2022.05.11 | “This thin blue line of atmosphere that blankets and protects us all”

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 11 May 2022: 

Space Show News:

• NASA’s CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) spacecraft is in transit from California to Rocket Lab’s launch complex 1B on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand 
• A report on the first two years of Yutu-2, the robotic lunar rover component of CNSA's Chang'e 4 mission to the far side of the Moon
• Hayabusa2 (the asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese state space agency JAXA) sample analysis reveals the presence of organic material (amino acids), the building blocks of life
• Ingenuity helicopter successfully completes 28 flights across Mars

Features:

• The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer aboard the International Space Station
• James Webb Space Telescope imaged by Gaia

Planet Earth - Episode 37: 

• AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder on NASA's Aqua satellite)
• Reduced air pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic and a sharp decline in precipitation in the western United States
• OCO (Orbiting Carbon Observatory) 2 and 3 
• Carbon Mapper 
• Gavin Schmidt, Acting Senior Climate Advisor at NASA
• Astronaut reflections on seeing the Earth from space: “The only border that matters is this thin blue line of atmosphere that blankets and protects us all” ~ Nicole Stott