A Crucial Find by Our James Webb Space Telescope on This Week @NASA – June 30, 2023

A crucial find by our James Webb Space Telescope, learning how life might be on Mars, and some tricky testing for a lunar roving robot … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

What is said in the film

A crucial find by our James Webb Space Telescope. Learning how life might be on Mars. And some tricky testing for a lunar roving robot. A few of the stories to tell you about This Week at NASA! An international team of scientists has used our James Webb Space Telescope to detect a new carbon compound in space for the first time.

The molecule, known as methyl cation, is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life and could help scientists understand how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in the universe. On June 25, the first Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA simulated Mars surface mission got underway at our Johnson Space Center. Four volunteer crew members will spend the 378-day mission in a 3D printed Mars habitat designed to simulate the challenges of a human mission to Mars. Learn more at nasa.

gov/chapea. A prototype of our VIPER Moon rover successfully completed more rigorous testing at our Ames Research Center to evaluate the rover’s ability to egress or drive down a ramp from the Astrobotic Griffin lander onto the lunar surface. This hours-long operation is one of the most critical and trickiest parts of VIPER's 100-day mission – and could become even more challenging on uneven or super steep terrain. VIPER is being built to search the Moon’s South Pole for water ice that could possibly sustain human exploration on future Artemis missions to the lunar surface. On June 29, a SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station and headed back to Earth.

The Dragon was loaded with over 3,600 pounds of supplies and NASA science experiments that will be examined by researchers on the ground. This was SpaceX’s 28th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the space station for NASA. That’s what’s up this week @NASA. For more on these and other stories, follow us on the web at nasa. gov/twan.

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