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The next space station crew trains for launch, a SpaceX Dragon delivers more science, and celebrating the life of Katherine Johnson … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!

With delivery of more than a ton of supplies and experiments completed, Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus cargo craft was detached and released from the International Space Station February 18 -- wrapping up the first of at least eight NASA contracted supply missions to the space station for Orbital through 2016. Also, Orion recovery tests, NuSTAR findings, Stofan visits Stennis, Virginia Aerospace Days and Friendship 7 anniversary!

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope recently produced a map of the night sky. Out of 1873 new sources, nearly 600 were complete mysteries. In this week's ScienceCast, researchers speculate on the nature of the mystery objects - including the possibility that they are made of dark matter.

POV: You're standing in an elevator inside the Vehicle Assembly Building.⁣ ⁣ The rocket and spacecraft that will kick off humanity's return to the Moon is currently sitting pretty inside the VAB, the world's largest single-story building located at @NASAKennedy Space Center. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will embark on their first integrated test flight with the launch of the #Artemis I mission, currently scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 29.⁣ ⁣ Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux⁣ ⁣ Music Provided by Universal Production Music: “Two Horizons” — Anthony d’Amario⁣ ⁣ #NASA #VehicleAssemblyBuilding #NASAKennedy #SpaceLaunchSystem #SLS #Orion #Elevator #POV #Space #Moon

After years of design, fabrication and testing Orion completed a perfect launch into Earth's orbit. After returning to Earth NASA's Orion spacecraft is seen from an unpiloted aircraft descending under three massive red and white main parachutes and then shortly after its bullseye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles southwest of San Diego. During the uncrewed test, Orion traveled twice through the Van Allen belt, where it experienced periods of intense radiation, and reached an altitude of 3,600 miles above Earth. The spacecraft hit speeds of 20,000 mph and weathered temperatures approaching 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it entered Earth’s atmosphere. www.nasa.gov/orion

The new results suggest that at least some of the supermassive black holes in the early Universe formed through this direct collapse method.

Astronomers have found five new supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. When galaxies collide and merge with each other, it can force their supermassive black holes close together. While models predict this would happen, it has been very difficult to find these giant black hole pairs until now. The combination of data from Chandra, WISE, and the Large Binocular Telescope led to this bumper crop of black holes. This discovery could lead to a better understanding of how giant black holes grow

Some 3.9 billion years ago in the heart of a distant galaxy, the tidal pull of a monster black hole shredded a star that wandered too close. X-rays produced in this event first reached Earth on March 28, 2011, when they were detected by NASA's Swift satellite. Within days, scientists concluded that the outburst, now known as Swift J1644+57, represented both the tidal disruption of a star and the sudden flare-up of a previously inactive black hole. Now astronomers using archival observations from Swift, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and the Japan-led Suzaku satellite have identified the reflections of X-ray flares erupting during the event. Led by Erin Kara, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the University of Maryland, College Park, the team has used these light echoes, or reverberations, to map the flow of gas near a newly awakened black hole for the first time. Swift J1644+57 is one of only three tidal disruptions that have produced high-energy X-rays, and to date it remains the only event caught at the peak of this emission. While astronomers don't yet understand what causes flares near the black hole, when one occurs they can detect its echo a couple of minutes later as its light washes over structures in the developing accretion disk. The technique, called X-ray reverberation mapping, has been used before to explore stable disks around black holes, but this is time it has been applied to a newly formed disk produced by a tidal disruption. Swift J1644+57's accretion disk was thicker, more turbulent and more chaotic than stable disks, which have had time to settle down into an orderly routine. One surprise is that high-energy X-rays arise from the innermost regions of the disk instead of a narrow jet of accelerated particles, as originally thought. The researchers estimate the black hole has a mass about a million times that of the sun. They expect future improvements in understanding and modeling accretion flows will allow them to measure the black hole's spin using this data.

Astronomers have found evidence for five dual supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, each containing millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black hole couples formed when two galaxies collided and merged with each other, forcing their supermassive black holes close together. Before this study fewer than ten confirmed pairs of growing black holes were known from X-ray studies, based mostly on chance detections. To carry out a systematic search, a team of researchers had to carefully sift through data from telescopes that detect different wavelengths of light. After first identified promising candidates in optical and infrared data, the researchers then used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm the presence of five merging supermassive black holes in different galaxies. This work shows the effectiveness of X-ray data to help find such black hole pairs. This discovery could help scientists better understand how giant black holes grow and how they may produce the strongest gravitational wave signals in the Universe.

Black holes are extremely compact and dense, generating incredibly powerful gravitational forces. When an object, like a star, wanders too close, these forces can rip that object to pieces. Some of the material from the doomed object is hurtled out into space. The black hole devours the rest. Astronomers just found a black hole gnawing on the remains of a star for over ten years. This is the largest meal, or the first clean-your-plate job, for a black hole ever seen.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a quasar named 3C 186 that is offset from the center of its galaxy. Astronomers hypothesize that this supermassive black hole was jettisoned from the center of its galaxy by the recoil from gravitational waves produced by the merging of two supermassive black holes. Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/... Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katrina Jackson Music credit: "Stealth Car" by Tom Sue [GEMA] and Zac Singer [GEMA]; Ed. Berlin Production Music/Universal Publishing Production Music GmbH GEMA; Berlin Production Music; Killer Tracks Production Music This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12539

Black holes are extremely compact and dense, generating incredibly powerful gravitational forces. When an object, like a star, wanders too close, these forces can rip that object to pieces. Some of the material from the doomed object is hurtled out into space. The black hole devours the rest. Astronomers just found a black hole gnawing on the remains of a star for over ten years. This is the largest meal, or the first clean-your-plate job, for a black hole ever seen.

Join us for this final episode of Inside the ISS featuring Chris Cassidy. Chris talks to Don Pettit and guest host Tom Marshburn about communicating with the family, keeping the ISS ship-shape, and hitting the dirt in Kazakhstan.