Vice President Visits Marshall Space Flight Center on This Week @NASA

Sept. 29, 2017: Vice President Mike Pence visited our Marshall Space Flight Center on Sept. 25 to thank employees working on NASA’s human spaceflight programs. He also spoke to the three NASA astronauts currently serving onboard the International Space Station. During a tour, the Vice President also saw progress being made on our Space Launch System rocket, that will send astronauts in our Orion spacecraft on missions around the Moon and ultimately to Mars.

Also, NASA Data and Tech Aid in Disaster Relief, Congressional Hearing on August 21 Solar Eclipse, OSIRIS-REx Views Earth During Flyby, and “Bladed Terrain” on Pluto Made of Frozen Methane!

Credit: NASA
Duration: 3 minutes, 24 seconds
Release Date: September 29, 2017

#NASA #Space #ISS #Marshall #MSFC #SLS #Rocket #Orion #Spacecraft #Astronauts #HumanSpaceflight #Mars #JourneyToMars #Moon #Pluto #SolarEclipse #MikePence #VP #Huntsville #Alabama #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Solar System Show | International Space Station

Sept. 28, 2017: On September 18, 2017, ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli shot this beautiful time-lapse showing the Moon rising above the Earth’s horizon together with Mercury, Mars, the star Regulus, and Venus.

Regulus, also designated Alpha Leonis, is the brightest star in the constellation of Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky, lying approximately 79 light years from the Sun. Regulus is a multiple star system composed of four stars that are organized into two pairs. (Source: Wikipedia)

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli is currently working and living on board the International Space Station as part of his long duration Vita mission.

Follow the Vita mission: http://blogs.esa.int/VITAmission/
Connect with Paolo via http://paolonespoli.esa.int

Credit: ESA/NASA
Duration: 1 minute, 32 seconds
Release Date: September 28, 2017

#NASA #ISS #Earth #Science #Moon #Mercury #Venus #Mars #Star #Regulus #Leo #SolarSystem #EarthObservation #Astronaut #PaoloNespoli #ASI #ESA #Europe #Italy #Italia #Human #Spaceflight #Expedition53 #VITAMission #UnitedStates #JSC #OverviewEffect #OrbitalPerspective #STEM #Education #Timelapse #HD #Video

Solar System Show | International Space Station

ESA Astronaut Paolo Nespoli of Italy: "The Moon, Mercury, Mars, the star Regulus and Venus!"

Regulus, also designated Alpha Leonis, is the brightest star in the constellation of Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky, lying approximately 79 light years from the Sun. Regulus is a multiple star system composed of four stars that are organized into two pairs. (Source: Wikipedia)

Nespoli is currently working and living aboard the International Space Station as part of his long duration Vita mission.

Follow the VITA mission: http://blogs.esa.int/VITAmission/
Connect with Paolo via http://paolonespoli.esa.int

Credit: ESA/NASA
Release Date: September 27, 2017

#NASA #ISS #Earth #Science #Moon #Mercury #Venus #Mars #Star #Regulus #Leo #SolarSystem #EarthObservation #Astronaut #PaoloNespoli #ASI #ESA #Europe #Italy #Italia #Human #Spaceflight #Expedition53 #VITAMission #UnitedStates #JSC #OverviewEffect #OrbitalPerspective #STEM #Education #Infographic

Solving the Mystery of Pluto’s Giant Blades of Ice | NASA New Horizons

Image: Pluto’s bladed terrain as seen from New Horizons during its July 2015 flyby. | Sept. 26, 2017: NASA’s New Horizons mission revolutionized our knowledge of Pluto when it flew past that distant world in July 2015. Among its many discoveries were images of strange formations resembling giant knife blades of ice, whose origin had remained a mystery.

Now, scientists have turned up a fascinating explanation for this “bladed terrain”: the structures are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of erosion wore away their surfaces, leaving dramatic crests and sharp divides.

These jagged geological ridges are found at the highest altitudes on Pluto’s surface, near its equator, and can soar many hundreds of feet into the sky—as high as a New York City skyscraper. They are one of the most puzzling feature types on Pluto, and it now appears the blades are related to Pluto’s complex climate and geological history.

A team led by New Horizons team member Jeffrey Moore, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, has determined that formation of the bladed terrain begins with methane freezing out of the atmosphere at extreme altitudes on Pluto, in the same way frost freezes on the ground on Earth, or even in your freezer.

“When we realized that bladed terrain consists of tall deposits of methane ice, we asked ourselves why it forms all of these ridges, as opposed to just being big blobs of ice on the ground,” said Moore. “It turns out that Pluto undergoes climate variation and sometimes, when Pluto is a little warmer, the methane ice begins to basically ‘evaporate’ away.”

Scientists use the term “sublimation” for this process where ice transforms directly into gas, skipping over the intermediate liquid form.

Similar structures can be found in high-altitude snowfields along Earth’s equator, though on a very different scale than the blades on Pluto. The terrestrial structures, called penitentes, are snow formations just a few meters high, with striking similarities to the vastly larger bladed terrain on Pluto. Their spiky texture also forms through sublimation.

This erosion of Pluto’s bladed terrain indicates that its climate has undergone changes over long periods of time—on a scale of millions of years—that cause this ongoing geological activity. Early climatic conditions allowed methane to freeze out onto high elevation surfaces, but, as time progressed, these conditions changed, causing the ice to “burn off” into a gas.

As a result of this discovery, we now know that the surface and air of Pluto are apparently far more dynamic than previously thought. The results have just been published in Icarus, an international journal of planetary science.

Mapping Pluto’s Surface

Identifying the nature of the exotic bladed terrain also brings us a step closer to understanding the global topography of Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft provided spectacular, high-resolution data about one side of Pluto, called the encounter hemisphere, and observed the other side of Pluto at lower resolution.

Since methane has now been linked to high elevations, researchers can use data that indicates where methane is present around Pluto’s globe to infer which locations are at higher altitudes. This provides an opportunity to map out altitudes of some parts of Pluto’s surface not captured in high resolution, where bladed terrains also appear to exist.

Though the detailed coverage of Pluto’s bladed terrain covers only a small area, NASA researchers and their collaborators have been able to conclude from several types of data that these sharp ridges may be a widespread feature on Pluto’s so-called “far side”, helping to develop a working understanding of Pluto’s global geography, its present and its past.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Release Date: September 26, 2017

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #NewHorizons #Pluto #Ice #Dwarf #Planet #Spacecraft #JPL #SolarSystem #MSFC #JohnsHopkins #JHUAPL #SwRI #SouthwestResearchInstitute #APL #UnitedStates #Exploration #STEM #Education #PlutoFlyby

Exotic Ice Formations Found on Pluto | NASA New Horizons

Sept. 26, 2017: NASA’s New Horizons mission revolutionized our knowledge of Pluto when it flew past that distant world in July 2015. Among its many discoveries were images of strange formations resembling giant blades of ice, whose origin had remained a mystery.

Now, scientists have turned up a fascinating explanation for this “bladed terrain”: the structures are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of erosion wore away their surfaces, leaving dramatic crests and sharp divides.

NASA's Ames Research Center is located in California's Silicon Valley. Follow us on social media to hear about the latest developments in space, science and technology.

Credit: NASA's Ames Research Center
Duration: 58 seconds
Release Date: September 26, 2017

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #NewHorizons #Pluto #Ice #Dwarf #Planet #Spacecraft #JPL #SolarSystem #MSFC #JohnsHopkins #JHUAPL #SwRI #SouthwestResearchInstitute #APL #UnitedStates #Exploration #STEM #Education #PlutoFlyby #HD #Video

NASA ScienceCasts: Hubble’s Contentious Constant

There are two leading ways to measure the universe's rate of expansion, and for fifteen years, they more or less agreed with one another. Not anymore, and that’s a big deal.

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/ for more.

Credit: NASA
Duration: 4 minutes

#NASA #Hubble #Astronomy #Science #Space #Constant #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #ESA #STScI #Goddard #GSFC #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Stars and spirals | ESO

This spectacular spiral galaxy, known as NGC 1964, resides approximately 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Lepus (The Hare). NGC 1964 has a bright and dense core. This core sits within a mottled oval disc, which is itself encircled by distinct spiral arms speckled with bright starry regions. The brilliant center of the galaxy caught the eye of the astronomer William Herschel on the night of November 20, 1784, leading to the galaxy’s discovery and subsequent documentation in the New General Catalogue.

In addition to containing stars, NGC 1964 lives in a star-sprinkled section of the sky. In this view from the Wide Field Imager (WFI)—an instrument mounted on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, Chile—the star HD 36785 can be seen to the galaxy’s immediate right. Above it reside two other prominent stars named HD 36784 and TYC 5928-368-1—and the large bright star below NGC 1964 is known as BD-22 1147.

This view of NGC 1964 also contains an array of galaxies, visible in the background. The WFI is able to observe the light from these distant galaxies, and those up to 40 million times fainter than the human eye can see.

Credit:  European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Jean-Christophe Lambry
Release Date: September 25, 2017

#ESO #Astronomy #Science #Space #Galaxy #NGC1964 #Stars #Lepus  #Cosmos #Universe #LaSilla #Observatory #Chile #SouthAmerica #Europe #STEM #Education

Mapping the nearby Universe | Hubble

Galaxy ESO 376-16

The distances to objects in the Universe can differ enormously. The nearest star to us—Proxima Centauri—lies some 4.2 light-years from us, while some incredibly distant galaxies are so far away—13 billion light-years or more—that they are only visible to us as a result of cosmic tricks of magnification.

The subject of this image, a galaxy called ESO 376-16, sits nearly 23 million light-years from Earth—not that great a distance on a cosmic scale. However, given the galaxy’s relative proximity to us, we know surprisingly little about it. Astronomers are still debating about many of the properties of ESO 376-16, including its morphology. Galaxies are divided into types based on their visual appearance and characteristics; spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, are flattened discs with curved arms sweeping out from a central nucleus, while irregular galaxies lack a distinct structure and look far more chaotic. On the basis of its rather ill-defined morphology, ESO 376-16 is thought to be either a late-type spiral or a dwarf irregular galaxy.

Despite its mystique, observations of ESO 376-16 have been useful in several studies, including one made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope that aimed to create a 3D map of galaxies lying in the vicinity of Earth. Researchers used Hubble to gauge the distance to galaxies including ESO 376-16 by measuring the luminosities of especially bright red-giant-branch stars sitting within the galaxies. They then used their data to generate and calibrate 3D maps of the distribution of galaxies throughout the nearby cosmos.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date: September 25, 2017

#NASA #Hubble #Astronomy #Science #Space #Galaxy #ESO37616 #Antlia #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #ESA #Goddard #GSFC #STScI #STEM #Education

Stunning aurora | International Space Station

On September 15, 2017, 711 photos were taken by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli of Italy to create this timelapse of a stunning aurora.

Follow the VITA mission: http://blogs.esa.int/VITAmission/
Connect with Paolo via http://paolonespoli.esa.int

Credit: ESA/NASA
Duration: 32 seconds
Release Date: September 21, 2017

#NASA #ISS #Earth #Science #Aurora #EarthObservation #Astronaut#PaoloNespoli #ASI #ESA #Europe #Italy #Italia #Human #Spaceflight#Expedition53 #VITAMission #UnitedStates #JSC #OverviewEffect#OrbitalPerspective #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Saturn: Shadow Art | NASA Cassini Mission

Assembled using RGB filtered images of Saturn taken on November 7, 2004.

The Cassini mission was a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and https://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at https://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Kevin M. Gill
Image Date: November 7, 2004
Release Date: September 22, 2017

#NASA #Astronomy #Science #Space #Saturn #Planet #Rings #SolarSystem #Exploration #Cassini #Spacecraft #GrandFinale #JPL #Caltech #Pasadena #California #UnitedStates #ESA #ASI #STEM #Education

Hurricane Maria | International Space Station

Captured by ESA Astronaut Paolo Nespoli of Italy

Credit: ESA/NASA
Release Date: September 21, 2017

#NASA #ISS #Earth #Science #Hurricane #Maria #Storm #Weather #Atlantic #Ocean #EarthObservation #Astronaut #PaoloNespoli #ASI #ESA #Europe #Italy #Italia #Human #Spaceflight #Expedition53 #VITAMission #UnitedStates #JSC #OverviewEffect #OrbitalPerspective #STEM #Education

NASA ScienceCasts: Riding the Slingshot to Asteroid Bennu

Gravity’s pull is being used to help propel a small spacecraft known as OSIRIS-REx to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx Mission: http://www.asteroidmission.org/

Credit: NASA
Duration: 3 minutes, 21 seconds
Release Date: September 21, 2017

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #OSIRISREx #Asteroid #Bennu #ToBennuAndBack #Organics #Minerals #Mapping #SampleReturn #Technology #Spacecraft #Goddard #GSFC #CSA #JAXA #Japan #日本 #USA #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA X-plane Preliminary Design Model Tests Quiet Supersonic Technology

Image: Engineer stands with X-plane design model in wind tunnel
Samantha O’Flaherty, Test Engineer for Jacobs Technology Inc., finalizes the set-up of the Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) Preliminary Design Model inside the 14- by- 22 Foot Subsonic Tunnel at NASA Langley Research Center. Over the next several weeks, engineers will conduct aerodynamic tests on the 15% scale model and the data collected from the wind tunnel test will be used to predict how the vehicle will perform and fly in low-speed flight.

The QueSST Preliminary Design is the initial design stage of NASA’s planned Low-Boom Flight Demonstration experimental airplane, otherwise known as an X-plane. This future X-plane is one of a series of X-planes envisioned in NASA’s New Aviation Horizons initiative, which aims to reduce fuel use, emissions and noise through innovations in aircraft design that depart from the conventional tube-and-wing aircraft shape.

For more information about QueSST and LBFD, visit:
https://go.nasa.gov/2tdiNif

For more information about NASA’s aeronautics work, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics

Image Credit: NASA/Chris Giersch
Release Date: September 21, 2017

#NASA #Aviation #Aerospace #Aeronautics #Supersonic #XPlane #Aircraft #Technology #Engineering #SonicBoom #Commercial #QueSST #Xplanes #Xvehicles #Experimental #Ames #Langley #Armstrong #JacobsTechnology #Research #STEM #Education

Hurricane Maria Makes Landfall in Puerto Rico | NOAA

This GOES-16 geocolor image was captured as Category 4 Hurricane Maria made landfall near Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, around 6:15 a.m. EDT on September 20, 2017.

Maria knocked out radar on the island just before Maria made landfall. With this critical technology disabled and a major hurricane approaching, forecasters were able to utilize data from NOAA’s latest geostationary satellite, GOES-16, to track the storm in real-time.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Credit: Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA)
Release Date: September 21, 2017
#NASA #NOAA #Earth #Science #Space #Satellite #Hurricane #Maria #PuertoRico #Yabucoa #Caribbean #Atlantic #Ocean #Storm #Weather #Meteorology #GOES #GOES16 #Geocolor #CIRA #Goddard #GSFC #STEM #UnitedStates #Education

Hurricane Maria | NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP Satellite

Thermal image of Maria
Sept. 20, 2017: NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite VIIRS instrument captured this thermal image on Sept. 20, 2017, at 2:12 a.m. EDT (0612 UTC). At the time, Maria’s eye was just east of the American Virgin Islands, and its northwestern quadrant stretched over Puerto Rico.

NASA looked into Hurricane Maria and found that powerful convective storms within the hurricane were dropping heavy rainfall. Maria brought that heavy rainfall to Puerto Rico and made landfall on Sept. 20 at 6:15 a.m. EDT. NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite VIIRS instrument captured a thermal image on Sept. 20 at 2:12 a.m. EDT (0612 UTC). The image showed very cold cloud top temperatures in the powerful thunderstorms in Maria’s eyewall. At the time, Maria’s eye was just east of the American Virgin Islands, and its northwestern quadrant stretched over Puerto Rico.

Credit: NASA Goddard Rapid Response Team
Release Date: September 20, 2017

#NASA #NOAA #Earth #Science #Space #Satellite #Hurricane #Maria #PuertoRico #Caribbean #Atlantic #Ocean #Storm #Weather #Meteorology #SuomiNPP #VIIRS #Thermal #Goddard #GSFC #STEM #UnitedStates #Education

Northern Lights over Canada | International Space Station

The spectacular aurora borealis, or the “northern lights,” over Canada is sighted from the International Space Station near the highest point of its orbital path. The station’s main solar arrays are seen in the left foreground. This photograph was taken by a member of the Expedition 53 crew aboard the station on Sept. 15, 2017.

Image Credit: NASA
Image Date: September 15, 2017
Release Date: September 19, 2017

#NASA #ISS #Earth #Science #Planet #Aurora #Borealis #NorthernLights #EarthObservation #Astronauts #Cosmonauts #Human #Spaceflight #Expedition53 #JSC #Houston #Texas #UnitedStates #OverviewEffect #OrbitalPerspective #STEM #Education