The  Spirit rover—and it's twin Opportunity, launched by NASA—studied the history of climate and water at sites on Mars where conditions may once have been favorable to life.

• Spirit uncovered strong evidence that Mars was once much wetter than it is now.
• Described as a "wonderful workhorse"—Spirit operated for 6 years, 2 months, and 19 days, more than 25 times its original intended lifetime.
• The rover traveled 4.8 miles (7.73 kilometers) across the Martian plains.
• On May 25, 2011, NASA ended efforts to contact the marooned rover and declared its mission complete. The rover had been silent since March 2010.

Major Accomplishments

• 2007: Unearthed a patch of nearly pure silica, the main ingredient of window glass, while dragging its right front wheel. The silica patch, dubbed "Gertrude Weise," provided strong evidence that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now because it was likely produced in an environment of hot springs or steam vents.

• 2006: Found evidence of an ancient explosion at a bright, low plateau called Home Plate. Spirit imaged coarse, bulbous grains overlaying finer material, which fits with the pattern of accumulation of material falling to the ground after a volcanic or impact explosion. These rocks, some of which had never been seen before on Mars, revealed the crater's violent history.

• 2006: Churned up bright Martian soil at a place named Tyrone that contained much sulfur and a trace of water. This material could be a volcanic deposit formed around ancient gas vents or could have been left behind by water that dissolved these minerals underground and evaporated when they came to the surface.

• 2005: Captured several movies of dust devils in motion, providing the best look of the wind effects on the Martian surface as they were happening.

• 2004: Discovered a surprising variety of bedrock in Columbia Hills, showing a complex geological history for the region. Some of the rocks showed evidence of alteration by water.

Tadpole Galaxy (also known as UGC 10214 and Arp 188, is a disrupted barred spiral galaxy located 420 million light-years from Earth in the northern constellation Draco. Its most dramatic feature is a trail of stars about 280,000 light-years long. Its size has been attributed to a merger with a smaller galaxy that is believed to have occurred about 100 million years ago. The galaxy is filled with bright blue star clusters triggered by the merger, some containing as many as one million stars. It is the largest disrupted spiral galaxy of its sort. It is hypothesized that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of the Tadpole Galaxy—from left to right from the perspective of Earth—and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their mutual gravitational attraction. During this close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gases and dust, forming the conspicuous tail. The intruder galaxy, estimated to lie about 300,000 light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper left. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older; the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy. Two supernovae are known to have occurred in the Tadpole Galaxy. SN 2007cu was discovered on June 27, 2007 with an apparent magnitude of 18.9, and SN 2008dq was discovered on June 25, 2008 with an apparent magnitude of 18.3. An image of the galaxy was taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in April 2002, containing 6000 background galaxies spanning billions of light-years)

Calling it a night............................

UGPS J072227.51−054031.2 (designation often abbreviated to UGPS 0722−05) is a brown dwarf of late T type, or possibly a rogue planet located approximately 4.1 parsecs (13 light-years) from Earth

The astronomical object was discovered by Philip Lucas at the University of Hertfordshire and announced in 2010. The discovery image was taken on 28 November 2006 by the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) with a recovery image confirming the object's proper motion on 2 March 2010. The reported distance is derived from the current measured parallax of 246 milliarcseconds. The object was initially reported to be at an even closer distance of 2.9 parsecs, which would have placed it among the ten nearest stars to the Sun but later measurements revealed that the object was in fact located at a greater distance than initially thought, at 4.1^+0.6
_−0.5 parsecs

The object is roughly the volume of Jupiter, but is estimated to have 5–40 Jupiter masses (M_J). This would make it less massive than ε Indi Ba. Planets have a mass of less than about 13 Jupiter masses. Infrared spectra shows the object contains water vapor and methane and has a surface temperature of approximately 480–560 kelvins

Vela Pulsar (is a radio, optical, X-ray- and gamma-emitting pulsar associated with the Vela Supernova Remnant in the constellation of Vela. Its parent Type II supernova exploded approximately 11,000–12,300 years ago (and was about 800 light-years away). Vela is the brightest pulsar (at radio frequencies) in the sky and spins 11.195 times per second[3] (i.e. a period of 89.33 milliseconds—the shortest known at the time of its discovery) and the remnant from the supernova explosion is estimated to be travelling outwards at 1,200 km/s (750 mi/s). It has the third-brightest optical component of all known pulsars (V = 23.6 mag) which pulses twice for every single radio pulse. The Vela pulsar is the brightest persistent object in the high-energy gamma-ray sky. Glitches are sudden spin-ups in the rotation of pulsars. Vela is the best known of all the glitching pulsars, with glitches occurring on average every three years. Glitches are currently not predictable. On 12 December 2016, Vela was observed to glitch live for the first time with a radio telescope (the 26 m telescope at the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory) large enough to see individual pulses. This observation showed that the pulsar nulled (i.e. did not pulse) for one pulse, with the pulse prior being very broad and the two following pulses featuring low linear polarization. It also appeared that the glitch process took under five seconds to occur. On 22 July 2021, a new glitch occurred. As a result, the period of the pulsar decreased by about 1 part in a million)

c

Witch Head Nebula, is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Eridanus .

Witch Head Nebula is magnitude 13 and is 3° x 1° in size. For reference, the full moon is 30' (arc minutes) or 0.5° in size.

XCOR Aerospace (was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherlands. XCOR was formed in 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team and ceased operations in 2017. By 2015, XCOR was headed by CEO John "Jay" Gibson, who remained CEO until June 2017. XCOR Aerospace was the parent operation, concerned with engineering and building spaceships and had two main subdivisions within it; XCOR Space Expeditions provided marketing and sales, and XCOR Science had been set up to conduct scientific and educational payload flights. By May 2016, XCOR was laying off staff and in 2017, XCOR closed their doors for good and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. XCOR Aerospace, which sold customers over $26 million in space tour tickets and then went bankrupt unexpectedly, could go down in history as the first major space tourism scam)

Calling it a night............................

Fyodor Yurchikhin, born January 3, 1959 in Batumi, Geogian SSR, is one of Russia’s most experienced Cosmonauts in active duty. A trained mechanical engineer, Yurchikhin flew on the U.S. Space Shuttle, the Russian Soyuz and completed three long-duration missions to the International Space Station, spending a total of 537 days in space. He made his return to the Space Station in 2017after a half-year stay as part of Expedition 51/52.

Zero-X (is a fictional Earth spacecraft that first appeared in two of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation productions, the 1966 film Thunderbirds Are Go and the 1967 television series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Although publicity material for the various Supermarionation series, and the TV Century 21 comic, made references to connections between the Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet canons, Zero-X is the only official link between the two series)

Calling it a night.....................................

Abell 70 is a planetary nebula located 13,500-17,500 light years away in the constellation of Aquila. It is approaching the earth at 79 kilometers per second and expanding 38 kilometers per second. There is a galaxy named PMN J2033-0656 behind Abell 70, giving it a "diamond ring" effect.

Abell 70 is a planetary nebula located 13,500-17,500 light years away in the constellation of Aquila. It is approaching the earth at 79 kilometers per second and expanding 38 kilometers per second. There is a galaxy named PMN J2033-0656 behind Abell 70, giving it a "diamond ring" effect

Round 9.....................................

Billionaire Space Race (is the rivalry among entrepreneurs who have entered the space industry from other industries - particularly computing. This private industry space race of the 21st century involves sending rockets to the ionosphere (mesosphere and thermosphere), orbital launch rockets, and suborbital tourist spaceflights. Today, the billionaire space race is primarily between three billionaires and their respective firms: Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is seeking to establish an industrial base in space. Richard Branson's Virgin Group (through Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit), which seeks to dominate space tourism, low-cost small orbital launch vehicles, and intercontinental sub-orbital spaceflight. Elon Musk's SpaceX, which seeks to colonize Mars as well as provide satellite-based internet through its Starlink project. Prior to his death in 2018, Paul Allen was also a major player in the billionaire space race through the aerospace division of his firm Vulcan. Allen sought to reduce the cost of launching payloads into orbit)

Calling it a night...........................................