevant tasks and evaluating shadow quality during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Test subjects performing subjective assessment of underwater lamp source during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Test subjects performing subjective assessment of underwater lamp source during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Test subjects performing subjective assessment of underwater lamp source during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Quantitative evaluation of light source by NBL diver during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

Quantitative evaluation of light source by NBL diver during NBL Preliminary Lunar Lighting Evaluation. Divers at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) in Houston are setting the stage for future Moonwalk training by simulating lunar lighting conditions. At the Lunar South Pole, the Sun will remain no more than a few degrees above the horizon, resulting in extremely long and dark shadows. To prepare astronauts for these challenging lighting conditions, the team at the NBL has begun preliminary evaluations of lunar lighting solutions at the bottom of the 40-foot deep pool. This testing and evaluation involved turning off all the lights in the facility, installing black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflections, and using a powerful underwater cinematic lamp, to get the conditions just right ahead of upcoming training for astronauts.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- In a clean room at Astrotech, workers begin black light testing on the solar panels of the Dawn spacecraft. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is scheduled to launch June 30 from Launch Complex 17-B. Photo credit: NASA/George Shelton

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- In a clean room at Astrotech, workers deploy the solar panels of the Dawn spacecraft. The panels will be tested and undergo black light inspection. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is scheduled to launch June 30 from Launch Complex 17-B. Photo credit: NASA/George Shelton

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- In a clean room at Astrotech, workers prepare to deploy the solar panels of the Dawn spacecraft. The panels will be tested and undergo black light inspection. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is scheduled to launch June 30 from Launch Complex 17-B. Photo credit: NASA/George Shelton

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- In a clean room at Astrotech, workers begin black light testing on the solar panels of the Dawn spacecraft. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is scheduled to launch June 30 from Launch Complex 17-B. Photo credit: NASA/George Shelton

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- In a clean room at Astrotech, the solar panels of the Dawn spacecraft are extended to their full extent. The panels will be tested and undergo black light inspection. Dawn's mission is to explore two of the asteroid belt's most intriguing and dissimilar occupants: asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is scheduled to launch June 30 from Launch Complex 17-B. Photo credit: NASA/George Shelton

KWAJALEIN ATOLL, Marshall Islands - The lights of Orbital Sciences' L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft illuminates the night sky as it takes off from the runway at Kwajalein Atoll with the company's Pegasus rocket to launch NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The plane left Kwajalein one hour before launch. At 9:00:35 a.m. PDT 12:00:35 p.m. EDT), June 13, 2012, the rocket dropped with the NuSTAR payload 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein. NuSTAR will use a unique set of “eyes” to see the highest energy X-ray light from the cosmos to reveal black holes lurking in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as those hidden in the hearts of faraway galaxies. Kwajalein is located in the Marshall Islands chain in the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Reagan Test Site and used for launches of NASA, commercial and military missions. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar. Photo credit: NASA

S74-20831 (November 1973) --- A group of astronauts and their cosmonaut hosts are photographed sightseeing on Red Square in the heart of Moscow during a tour of the Soviet capital. The Americans were in the USSR to participate in Apollo-Soyuz Test Project familiarization training on the Soyuz systems at the Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City) near Moscow. Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford (light coat, black cap), commander of the American ASTP crew, was head of the U.S. delegation to Star City. Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan (on Stafford?s left, light coat) is the Special Assistant to the American Technical Director of ASTP. The sightseeing group is walking in the direction of Lenin?s Mausoleum. The structure in the background is the Cathedral of the Intercession (St. Basil?s) Museum. The historic Kremlin complex is to the right. PHOTO COURTESY: USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

S69-47900 (September 1969) --- This is a photo micrograph of lunar sample 10022. Magnification one inch equals one-tenth millimeter. The light blue and white mineral is plagioclase. The black is ilmenite, and the blue and/or green and/or orange and/or yellow and/or red mineral is pyroxene. The large pyroxene is a phenocryst that had been partially resorbed. The lunar samples collected by astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. during the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission have been subjected to extensive tests and examinations at the Manned Spacecraft Center’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Workers in the Vertical Processing Facility test the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) Cooling System, part of the payload on mission STS-109, the Hubble Servicing Telescope Mission. The worker at right is using a black light. NICMOS II is a new experimental cooling system consisting of a compressor and tiny turbines. With the experimental cryogenic system, NASA hopes to re-cool the infrared detectors to below -315 degrees F (-193 degrees Celsius). NICMOS II was previously tested aboard STS-95 in 1998. It could extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope by several years. Astronauts aboard Columbia on mission STS-109 will be replacing the original NICMOS with the newer version. Launch of mission STS-109 is scheduled for Feb. 28, 2002

Technicians attach NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) to the Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket inside Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Sept. 10, 2019. Preparations are underway to perform a black light test on Pegasus before the port and starboard payload fairings are installed around ICON. The Pegasus XL rocket, attached beneath the company's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, will launch ICON from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Launch is scheduled for Oct. 9, 2019. ICON will study the frontier of space - the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above. The explorer will help determine the physics of Earth's space environment and pave the way for mitigating its effects on our technology and communications systems.

NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) spacecraft undergoes a black light test in Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. CYGNSS is being prepared at Vandenberg, and then will be transported to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket which will be attached to the Orbital ATK L-1011 carrier aircraft. CYGNSS will launch on the Pegasus XL rocket from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. CYGNSS will make frequent and accurate measurements of ocean surface winds throughout the life cycle of tropical storms and hurricanes. The data that CYGNSS provides will enable scientists to probe key air-sea interaction processes that take place near the core of storms, which are rapidly changing and play a critical role in the beginning and intensification of hurricanes.

KWAJALEIN ATOLL, Marshall Islands - Orbital Sciences' L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft takes off from the runway at Kwajalein Atoll with the company's Pegasus rocket to launch NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, payload strapped to the belly of the plane. The plane left Kwajalein one hour before launch. At 9:00:35 a.m. PDT 12:00:35 p.m. EDT), June 13, 2012, the rocket dropped with the NuSTAR payload 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein. NuSTAR will use a unique set of “eyes” to see the highest energy X-ray light from the cosmos to reveal black holes lurking in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as those hidden in the hearts of faraway galaxies. Kwajalein is located in the Marshall Islands chain in the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Reagan Test Site and used for launches of NASA, commercial and military missions. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar. Photo credit: NASA

NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) is attached to the Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket inside Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Preparations are underway to perform a black light test on Pegasus before the port and starboard payload fairings are installed around ICON on Aug. 22, 2018. The Pegasus XL rocket, attached beneath the company's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, will launch ICON from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Launch is scheduled for Oct. 26. ICON will study the frontier of space - the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above. The explorer will help determine the physics of Earth's space environment and pave the way for mitigating its effects on our technology and communications systems.

KWAJALEIN ATOLL, Marshall Islands - Orbital Sciences' L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft takes off from the runway at Kwajalein Atoll with the company's Pegasus rocket to launch NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The plane left Kwajalein one hour before launch. At 9:00:35 a.m. PDT 12:00:35 p.m. EDT), June 13, 2012, the rocket dropped with the NuSTAR payload 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein. NuSTAR will use a unique set of “eyes” to see the highest energy X-ray light from the cosmos to reveal black holes lurking in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as those hidden in the hearts of faraway galaxies. Kwajalein is located in the Marshall Islands chain in the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Reagan Test Site and used for launches of NASA, commercial and military missions. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar. Photo credit: NASA

NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) is attached to the Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket inside Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Sept. 10, 2019. Preparations are underway to perform a black light test on Pegasus before the port and starboard payload fairings are installed around ICON. The Pegasus XL rocket, attached beneath the company's L-1011 Stargazer aircraft, will launch ICON from the Skid Strip at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Launch is scheduled for Oct. 9, 2019. ICON will study the frontier of space - the dynamic zone high in Earth's atmosphere where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather above. The explorer will help determine the physics of Earth's space environment and pave the way for mitigating its effects on our technology and communications systems.

The Roman Coronagraph Instrument on NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will test new tools that block starlight, revealing planets hidden by the glare of their parent stars. This graphic shows a test of what engineers call "digging the dark hole." The image shows three computer readouts of real data from the coronagraph's camera. Engineers used lasers and special optics to replicate the light from a star as it would look when observed by the Roman telescope. The image at left shows the amount of starlight that leaks into the coronagraph's field of view when only fixed components called masks are used to block the star at the center of the circle. Using moveable components such as deformable mirrors, the coronagraph can remove more and more of this starlight. The middle and right images show the progression of this process, where red indicates less starlight, and black indicates most or all starlight has been removed. The deformable mirrors are each only 2 inches (5 centimeters) in diameter and backed by more than 2,000 tiny pistons that move up and down. The pistons work together to change the shape of the mirrors to compensate for the unwanted stray light that spills around the edges of the masks. Though they are too small to affect Roman's other highly precise measurements, the imperfections can send stray starlight into the dark hole. In space, this technique will enable astronomers to observe light directly from planets around other stars, or exoplanets. Once demonstrated on Roman, similar technologies on a future mission could enable astronomers to use that light to identify chemicals in an exoplanet's atmosphere, potentially indicating the presence of life. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26279

KWAJALEIN ATOLL, Marshall Islands - In this time-lapse image, the lights of Orbital Sciences' L-1011 "Stargazer" streak across the night sky as the aircraft takes off from the runway at Kwajalein Atoll with the company's Pegasus rocket to launch NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The plane left Kwajalein one hour before launch. At 9:00:35 a.m. PDT 12:00:35 p.m. EDT), June 13, 2012, the rocket dropped with the NuSTAR payload 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein. NuSTAR will use a unique set of “eyes” to see the highest energy X-ray light from the cosmos to reveal black holes lurking in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as those hidden in the hearts of faraway galaxies. Kwajalein is located in the Marshall Islands chain in the Pacific Ocean and is part of the Reagan Test Site and used for launches of NASA, commercial and military missions. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar. Photo credit: NASA

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, a worker gives a black light inspection to part of the servicing equipment for the third Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission (SM-3A), STS-103. The hardware is undergoing final testing and integration of payload elements. Mission STS-103 is a "call-up" due to the need to replace portions of the Hubble's pointing system, the gyros, which have begun to fail. Although Hubble is operating normally and conducting its scientific observations, only three of its six gyroscopes are working properly. The gyroscopes allow the telescope to point at stars, galaxies and planets. The STS-103 crew will not only replace gyroscopes, it will also replace a Fine Guidance Sensor and an older computer with a new enhanced model, an older data tape recorder with a solid state digital recorder, a failed spare transmitter with a new one, and degraded insulation on the telescope with new thermal insulation. The crew will also install a Battery Voltage/Temperature Improvement Kit to protect the spacecraft batteries from overcharging and overheating when the telescope goes into a safe mode. The scheduled launch date in October is under review

AST-32-2686 (17-19 July 1975) --- The American Apollo spacecraft as seen in Earth orbit from the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft during the joint U.S.-USSR Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission. The Command and Service Module (CSM) and Docking Module (DM) are contrasted against a black-sky background. Light reflected in the camera streaks the image. Note the docking mechanism and docking target on the DM. On the left the bell-shaped engine nozzle of the service propulsion system protrudes from the rear of the Service Module (SM). The American and Soviet spacecraft were joined together in space for approximately 47 hours on July 17, 18, 19, 1975. This picture was furnished by the USSR in an exchange of photography taken during the ASTP flight. The Apollo crew consisted of astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, commander; Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, docking module pilot; and Vance D. Brand, command module pilot. The Soyuz 19 crew consisted of cosmonauts Aleksei A. Leonov, command pilot; and Valeri N. Kubasov, flight engineer.

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, part of the servicing equipment for the third Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission (SM-3A), STS-103, is given a black light inspection. The hardware is undergoing final testing and integration of payload elements. Mission STS-103 is a "call-up" due to the need to replace portions of the Hubble's pointing system, the gyros, which have begun to fail. Although Hubble is operating normally and conducting its scientific observations, only three of its six gyroscopes are working properly. The gyroscopes allow the telescope to point at stars, galaxies and planets. The STS-103 crew will not only replace gyroscopes, it will also replace a Fine Guidance Sensor and an older computer with a new enhanced model, an older data tape recorder with a solid state digital recorder, a failed spare transmitter with a new one, and degraded insulation on the telescope with new thermal insulation. The crew will also install a Battery Voltage/Temperature Improvement Kit to protect the spacecraft batteries from overcharging and overheating when the telescope goes into a safe mode. The scheduled launch date in October is under review

After arriving at the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in May 2025, the instrument enclosure for the agency's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission was inspected prior to thermal vacuum testing. Shown here, the enclosure stands vertically atop an articulating assembly dolly. The shiny and black surfaces of the enclosure optimize the reflection and radiation properties of the structure. The telescope, which has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters), features detectors sensitive to two infrared wavelengths in which near-Earth objects re-radiate solar heat. The instrument enclosure is designed to ensure heat produced by the telescope during operations doesn't interfere with its observations. As NASA's first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor will seek out, measure, and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth. While many near-Earth objects don't reflect much visible light, they glow brightly in infrared light due to heating by the Sun. Targeting launch in late 2027, the NEO Surveyor mission is led by Professor Amy Mainzer at UCLA for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and is being managed by JPL for the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, SDL, and are among the companies that were contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder will support operations, and IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for producing some of the mission's data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26597

NASA image release August 23, 2012 What looks like a giant golden spider weaving a web of cables and cords, is actually ground support equipment, including the Optical Telescope Simulator (OSIM), for the James Webb Space Telescope. OSIM's job is to generate a beam of light just like the one that the real telescope optics will feed into the actual flight instruments. Because the real flight instruments will be used to test the real flight telescope, their alignment and performance first have to be verified by using the OSIM. Engineers are thoroughly checking out OSIM now in preparation for using it to test the flight science instruments later. This photo was taken from inside a large thermal-vacuum chamber called the Space Environment Simulator (SES), at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Engineers have blanketed the structure of the OSIM with special insulating material to help control its temperature while it goes into the deep freeze testing that mimics the chill of space that Webb will ultimately experience in its operational orbit over 1 million miles from Earth. The golden-colored thermal blankets are made of aluminized kapton, a polymer film that remains stable over a wide range of temperatures. The structure that looks like a silver and black cube underneath the &quot;spider&quot; is a set of cold panels that surround OSIM's optics. During testing, OSIM's temperature will drop to 100 Kelvin (-280 F or -173 C) as liquid nitrogen flows through tubes welded to the chamber walls and through tubes along the silver panels surrounding OSIM's optics. These cold panels will keep the OSIM optics very cold, but the parts covered by the aluminized kapton blankets will stay warm. &quot;Some blankets have silver facing out and gold facing in, or inverted, or silver on both sides, etc.,&quot; says Erin Wilson, a Goddard engineer. &quot;Depending on which side of the blanket your hardware is looking at, the blankets can help it get colder or stay warmer, in an environmental test.&quot; Another reason for thermal blankets is to shield the cold OSIM optics from unwanted stray infrared light. When the OSIM is pointing its calibrated light beam at Webb's science instruments, engineers don't want any stray infrared light, such as &quot;warm photons&quot; from warm structures, leaking into the instruments' field of view. Too much of this stray light would raise the background too much for the instruments to &quot;see&quot; light from the OSIM—it would be like trying to photograph a lightning bug flying in front of car headlights. To get OSIM's optics cold, the inside of the chamber has to get cold, and to do that, all the air has to be pumped out to create a vacuum. Then liquid nitrogen has to be run though the plumbing along the inner walls of the chamber. Wilson notes that's why the blankets have to have vents in them: &quot;That way, the air between all the layers can be evacuated as the chamber pressure drops, otherwise the blankets could pop,&quot; says Wilson. The most powerful space telescope ever built, Webb is the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Webb's four instruments will reveal how the universe evolved from the Big Bang to the formation of our solar system. Webb is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Chris Gunn <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

Dryden Flight Research Center's Piper PA-30 Twin Commanche, which helped validate the RPRV concept, descends to a remotely controlled landing on Rogers Dry Lake, unassisted by the onboard pilot. A Piper PA-30 Twin Commanche, known as NASA 808, was used at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center as a rugged workhorse in a variety of research projects associated with both general aviation and military projects. In the early 1970s, the PA-30, serial number 301498, was used to test a flight technique used to fly Remotely Piloted Research Vehicles (RPRV's). The technique was first tested with the cockpit windows of the light aircraft blacked out while the pilot flew the aircraft utilizing a television monitor which gave him a "pilot's eye" view ahead of the aircraft. Later pilots flew the aircraft from a ground cockpit, a procedure used with all RPRV's. TV and two-way telemetry allow the pilot to be in constant control of the aircraft. The apparatus mounted over the cockpit is a special fish eye lens camera, used to obtain images that are transmitted to the ground based cockpit. This project paved the way for sophisticated, highly successful research programs involving high risk spin, stall, and flight control conditions, such as the HiMAT and the subscale F-15 remotely piloted vehicles. Over the years, NASA 808 has also been used for spin and stall research related to general aviation aircraft and also research to alleviate wake vortices behind large jetliners.

Inside NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's giant clean room in Greenbelt, Md., JWST Optical Engineer Larkin Carey from Ball Aerospace, examines two test mirror segments recently placed on a black composite structure. This black composite structure is called the James Webb Space Telescope's “Pathfinder” and acts as a spine supporting the telescope's primary mirror segments. The Pathfinder is a non-flight prototype. The mirrors were placed on Pathfinder using a robotic arm move that involved highly trained engineers and technicians from Exelis, Northrop Grumman and NASA. &quot;Getting this right is critical to proving we are ready to start assembling the flight mirrors onto the flight structure next summer,&quot; said Lee Feinberg, NASA's Optical Telescope Element Manager at NASA Goddard. &quot;This is the first space telescope that has ever been built with a light-weighted segmented primary mirror, so learning how to do this is a groundbreaking capability for not only the Webb telescope but for potential future space telescopes.&quot; The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. For more information about the Webb telescope, visit: <a href="http://www.jwst.nasa.gov" rel="nofollow">www.jwst.nasa.gov</a> or <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/webb" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/webb</a> Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>

This image from NASA Kepler mission shows the telescope full field of view an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra stretching across 100 square degrees, or the equivalent of two side-by-side dips of the Big Dipper. A cluster of stars, called NGC 6791, and a star with a known planet, called TrES-2, are outlined. The cluster is eight billion years old, and located 13,000 light-years from Earth. It is called an open cluster because its stars are loosely bound and have started to spread out. TrES-2 is a hot Jupiter-like planet known to cross in front of, or transit, its star every 2.5 days. Kepler will hunt for transiting planets that are as small as Earth. Kepler was designed to hunt for planets like Earth. Of the approximately 4.5 million stars in the region pictured here, more than 100,000 were selected as candidates for Kepler's search. The mission will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at these target stars, looking for periodic dips in brightness. Such dips occur when planets cross in front of their stars from our point of view in the galaxy, partially blocking the starlight. The area in the lower right of the image is brighter because it is closer to the plane of our galaxy and is jam-packed with stars. The area in upper left is farther from the galactic plane and contains fewer stars. The image has been color-coded so that brighter stars appear white, and fainter stars, red. It is a 60-second exposure, taken on April 8, 2009, one day after the spacecraft's dust cover was jettisoned. To achieve the level of precision needed to spot planets as small as Earth, Kepler's images are intentionally blurred slightly. This minimizes the number of saturated stars. Saturation, or "blooming," occurs when the brightest stars overload the individual pixels in the detectors, causing the signal to spill out into nearby pixels. These spills can be seen in the image as fine white lines extending above and below some of the brightest stars. Blooming is an expected side effect of Kepler's ultra-sensitive camera. Some of the lightly saturated stars are candidates for planet searches, while those that are heavily saturated are not. The grid lines across the picture show how the focal plane is laid out on Kepler's camera —the largest ever launched in space at 95 megapixels. There are 42 charge-coupled devices (CCDs), paired into square-shaped modules, whose outline can be seen in the image. A thin black line in each module shows adjacent pairs of CCDs. The thicker black lines that cross through the image are from structures holding the modules together, and were purposely oriented to block out the very brightest stars in Kepler's field of view. The four black corners of the image show where the fine-guidance sensors reside on the focal plane. These sensors are used to hold the telescope's gaze steady by measuring its position on the sky 10 times every second, and by feeding this information to the spacecraft's attitude control system. Ghost images also appear in the image, which are reflections off the lenses above the CCDs. These expected artifacts were mapped out during ground testing for Kepler, and will not affect science observations because they will be removed as the data are processed. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11984

Building a space telescope to see the light from the earliest stars of our universe is a pretty complex task. Although much of the attention goes to instruments and the giant mirrors on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, there are other components that have big jobs to do and that required imagination, engineering, and innovation to become a reality. For example, engineers working on the Webb telescope have to think of everything from keeping instruments from overheating or freezing, to packing up the Webb, which is as big as a tennis court, to fit inside the rocket that will take it to space. Those are two areas where the &quot;DTA&quot; or Deployable Tower Assembly (DTA) plays a major role. The DTA looks like a big black pipe and is made out of graphite-epoxy composite material to ensure stability and strength with extreme changes in temperature like those encountered in space. When fully deployed, the DTA reaches ten feet in length. The DTA interfaces and supports the spacecraft and the telescope structures. It features two large nested telescoping tubes, connected by a mechanized lead screw. It is a deployable structure that is both very light and extremely strong and stable. The Webb telescope’s secondary mirror support structure and DTA contribute to how the telescope and instruments fit into the rocket fairing in preparation for launch. The DTA allows the Webb to be short enough when stowed to fit in the rocket fairing with an acceptably low center of gravity for launch. Several days after the Webb telescope is launched, the DTA will deploy, or separate, the telescope mirrors and instruments from the spacecraft bus and sunshield. This separation allows the sunshield to unfurl and shade the telescope and instruments from radiant heat and stray light from the sun and Earth. The DTA was designed, built and tested by Astro Aerospace - a Northrop Grumman Company, in Carpinteria, California. The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. The Webb telescope is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. For more information about the Webb telescope, visit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/webb" rel="nofollow">www.nasa.gov/webb</a> or jwst.nasa.gov <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a></b> <b><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a></b> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. <b>Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a></b> <b>Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a></b> <b>Find us on <a href="http://instagrid.me/nasagoddard/?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a></b>