This Week @ NASA: Send Your Name to the Sun

William Shatner, Actor:
“Want to join NASA on an historic mission of discovery?”

We’re inviting people around the world to join actor William Shatner – by submitting their names online to be stored on a microchip that will travel aboard our historic Parker Solar Probe mission.

William Shatner, Actor:
“The first spacecraft to the Sun.”

To learn more and add your name to the mission, check out go.nasa.gov/HotTicket. Names can be submitted until April 27, 2018. Parker Solar Probe is targeted for launch in summer 2018, to travel through the brutal heat and radiation of the Sun’s atmosphere – making critical observations to help us better understand how stars work, and improve forecasts of major space weather events affecting life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.

Orion Crew Module Arrives for Safety Test

The crew module for the next test of our Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system, recently arrived at our Johnson Space Center, in Houston. Targeted for April 2019, the test will help ensure the spacecraft can carry astronauts to safety during a launch emergency, and is a critical safety milestone in our effort to send crewed missions to the Moon and beyond.

SLS Hardware Transported for Testing

A test version of our Space Launch System rocket’s intertank – is one of five components that make up the rocket’s 212-foot-tall core stage. It was shipped recently from Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to our Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama – for tests to ensure the rocket can withstand the more than 8 million pounds of thrust experienced during liftoff and spaceflight.

ICESat-2 Mission to Measure Height of Earth’s Surface

Our ICESat-2 mission will use an instrument called the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System, or ATLAS to measure the height of Earth’s surface – in particular, the changing polar ice. The instrument precisely times how long it takes light particles to bounce off Earth and return to the satellite. ICESat-2 is slated to launch in September from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

That’s what’s up this week @NASA …

For more on these and other stories follow us on the web at nasa.gov/twan.

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