What's Up? The Space Place

 Hey, Space Placers!  The Orion Arm or Spur Greg Redfern See what's happening in the sky this month. Sky Guy in SNOWCRETE VA

 Hey, Space Placers! Containing nearly 800,000 galaxies, this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is overlaid with a map of dark matter, represented in blue. Researchers used Webb data to find the invisible substance via its gravitational influence on regular matter. Credit: NASA/STScI/J. DePasquale/A. Pagan  Full Image Details This is a fascinating article that showcases the power of Webb. Be sure to scroll through the picture section. Sky Guy in SNOWCRETE VA

 Hey, Space Placers! The cold weather in Florida has pushed back the wet dress rehearsal date to February 2, 2026.  Read the full update here. You can see the Livestream of the Artemis II stack here. Sky Guy in Still Frigid VA

 Hey, Space Placers! Interesting read on UAPs. Sky Guy in still icy VA 

 Hey, Space Placers! Credit: Greg Redfern FROM NASA: Teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue to prepare the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground infrastructure in advance of the Artemis II test flight. Engineers have remained on track or ahead of schedule as they work through planned activities at the launch pad and are getting ready to conduct a wet dress rehearsal, leading up to a simulated “launch” as early as Saturday, Jan. 31. The upcoming wet dress rehearsal is a prelaunch test to fuel the rocket. During the rehearsal, teams demonstrate the ability to load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants into the rocket, conduct a launch countdown, and practice safely removing propellant from the rocket without astronauts inside the spacecraft. During several “runs,” the wet dress rehearsal will test the launch team’s ability to hold, resume, and recycle to several different times in the final 10 minutes of the countdown, known as ...

 Hey, Space Placers! " A new study led by the University of Bern has discovered a large number of bright streaks, also known as "lineae", on Mercury, which are presumably caused by the outgassing of volatile material from the planet's interior. This indicates that Mercury is not a dead planet, as previously assumed, but might in fact be geologically active. The results provide important insights into the evolution of Mercury and its volatiles and will be further investigated by future space missions such as BepiColombo." See the full story here. Sky Guy in Still Snowbound VA