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The X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology, or QueSST, wing assembly is lifted by a crane and moved to another area of the manufacturing floor in preparation for wing skin installation. The aircraft is under construction at Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, California, and will fly for the first time in 2021. Currently, commercial planes aren’t allowed to fly faster than the speed of sound over land because they would create sonic booms which are very loud and disruptive to humans and animals. The X-59 is an experimental aircraft that will eventually lead to supersonic commercial aircraft that will travel much faster than current subsonic commercial aircraft, saving people time in the air. Image Credit: Lockheed Martin X-59静音超音速技术（或称QueSST）的机翼组件由起重机吊起并移至生产车间的另一个区域，以准备机翼蒙皮安装。 该飞机正在加利福尼亚州棕榈谷的洛克希德·马丁公司制造，并将于2021年首次飞行。 目前，商用飞机的飞行速度不允许超过陆地上的声音速度，因为它们会造成音爆，对人畜造成极大的破坏。X-59是一架实验飞机，最终将发展成为超音速商用飞机，比目前的亚音速商用飞机速度快得多，节省人们在空中的时间。 图片来源: Lockheed Martin

Human eyes can see only a small portion of the range of radiation given off by the objects around us. We call this wide array of radiation the electromagnetic spectrum, and the part we can see visible light. In this Hubble Space Telescope image, researchers revisited one of Hubble’s most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. Here, the pillars are seen in infrared light, which pierces through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar — but just as amazing — view of the pillars. The better-known image is of the pillars in visible light. In this ethereal view the entire frame is peppered with bright stars and baby stars are revealed being formed within the pillars themselves. The ghostly…

This remarkable spiral galaxy, known as NGC 4651, may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space, but don’t be fooled — it keeps a violent secret. It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the large and beautiful spiral that we observe today. Although only a telescope like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captured this image, could give us a picture this clear, NGC 4651 can also be observed with an amateur telescope — so if you have a telescope at home and a star-gazing eye, look out for this glittering carnivorous spiral. Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency) Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Leonard 这个引人注目的螺旋星系，即NGC 4651，当它在广袤、寂静的太空中旋转时，看起来像宁静祥和，但不要被愚弄了——它隐藏着一个暴烈的秘密。据信，这个星系吞噬了另一个较小的星系，形成了我们今天看到的巨大而美丽的螺旋。 尽管只有像NASA/ESA哈勃太空望远镜这样的望远镜能够捕获到这张图像，才能使我们获得清晰的照片，但是NGC 4651也可以用业余望远镜观察到——所以如果你家里有望远镜和一双观星的眼睛，留意一下这个闪闪发光的食肉螺旋。 文字来源：ESA（欧洲航天局） 图片来源：ESA/Hubble和NASA, D….

This 2010 image from the Herschel Space Observatory shows dust clouds associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the Monoceros, or Unicorn, constellation. Herschel collected the infrared light given out by dust. The bright smudges are dusty cocoons containing massive embryonic stars, which will grow up to 10 times the mass of our Sun. The small spots near the center of the image are lower mass stellar embryos. The nebula itself is located to the right of the picture, along with its massive cluster of stars. #TBT Image Credit: ESA and the PACS, SPIRE & HSC consortia, F. Motte (AIM Saclay,CEA/IRFU – CNRS/INSU – U.ParisDidedrot) for the HOBYS key programme 这张2010年赫歇尔太空天文台拍摄的照片显示了尘埃云与玫瑰星云的关系。玫瑰星云位于麒麟座，距离地球约5000光年。赫歇尔收集了尘埃发出的红外线。明亮的黑斑是含有巨大恒星胚胎的布满尘埃的蚕茧，这些恒星的质量将是太阳的10倍。靠近图像中心的小点是质量较小的恒星胚胎。星云本身及其巨大的恒星群位于图片的右侧。 # TBT 影像来源：ESA and the PACS, SPIRE…

NGC 4618 was discovered on April 9, 1787, by the German-British astronomer William Herschel, who also discovered Uranus in 1781. Only a year before discovering NGC 4618, Herschel theorized that the “foggy” objects astronomers were seeing in the night sky were likely to be large star clusters located much farther away than the individual stars he could easily discern. Since Herschel proposed his theory, astronomers have come to understand that what he was seeing was a galaxy. NGC 4618, classified as a barred spiral galaxy, has the special distinction among other spiral galaxies of only having one arm rotating around the center of the galaxy. Located about 21 million light-years from our galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, NGC 4618 has a diameter of about…

NASA’s new three-dimensional portrait of methane, the world’s second-largest contributor to greenhouse warming, shows it arising from a diversity of sources on the ground and how it moves through the atmosphere. Combining multiple data sets from emissions inventories, including fossil fuel, agricultural, biomass burning and biofuels, and simulations of wetland sources into a high-resolution computer model, researchers now have an additional tool for understanding this complex gas and its role in Earth’s carbon cycle, atmospheric composition, and climate system. Image Credit: NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio 甲烷是造成温室效应的第二大因素，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）最新发布的甲烷三维图像显示，甲烷显示甲烷是由地面上各种不同的来源产生，以及甲烷如何在大气中运动。将来自排放清单的多个数据集（包括化石燃料，农业，生物质燃烧和生物燃料，以及对湿地源的模拟）组合到高分辨率计算机模型中，研究人员现在有了一个额外的工具来了解这种复杂气体及其在地球碳循环、大气组成和气候系统中的作用。 来源：NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio

In this image from Dec. 2019, astronaut Christina Koch handles media bags that enable the manufacturing of organ-like tissues using the BioFabrication Facility (BFF), a 3-D biological printer on the International Space Station. The BFF could become a part of a larger system capable of manufacturing whole, fully functioning human organs from existing patient cells in microgravity. Learn more about science experiments aboard the station and how it helps improve life on Earth. Video: Science at 17,500 Miles Per Hour Image Credit: NASA 在2019年12月的这张照片中，宇航员克里斯蒂娜·科赫（Christina Koch）处理的介质袋可以使用国际空间站上的3D生物打印机BioFabrication Facility（BFF）制造器官样组织。 BFF可能会成为更大系统的一部分，该系统能够通过微重力作用从现有患者细胞中制造出完整，功能齐全的人体器官。 详细了解国际空间站站上的科学实验以及它如何帮助改善地球上的生命。 视频：科学时速17500英里 图片来源：NASA