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A volunteer from NASA’s Artemis Extravehicular Activity training group moves a 30-pound object through a boulder field while in a spacesuit connected to NASA’s Active Response Gravity Offload System, or ARGOS. He is conducting a trial run through an obstacle course while ARGOS lifts him and the suit in a way that simulates gravity similar to that on Mars. Some astronauts will work through this obstacle course immediately after returning to Earth so that researchers can learn more about how mission-ready crew can be after landing on a planet’s surface.

Source: NASA

Hubble Finds a Planet Forming in an Unconventional Way

Source：NASA

Every winter, a layer of carbon dioxide frost (dry ice) forms on the surface of Mars. At its greatest extent in mid-winter, this frost reaches from the poles down to the middle latitudes, until it is too warm and sunny to persist. In most places this is around 50 degrees latitude, similar to the latitude of southern Canada on Earth.

However, small patches of dry ice are found closer to the equator on pole-facing slopes, which are colder because they receive less sunlight. This image was taken in the middle of winter in Mars' Southern Hemisphere, and shows a crater near 37 degrees south latitude. The south-facing slope has patchy bright frost, blue in enhanced color. This frost occurs in and around the many gullies on the slope, and in other images, has caused flows in the gullies.

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei arrived at the International Space Station on April 9, 2021, and will return home March 30, 2022, after spending 355 days in low-Earth orbit. This duration breaks the previous record, held by retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, by 15 days.

Vande Hei will return in a Soyuz spacecraft as scheduled alongside cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov.

Source: NASA