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Jessica Watkins
@astro_watkins
NASA Astronaut and Mission Specialist on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the .
Houston, Texasnasa.gov/content/jessic…Joined March 2022

Jessica Watkins’s Tweets

As beautiful as the Earth is, I can't seem to take my eyes off of the Moon. Every moonset on brings us one step closer to earthrise on the Moon as we conduct scientific research and develop new technologies that will help pave the way to the lunar surface.
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Last week I had the honor of harvesting the plants we've been growing as part of the XROOTS experiment, which uses hydroponic and aeroponic techniques to grow crops without soil. Just one of the many ways we use the as a testbed for future exploration!
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Suddenly 250 miles up doesn’t seem so far when galaxies in 's incredible first images are 290 million light-years away! #UnfoldTheUniverse
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Space is lovely, dark and deep. You're looking at the deepest infrared image of the universe ever taken—the first full-color image from @NASAWebb. Go deeper on the galaxies of SMACS 0723 at nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse
The background of space is black. Thousands of galaxies appear all across the view. Their shapes and colors vary. Some are various shades of orange, others are white. Most stars appear blue, and are sometimes as large as more distant galaxies that appear next to them. A very bright star is just above and left of center. It has eight bright blue, long diffraction spikes. Between 4 o’clock and 6 o’clock in its spikes are several very bright galaxies. A group of three are in the middle, and two are closer to 4 o’clock. These galaxies are part of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and they are warping the appearances of galaxies seen around them. Long orange arcs appear at left and right toward the center.
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One of my favorite parts about being in orbit is getting to observe geologic features on Earth from a planetary perspective. A great example is the Grand Canyon – truly grand both from afar and up close, but Valles Marineris on Mars is 4x as long, 4.5x as deep, and 20x as wide!
Grand Canyon from the International Space Station (Credit: NASA/Astronaut Jessica Watkins)
Turtle field geology training with NASA Astromaterials in the Grand Canyon (Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel)
Valles Marineris, Mars (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
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We put the human in human spaceflight this week as test subjects for ’s GRASP and GRIP experiments. These human research studies are exploring the role of gravity in hand-eye coordination and motor control, helping us prepare for future missions further into the system.
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