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https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/bgk.html

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/space/o ... story.html

Not all of the players have been chosen for the mission to return samples of Mars back to Earth, but NASA on Monday announced Lockheed Martin will get the chance to become the first rocket to be launched off another planet.

The joint mission between NASA and European Space Agency is tied to the Perseverance rover already on the Red Planet that landed in 2021. The agencies’ plan is to launch a lander to Mars as early as 2026 that brings along with it a smaller rover designed to collect the samples that Perseverance is currently gathering, then stick them in what will be the first Mars Ascent Vehicle.

Solstice Sun and Milky Way
Composite Image Credit & Copyright: Stefan Seip (TWAN)

Explanation: Welcome to December's solstice, first day of winter in the north and summer for the southern hemisphere. Astronomical markers of the seasons, solstice and equinox dates are based on the Sun's place in its annual journey along the ecliptic, through planet Earth's sky. At this solstice, the Sun reaches its maximum southern declination of -23.5 degrees today at 16:28 UTC, while its right ascension coordinate on the celestial sphere is 18 hours. That puts the Sun in the constellation Sagittarius in a direction near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, if you could see today's Solstice Sun against faint background stars and nebulae (that's really hard to do, especially in the daytime ...) your view might look something like this composited panorama. To make it, images of our fair galaxy were taken under dark Namibian night skies, then stitched together in a panoramic view. From a snapshot made on December 21, 2015, the Sun was digitally overlayed as a brilliant star at today's northern winter solstice position, close to the center of the Milky Way.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171221.html

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/random_apod.html

Every child, at least once in their life, has been admonished to not stare at the sun for so long lest they go blind. But does looking at the sun really cause blindness, or is that just an old wives’ tale? Turns out, it’s a bit of both. The retina most certainly can be damaged by staring straight at the sun, but it would take several minutes of uninterrupted focus for that to happen.

In order to cause permanent injury to the eye, the retina would need to heat up by 50 degrees Fahrenheit. And at the brightest point of the day, when sun-induced eye damage is most likely, the average person can only look at the sun long enough to experience a 39-degree Fahrenheit increase in corneal temperature. After that, our natural defenses take over and our sensitive eyes begin to water and burn, which typically causes us to blink and look away before long-term harm can be done.

Fortunately, there are better and easier ways to get a good look at the sun. We can, for example, peruse NASA’s online gallery of sun photos. Over the last 100 years alone, the agency has taken thousands of photographs of the star. In the following slides, Stacker has rounded up 10 incredible photos of the sun from space taken by the agency. These images are a much clearer and safer way of getting a good look at the glowing ball of gas at the center of our solar system.

Source:
https://www.stltoday.com/news/science/i ... 79639.html

I like learning more about Exo-planets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJWtZFooKaE