Description: Artemis II is an ongoing United States spaceflight mission sending four astronauts on a flyby around the Moon and back to Earth over the span of ten days. It launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026. The mission is crewed by NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. It is the second flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, and the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972. The 10-day mission is a crewed test flight designed to verify the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems in deep space before future lunar landings.
Description: The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) is the next great space science observatory following Hubble, designed to answer outstanding questions about the Universe and to make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy. Webb will see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets, to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and CSA. The telescope launched on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, on 25th December 2021.
Description: April 12, 2021 - exactly 60 years ago 27-year old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to journey into outer space. At 9:07 a.m. on April 12, 1961, when Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur cosmodrome, he uttered the surprisingly informal, immediately iconic exclamation “Поехали!" ("Poyekhali!" - Translation: “Let’s go!”) His flight, a single orbit around the Earth, was uneventful, but the landing ended in near-disaster when the cables joining the Vostok’s descent module and service module failed to separate properly, causing massive shaking as the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Gagarin ejected before landing, parachuting down safely near the Volga River.
Description: "Never limit yourself because of others' limited imagination" - Mae Carol Jemison, an American engineer, physician, and NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, 1992.
Description: IO Jupiter’s fifth moon, Io, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Io has more than 400 active volcanoes with average height of 6km on its surface. Plumes of sulfur spew upward as high as 300 kilometers. The surface of Io is splotched with lava lakes and floodplains of liquid rock. Io's atmosphere is made primarily of sulfur. Temperatures on Io vary from extremely hot to extremely cold. Areas which feature volcanic activity can reach temperatures of over 2000C, away from these areas however will see temperatures plunge to -143C. Io is subjected to tremendous tidal forces. which cause Io's surface to bulge up and down (or in and out) by as much as 100 m. As Jupiter rotates, it takes its magnetic field around wi...
Description: "The beauty and terror of it seen from so close can empty any mind, thrust anyone into a trance. It's like seeing the face of God, some people say. The sight of it can strike thought clean out of your head. People seek it out precisely for that. .. each thunderheads of fire burning furiously, all together torching five million tons of hydrogen a second — at which rate the star will burn another four billion years.." (Kim Stanley Robinson)
