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Now for sale in LEGO Stores and on LEGO.com, the Technic model of NASA's Perseverance Mars rover faithfully reproduces the real six-wheeled explorer now on the Red Planet. In an interview with collectSPACE, Jet Propulsion Laboratory public engagement specialist Scott Hulme shares how and his colleagues helped advise on the set and reveals some of the details that LEGO was able to include in the build.
The U.S. Space & Rocket Center held a ground breaking ceremony on Thursday (Aug. 3), celebrating the renewal of its Rocket Park. In addition to displaying newly-restored historic boosters from the early years of the U.S. space program, the Alabama space museum is also adding a monument to "Rocket City" space workers and, to symbolize Huntsville's ongoing contributions, the engine segment from the Space Launch System (SLS) core stage pathfinder.
In total, cosmonaut Alexander Viktorenko spent 489 days in Earth orbit, spread across four flights to the Mir space station. Viktorenko died on Thursday (Aug. 10) at the age of 76. During his time off the planet, he helped test a "space motorcycle," conducted six spacewalks and commanded the first Soyuz mission to launch after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A postage stamp issued on Friday (Aug. 11) by the Greenland and Faroe Islands postal services commemorates the upcoming launch of ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen of Denmark to the International Space Station. The stamp features a raven, connecting it to both Nordic mythology and "Huginn," Mogensen's name for his European science mission. Designed by the renowned Faroese artist Anker Eli Petersen, the stamp is sold alone, as a sheet and with a folder depicting Mogensen's training.
Michael Peña plays real NASA astronaut José Hernández in the new movie "A Million Miles Away" coming to Amazon Prime Video on Sept. 15. In the first trailer for the film, Peña depicts Hernández as he overcame his past as a migrant farm worker to reach his dream of launching into space. "A Million Miles Away" is directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella and co-stars Sarayu Blue, Rosa Salazar, Veronica Falcon and Bobby Soto.
A Galveston, Texas bakery is just over the moon about one of its customers, so much so, that it has named a pastry in her honor. Good Dough's "Koch it to the Moon" kolache adds Milky Way candy to their traditional Czech recipe as a nod to NASA Artemis II crew member Christina Koch (pronounced "Cook"), who is set to become the first woman to launch to the moon.
Karen Nyberg, who in 2008 became the 50th woman to fly in space, unveiled her quilted portraits of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and the first American in space, Sally Ride, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida on Thursday (Aug. 17). Nyberg created the two works of art to commemorate the first 60 years of women flying in space.
A veteran of three spaceflights, Karol "Bo" Bobko was the only NASA astronaut to fly on the first launch of two space shuttle orbiters. Bobko died on Thursday (Aug. 17) at the age of 85. Chosen by NASA in 1969 after being recruit for the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory astronaut corps, Bobko flew in 1983 on STS-6, the first flight of Challenger, and in 1985 on STS-51J, the first flight of Atlantis. In between, he was also commander of Discovery on the STS-51D mission in 1985.
India's Chandrayaan-3 mission landed on the moon on Wednesday (Aug. 23), making it only the fourth nation to reach the lunar surface. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) confirmed its Vikram lander and Pragyan rover had safely touched down in the lunar south pole region, where they are expected to collect science data for one lunar day (or two Earth weeks).
More than 50 years after Apollo 14 astronaut Stu Roosa created the original moon trees by taking seeds with him into lunar orbit, a new generation of the living moon mission monuments are about to take root. NASA and the USDA Forest Service are ready to begin distributing seedlings grown from five species of tree seeds that were flown around the moon on board Artemis I in 2022. Education and community organizations can now apply (through Oct. 6) to help plant the Artemis moon trees.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon "Endurance" lifted off on its third mission on Saturday (Aug. 26) this time bringing Crew-7 to the International Space Station. Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Andreas Mogensen with ESA, Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA and Konstantin Borisov with Roscosmos will spend the next six months helping to conduct science and keeping the space station operational. They are the first crew to wear four different flags to space since NASA's STS-100 space shuttle mission in April 2001.
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen let free his and his crew's zero-g indicator, a three-toed sloth named "Sasha," as they entered Earth orbit on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon "Endurance" on Saturday (Aug. 26). In response, the doll began to float, signaling the Crew-7 astronauts were in the microgravity environment of space. Chosen by his children, the toy sloth represented both a happy family memory and a comment about the pace at which Mogensen moves.
