NASA·每日一图

NASA’s Pegasus Barge arrived at the Launch Complex 39 turn basin wharf at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to make its first delivery to Kennedy in support of the agency’s Artemis missions. The upgraded 310-foot-long barge arrived Sept. 27, 2019, ferrying the 212-foot-long Space Launch System rocket core stage pathfinder. Weighing in at 228,000 pounds, the pathfinder is a full-scale mock-up of the rocket’s core stage and will be used to validate ground support equipment and demonstrate it can be integrated with Kennedy facilities. Image Credit: NASA 美国国家航空航天局的飞马号驳船抵达位于佛罗里达州肯尼迪航天中心的发射中心39号掉头盆地码头，这是它为支持NASA的阿尔特弥斯任务首次向肯尼迪航天中心交付。升级后的310英尺长的驳船于2019年9月27日抵达，运载着212英尺长的太空发射系统火箭核心级探路者号。“探路者”重22.8万磅，是火箭核心级的全尺寸模型，将用于验证地面支持设备，并证明它可以与肯尼迪航天中心的设施整合。 图片来源: NASA

Frank Rubio was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class and reported for duty in August 2017. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and earned a Doctorate of Medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Before attending medical school, he served as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter pilot and flew more than 1,100 hours, including more than 600 hours of combat and imminent danger time during deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Rubio is a board certified family physician and flight surgeon. At the time of his selection, he was serving in the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). #HispanicHeritageMonth Image Credit: NASA 弗兰克·卢比奥被美国宇航局选中加入2017年宇航员候选人班，并于2017年8月报到。他毕业于美国军事学院，并在健康科学统一服务大学获得医学博士学位。在进入医学院之前，他是一名UH-60黑鹰直升机飞行员，飞行时间超过1100小时，其中包括在波斯尼亚、阿富汗和伊拉克部署期间超过600小时的战斗和迫在眉睫的危险时间。卢比奥是经董事会认证的家庭医生和飞行外科医生。他被选中的时候，他在第十特种部队(空降部队)服役。 # HispanicHeritageMonth 图片来源:NASA

In our vast universe, the heaviest black holes grew from seeds. Nourished by the gas and dust they consume, or by merging with other dense objects, these seeds grow in size and heft to form the centers of galaxies, such as our own Milky Way. But unlike in the realm of plants, the seeds of giant black holes must have been black holes, too. And no one has ever found these seeds — yet. One idea is that supermassive black holes — the equivalent of hundreds of thousands to billions of Suns in mass — grew from a population of smaller black holes that has never been seen. This elusive group, the “intermediate-mass black holes,” would weigh in somewhere between 100 and 100,000 Suns. Among…

Like a drop of dew hanging on a leaf, Tethys appears to be stuck to Saturn’s A and F rings from this perspective in this 2014 image from the Cassini mission. For more than a decade, Cassini shared the wonders of Saturn and its family of icy moons—taking us to astounding worlds where methane rivers run to a methane sea and where jets of ice and gas are blasting material into space from a liquid water ocean that might harbor the ingredients for life. Saturn’s moon Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), like the ring particles, is composed primarily of ice. The gap in the A ring through which Tethys is visible is the Keeler gap, which is kept clear by the small moon…

Many of the best-loved galaxies in the cosmos are remarkably large, close, massive, bright, or beautiful, often with an unusual or intriguing structure or history. However, it takes all kinds to make a universe — as demonstrated by this Hubble image of Messier 110. Messier 110 may not look like much, but it is a fascinating near neighbor of our home galaxy, and an unusual example of its type. It is a member of the Local Group, a gathering of galaxies comprising the Milky Way and a number of the galaxies closest to it. Specifically, Messier 110 is one of the many satellite galaxies encircling the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to our own, and is classified as a dwarf elliptical galaxy, meaning that…