Starry Greetings!

A neutron star located within the remains of a supernova - known as 1E 0102.2-7219 (E0102) - in the Small Magellanic Cloud located 200,000 light years from Earth. [3985 × 6287]

NGC 3372, Dusty Carina 

55 Nights with Saturn

The Orion Bullets via NASA https://ift.tt/2VwwqDm

Facing NGC 3344 : From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 3344 face-on. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo Minor. This multi-color Hubble Space Telescope close-up of NGC 3344 includes remarkable details from near infrared to ultraviolet wavelengths. The frame extends some 15,000 light-years across the spiral’s central regions. From the core outward, the galaxy’s colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms. Of course, the bright stars with a spiky appearance are in front of NGC 3344 and lie well within our own Milky Way. via NASA

‘That was a quick flight’: How astronauts kept ice cool while their rocket malfunctioned at 4,970mph and plummeted back to Earth in harrowing 7G 'ballistic re-entry’ before hugging their loved-ones on the landing pad as Russia opens CRIMINAL probe.

Two astronauts kept ice cool as their rocket traveling at thousands of miles an hour malfunctioned on the edge of space while carrying them to the International Space Station, cockpit audio reveals.

Russian Aleksey Ovchinin and American Nick Hague made it back to Earth alive this morning after the booster on their Soyuz rocket broke at 164,000 feet and the rocket automatically turned back during a dramatic 7G 'ballistic re-entry’.

Ovchinin retained an enviable sang-froid as he realised what was happening, after they were rocked violently around in their seats by the force of the booster malfunction.

'An accident with the booster, 2 minutes, 45 seconds. That was a quick flight,’ he said in a calm voice in a streamed video of the incident.  

'We’re tightening our seatbelts,’ Ovchinin said on the video.

At that moment the two astronauts were experiencing weightlessness, when in an ordinary launch they should still have been pinned to the back of their seats by the force of the rocket surging upwards at 4,970mph.  

Russia says it has opened a criminal investigation and grounded all Soyuz flights. The accident comes weeks after a hole was discovered in the International Space Station amid talk from the Russian space authorities of deliberate sabotage.  

Video footage from the launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome shows a large plume of smoke coming from the rocket at the moment it failed and footage from inside the capsule shows the two astronauts being violently shaken about.

The accident bears similarities to the 1986 Challenger disaster when one of its boosters failed at lift-off causing an explosion that killed seven.

Astronauts have been involved in Soyuz malfunctions twice before, one in 1983 when a crew was forced to eject from a Soyuz rocket as it exploded on the launchpad. In 1975 a Soyuz capsule crashed back to Earth from 90 miles up after a rocket failure, but the crew survived.

The rocket, which was designed in the 1960s, has also had one booster fail in similar fashion to today’s malfunction. In 2002 a booster rocket malfunctioned and the rocket which was carrying a satellite crashed in Kazakhstan killing one person on the ground.

In total Soyuz rockets have been launched 745 times of which 21 have failed. Thirteen of those failures have been since 2010, calling into question the continued reliability of the rocket.

Search and rescue teams were scrambled to the touchdown location as NASA revealed the descent meant the Russian-built Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft had to take 'a sharper angle of landing compared to normal’.

The Russians have suspended Soyuz flights to the space station while they investigate the cause of the booster failure.

The Soyuz is the only way to get people to the space station at the moment but officials insist the astronauts currently on the space station have enough supplies.  

NASA rookie Nick Hague and second-time flyer Aleksey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency were setting off for a six-month mission at the International Space Station Thursday, on a relatively rare two-man launch.

A spokesperson for NASA said that rescue teams have now reached Hague and Ovchinin and they’ve been taken out of the capsule and were in 'good condition’.

The craft’s landing engines and parachute system were said to have done their job as normal despite the enormous G-force acting on both the shuttle and crew during the landing.

Shortly after the incident rescue crews and paratroopers were rushed the emergency landing site in the barren Kazakh steppe to provide support for the crew.

NASA had issued a worrying tweet on Thursday morning saying: 'There’s been an issue with the booster from today’s launch. Teams have been in contact with the crew.’

'The capsule is returning via a ballistic descent, which is a sharper angle of landing compared to normal. Search and rescue teams are heading towards the expected touchdown location of the spacecraft and crew.’  

Cosmonaut Alexander Volkov commented: 'The guys are lucky that they remained alive. They had reached a good height so it was possible to descend in their capsule.’

More info, pictures, diagrams, videos at this link:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6264339/Rocket-launch-booster-malfunction-forces-astronauts-return-Earth-ballistic-entry.html

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the iridescent tapestry of star birth in a neighbouring galaxy in this panoramic view of glowing gas, dark dust clouds, and young, hot stars.

Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/HEIC)

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