NASA will test new science equipment for future missions with a sounding rocket launch August 22 from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

The Sporadic-E ElectroDynamics Demonstration mission, or SpEED Demon, will fly new instrumentation along with heritage instruments that have flown on other sounding rocket missions, but not together. The SpEED Demon instruments will be further improved based on results from this launch and will subsequently fly on a science mission targeted for summer 2024 from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands and possibly many other sounding rocket opportunities.

SpEED Demon will launch on a 40-foot tall Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket between 9 p.m. EDT Aug. 22 and 1 a.m. Aug. 23. The backup launch dates are Aug. 23 through Aug. 27.

The NASA Wallops Visitor Center will open to the public at 8 p.m.

NASA juggled light and dark to come up with 13 potential landing sites for the future Artemis III mission that will return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

Key to the choices was being able to find locations that could support the duo of astronauts for 6 1/2 days on the surface with enough sunlight to provide power and thermal protection, but also give access to the dark regions of craters and mountainous terrain near the moon's south pole that could potentially hold water ice.

Finding water ice, which could be broken down into its component oxygen and hydrogen compounds to provide life-sustaining air and potential fuel, has been the driving force behind the initial Artemis missions.

The uncrewed Artemis I rocket is at the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center awaiting a potential launch as soon as Aug. 29. Artemis II is slated to fly with astronauts in 2024, but only orbit the moon. The Artemis III flight is slated for 2025, and two of its four astronauts, including the first woman, will take a version of SpaceX's Starship to the lunar surface.

Two fundamental factors affect all astrophotography—timing and location. If a camera happens to be at the right place at the right time, it can capture images that have never been seen before. And with the proliferation of cameras throughout the solar system, more and more novel photos will be captured at an ever-increasing frequency. China's Tianwen-1 probe added to that novel collection to celebrate its second anniversary by taking a shot of Mars' moon Phobos.

The image itself is stunning, with clear definition of many features of the object, whose length isn't much more than that of Manhattan. Seen in full sunlight, or as we might call it on Earth, as a "full moon," there are some noticeable streaks in the upper left of the photo, which may indicate relatively recent impacts. In addition, a crater named Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik is visible in the upper right of the image. Other features, named after other astronomers and characters from Gulliver's Travels, aren't as clear on the image, as the space around the Öpik crater is largely featureless.

A team of researchers at Iowa State University has found that it may be possible to grow alfalfa successfully on Mars. The group has written a paper describing their work and have published it on the open-access site PLOS ONE.

As various groups around the world ponder the possibility of not only sending humans to Mars but of building shelters on the Red Planet that could sustain them—possibly indefinitely—work continues on ways to make such projects possible. Such projects have many challenges to overcome before they can become reality, one of which is how to feed people living so far away.