lonestarflight

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Technicians attaching the Launch Escape Tower to the LJ-1 Mercury Boilerplate Capsule prior to assembly with Little Joe rocket. This was photographed at LA-1 in Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia.

Date: August 20, 1959

NASA ID: LRC-1959-B701_P-05952, LRC-1959-B701_P-05956, LRC-1959-B701_P-05947, LRC-1959-B701_P-05810,

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Smile for your picture! NASA's Mission to Psyche, the spacecraft headed for the metal-rich asteroid turned its aim towards our home planet and tested its cameras by photographing the Earth. Now about 180 million miles away, the mission to Psyche will receive a gravity assist from Mars in May 2026 before heading for the distant asteroid, set to arrive in 2029.

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2025 August 19

Giant Galaxies in Pavo Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block

Explanation: Over 500,000 light years across, NGC 6872 (bottom left) is a truly enormous barred spiral galaxy. At least 5 times the size of our own large Milky Way, NGC 6872 is the largest known spiral galaxy. About 200 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the appearance of this giant galaxy’s stretched out spiral arms suggest the wings of a giant bird. So its popular moniker is the Condor galaxy. Lined with massive young, bluish star clusters and star-forming regions, the extended and distorted spiral arms are due to NGC 6872’s past gravitational interactions with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible here below the giant spiral galaxy’s core. Other members of the southern Pavo galaxy group are scattered through this magnificent galaxy group portrait, with the dominant giant elliptical galaxy, NGC 6876, above and right of the soaring Condor galaxy.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250819.html

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This Picture shows the Milky Way flowing over its future spectator, ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

Focussing back down on Earth, the ELT will scrutinise the pristine night sky above the Chilean Atacama Desert with unprecedented precision. It will help us learn more about the close environment of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It will analyse the atmospheres of exoplanets, answer questions about the births and deaths of stars we yet cannot even begin to ask, and explore how galaxies form and evolve, among many other exciting questions. We eagerly await the mysteries of the cosmos the world’s biggest eye on the sky will unveil. 

Credit: C. Letelier/ESO

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"Workers prepare to install the first stage of AS-201’s Saturn-IB on Launch Pad 34 at the Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, now the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station."

Date: August 18, 1965

NASA ID: 107-KSC-65C-5347

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The forward fuselage of the first Space Shuttle (OV-101) is under construction at Rockwell's facility in Downey, California.

Date: August 18, 1975

source

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Technicians adjust the rocket motor during the attachment of the escape tower to the Mercury capsule prior to assembly with Little Joe launcher.

Date: August 18, 1959.

NASA ID: LRC-1959-B701_P-05790, LRC-1959-B701_P-05781, LRC-1959-B701_P-05803,LRC-1959-B701_P-05798

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August 16, 1960: Joseph Kittinger set the decades-long world record for the longest free fall

The U.S. Air Force's Project Excelsior was a series of three high-altitude jumps that tested a new multi-stage parachute system. Meaning "ever upward", the project pioneered aviation safety and made breakthroughs in aerospace medicine that are still relevant more than sixty years later. Captain Joseph Kittinger set long-standing world records for the longest free-fall, the highest altitude jump, and the highest altitude traveled by a human in a balloon.

Read more about Project Excelsior here!

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Planned sequence of events for a Gemini mission.

McDonnell, "Project Gemini Engineering Mockup Review," Aug. 15-16, 1962, p. 23.

NASA ID: link

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August 14, 1959: Explorer 6 takes the first image of Earth from orbit

Explorer 6 launched onboard a Thor-Able rocket from Cape Canaveral into a highly elliptical orbit on August 7, 1959. One week later, while over Mexico, it took the first image of Earth from orbit— of the north central Pacific Ocean from an altitude of approximately 17,000 miles.

📸 NASA

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A 95th Bomb Group B-17 takes off from Horham, England, August 1944

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"This NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station photograph shows the Douglas D-558-2 #2 Skyrocket (NACA 144), prior to flight, being towed under the P2B-1S launch vehicle (NACA 137) for attachment. The photograph also shows the large hydraulic jacks used to elevate the P2B-1S launch vehicle. Once the D-558-2 was in position, the P2B-1S would be lowered and the attachment made."

Date: August 1953

NASA ID: E-1013

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STS-38 Atlantis sitting on LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Date: August 1990

source

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A Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk on the shore of Andrew Lagoon, Adak, Alaska.

Bureau of Aeronautics Photograph Collection, Adak, 1944-1945. ASL-PCA-545.

Date: August 11, 1945

Alaska State Library: ASL-P545-78

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I'm kinda on break rn. Sorry, it's been rough lately and I haven't had the energy to do this month's queue. I'll come back later and try to finish out the month. Sorry to those who enjoy my posts.

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Gemini capsule wind tunnel test, Gemini program