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The space shuttle Discovery launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, heading through Atlantic skies toward its 51-D mission. The seven-member crew lifted off at 8:59 a.m. ET, April 12, 1985.NASA The launch of space shuttle Discovery is captured in this April 12, 1985, photo. This mission, STS-51D, was the 16th flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and Discovery’s fourth flight.
Discovery carried out 39 missions, more than any other space shuttle. Its missions included deploying and repairing the Hubble Space Telescope and 13 flights to the International Space Station – including the very first docking in 1999. The retired shuttle now resides at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
Learn more about NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.
Image credit: NASA
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Sols 4507-4508: “Just Keep Driving”
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, on April 9, 2025, Sol 4505 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, at 00:56:30 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Written by Natalie Moore, Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
Earth planning date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Our drive from Monday’s plan was mostly successful, putting us ~22 meters down the “road” out of an expected 30 meters. A steering command halted the drive a little short when we tried to turn-in-place but instead turned into a rock, which also had the effect of making our position too unstable for arm activities. Oh well! APXS data has been showing the recent terrain as being pretty similar in composition, so the team isn’t complaining about trying again after another drive. Plus, keeping the arm stowed should give us a little more power to play with in the coming sols (an ongoing struggle this Martian winter).
Recently, my job on Mastcam has been to make sure our science imaging is as concurrent as possible with required rover activities. This strategy helps save rover awake time, AKA power consumption. Today we did a pretty good job with this, only increasing the total awake time by ~2 minutes even though we planned 52 images! Our imaging today included a mosaic of the “Devil’s Gate” ridge including some nodular bedrock and distant “Torote Bowl,” a mosaic of a close-by vein network named “Moonstone Beach,” and several sandy troughs surrounding the bedrock blocks we see here.
ChemCam is planning a LIBS raster on a vertical vein in our workspace named “Jackrabbit Flat,” and a distant RMI mosaic of “Condor Peak” (a butte to the north we’re losing view of). Our drive will happen in the 1400 hour on the first sol, hopefully landing us successfully 53 meters further into this new valley on our way to the boxwork structures to the west! Post-drive, we’re including a test of a “Post Traverse Autonav Terrain Observation” AKA PoTATO – an easy drop-in activity for ground analysis of a rover-built navigation map of our new terrain. Plus we get to say PoTATO a lot.
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Students from Universidad Católica Boliviana “San Pablo” compete during NASA’s 2024 Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The 2025 competition takes place Friday and Saturday, April 11-12, 2025, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Aviation Challenge course in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA NASA’s annual Human Exploration Rover Challenge returns Friday, April 11, and Saturday, April 12, with student teams competing at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Aviation Challenge course near the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Media are invited to watch as hundreds of students from around the world attempt to navigate a complex obstacle course by piloting a vehicle of their own design and production. Media interested in attending or setting up interviews should contact Taylor Goodwin in the Marshall Office of Communications at 938-210-2891 no later than 2 p.m. Thursday, April 10.
In addition to the traditional human-powered rover division, this year’s competition expands the challenge to include a remote-control division. The 2025 HERC Handbook includes guidelines for the new remote-control division and updates for the human-powered division.
Participating teams represent 35 colleges and universities, 38 high schools, and two middle schools from 20 states, Puerto Rico, and 16 other nations.
The event is free and open to the public, with rover excursions from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. CDT each day, or until the last rover completes the obstacle course.
Following the competition, NASA will host an in-person awards ceremony Saturday, April 12, at 5:30 p.m. inside the Space Camp Operations Center at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. NASA and industry sponsors will present multiple awards highlighting team successes throughout the past eight-months-long engineering design project, including awards for best rover design, best pit crew, best social media presence, and many other accomplishments.
About the Challenge
Recognized as NASA’s leading international student challenge, the Human Exploration Rover Challenge aims to put competitors in the mindset of NASA’s Artemis campaign. Teams pitch an engineering design for a lunar rover which simulates astronauts exploring the lunar surface while overcoming various obstacles. Eligible teams compete to be among the top three finishers in their divisions, and to win multiple awards, including best vehicle design, best rookie team, and more.
The annual challenge draws hundreds of students from around the world and reflects the goals of NASA’s Artemis campaign, which will establish the first long-term presence on the Moon and pave the way for eventual missions to Mars.
The event was launched in 1994 as the NASA Great Moonbuggy Race – a collegiate competition to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. It expanded in 1996 to include high school teams, evolving again in 2014 into the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge. Since its inception, more than 15,000 students have participated – with many former students now working in the aerospace industry, including with NASA.
The Human Exploration Rover Challenge is managed by NASA Marshall’s Southeast Regional Office of STEM Engagement and is one of eight Artemis Student Challenges. NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement uses challenges and competitions to further the agency’s goal of encouraging students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
To learn more about the challenge, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/roverchallenge/
Taylor Goodwin
256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
taylor.goodwin@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Apr 04, 2025 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Sols 4493-4494: Just Looking Around
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 25, 2025 — sol 4491, or Martian day 4,491 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 17:16:50 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Alex Innanen, atmospheric scientist at York University
Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
It’s my second shift of the week as the Environmental theme lead and keeper of the plan (a bit of a mouthful we shorten to ESTLK) and today started out feeling eerily similar to Monday. Once again, Curiosity is posing like a geologist, which means that once again we can’t unstow the arm and will be skipping contact science. The silver lining is that this means we have extra time to have a good look around.
The plan also looks similar to Monday’s — targeted remote sensing on the first sol before driving away, and then untargeted remote sensing on the next. On sol 4493 we start our remote sensing, almost as remote as we can get, with a suprahorizon movie looking for clouds in the south. A dust-devil survey rounds out the sol’s environmental observations, and then the geology theme group can get down to the serious business of looking at rocks. For Mastcam this means observing a group of bedrock targets all called “Observatory Trail” (one of which you can see in the middle of the image above), pointing out some interesting veins in “Point Loma,” and casting their gaze out toward “Black Butte” (which I could not think of a fun pun for…). ChemCam has a LIBS observation of “Cholla,” as well as two long-distance observations of the Texoli Butte and the boxwork structures. Our second sol is a little more restrained, as untargeted sols tend to be. But Curiosity will still have plenty of energy after a good rest. We’re taking advantage of that with an extra-long dust-devil movie. Even though we’re in our cloudy season, we still sometimes see dust lifting, and having that extra time to look out for it increases our chances of catching a wind gust or a dust devil in action. Alongside that we also have a Mastcam tau observation to keep an eye on the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and wrap up with a ChemCam AEGIS activity to autonomously choose a LIBS target.
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Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Related Terms
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