Flighty

Expedition 58 Flight Engineer Anne McClain of NASA greets her mother, Charlotte Lamp, on Dec. 2 at the Cosmonaut Hotel in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. (Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via AP)

LOFTY AMBITION: From an article in the Seattle Times, we learned that one of the astronauts on the International Space Station right now is an Evergreen State native. Anne McClain is from Spokane.

Apparently McClain declared her intent to be an astronaut at age 3, and worked since that day to make it become a reality. (No doubt McClain's mother, Charlotte Lamp, a former math and science teacher, gave her many an encouraging word along the way.) 

McClain, 39, graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory School in 1997, and went on to West Point Military Academy. After West Point, she her work has involved, among other things, flying Army helicopters in Iraq.  

Below is a screen shot of McClain's first Tweet from space.

McClain has two master’s degrees, one in aerospace engineering and another in international relations. She's also a former member of the U.S. women’s rugby team.

I sure hope we get to meet her some day!

INSIGHT ON InSIGHT: NASA just released photos of the InSight lander on Mars - taken by another NASA craft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Below is a composite of three images. The first is InSight's parachute, which was used during its descent and landing. The second is the lander itself, and the third is its heat shield, which protected it during descent.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

You can see larger versions of the images on this page: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA22875

In a press release, NASA explained that though the objects look teal, "That's not their actual color: Light reflected off their surfaces cause the color to be saturated." They also noted that the ground around the lander is dark, due to it being blasted by InSight's retrorockets during descent. 

FUTURE FLIGHT: An email from the European Space Agency let us know their website for kids has been revamped. We looked around a bit, and in the process learned about the ESA's module that will use three types of engines to propel NASA's Orion crew capsule in the future. The module has large fuel tanks, as well as oxygen and a heat exchange unit. 

It was recently delivered to the Space Coast in Florida via a Antonov An-124 transporter.  The photo below shows the nosecone of the transporter opened and the module in a special cargo container inside. 

• Copyright ESA–A. Conigli 

Below is ESA artis D. Ducros' rendition of what the module and Orion will look like in the not-too-distant future.

• An unmanned test flight is scheduled for 2020.