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: SpaceX launched its sixth test flight of its Starship heavy-lift rocket Tuesday (Nov. 19), including its first physical payload: a toy banana. The full-size-but-fake fruit was not only "for scale," but also Starship's first zero-gravity indicator. Bananas also adorned the outside of the vehicle, with pixelated cartoon bananas holding actual size examples. A typical 8-inch banana measures 1/247th the height of the towering Starship and Super Heavy stack.
: In the 1990s, Eileen Collins broke through the "glass ceiling to the stars" as NASA's first female astronaut to pilot and command the space shuttle. Now she is launching onto the silver screen. "Spacewoman," a Haviland Digital and Tigerlily Productions documentary directed by Hannah Berryman, is premiering on Saturday (Nov. 16) at the Doc NYC festival. Collins and Berryman spoke to collectSPACE about the film's themes.
: Space Center has opened its new Artemis Gateway exhibit featuring a walkthrough mockup of a lunar orbit habitat. Designed by Northrop Grumman and used by NASA to assess the best configuration for the Gateway's Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the full-size module is outfitted with science racks, docking ports and astronaut crew quarters. The mockup is one of the first artifacts of the Gateway platform to go on display.
: A parking lot stood in for the moon on Thursday (Nov. 7), as a lunar rover took its first public drive. Intuitive Machines revealed its lunar terrain vehicle for NASA's Artemis program at Space Center Houston. Moon RACER (Reusable Autonomous Crewed Exploration Rover) features a Roush chassis, satellite relay and direct communications, Michelin tires and the sign off (literally) by two of the six Apollo astronauts to drive a car on the moon.
: A large, spinning NASA logo outside of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex inspired the cake for this year's "Taste of Space" culinary evening on Saturday (Nov. 2). Duff Goldman and his team at Charm City Cakes made the half-NASA "cake-ball" so the opposite side of the sphere resembled the moon for the 55th anniversary of the lunar landing. The rotating cake also had a chocolate astronaut and pulled-sugar nebulae.
: Taikonauts Cai Xuzhe, Song Lingdong and Wang Haoze are on their way to spending six months on the Tiangong space station after launching on board China's Shenzhou-19 spacecraft on Tuesday (Oct. 29). Cai previously flew on Shenzhou-14 in 2022; his two crewmates are first-time fliers. Wang is the only female flight engineer currently in the taikonaut corps and she is the third Chinese woman to launch into space.
: At the end of the Yellow Brick Road, somewhere over the rainbow, you will find... the moon. With "The Wizard of Oz" celebrating its 85th anniversary and "Wicked" being released into movie theaters, collectSPACE spoke with actor Patrick Labyorteaux to discover the link between the Emerald City and Tranquility Base. Hint: You needn't a brain, a heart or courage to see this is going to be a tenuous link, but it is "for all mankind."
: The moon, as sewn together by students and crafters in all 50 United States, will go on display at the Earth to Space festival at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington in 2025, and your lunar-themed square could be part of it! Organized by the National Quilt Museum together with Karen Nyberg, the first quilter in space, the Lunar Quilt Challenge is open for submissions themed around humanity's return to the moon.
: Though the steel installation was in part a tribute to them, only two of the seven original astronauts attended the Nov. 10, 1964, dedication of the Project Mercury Monument at Launch Complex-14 in Cape Canaveral. Gus Grissom and Wally Schirra joined NASA, Air Force and government officials to celebrate the success of the first U.S. human space program. Encased in the landmark is a time capsule not to be opened until 2464.
On Monday (Nov. 4), the U.S. Space Force released the details of its new exhibit of a Centaur III propellant tank and RL-10 engine outside of the headquarters of Space Systems Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base in California. The upper stage components were dedicated at an Oct. 18 ceremony, which hailed the donation by United Launch Alliance and the Centaur's role in launching both U.S. military and civilian space missions.
: Swatch found the inspiration for its latest addition to its Omega collaboration in the photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts. The new MoonSwatch "Mission to Earthphase" features both moon and Earth phase indicators, a first in watchmaking history. The open-edition $325 Bioceramic watch displays both the phase of the moon as it appears from Earth and Earth as it appears if viewed from the lunar surface at the same time.
How good are you at recognizing astronauts? Would you be able to tell a real space traveler from an actor if the person in question was wearing a costume spacesuit? What if they were in a TV commercial, but never named? Have you seen Capital One's ad about a school's Career Day? Did you see former shuttle and space station astronaut Karen Nyberg standing next to baseball star Derek Jeter? "What's in your wallet?"
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