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Artist’s concept of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The construction phase of the TMT project officially kicked off in October 2014; the telescope should achieve “first light” in 2022, if all goes according to plan. Credit: Courtesy TMT International Observatory

The group building a huge telescope on Hawaii’s tallest mountain plans to restart construction this week, ending a two-month delay caused by protestors opposed to the ambitious project.

Construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano — work that was halted in April after a series of protests—will resume on Wednesday (June 24), project representatives said in a statement issued over the weekend.

“Our period of inactivity has made us a better organization in the long run,” Henry Yang, chair of the TMT International Observatory Board, said in the statement. “We are now comfortable that we can be better stewards and better neighbors during our temporary and limited use of this precious land, which will allow us to explore the heavens and broaden the boundaries of science in the interest of humanity.” [The Biggest Telescopes on Earth: How They Measure Up]

Construction of the $1.4 billion TMT began in October near the top of Mauna Kea, which rises 13,796 feet (4,205 meters) into the sky from the Big Island of Hawaii. The TMT will link up 492 small, hexagonal mirrors to form a giant light-collecting surface 98 feet (30 m) wide.

Once complete in the early 2020s, the observatory will return images 10 times sharper than those captured by NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope, TMT representatives have said. Astronomers will put the telescope to a number of uses: searching for and characterizing exoplanets, for example, and investigating the nature of mysterious dark matter and dark energy. (Two other huge, ground-based scopes — the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope — should come online in Chile at about the same time as TMT, and do similar work.)

But not everybody is enamored with the TMT. Native Hawaiians regard the peaks of mountains throughout the island chain as sacred, and Mauna Kea may be the most sacred one of all.

So building another telescope on this dormant volanco, which already houses a number of observatories, has been controversial from the start. For instance, protestors disrupted the TMT’s groundbreaking ceremony in October, and further demonstrations in March and April resulted in a number of arrests and eventually halted construction altogether.

In his statement, Yang said TMT representatives are “mindful of those who have concerns, and yet, we hope they will permit us to proceed with this important task while reserving their right to peaceful protest.” But another showdown appears to be looming Wednesday.

“By proceeding with the project, the TMT officials neglect to acknowledge and act on the concerns of citizens of Hawai’i who have voiced their strong disapproval of the project. This action further demonstrates the lack of respect that the State of Hawai’i and project officials have for Native Hawaiians and their culture, in addition to the health and well-being of the people and the environment,” members of the group Idle No More Mauna Kea wrote in a Facebook post Sunday (June 21).

“Members of the global Mauna Kea ‘Ohana [family] are asked to lift prayers, songs and chants for our mauna [mountain] and those who will be standing physically on the mauna,” they added. “Those who are on island and plan to be on the mauna Wednesday morning are asked to bring their highest selves to protect the mauna and stand with compassion, patience, love and forgiveness in their hearts. Bring digital cameras, phones and video cameras to the mauna to document the day as it unfolds.”

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Early summer is an “in-between” time in the skies. The realm of the galaxies has moved off to the west, but the summer Milky Way has not yet arrived. This is the best time of year to observe globular clusters and double stars.

The centerpiece of the early summer constellations is Boötes, the herdsman, with the bright star Arcturus at his heart. Arcturus is easy to find by following the “arc” of the Big Dipper’s handle away from the ladle: it is the only bright star in this part of the sky. Alternately, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, simply look straight overhead around 11 p.m. your local time.

Although Boötes looks like it might be pronounced like “booties,” the diaeresis (double dot) over the second “o” gives you a clue: the two “o”s are pronounced separately: Boh-OO-tes. Its stars form a distinctive kite shape, complete with tail. [The Brightest Stars in the Night Sky]

Arcturus is the third brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius and Canopus. It is relatively close to us, only 37 light-years distant. It is an orange giant star, slightly cooler than the sun, but quite a bit larger in diameter.

These three constellations contain many interesting objects to look at with binoculars or a small telescope.
Credit: Starry Night Software

Boötes contains relatively few deep sky objects, but is rich in double and variable stars. Izar (Epsilon Boötis) is one of the finest double stars in the sky. With a separation of only 2.9 arc seconds, it requires at least 3 inches aperture, steady skies, and high magnification to see its duality; its stars are gold and greenish in colour. Alkalurops (Mu Boötis) is a much wider double at 2 arc minutes separation, but it is a challenge to see that one of its stars is itself a double.

Although not within Boötes itself, most amateur astronomers use the stars of Boötes to star-hop to the Messier globular cluster Messier 3 in the dim constellation of Canes Venatici. M3 forms an almost perfect equilateral triangle with Arcturus and Rho Boötis. This is one of the finest globular clusters in the sky.

Just to the left (east) of Boötes is a small circlet of stars forming Corona Borealis, the northern crown. Look within the circle to see if you can see R Corona Borealis, a very unusual variable star. Some have called this an “inverse nova.” Most of the time, it shines steadily with a brightness of about magnitude 7, just below naked eye visibility, but easily seen in binoculars. At long and irregular intervals, instead of brightening like a nova, it dims by about 6 magnitudes. This dimming is caused by occasional expulsion of a dark obscuring cloud of dust. Currently R is entering its dark phase, but keep watching, and it should soon reappear.

Constellation Quiz: What’s Your Cosmic IQ?

Constellations ancient and modern grace the skies year round. Let’s see what you know about the star patterns that appear overhead every night.

0 of 10 questions complete

Constellation Quiz: What’s Your Cosmic IQ?

Constellations ancient and modern grace the skies year round. Let’s see what you know about the star patterns that appear overhead every night.

0 of questions complete

Below Corona Borealis is one of the most unusual constellations, or rather “half constellations.” Serpens represents a snake cut in half, each half held in one hand of Ophiuchus. This is the front half: Serpens Caput, or the head of the serpent. The other half, located quite a ways to the east, is Serpens Cauda, the tail of the Serpent. A triangle is supposed to represent the head of the spent, but I always see this and the two stars above as a large “X.”

The brightest star in Serpens bears the ugly name Unukalhai, which is Arabic for “the serpent’s neck.” Just above Unukalhai is Delta Serpentis, a fine pair of pale yellow stars in a telescope.

But the real prize in Serpens Caput is the globular cluster Messier 5, every bit as fine as Messier 3 to the northwest. Like all globular clusters, M5 responds well to aperture and magnification. Besides resolving the cluster into myriads of tiny stars, a large telescope will reveal chains of stars and clusters within the cluster.

This article was provided to SPACE.com by Simulation Curriculum, the leader in space science curriculum solutions and the makers of Starry Night and SkySafari. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on Space.com.

NASA is celebrating the New Year on Mars on June 19, 2015. One Mars year is 687 days long, nearly twice the time of an Earth year, due to Mars’ longer orbit around the sun. Credit: NASA

It’s New Year’s Day on the Red Planet today and NASA is celebrating in style with an epic three-day party in Mars itself … Mars, Pennsylvania, that is.

NASA scientists and Mars experts have descended on the town of Mars to celebrate the Martian New Year today (June 18) with a press briefing at a flying saucer spaceship monument in Mars, Pennsylvania, kicks off a weekend of Mars-themed activities by NASA to inspire kids to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics – all fields that the space agency says it will need in its push to the Red Planet. [Mars Myths & Misconception: A Quiz]

Among the invited speakers is Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science. Green not only oversees many aspects of Red Planet exploration, but also was a technical consultant on the upcoming movie “The Martian,” which lands in theaters in November.

NASA will celebrate the Martian New Year with an event at this flying saucer spaceship monument in Mars, Pennsylvania on June 19, 2015, which marks the official start of a new Martian year.
Credit: Jon Dawson

Mars celebrates its New Year about once every two Earth years because the Red Planet takes twice as long to orbit the sun as our world. Astronomers count the Martian New Year from the time that the planet’s northern hemisphere spring equinox starts on Mars. This year, the Martian New Year starts June 19.

Other NASA activities at the event include a “blast-off” dinner, a talk about music of the Red Planet, and a performance by a Mars Jump Rope Team. There will also be a miniature rocket launch on Saturday (June 20), subject to weather.

In recent months, NASA has been publicly aligning many of its activities to what it says will be the ultimate goal: landing a human on Mars in a few decades. For now, NASA’s human exploration is confined to low Earth orbit, but it has an Orion spacecraft under development to bring people further into the solar system.

Space.com Exclusive T-shirt. Available to Populate Mars. Buy Now
Credit: Space.com Store

Mars is currently being studied by a fleet of spacecraft built by NASA and the space agencies of Europe and India. On the surface, NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers continue to drive across the Martian terrain, while several orbiters monitor changes in the planet from above. The most recent addition was India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, which arrived at the Red Planet on Sept. 24, 2014, two days after NASA’s own Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission orbiter.

You can see more details about the Martian New Year celebrations at http://www.marsnewyear.com/.

Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflect that NASA’s Mars briefing today will not be webcast on NASA TV.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

This photo, taken by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly from the International Space Station, shows Tropical Storm Bill in the Gulf of Mexico on June 15, 2015. Credit: Scott Kelly/NASA

Tropical Storm Bill lurks menacingly near the coast of Texas in a photo taken from space yesterday (June 15).

The image was captured from the International Space Station, and shows the storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of the Lone Star State. The storm made landfall earlier today, on southern Matagorda Island, Texas, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (97 km/h), according to the National Hurricane Center.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly took the new photo. Kelly, along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, is participating in the first yearlong mission at the International Space Station to study the long-term effects of microgravity on the human body. [Earth from Above: 101 Stunning Images from Orbit]

“Concerned for all in its path including family, friends and colleagues,” Kelly wrote in an update on Twitter.

Tropical Storm Bill is expected to curve across the heart of Texas, and a tornado watch has been issued for parts of central and southeast Texas, including Houston and Austin. The latest projections show that the storm will likely move into Oklahoma on Thursday (June 18).

As of 2 p.m. EDT, a swath of land from Baffin Bay, Texas, to High Island, Texas, is under a tropical storm watch. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that Tropical Storm Bill could dump up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain over some parts of eastern Texas.

More generally, Bill is expected to produce 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) of rain in most of eastern Texas and eastern Oklahoma, and 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 cm) in western Arkansas and southern Missouri. Along the Texas and Louisiana coasts, storm surges could reach 2 to 4 feet (0.6 to 1.2 meters) high, according to NOAA.

“The combination of a storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters,” NOAA officials wrote in an advisory, adding that recent reports state that Port Lavaca, Texas, is already experiencing water levels 3 feet (0.9 m) above normal.

“The deepest water will occur along the immediate coast near and to the right of the landfall location,” the advisory states. “Surge-related flooding depends on the relative timing of the surge and the tidal cycle, and can vary greatly over short distances.”

Parts of Texas and Oklahoma are still reeling from severe storms that soaked the state in late May. Multiple storm systems dumped nearly record-breaking rains across the two states, causing flash floods in many drought-stricken areas.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Meteorites from Mars found on Earth have traces of methane, adding weight to the idea that life could live off methane on the Red Planet, scientists say. But the methane detection alone is not proof that life exists on Mars now or in the past, they add. Credit: Image by Michael Helfenbein

Methane, a potential sign of primitive life, has been found in meteorites from Mars, adding weight to the idea that life could live off methane on the Red Planet, researchers say.

This discovery is not evidence that life exists, or has ever existed, on Mars, the researchers cautioned. Still, methane “is an ingredient that could potentially support microbial activity in the Red Planet,” study lead author Nigel Blamey, a geochemist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, told Space.com.

Methane is the simplest organic molecule. This colorless, odorless, flammable gas was first discovered in the Martian atmosphere by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft in 2003, and NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered a fleeting spike of methane at its landing site last year. [The Search for Life on Mars: A Photo Timeline]

Much of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere is produced by life, such as cattle digesting food. However, there are ways to produce methane without life, such as volcanic activity.

To shed light on the nature of the methane on Mars, Blamey and his colleagues analyzed rocks blasted off Mars by cosmic impacts that subsequently crash-landed on Earth as meteorites. About 220 pounds (100 kilograms) of Martian meteorites have been found on Earth.

The scientists focused on six meteorites from Mars that serve as examples of volcanic rocks there, collecting samples about one-quarter of a gram from each — a little bigger than a 1-carat diamond. All the samples were taken from the interiors of the meteorites, to avoid terrestrial contamination.

The researchers found that all six released methane and other gases when crushed, probably from small pockets inside.

“The biggest surprise was how large the methane signals were,” Blamey said.

Chemical reactions between volcanic rocks on Mars and the Martian environment could release methane. Although the dry thin air of Mars makes its surface hostile to life, the researchers suggest the Red Planet is probably more habitable under its surface. They noted that if methane is available underground on Mars, microbes could live off it, just as some bacteria do in extreme environments on Earth.

“We have not found life, but we have found methane that could potentially support microbes in the subsurface,” Blamey said.

Blamey now hopes to analyze more Martian meteorites. He and his colleagues detailed their findings online today (June 16) in the journal Nature Communications. 

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

JPL engineers Joel Steinkraus and Farah Alibay display a full-scale mechanical mock-up of a MarCO 6U cubesat. Credit: JPL

WASHINGTON — Two tiny cubesats, the first NASA plans to send to another planet, will keep watch on the agency’s InSight mission as it descends to the Martian surface in September 2016, an agency official said June 9.

The Mars Cube One satellites (or MarCO) are 6U cubesats, meaning each is built from six standard cubesat modules that measure 10 centimeters on a side and weigh just over 1 kilogram each. MarCO will be NASA’s first interplanetary cubesats, according to the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is building the spacecraft.

“News about the status of InSight’s landing could come hours earlier with MarCO,” Joel Krajewski, MarCO program manager at JPL, wrote in a June 10 email. [NASA’s InSight Mars Lander Mission in Pictures]

MarCO is not an official part of InSight, the 12th in NASA’s Discovery line of cost-capped planetary science missions. The lander, also managed by JPL, will be built Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver using heritage parts and designs from the Mars lander Phoenix. InSight is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on March 4, 2016, and when it does, MarCO will go along for the ride.

NASA’s two small MarCO CubeSats will be flying past Mars in 2016 just as NASA’s next Mars lander, InSight, is descending through the Martian atmosphere and landing on the surface. MarCO, for Mars Cube One, will provide an experimental communications relay to inform Earth quickly about the landing.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Bundled up against the bottom of the second stage of InSight’s Atlas V rocket in open-air boxes, the MarCO satellites will separate from the launcher after InSight and fly to Mars separate from the lander. That will be possible thanks to cold gas thrusters, provided by VACCO Industries, South El Monte, California, that enable MarCO to perform the five trajectory correction maneuvers required to reach Mars at the same time as InSight. The cruise from Earth takes about six-and-a-half months.

Cubesats typically lack propulsion systems and so are little thought of as serious ride-along missions to other planets. If MarCO works, Krajewski said, it will go a long way toward proving such spacecraft are worth the mass they take up on a launch vehicle.

If MarCO can make it to Mars, stay in position to observe InSight’s descent during the lander’s seven minutes of terror, and relay the data back to Earth, it will “show that these are indeed viable technologies for interplanetary missions and feasible on a short spacecraft-development timeline.”

The MarCO mission will cost around $13 million, NASA spokesman Guy Webster wrote in a June 12 email. That includes $9 million to build the two cubesats, $2 million to get them on InSight’s launch vehicle, and $2 million for mission operations.

Should MarCO fail to make it to Mars, or if its radio equipment malfunctions, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be around to watch InSight’s landing. However, that orbiter would not immediately be able to transmit InSight landing data to Earth, as it could be busy relaying data from other landed craft.

“Confirmation of a successful landing could be aboard the [Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter] for more than an hour before it is relayed to Earth,” Krajewski said.

Concept art of InSight lander drilling beneath Mars’ surface.
Credit: NASA

MarCO came up during a June meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s planetary protection subcommittee here and has not been widely publicized outside the agency. The mission got some exposure in November at JPL’s Mars Cubesat/NanoSat Workshop in Pasadena, when Sami Asmar, a JPL scientist and MarCO’s principal investigator, briefed slides about the program.

Like all NASA missions, MarCO has to go through the bureaucratic planetary protection process put in place to ensure agency spacecraft can carry out their missions without crashing into other spacecraft or polluting extraterrestrial environments scientists want to study. MarCO’s approval process is ongoing, Krajewski told the NASA Advisory Council June 9.

JPL’s other industry partners on MarCO are:

• Blue Canyon Technologies, Boulder, Colorado, which will provide an attitude-control system;
• AstroDev, Ann Arbor, Michigan, which will provide spacecraft electronics;
• MMA Design, Boulder, Colorado, which will provide solar arrays;
• Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, part of cubesat parts and services vendor Terran Orbital Company, San Luis Obispo, California, which will provide the CubeSat dispenser system to eject the MarCO satellites from Atlas 5’s upper stage.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

The many “faces” of Pluto are visible in new images by NASA’s New Horizon’s probe, which is only one month away from the first-ever close encounter with the dwarf planet.

This week, NASA released what it called “the best views ever obtained of the Pluto system” taken by New Horizons, which will make its closest approach of the dwarf planet starting July 14. A video of the Pluto new images reveals the many “faces” of this petite planetary object — that is, the photos show a complete 360 degree panorama of the dwarf planet’s surface. The pictures reveal regions of light and dark, and many shades of gray in between, that hint at the presence of surface features.

“We’re squeezing as much information as we can out of these images, and seeing details we’ve never seen before,” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, in a statement from NASA. “We’ve seen evidence of light and dark spots in Hubble Space Telescope images and in previous New Horizons pictures, but these new images indicate an increasingly complex and nuanced surface. Now, we want to start to learn more about what these various surface units might be and what’s causing them. By early July we will have spectroscopic data to help pinpoint that.” [More Amazing Pluto Photos by New Horizons]

These images, taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), show four different “faces” of Pluto as it rotates about its axis with a period of 6.4 days. All the images have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down) on the figure.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

New Horizons has traveled nearly 3 billion miles in just under 10 years to reach Pluto. It is the first probe to ever make a close study of the planet, and it is already returning images of the system that are of higher quality than those taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. (However, Hubble has still returned some great science about Pluto. Recently, scientists using Hubble data revealed new information about the very strange motions and colors of Pluto’s five moons).

The new images, taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), seem to show a very lumpy, nonspherical-looking Pluto, but this is the result of the technique used to create the images, called deconvolution, as well as Pluto’s large variations in surface brightness, according to the same statement. In addition, the contrast in the images has been “stretched to bring out additional details.” 

The deconvolution technique has been used by the New Horizons team to identify surface markings on Pluto, including a bright area at one pole that scientists think is a polar cap. Deconvolution has been known to create “false details,” or artifacts, in the images, so NASA said the spacecraft team will be carefully reviewing images produced with this technique.

These images, taken by the LORRI instrument, have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which sharpens the original images to enhance features on Pluto. Deconvolution can occasionally introduce “false” details, so the finest details in these pictures will need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few weeks.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

“Even though the latest images were made from more than 30 million miles away, they show an increasingly complex surface with clear evidence of discrete equatorial bright and dark regions—some that may also have variations in brightness,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator. “We can also see that every face of Pluto is different and that Pluto’s northern hemisphere displays substantial dark terrains, though both Pluto’s darkest and its brightest known terrain units are just south of, or on, its equator. Why this is so is an emerging puzzle.”

As of yesterday (June 11), New Horizons was approximately 2.9 billion miles (4.7 billion kilometers) from Earth and just 24 million miles (39 million kilometers) from Pluto.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

“Happy Constellations” by artist Fin’es Scott, one of The Museum of Flight’s 25 “Astronauts on the Town” art statues, is on display at Theo Chocolate in Seattle, Washington. Credit: The Museum of Flight

Some two dozen astronauts are landing under Seattle’s Space Needle and if you can snap a selfie with one or more of them, you could win your own ticket to fly.

The Museum of Flight on Friday (June 12) launched its “Astronauts on the Town” public art program by beginning to place 25 six-foot-tall spacesuit-clad statues around the “Jet City.”

“Prepare for an astronaut invasion!” the museum declared on its art project’s website. “You may have started to see fiberglass giants emerging from the museum’s shadows. As part of our 50th anniversary celebration, the museum is launching… ‘Astronauts on the Town.’” [The Art of Space Envisioned (Gallery)]

Similar to other art installations that have featured painted cows, sports team mascots and even space shuttles, The Museum of Flight’s “Astronauts on the Town” showcases suited statues decorated by local artists and presented in locations and businesses in the surrounding area.

“Keep your eyes peeled for the astronauts at EMP, Ray’s Boathouse, the Pacific Science Center, Salty’s and many more locations!” the museum advised.

Not all the astronauts are immediately recognizable as the spacemen they all started off as. Among the customized statues are a tuxedo-sporting astronaut (complete with top hat); a hairy “SpaceSquatch” in a lumberjack shirt; and a fishy “Basstronaut” (of no relation to the singer and once-space-tourist-hopeful Lance Bass).

“SpaceSquatch” by artists David Newman and Ruth Cielo, part of The Museum of Flight’s “Astronauts on the Town,” will go on display at Pyramid Alehouse in Seattle.
Credit: The Museum of Flight

The inspiration for the statues’ theming came from the air and space museum’s “Now everyone can be an astronaut” campaign launched in 2012. Its spacesuit-wearing mascot has appeared in short videos, advertisements and at local events in and around Seattle.

“Astronauts on the Town” builds upon the campaign, while helping to promote the museum’s upcoming celebration of its founding in 1965 – the same year that an astronaut first donned a pressurized suit to walk in space. The statues will remain on exhibit for the next three and a half months, after which they will move back to the museum for its 50th birthday party planned for Sept. 19.

In the interim, the statues will be put up for auction, with bidding to begin on Aug. 1.

For now though, the museum is inviting the public to find and photograph the astronauts and then share their shots on Instagram with the hashtag #AstronautsontheTown.

“Post a photo of yourself with your favorite astronaut and be entered for your chance to win two roundtrip tickets on Alaska Airlines,” the museum announced on Friday.

Everyone who shares their statue selfies are also eligible to get an “Astronauts on the Town” t-shirt at The Museum of Flight’s 50th anniversary celebration this fall.

For more information, see The Museum of Flight’s website at: www.astronautsonthetown.org.

Click through to collectSPACE to watch The Museum of Flight’s astronaut mascot meet the “Astronauts on the Town.”

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