A Russian cosmonaut joined two NASA crewmates and a Japanese space veteran on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday to the International Space Station
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts lifted off at 12 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 5, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the International Space Station for the fifth commercial crew rotation mission aboard the microgravity laboratory. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, into orbit to begin a long-duration science mission on the space station.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts docked autonomously to the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 4:57 p.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 6. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, arrived after a one-day journey to begin a long-duration science mission on the space station. Following docking, Mann, Cassada, Wakata, and Kikina joined the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, Frank Rubio, and Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and station commander Samantha Cristoforetti, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.
Expedition 68 – NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Flight Day 1 Highlights – Oct. 5, 2022 45:00 mins
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts lifted off at 12 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 5, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the International Space Station for the fifth commercial crew rotation mission aboard the microgravity laboratory. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, into orbit to begin a long-duration science mission on the space station. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endurance, will dock autonomously to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 4:57 p.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 6. Join NASA as we go forward to the Moon and on to Mars – discover the latest on Earth, the Solar System and beyond with a weekly update in your inbox. Subscribe at: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
Expedition 68 – NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Flight Day 2 Highlights – Oct. 6, 2022 – 24:27 Mins
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts docked autonomously to the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 4:57 p.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 6. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, arrived after a one-day journey to begin a long-duration science mission on the space station. Following docking, Mann, Cassada, Wakata, and Kikina joined the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, Frank Rubio, and Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and station commander Samantha Cristoforetti, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. Join NASA as we go forward to the Moon and on to Mars – discover the latest on Earth, the Solar System and beyond with a weekly update in yo– inbox. Subscribe at: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
The astronauts of Crew-4 have undocked from the International Space Station and are on their way home to Earth. Watch live with NASA as the Dragon spacecraft Freedom reenters the atmosphere and splashes down off the coast of Florida. Splashdown is targeted for 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 UTC), Friday, Oct. 14. NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Jessica Watkins, Bob Hines, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti spent five and a half months living and working aboard the orbiting laboratory. During their stay, they contributed to a number of experiments to expand our understanding of space while benefitting life on Earth: https://go.nasa.gov/3yCDeW0 Credit: NASA
Ing’s Comments
Expedition 68 – NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Flight was a successful trip of bringing 4 astronauts to the space station. This trip Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, from Russia joined with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and USA, NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada. This event makes me realize that countries can come together with knowledge, manpower and resources, to discover new things. This advances human kind bringing constructive inventions to the world as a whole. It takes time and hundreds or thousands of knowledgeable people to produce the work that space expiration achieves, including a large amount of financial support. But then I think of Mr. Putin of Russia invading Ukraine, a much smaller country, bombing Ukraine to utter devastation. This is called a destructive, rather than a constructive operation. If we try to do something constructive and suddenly someone come and destroys everything that we work so hard to achieve, how would we feel? Why are we working so hard with space expiration and other science experiments, if some dictators like Mr. Putin come along and destroys everything. At this time in the US, Mr. Trump, did not like the outcome of the presidential election, so he mobilized his followers to attack the capital. They also attempted to find Vice president Mike Pence, and Nancy Pelosi, Leader of the House of Representatives, in order to hang them. Mr. Trump may still destroy the democratic system of this country by his influence and lies among his followers, including extreme right-wing politicians.
The destruction caused by Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin will be the subject of my next posts.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Month in Review
MARS
NASA’s InSight ‘Hears’ Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars
Sept. 19, 2022
These craters were formed by a Sept. 5, 2021, meteoroid impact on Mars, the first to be detected by NASA’s InSight. Taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this enhanced-color image highlights the dust and soil disturbed by the impact in blue in order to make details more visible to the human eye.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.
NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. Not only do these represent the first impacts detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since InSight touched down on the Red Planet in 2018, it also marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.
A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight’s location, a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.
The first of the four confirmed meteoroids – the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground – made the most dramatic entrance: It entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.
Learn more about the first meteoroid impact NASA’s InSight lander detected on Mars in this video.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters (the meteoroid could have left additional craters in the surface, but they would be too small to see in HiRISE’s images).
“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts.
After combing through earlier data, scientists confirmed three other impacts had occurred on May 27, 2020; Feb. 18, 2021; and Aug. 31, 2021.
Researchers have puzzled over why they haven’t detected more meteoroid impacts on Mars. The Red Planet is next to the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which provides an ample supply of space rocks to scar the planet’s surface. Because Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as thick as Earth’s, more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.
InSight’s seismometer has detected over 1,300 marsquakes. Provided by France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the instrument is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. But the Sept. 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.
InSight’s team suspects that other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere. But now that the distinctive seismic signature of an impact on Mars has been discovered, scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data.
Listen to a Meteoroid Hitting the Red Planet
The sound of a meteoroid striking Mars – created from data recorded by NASA’s InSight lander – is like a “bloop” due to a peculiar atmospheric effect. In this audio clip, the sound can be heard three times: when the meteoroid enters the Martian atmosphere, explodes into pieces, and impacts the surface.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/IPGP
Science Behind the Strikes
Seismic data offer various clues that will help researchers better understand the Red Planet. Most marsquakes are caused by subsurface rocks cracking from heat and pressure. Studying how the resulting seismic waves change as they move through different material provides scientists a way to study Mars’ crust, mantle, and core.
The four meteoroid impacts confirmed so far produced small quakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Those smaller quakes provide scientists with only a glimpse into the Martian crust, while seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5 event that occurred in May 2022, can also reveal details about the planet’s mantle and core.
But the impacts will be critical to refining Mars’ timeline. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said the paper’s lead author, Raphael Garcia of Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”
Scientists can approximate the age of a planet’s surface by counting its impact craters: The more they see, the older the surface. By calibrating their statistical models based on how often they see impacts occurring now, scientists can then estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system’s history.
InSight’s data, in combination with orbital images, can be used to rebuild a meteoroid’s trajectory and the size of its shock wave. Every meteoroid creates a shock wave as it hits the atmosphere and an explosion as it hits the ground. These events send sound waves through the atmosphere. The bigger the explosion, the more this sound wave tilts the ground when it reaches InSight. The lander’s seismometer is sensitive enough to measure how much the ground tilts from such an event and in what direction.
“We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”
The lander still has time to study Mars. Dust buildup on the lander’s solar panels is reducing its power and will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.
More About the Mission
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages InSight for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
Hear Meteoroid Striking Mars, Captured by NASA’s InSight Lander
NASA’s InSight lander detected seismic waves from a meteoroid and was able to capture the sound of the space rock striking the surface of Mars for the first time. The meteoroid – the term used for incoming space rocks before they hit the ground – entered Mars’ atmosphere on Sept. 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left craters behind. Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s, allowing far more meteoroids to pass through and impact the Red Planet’s surface. This event marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact were detected on the Red Planet. Why does this meteoroid impact sound like a “bloop” in the video? It has to do with a peculiar atmospheric effect that’s also observed in deserts on Earth. After sunset, the atmosphere retains some heat accumulated during the day. Sound waves travel through this heated atmosphere at different speeds, depending on their frequency. As a result, lower-pitched sounds arrive before high-pitched sounds. An observer close to the impact would hear a “bang,” while someone many miles away would hear the bass sounds first, creating a “bloop.” NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters. Because HiRISE sees wavelengths the human eye can’t detect, scientists change the camera’s filters to enhance the color of the image. The areas that appear blue around the craters are where dust has been removed or disturbed by the blast of the impact. Martian dust is bright and red, so removing it makes the surface appear relatively dark and blue. For more information on InSight, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland/University of Arizona/CNES/IPGP/Manchu/Bureau 21/ETH Zurich/Kirschner/van Driel
NASA, USGS Map Minerals to Understand Earth Makeup, Climate Change
Sept. 30, 2022
A photo of a NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft with the AVIRIS and HyTES instruments installed.
Credit: NASA
These new observations can be used to identify the presence of a wide variety of minerals as well as mineral weathering or alteration.
NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will map portions of the southwest United States for critical minerals using advanced airborne imaging.
Hyperspectral data from hundreds of wavelengths of reflected light can provide new information about Earth’s surface and atmosphere to help scientists understand Earth’s geology and biology, as well as the effects of climate change.
The research project, called the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx), will use NASA’s Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) and Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES) instruments flown on NASA’s ER-2 and Gulfstream V aircraft to collect the measurements over the country’s arid and semi-arid regions, including parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.
“This exciting new project is just one example of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to a clean energy future,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “NASA has a long history of Earth observation that shows us how the planet is responding to climate change. This project builds on our 60-year legacy, and can show us where to look for the resources that support our transition to a clean energy economy. With our partners at USGS, NASA has led the way in developing these Earth observation systems to gather information to measure and monitor the environment and climate change.”
These new observations record the spectroscopic fingerprints of surface minerals across hundreds of wavelength bands. In other words, these are measurements not only of visible light our eyes can see but also of wavelengths of light beyond the visible into the infrared. The data can be used to identify the presence of a wide variety of minerals including primary rock-forming minerals as well as mineral weathering or alteration.
This project will complement data from NASA’s newest instrument on the International Space Station, the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT). EMIT is focused on mapping the mineral dust source composition of Earth’s arid regions to better understand how mineral dust affects heating and cooling of the planet. The instrument also makes spectroscopic measurements of the hundreds of wavelengths of light reflected from materials on Earth. The mission provided its first view of Earth on July 27 and is expected to become fully operational next month.
The $16 million GEMx research project will last five years and is funded by the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, through investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The initiative will capitalize on both the technology developed by NASA for spectroscopic imaging as well as the expertise in analyzing the datasets and extracting critical mineral information from them. Beyond providing additional detail over the mineral maps made by EMIT, GEMx will provide NASA with critical high-resolution data at regional scales to support development of the Surface Biology and Geology mission, part of NASA’s new Earth System Observatory. The Surface Biology and Geology mission will answer questions about the fluxes of carbon, water, nutrients, and energy within and between ecosystems and the atmosphere, the ocean, and Earth.
“This exciting scientific effort is made possible through the President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law investments and will enable NASA and the USGS to leverage our unique capabilities toward a common goal,” said USGS Director David Applegate. “The data we’re collecting will be foundational for not only critical minerals research but also for a wide range of other scientific applications, from natural hazards mitigation to ecosystem restoration.”
In 1979, NASA started developing spectral imaging systems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The first system, the Airborne Imaging Spectrometer, led to the development of AVIRIS. NASA and USGS have a long history of collaborating on collecting and analyzing spectroscopic data, including the 17-year Earth Observing-1 mission, which carried the first Earth orbiting instrument spanning the AVIRIS spectral range, Hyperion. This type of spectroscopic imaging has a long history of use in mineral research. These data are also useful for understanding a variety of other Earth science, ecological, and biological issues including geological acid mine drainage, debris flows, agriculture, wildfires, and biodiversity.
For more information about NASA’s Earth science programs, visit:
NASA’s Juno Shares First Image From Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Europa
Sept. 29, 2022
Observations from the spacecraft’s pass of the moon provided the first close-up in over two decades of this ocean world, resulting in remarkable imagery and unique science.
The complex, ice-covered surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during a flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. At closest approach, the spacecraft came within a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers).
The first picture NASA’s Juno spacecraft took as it flew by Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has arrived on Earth. Revealing surface features in a region near the moon’s equator called Annwn Regio, the image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft’s closest approach, on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), at a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers).
This is only the third close pass in history below 310 miles (500 kilometers) altitude and the closest look any spacecraft has provided at Europa since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) of the surface.
Europa is the sixth-largest moon in the solar system, slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. Scientists think a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell, sparking questions about potential conditions capable of supporting life underneath Europa’s surface.
This segment of the first image of Europa taken during this flyby by the spacecraft’s JunoCam (a public-engagement camera) zooms in on a swath of Europa’s surface north of the equator. Due to the enhanced contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator (the nightside boundary), rugged terrain features are easily seen, including tall shadow-casting blocks, while bright and dark ridges and troughs curve across the surface. The oblong pit near the terminator might be a degraded impact crater.
Find out where Juno is right now with NASA’s interactive Eyes on the Solar System. With its blades stretching out some 66 feet (20 meters), the spacecraft is a dynamic engineering marvel, spinning to keep itself stable as it orbits Jupiter and flies by some of the planet’s moons. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
With this additional data about Europa’s geology, Juno’s observations will benefit future missions to the Jovian moon, including the agency’s Europa Clipper. Set to launch in 2024, Europa Clipper will study the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior, with its main science goal being to determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.
As exciting as Juno’s data will be, the spacecraft had only a two-hour window to collect it, racing past the moon with a relative velocity of about 14.7 miles per second (23.6 kilometers per second).
“It’s very early in the process, but by all indications Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “This first picture is just a glimpse of the remarkable new science to come from Juno’s entire suite of instruments and sensors that acquired data as we skimmed over the moon’s icy crust.”
During the flyby, the mission collected what will be some of the highest-resolution images of the moon (0.6 miles, or 1 kilometer, per pixel) and obtained valuable data on Europa’s ice shell structure, interior, surface composition, and ionosphere, in addition to the moon’s interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
“The science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa’s surface features have changed over the past two decades,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator who leads planning for the camera at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area.”
Juno’s close-up views and data from its Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument will provide new details on how the structure of Europa’s ice varies beneath its crust. Scientists can use all this information to generate new insights into the moon, including data in the search for regions where liquid water may exist in shallow subsurface pockets.
Building on Juno’s observations and previous missions such as Voyager 2 and Galileo, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, slated to arrive at Europa in 2030, will study the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior – with a goal to investigate habitability and better understand its global subsurface ocean, the thickness of its ice crust, and search for possible plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.
The close flyby modified Juno’s trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days. The flyby also marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during Juno’s extended mission. The mission explored Ganymede in June 2021 and is scheduled to make close flybys of Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, in 2023 and 2024.
More About the Mission
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
NASA-Built Weather Sensors Capture Vital Data on Hurricane Ian
Sept. 28, 2022
From aboard the International Space Station, NASA-built instruments Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) and Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) captured wind and water vapor data from Hurricane Ian as the storm neared Cuba.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A pair of microwave radiometers collected data on the storm as they passed over the Caribbean Sea aboard the International Space Station.
Two recently launched instruments that were designed and built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to provide forecasters data on weather over the open ocean captured images of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, as the storm approached Cuba on its way north toward the U.S. mainland.
COWVR (short for Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer) and TEMPEST (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems) observe the planet’s atmosphere and surface from aboard the International Space Station, which passed in low-Earth orbit over the Caribbean Sea at about 12:30 a.m. EDT.
Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province at 4:30 a.m. EDT, according to the National Hurricane Center. At that time, it was a Category 3 hurricane, with estimated wind speeds of 125 mph (205 kph).
The image above combines microwave emissions measurements from both COWVR and TEMPEST. White sections indicate the presence of clouds. Green portions indicate rain. Yellow, red, and black indicate where air and water vapor were moving most swiftly. Ian’s center is seen just off of Cuba’s southern coast, and the storm is shown covering the island with rain and wind.
COWVR and TEMPEST sent the data for this image back to Earth in a direct stream via NASA’s tracking and data relay satellite (TDRS) constellation. The data were processed at JPL and made available to forecasters less than two hours after collection.
About the size of a minifridge, COWVR measures natural microwave emissions over the ocean. The magnitude of the emissions increases with the amount of rain in the atmosphere, and the strongest rain produces the strongest microwave emissions. TEMPEST – comparable in size to a cereal box – tracks microwaves at a much shorter wavelength, allowing it to see ice particles within the hurricane’s cloudy regions that are thrust into the upper atmosphere by the storm.
Both microwave radiometers were conceived to demonstrate that smaller, more energy-efficient, more simply designed sensors can perform most of the same measurements as current space-based weather instruments that are heavier, consume more power, and cost much more to construct.
COWVR’s development was funded by the U.S. Space Force, and TEMPEST was developed with NASA funding. The U.S. Space Test Program-Houston 8 (STP-H8) is responsible for hosting the instruments on the space station under Space Force funding in partnership with NASA. Data from the instruments is being used by government and university weather forecasters and scientists. The mission will inform development of future space-based weather sensors, and scientists are working on mission concepts that would take advantage of the low-cost microwave sensor technologies to study long-standing questions, such as how heat from the ocean fuels global weather patterns.
NASA’s Asteroid-Striking DART Mission Team Has JPL Members
Sept. 22, 2022
This illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
It’s a bold and complex undertaking to try impacting an asteroid. JPL is there to assist with navigators, communications, and more.
On Monday, Sept. 26, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission has the challenging goal of crashing its spacecraft into Dimorphos, a small moonlet orbiting a larger asteroid by the name of Didymos. While the asteroid poses no threat to Earth, this mission will test technology that could be used to defend our planet against potential asteroid or comet hazards that may be detected in the future.
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, designed and leads the ambitious mission for NASA. But as with many missions, the endeavor calls on expertise from various NASA centers. In the case of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, that expertise is for navigation, precise location of the target, asteroid science, and Earth-to-spacecraft communications.
“Strategic partnerships like ours with APL are the lifeblood of cutting-edge space mission development,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL. “Our history of working with APL goes all the way back to Voyager and extends well into the future, with missions like Europa Clipper. The work we do together makes us all – and our missions – better. We’re proud to support the DART mission and team.”
Launched in November 2021, the approximately 1,320-pound (about 600-kilogram) DART spacecraft will be at a point 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth when it impacts Dimorphos, which is just 525 feet (160 meters) across. Making matters more challenging still, the spacecraft will be closing in on the space rock at about 4 miles (6.1 kilometers) per second. Dimorphos orbits Didymos, which is roughly half a mile (780 meters) in diameter, every 11.9 hours.
Getting to Dimorphos
JPL’s navigation section is experienced at getting spacecraft to faraway locations accurately (think: Cassini to Saturn, Juno to Jupiter, Perseverance to Mars). Each mission brings its own set of challenges, and DART has many.
“It’s a difficult job,” said JPL’s Julie Bellerose, who leads the DART spacecraft navigation team. “A big part of what the navigation team is working on is getting DART to a 9-mile-wide (15-kilometer-wide) box in space 24 hours before impact.” At that point, Bellerose said, the mission’s final trajectory correction maneuver (the firing of thrusters to modify the direction of flight) will be executed by mission controllers back on Earth. From then on, it’s up to DART.
During the final hours of its one-way journey, DART will utilize an autonomous onboard navigator created by APL to stay on course. SMART Nav, or Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation, collects and processes images of Didymos and Dimorphos from DART’s DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation) high-resolution camera, and then uses a set of computational algorithms to determine what maneuvering needs to be done in the final four hours before impact.
Along with the DART team, another set of JPL navigators is calculating and planning the trajectory of DART’s spacecraft companion: The Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids, or LICIACube, which has the important task of imaging DART’s impact effects on Dimorphos. The toaster-size spacecraft disconnected from DART on Sept. 11 to navigate interplanetary space on its own – with an assist from the team at JPL.
“We are working with ASI to get LICIACube to within 25 to 50 miles (40 to 80 kilometers) of Dimorphos just two to three minutes after DART’s impact – close enough to get good images of the impact and ejecta plume, but not so close LICIACube could be hit by ejecta,” said JPL’s LICIACube navigation lead Dan Lubey.
While not necessary for the DART mission to succeed, the pre- and post-impact images this small satellite’s two optical cameras LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid) and LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer) will provide could benefit the scientific community for studies of near-Earth objects and aid in the interpretation of the DART results.
Time and Space
JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), an element of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), was tasked with determining not only the location of Didymos in space to within 16 miles (25 kilometers), but also when Dimorphos would be visible – and accessible – from DART’s direction of approach.
Along with investigators at other institutions, members of CNEOS will study the plume of rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) ejected by the impact, as well as the newly formed impact crater and the movement of Dimorphos in its orbit around its parent asteroid. Led by JPL’s Steve Chesley, they will not only examine data and imagery from DART and LICIACube, but also data from space and ground-based telescopes.
Scientists think the impact should shorten the moonlet’s orbital period around the larger asteroid by several minutes. That duration should be long enough for the effects to be observed and measured by telescopes on Earth. It should also be enough for this test to demonstrate whether kinetic impact technology – impacting an asteroid to adjust its speed and therefore its path – could in fact protect Earth from an asteroid strike.
Important contributors among those Earth-based telescopes include NASA’s Deep Space Network, the array of giant radio telescope dishes that JPL manages. With radar observations led by JPL scientist Shantanu Naidu, the massive 70-meter (230-foot) dish of Deep Space Station 14 at the network’s Goldstone complex near Barstow, California, will begin observing the aftermath of the celestial collision about 11 hours after impact, when Earth’s rotation brings Didymos and Dimorphos into view of Goldstone. Data from the echoes bounced off the two space rocks should help determine what changes occurred in the moonlet’s orbit and may even provide some coarse-resolution radar images.
Of course, radio science is only part of the Deep Space Network’s role. The navigation teams depend on it as well because the network is the means by which NASA has been communicating with spacecraft at the Moon and beyond since 1963.
More About the Mission
Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for PDCO as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office. DART is the world’s first planetary defense test mission, intentionally executing a kinetic impact into Dimorphos to slightly change its motion in space. While the asteroid does not pose any threat to Earth, the DART mission will demonstrate that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a kinetic impact on a relatively small asteroid and prove this is a viable technique to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth if one is ever discovered. DART will reach its target on Sept. 26, 2022.
ASI’s LICIACube mission is operated by Argotec with independent navigation provided by JPL, the University of Bologna, and Politecnico di Milano. LICIACube rode along with DART throughout launch and cruise and then was released 15 days before DART’s impact. LICIACube’s mission focuses on imaging the results of the DART’s impact (the crater and ejecta plume) as well as the unimpacted side of Dimorphos.
NASA’s Juno Will Perform Close Flyby of Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa
Sept. 22, 2022
This image of Jupiter’s moon Europa was taken by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021, from a distance of about 51,000 miles (82,000 kilometers).
Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing: Andrea Luck CC BY
As the spacecraft makes a close approach of the moon, it is expected to provide valuable science – and remarkable imagery – for NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission.
On Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), NASA’s Juno spacecraft will come within 222 miles (358 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa. The solar-powered spacecraft is expected to obtain some of the highest-resolution images ever taken of portions of Europa’s surface, as well as collect valuable data on the moon’s interior, surface composition, and ionosphere, along with its interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
Such information could benefit future missions, including the agency’s Europa Clipper, which is set to launch in 2024 to study the icy moon. “Europa is such an intriguing Jovian moon, it is the focus of its own future NASA mission,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We’re happy to provide data that may help the Europa Clipper team with mission planning, as well as provide new scientific insights into this icy world.”
Juno’s extended mission includes flybys of the moons Ganymede, Europa, and Io. This graphic depicts the spacecraft’s orbits of Jupiter – labeled “PJ” for perijove, or point of closest approach to the planet – from its prime mission in gray to the 42 orbits of its extended mission in shades of blue and purple.
With an equatorial diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometers), Europa is about 90% the size of Earth’s Moon. Scientists think a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell, sparking questions about potential conditions capable of supporting life underneath Europa’s surface.
The close flyby will modify Juno’s trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days. It will be the closest a NASA spacecraft has approached Europa since Galileo came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) on Jan. 3, 2000. In addition, this flyby marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during Juno’s extended mission. The mission explored Ganymede in June 2021 and plans to make close approaches of Io in 2023 and 2024.
Data collection will begin an hour prior to closest approach, when the spacecraft is 51,820 miles (83,397 kilometers) from Europa.
“The relative velocity between spacecraft and moon will be 14.7 miles per second (23.6 kilometers per second), so we are screaming by pretty fast,” said John Bordi, Juno deputy mission manager at JPL. “All steps have to go like clockwork to successfully acquire our planned data, because soon after the flyby is complete, the spacecraft needs to be reoriented for our upcoming close approach of Jupiter, which happens only 7 ½ hours later.”
Find out where Juno is right now with NASA’s interactive Eyes on the Solar System. With its three giant blades stretching out some 66 feet (20 meters), the spacecraft is a dynamic engineering marvel, spinning to keep itself stable as it makes oval-shaped orbits around Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The spacecraft’s full suite of instruments and sensors will be activated for the Europa encounter. Juno’s Jupiter Energetic-Particle Detector Instrument (JEDI) and its medium-gain (X-band) radio antenna will collect data on Europa’s ionosphere. Its Waves, Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE), and Magnetometer (MAG) experiments will measure plasma in the moon’s wake as Juno explores Europa’s interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
MAG and Waves will also search for possible water plumes above Europa’s surface. “We have the right equipment to do the job, but to capture a plume will require a lot of luck,” said Bolton. “We have to be at the right place at just the right time, but if we are so fortunate, it’s a home run for sure.”
Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) will peer into Europa’s water-ice crust, obtaining data on its composition and temperature. This is the first time such data will have been collected to study the moon’s icy shell.
In addition, the mission expects to take four visible-light images of the moon with JunoCam (a public-engagement camera) during the flyby. The Juno science team will compare them to images from previous missions, looking for changes in Europa’s surface features that might have occurred over the past two decades. These visible-light images will have an expected resolution better than 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per pixel.
Although Juno will be in Europa’s shadow when closest to the moon, Jupiter’s atmosphere will reflect enough sunlight for Juno’s visible-light imagers to collect data. Designed to take images of star fields and search for bright stars with known positions to help Juno get its bearings, the mission’s star camera (called the Stellar Reference Unit) will take a high-resolution black-and-white image of Europa’s surface. Meanwhile, the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) will attempt to collect infrared images of its surface.
Juno’s closeup views and data from its MWR instrument will inform the Europa Clipper mission, which will perform nearly 50 flybys after it arrives at Europa in 2030. Europa Clipper will gather data on the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior – information that scientists will use to better understand Europa’s global subsurface ocean, the thickness of its ice crust, and possible plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.
More About the Mission
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
What are some skywatching highlights in October 2022? Enjoy giant planets Jupiter and Saturn all night throughout the month. Then watch as Mars begins its retrograde motion, moving westward each night instead of eastward, for the next few months. Finally, check out the Orionid meteors overnight on Oct. 20.
Transcript:
What’s Up for October? Evenings with giants, Mars changes course, and meteors from Orion.
Giant planets Jupiter and Saturn are visible throughout the night in October. Early in the evening, you’ll find them to the southeast, moving slowly westward with the stars over the course of the night. They form a triangle with bright star Fomalhaut.
When observing this trio, note how the planets shine with a steady light, while the star twinkles. This can be an easy way to know if what you’re looking at is a planet or a star.
Mars has been steadily working its way toward the east all year like it usually does, relative to the background stars. But at the end of October, Mars halts this apparent motion, and then appears to reverse course. Over the next three months, from November to late January, Mars moves toward the west each night. Then near the end of January, it reverses direction again, and continues its eastward journey.
This is what’s called the retrograde motion of Mars. It happens about every two years, and it really threw early observers for a loop. That Mars appears to change its direction is an illusion caused by the motions of our planet in its orbit passing by the Red Planet in its orbit.
See, Earth and Mars are on these roughly circular paths around the Sun, like cars on a racetrack, and Earth is on the inner, faster track. About every 26 months, we overtake Mars, which is moving slower in its orbit. During that period when we’re passing Mars, and before we round the bend in our orbit to pull away from it, we see Mars in retrograde, appearing to change direction, even though it’s still moving forward in its orbit.
So take note of Mars over the next few months, as it appears to reverse course. Note how its position changes with respect to Betelgeuse, Aldebaran and the Pleiades over the weeks, and you’ll be witnessing what was once a source of intense curiosity for astronomers, but which we now know is just a sign of two planets passing in the night.
The Orionid meteor shower is active throughout October and November, and peaks on the night of October 20. It’s a moderate shower, usually producing 10-20 meteors per hour at its peak, under clear, dark skies. This year, the Moon will be about 20 percent full on the peak nights. So it will interfere a bit when it rises a couple of hours before dawn, but shouldn’t totally spoil the viewing.
The shower’s name comes from the fact that you can trace the paths of its meteors back to an area on the sky near Orion. These meteors are fragments of dust left behind by Comet Halley in a trail that extends along its orbit. They tend to be bright and fast moving, and they often leave persistent trails that can glow in the sky for a few seconds after they streak by.
No special equipment is needed to observe meteor showers. Just make sure you’re warm enough, and viewing from a safe, dark spot away from bright lights. Then all you have to do is look up and enjoy the show.
Here are the phases of the Moon for October. Stay up to date with all of NASA’s missions to explore the solar system and beyond at nasa.gov. I’m Preston Dyches from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that’s What’s Up for this month.
For more information, please visit the following link:
What are some skywatching highlights in October 2022? Enjoy giant planets Jupiter and Saturn all night throughout the month. Then watch as Mars begins its retrograde motion, moving westward each night instead of eastward, for the next few months. Finally, check out the Orionid meteors overnight on Oct. 20. 0:00 Intro 0:11 Evenings with Jupiter & Saturn 0:37 Mars’ retrograde motion 2:07 Orionid meteor shower 3:04 October Moon phases Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatch…. — Additional Resources — Skywatching resources from NASA: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatch… NASA “Watch the Skies” blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/ NASA’s Night Sky Network: https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain
Sept. 15, 2022
NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
The latest findings provide greater detail on a region of the Red Planet that has a watery past and is yielding promising samples for the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return campaign.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”
Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.
“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallization of magma – discovered on the crater floor,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”
Composed of multiple images from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, this mosaic shows a rocky outcrop called “Wildcat Ridge,” where the rover extracted two rock cores and abraded a circular patch to investigate the rock’s composition.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
“Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.
SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the aqueous environments in which they formed.
The most detailed panorama ever returned from Mars – combining 1,118 images taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover in June 2022 – reveals the intriguing landscape of Jezero Crater’s delta. In this video, rover science operations team member Rachel Kronyak gives a tour of the panorama.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
What Is Organic Matter?
Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don’t require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed. In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the SHERLOC instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date.
“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”
The first step in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its rock-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.
The geologic diversity of the samples already carried in the rover is so good that the rover team is looking into depositing select tubes near the base of the delta in about two months. After depositing the cache, the rover will continue its delta explorations.
“I’ve studied Martian habitability and geology for much of my career and know first-hand the incredible scientific value of returning a carefully collected set of Mars rocks to Earth,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance’s fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal. We will learn so much.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has arrived at an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, one of the best places on the Red Planet to search for potential signs of ancient life. The delta is an area where scientists surmise that a river once flowed billions of years ago into a lake and deposited sediments in a fan shape. Rachel Kronyak, a member of the Perseverance science operations team, guides the viewer through this Martian panorama and its intriguing sedimentary rocks. It’s the most detailed view ever returned from the Martian surface, consisting of 2.5 billion pixels and generated from 1,118 individual Mastcam-Z images. Those images were acquired on June 12, 13, 16, 17, and 20, 2022 (the 466th, 467th, 470th, 471st, and 474th Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance’s mission). In this panorama, an area called Hogwallow Flats is visible, as is Skinner Ridge, where two rock core samples were taken. The color enhancement in this image improves the visual contrast and accentuates color differences. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. For more information on the Perseverance rover, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
NASA’s AIRS Instrument Records Typhoon Hinnamnor Before Landfall
Sept. 8, 2022
NASA’s AIRS instrument imaged Typhoon Hinnamnor on the afternoon of Sept. 5, shortly before the storm made landfall in South Korea on Sept. 6. This image captured Hinnamnor – the first super typhoon of the Western Pacific season – as it spiraled northward through the East China Sea.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder aboard the Aqua satellite captured the outer bands of the powerful tropical cyclone as the storm approached the Korean Peninsula.
NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard the Aqua satellite captured imagery of Typhoon Hinnamnor in the West Pacific Ocean just before 2 p.m. local time on Sept. 5. Typhoon Hinnamnor was one of the strongest in South Korea’s recorded history, dropping some 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain and unleashing record winds.
In an infrared image from AIRS, the typhoon can be seen moving northward over the Korean Peninsula, with the coast of China to the west and the southernmost Japanese islands to the east. The large purple area of the image indicates very cold clouds at about minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 67 degrees Celsius), carried high into the atmosphere by deep thunderstorms. These storm clouds are associated with heavy rainfall. The image’s extensive areas of red beyond the storm indicate temperatures of around 80 F (26 C), typical of Earth’s daytime surface during late summer. These areas are mostly cloud-free, with the clear air caused by air motion outward from the cold clouds in the storm center then downward in the surrounding areas.
U.S. Hurricane Hunter planes don’t monitor the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, so AIRS and other satellite instruments are essential for tracking typhoons as they grow. AIRS, launched in 2002, was the first instrument to reveal the 3D distribution of rain within tropical storms like Hinnamnor. These 3D images have made a major contribution to knowledge of how hurricanes and typhoons develop, improving forecasts and saving lives.
One of six instruments aboard Aqua, AIRS provides data that is improving weather forecasts and advancing our understanding of Earth’s climate. AIRS, along with its partner microwave instrument the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit, AMSU-A, was a generational advancement in atmospheric sounding systems at its launch and has provided two decades of high-quality atmospheric observations. These instruments are part of NASA’s larger Earth observing fleet, which works to measure components of the global water and energy cycles, climate variation and trends, and the response of the climate system to increased greenhouse gases.
AIRS, in conjunction with AMSU-A, senses infrared and microwave radiation emitted from Earth to provide a 3D look at the planet’s weather and climate, making observations down to Earth’s surface. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, 3D map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations, and many other atmospheric phenomena. AIRS is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, a division of Caltech.
In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
The cycle of star formation is on display in this nearby nebula. Webb’s MIRI instrument captures protostars nestled deep in clouds of gas and dust, still gathering mass.
Once upon a space-time, a cosmic creation story unfolded: thousands of never-before-seen young stars spotted in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula for the appearance of its dusty filaments in previous telescope images, the nebula has long been a favorite for astronomers studying star formation. In addition to young stars, Webb reveals distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust.
At only 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies nearest our Milky Way. It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known. Astronomers focused three of Webb’s high-resolution infrared instruments on the Tarantula. Viewed with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk. The nebula’s cavity centered in the NIRCam image has been hollowed out by blistering radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which sparkle pale blue in the image. Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion by these stars’ powerful stellar winds, forming pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster. These pillars contain forming protostars, which will eventually emerge from their dusty cocoons and take their turn shaping the nebula.
At the longer wavelengths of light captured by its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Webb focuses on the area surrounding the central star cluster and unveils a very different view of the Tarantula Nebula. Full Image Details
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) caught one very young star doing just that. Astronomers previously thought this star might be a bit older and already in the process of clearing out a bubble around itself. However, NIRSpec showed that the star was only just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around itself. Without Webb’s high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation in action could not have been revealed.
The region takes on a different appearance when viewed in the longer infrared wavelengths detected by Webb’s Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI). The hot stars fade, and the cooler gas and dust glow. Within the stellar nursery clouds, points of light indicate embedded protostars, still gaining mass. While shorter wavelengths of light are absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula, and therefore never reach Webb to be detected, longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate that dust, ultimately revealing a previously unseen cosmic environment.
One of the reasons the Tarantula Nebula is interesting to astronomers is that the nebula has a similar type of chemical composition as the gigantic star-forming regions observed at the universe’s “cosmic noon,” when the cosmos was only a few billion years old and star formation was at its peak. Star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same furious rate as the Tarantula Nebula and have a different chemical composition. This makes the Tarantula the closest (i.e., easiest to see in detail) example of what was happening in the universe as it reached its brilliant high noon. Webb will provide astronomers the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in the Tarantula Nebula with the telescope’s deep observations of distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon.
Despite humanity’s thousands of years of stargazing, the star-formation process still holds many mysteries – many of them due to our previous inability to get crisp images of what was happening behind the thick clouds of stellar nurseries. Webb has already begun revealing a universe never seen before, and is only getting started on rewriting the stellar creation story.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
NASA’s Webb Takes Its First-Ever Direct Image of Distant World
Sept. 2, 2022
This image shows the exoplanet HIP 65426 b in different bands of infrared light, as seen from the James Webb Space Telescope. The images at bottom look different because of the ways the different Webb instruments capture light. A coronagraph blocks the host star’s light so the planet can be seen.
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA, A Carter (UCSC), the ERS 1386 team, and A. Pagan (STScI)
One of the telescope’s instruments used to observe the planet is managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
For the first time, astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and is not habitable. The finding is detailed in NASA’s latest JWST blog entry.
Two of Webb’s instruments observed the planet: the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California managed MIRI during its design, construction, and commissioning. Both instruments are equipped with coronagraphs, which are sets of tiny masks that block out starlight, enabling Webb to take direct images of certain exoplanets like this one, called HIP 65426 b. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, slated to launch later this decade, will use the even more advanced Coronagraph Instrument, which is also managed by JPL.
Explore the Solar System With NASA’s New-and-Improved 3D ‘Eyes’
Sept. 2, 2022
NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System includes renderings of 126 NASA spacecraft, including Juno, seen here flying by Jupiter.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The agency’s newly upgraded “Eyes on the Solar System” visualization tool includes Artemis I’s trajectory along with a host of other new features.
NASA has revamped its “Eyes on the Solar System” 3D visualization tool, making interplanetary travel easier and more interactive than ever. More than two years in the making, the update delivers better controls, improved navigation, and a host of new opportunities to learn about our incredible corner of the cosmos – no spacesuit required. All you need is a device with an internet connection.
Anyone with an internet-enabled device browser can explore the past, present, and future of the solar system in 3D with NASA’s interactive Eyes on the Solar System. Click anywhere on the image to get a closer look at a 3D rendering of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flying by Saturn’s moon Enceladus in 2015.
Learn the basics about dwarf planets or the finer points of gas giants, and ride alongside no fewer than 126 space missions past and present – including Perseverance during its harrowing entry, descent, and landing on the Red Planet. In fact, you can follow the paths of spacecraft and celestial bodies as far back as 1949 and as far into the future as 2049.
While you’re at it, you can rotate objects, compare them side by side, and even modulate the perspective as well as the lighting. The visuals are striking. This latest version of “Eyes” also lets you scroll through rich interactive journeys, including Voyager’s Grand Tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
“The beauty of the new browser-based ‘Eyes on the Solar System’ is that it really invites exploration. You just need an internet connection, a device that has a web browser, and some curiosity,” said Jason Craig, the producer of the “Eyes” software at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Ocean Worlds Life Surveyor (OWLS) is the first life detection suite to explore a wide range of size scales, from single molecules to microscopic organisms, in a water sample.
NASA, First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope & Image of The Day
James Webb Space Telescope
First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope
The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data were released during a televised broadcast at 10:30 a.m. EDT (14:30 UTC) on Tuesday, July 12, 2022, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. These listed targets below represent the first wave of full-color scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered, and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. They were selected by an international committee of representatives from NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
These first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope demonstrate Webb at its full power, ready to begin its mission to unfold the infrared universe.
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.
Called the Cosmic Cliffs, Webb’s seemingly three-dimensional picture looks like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening. In reality, it is the edge of the giant, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, and the tallest “peaks” in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in this image.
Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Today, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This enormous mosaic is Webb’s largest image to date, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from Webb provides new insights into how galactic interactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.
With its powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, Webb shows never-before-seen details in this galaxy group. Sparkling clusters of millions of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.
This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right, from NASA’s Webb Telescope. This scene was created by a white dwarf star – the remains of a star like our Sun after it shed its outer layers and stopped burning fuel though nuclear fusion. Those outer layers now form the ejected shells all along this view. In the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image, the white dwarf appears to the lower left of the bright, central star, partially hidden by a diffraction spike. The same star appears – but brighter, larger, and redder – in the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) image. This white dwarf star is cloaked in thick layers of dust, which make it appear larger. The brighter star in both images hasn’t yet shed its layers. It closely orbits the dimmer white dwarf, helping to distribute what it’s ejected. Over thousands of years and before it became a white dwarf, the star periodically ejected mass – the visible shells of material. As if on repeat, it contracted, heated up – and then, unable to push out more material, pulsated. Stellar material was sent in all directions – like a rotating sprinkler – and provided the ingredients for this asymmetrical landscape. Today, the white dwarf is heating up the gas in the inner regions – which appear blue at left and red at right. Both stars are lighting up the outer regions, shown in orange and blue, respectively. The images look very different because NIRCam and MIRI collect different wavelengths of light. NIRCam observes near-infrared light, which is closer to the visible wavelengths our eyes detect. MIRI goes farther into the infrared, picking up mid-infrared wavelengths. The second star more clearly appears in the MIRI image, because this instrument can see the gleaming dust around it, bringing it more clearly into view. The stars – and their layers of light – steal more attention in the NIRCam image, while dust pl
The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed for the first time that this star is cloaked in dust.
Two cameras aboard Webb captured the latest image of this planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 3132, and known informally as the Southern Ring Nebula. It is approximately 2,500 light-years away.
Webb will allow astronomers to dig into many more specifics about planetary nebulae like this one – clouds of gas and dust expelled by dying stars. Understanding which molecules are present, and where they lie throughout the shells of gas and dust will help researchers refine their knowledge of these objects.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the distinct signature of water, along with evidence for clouds and haze, in the atmosphere surrounding a hot, puffy gas giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.
The observation, which reveals the presence of specific gas molecules based on tiny decreases in the brightness of precise colors of light, is the most detailed of its kind to date, demonstrating Webb’s unprecedented ability to analyze atmospheres hundreds of light-years away.
While the Hubble Space Telescope has analyzed numerous exoplanet atmospheres over the past two decades, capturing the first clear detection of water in 2013, Webb’s immediate and more detailed observation marks a giant leap forward in the quest to characterize potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.
Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.
You’ve seen the pictures. What questions do you have? Our experts for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are ready to handle them in our NASA Science Live, starting at 3 p.m. ET (19:00 UTC) on Wednesday, July 13. Share your Qs with #UnfoldTheUniverse during our livestream. Have questions you want answered in Spanish? Tune in to a live Q&A at 1 p.m. EDT (17:00 UTC) on the NASA en español Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages: Facebook: https://facebook.com/nasaes Twitter: https://twitter.com/nasa_es YouTube: https://youtube.com/nasaes Image credit: NASA Goddard/Chris Gunn
Highlights: First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope (Official NASA Video)
NASA revealed the first five full-color images and spectrographic data from the world’s most powerful space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The world got its first look at the full capabilities of the mission at a live event streamed from the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on July 12, 2022. The event showcased these targets: – Carina Nebula: A landscape speckled with glittering stars and cosmic cliffs – Stephan’s Quintet: An enormous mosaic with a visual grouping of five galaxies – Southern Ring Nebula: A nebula with rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in all directions – WASP 96-b: A distinct signature of water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet orbiting a distant Sun-like star – SMACS 0723: The deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date The full set of the telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data are available at: https://nasa.gov/webbfirstimages Full-resolution images can be downloaded at: https://webbtelescope.org Credit: NASA Download Avail Link: https://images.nasa.gov/details-First…) Production Credit: Producer/Editor: Amy Leniarthtt
An overview of the instruments onboard the Webb Telescope: the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), and the Fine Guidance Sensor/Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph. Learn how each instrument will help Webb unfold the universe. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Producer Michael Starobin (KBRwyle): Producer Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Producer Jonathan North (KBRwyle): Animator Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (KBRwyle): Animator Chris Meaney (KBRwyle): Animator Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Videographer Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Editor Rich Melnick (KBRwyle): Editor Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Lead Host Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Lead Narrator Download this video at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14136
An overview of the instruments onboard the Webb Telescope: the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), and the Fine Guidance Sensor/Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph. Learn how each instrument will help Webb unfold the universe. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Producer Michael Starobin (KBRwyle): Producer Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Producer Jonathan North (KBRwyle): Animator Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (KBRwyle): Animator Chris Meaney (KBRwyle): Animator Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Videographer Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Editor Rich Melnick (KBRwyle): Editor Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Lead Host Sophia Roberts (AIMM): Lead Narrator Download this video at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14136
WATCH LIVE: Stunning new images from James Webb Space Telescope offer fuller picture of our universe
Now that the James Webb Space Telescope has released its first images, it’s time for the science programs to begin. We meet 5 scientists who will be using the telescope during its first cycle of operations looking at the earliest galaxies, red giant stars in the disc of Andromeda, star forming regions in the MIlky Way and nearby galaxies, the Trappist-1 exoplanet system, and mysterious icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. #JamesWebb#NASA#Space ——– Like this video? Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg?sub_… Become a Quicktake Member for exclusive perks: http://www.youtube.com/bloomberg/join Subscribe to Quicktake Explained: https://bit.ly/3iERrup QuickTake Originals is Bloomberg’s official premium video channel. We bring you insights and analysis from business, science, and technology experts who are shaping our future. We’re home to Hello World, Giant Leap, Storylines, and the series powering CityLab, Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Green, and much more. Subscribe for business news, but not as you’ve known it: exclusive interviews, fascinating profiles, data-driven analysis, and the latest in tech innovation from around the world. Visit our partner channel QuickTake News for breaking global news and insight in an instant. 0:00 – A Giant Leap for Science 1:59 – First full color, science quality images of JWST 8:11 – COSMOS-Web: mapping the earliest structures of the Universe 14:11 – Unearthing the fossilised Andromeda Galaxy 21:49 – Star formation in the Milky Way, Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud 26:56 – Trappist-1: checking atmosphere of exoplanet system with multiple earth-like planets in the habitable zone 31:27 – TransNeptunian objects: discovering the composition of icy bodies beyond Neptune
NASA celebrates the life of Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek actor, trailblazer, and role model, who symbolized to so many what was possible. She partnered with us to recruit some of the first women and minority astronauts, and inspired generations to reach for the stars.
In this photo from February 2012, Nichols was a featured guest speaker in the Building 8 auditorium at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. at a special event commemorating of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a “shocking” effect on the surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Stellar winds flowing out from this fast-moving star are making ripples in the dust as it approaches, creating a bow shock seen as glowing gossamer threads, which, for this star, are only seen in infrared light. Zeta Ophiuchi is a young, large and hot star located around 370 light-years away. It dwarfs our own sun in many ways — it is about six times hotter, eight times wider, 20 times more massive, and about 80,000 times as bright. Even at its great distance, it would be one of the brightest stars in the sky were it not largely obscured by foreground dust clouds. This massive star is travelling at a snappy pace of about 54,000 mph (24 kilometers per second), fast enough to break the sound barrier in the surrounding interstellar material. Because of this motion, it creates a spectacular bow shock ahead of its direction of travel (to the left). The structure is analogous to the ripples that precede the bow of a ship as it moves through the water, or the sonic boom of an airplane hitting supersonic speeds. The fine filaments of dust surrounding the star glow primarily at shorter infrared wavelengths, rendered here in green. The area of the shock pops out dramatically at longer infrared wavelengths, creating the red highlights. A bright bow shock like this would normally be seen in visible light as well, but because it is hidden behind a curtain of dust, only the longer infrared wavelengths of light seen by Spitzer can reach us. Bow shocks are commonly seen when two different regions of gas and dust slam into one another. Zeta Ophiuchi, like other massive stars, generates a strong wind of hot gas particles flowing out from its surface. This expanding wind collides with the tenuous clouds of interstellar gas and dust about half a light-year away from the star, which is almost 800 times the distance from the sun to
Zeta Ophiuchi is a star with a complicated past, having likely been ejected from its birthplace by a powerful stellar explosion. A new look by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory helps tell more of the story of this runaway star.
Located about 440 light-years from Earth, Zeta Ophiuchi is a hot star that is 20 times more massive than the Sun. Previous observations have provided evidence that Zeta Ophiuchi was once in close orbit with another star, before being ejected at about 100,000 miles per hour when this companion was destroyed in a supernova explosion over a million years ago. Previously released infrared data from NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, seen in this new composite image, reveals a spectacular shock wave (red and green) that was formed by matter blowing away from the star’s surface and slamming into gas in its path. Data from Chandra shows a bubble of X-ray emission (blue) located around the star, produced by gas that has been heated by the effects of the shock wave to tens of millions of degrees.
As NASA’s Juno mission completed its 43rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 5, 2022, its JunoCam instrument captured this striking view of vortices — hurricane-like spiral wind patterns — near the planet’s north pole.
These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across. Figuring out how they form is key to understanding Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create the planet’s other atmospheric features. A NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks help from volunteer members of the public to spot and help categorize vortices and other atmospheric phenomena visible in JunoCam photos of Jupiter. As of July 2022, 2,404 volunteers had made 376,725 classifications using the Jovian Vortex Hunter project web site at https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ramanakumars/jovian-vortex-hunter.
Lockheed Martin Photography By Garry Tice 1011 Lockheed Way, Palmdale, Ca. 93599 Event: Forebody and Nose – Windtunnel Testing Date: 2/10/2022 Additional Info:
Before NASA’s quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft takes to the skies, plenty of testing happens to ensure a safe first flight. One part of this safety check is to analyze data collected for the X-59’s flight control system through low-speed wind tunnel tests.
The X-59 is central to NASA’s Quesst mission to expand supersonic flight and provide regulators with data to help change existing national and international aviation rules that ban commercial supersonic flight over land. The aircraft is designed to produce a gentle thump instead of a sonic boom.
Recently, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, completed low-speed wind tunnel tests of a scale model of the X-59’s forebody. The tests provided measurements of how wind flows around the aircraft nose and confirmed computer predictions made using computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, software tools. The data will be fed into the aircraft flight control system and will allow the pilot to know the altitude, speed and angle that the aircraft is flying at in the sky.
In this image, a technician works on the X-59 model during testing in the low-speed wind tunnel, in February 2022.
The Sun’s rays begin to illuminate the Earth’s atmosphere as the International Space Station flew into an orbital sunrise 261 miles above Texas, as seen in this image taken by astronaut Bob Hines.
The crew doesn’t just snap pretty pictures; the research aboard the station benefits humanity in numerous ways. This week, the 11th annual International Space Station Research and Development Conference runs through Thursday, July 28, 2022, in Washington. The full conference agenda is available online.
NASA will provide live coverage of select panels from the conference on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.
The event coincides with the publication of the 2022 edition of the International Space Station Benefits for Humanity, highlighting the advances in scientific knowledge on Earth, and in space, physical, and biological sciences, aboard the microgravity laboratory for the benefits of people living on our home planet.
Though Mars is the Red Planet, false-color images can help us learn about its weather and geology. This image shows a variety of wind-related features on the Red Planet near the center of Gamboa Crater. Larger sand dunes form sinuous crests and individual domes.
There are tiny ripples on the tops of the dunes, only several feet from crest-to-crest. These merge into larger mega-ripples about 30 feet apart that radiate outward from the dunes. The larger, brighter formations that are roughly parallel are called “Transverse Aeolian Ridges” (TAR). These TAR are covered with very coarse sand.
The mega-ripples appear blue-green on one side of an enhanced color cutout while the TAR appear brighter blue on the other. This could be because the TAR are actively moving under the force of the wind, clearing away darker dust and making them brighter. All of these different features can indicate which way the wind was blowing when they formed. Being able to study such variety so close together allows us to see their relationships and compare and contrast features to examine what they are made of and how they formed.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
We’re celebrating 50 years of the Landsat satellite, the first of which launched on July 23, 1972. The latest in the series, Landsat 9, launched in September 2021.
Landsat shows us Earth from space. For 50 years, the mission has collected data on the forests, farms, urban areas and freshwater of our home planet, generating the longest continuous record of its kind. Decision makers from across the globe use freely available Landsat data to better understand environmental change, manage agricultural practices, allocate scarce water resources, respond to natural disasters and more.
This natural color image of Eleuthera Island, the Bahamas, was taken by Landsat 9 on January 18, 2022. Between Landsat 8 and Landsat 9, the Landsat program delivers complete coverage of the Earth’s surface every eight days.
Image Credit: Michelle Bouchard using Landsat data from USGS
An Alta-X drone operated by NASA researchers flies over NASA Langley’s City Environment Range Testing for Autonomous Integrated Navigation (CERTAIN) as part of the Advanced Air Mobility project’s High Density Vertiplex (HDV) testing in April 2022.
HDV is developing the necessary systems to enable urban drone flights that travel beyond visual sight.
Apollo 11 Crew Trains for Excursion on the Sea of Tranquility
Two members of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission participate in a simulation of deploying and using lunar tools on the surface of the Moon during a training exercise on April 22, 1969. Astronaut Buzz (Aldrin Jr. on left), lunar module pilot, uses a scoop and tongs to pick up a soil sample. Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander, holds a bag to receive the sample. In the background is a Lunar Module mockup.
The Apollo 11 crew simulates deploying and using lunar tools on the surface of the Moon during a training exercise on April 22, 1969. Lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin (left) uses a scoop and tongs to pick up a soil sample. Mission Commander Neil Armstrong holds a bag to receive the sample. In the background is a Lunar Module mockup.
On July 16, 1969, the crew off Apollo 11, including command module pilot Michael Collins, launched into history on a journey to explore Earth’s only natural satellite.
Landing on the Moon’s Mare Tranquillitatis, or Sea of Tranquility, on July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first people to walk on another terrestrial body. At 5 p.m. EDT (21:00 UTC) on July 20, 2022, NASA TV will air restored footage of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk.
This composite image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope shows the supernova remnant known as N132D. Supernovas are the explosive deaths of the Universe’s most massive stars. Once these stars run out of fuel, they collapse and blast waves of energy into space around them. In this image, three of Spitzer’s infrared bands are shown in red, green, and blue, while Chandra’s X-rays are seen in purple. The pinkish color reveals a clash between the explosion’s high-energy shockwaves and surrounding dust grains.
Supernovas are the explosive deaths of the universe’s most massive stars. In death, these objects blast powerful waves into the cosmos, destroying much of the dust surrounding them.
This 2007 composite from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the remnant of such an explosion, known as N132D, and the environment it is expanding into. In this image, infrared light at 4.5 microns is mapped to blue, 8.0 microns to green, and 24 microns to red. Meanwhile, broadband X-ray light is mapped purple. The remnant itself is seen as a wispy pink shell of gas at the center of this image. The pinkish color reveals an interaction between the explosion’s high-energy shockwaves (originally purple) and surrounding dust grains.
Outside of the central remnant, small organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, are shown as tints of green. Meanwhile, the blue dots represent stars within that lie along the line of sight between the observatories and N132D.
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/SAO/CXC; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/A. Tappe & J. Rho
A View from Above: Zero Gravity Facility Circa 1966
Zero Gravity Facility at Lewis Research Center, now known as John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field. This is a tunnel view looking up from level 5. This tower drops 460 feet and allows scientists 5.18 seconds of zero gravity. By comparison, the Washington Monument is 555 feet tall.
This tunnel view looking up from Level 5 is of the Zero Gravity Facility at Lewis Research Center, now known as John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, and was taken in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sept. 12, 1966. The tower dropped 460 feet and allowed scientists to perform 5.18 seconds of microgravity research. By comparison, the Washington Monument is 555 feet tall.
SpaceX Dragon Heads to Station on 25th Resupply Mission
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule soars upward after lifting off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 14, 2022, on the company’s 25th Commercial Resupply Services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 8:44 p.m. EDT. Dragon will deliver more than 5,800 pounds of cargo, including a variety of NASA investigations, to the space station. The spacecraft is expected to spend about a month attached to the orbiting outpost before it returns to Earth with research and return cargo, splashing down off the coast of Florida.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule soars upward after lifting off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 14, 2022, on the company’s 25th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 8:44 p.m. EDT.
Dragon will deliver more than 5,800 pounds of cargo, including a variety of scientific investigations, to the space station. The craft is expected to spend about a month attached to the orbiting outpost before it returns to Earth with research and return cargo, splashing down off the coast of Florida.
James Webb Space Telescope Senior Project Scientist John Mather
NASA James Webb Space Telescope Senior Project Scientist John Mather speaks with members of the media following the release of the first full-color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Tuesday, July 12, 2022, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The first full-color images and spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), are a demonstration of the power of Webb as the telescope begins its science mission to unfold the infrared universe. Photo Credit: (NASA/Taylor Mickal)
Senior Project Scientist John Mather, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics, speaks with members of the media following the release of the first full-color images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Tuesday, July 12, 2022, at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The first full-color images and spectroscopic data from the telescope, a partnership with European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, are a demonstration of the power of Webb as the telescope begins its science mission to unfold the infrared universe.
President Biden and the World Preview Webb Telescope’s First Image
U.S. President Joe Biden previews the first full-color image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the highest-resolution image of the infrared universe in history, Monday, July 11, 2022, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. On screen are NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen, top, Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) Nancy Levenson, and NASA James Webb Space Telescope Program Director Greg Robinson, bottom. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
President Joe Biden previews the first full-color image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the highest-resolution image of the infrared universe in history, Monday, July 11, 2022, in Washington. On screen are NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen, top, Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) Nancy Levenson, and NASA James Webb Space Telescope Program Director Greg Robinson, bottom.
Within the tempestuous Carina Nebula lies “Mystic Mountain.” This three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 in 2010, is made up primarily of dust and gas, and exhibits signs of intense star-forming activity. The colors in this composite image correspond to the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green) and sulfur (red).
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency, will soon reveal unprecedented and detailed views of the universe, with the upcoming release of its first full-color images and spectroscopic data.
The Carina Nebula is one of a list of cosmic objects that Webb targeted for these first observations, which will be released in NASA’s live broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 12. Each image will simultaneously be made available on social media as well as on the agency’s website.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observation has captured the galaxy CGCG 396-2, an unusual multi-armed galaxy merger which lies around 520 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.
This observation is a gem from the Galaxy Zoo project, a citizen science project involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers from around the world who classified galaxies to help scientists solve a problem of astronomical proportions: how to sort through the vast amounts of data generated by telescopes. A public vote selected the most astronomically intriguing objects for follow-up observations with Hubble. CGCG 396-2 is one such object, imaged here by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel
We’re less than one week away from the July 12, 2022, release of the first science-quality images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, but how does the observatory find and lock onto its targets? Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), developed by the Canadian Space Agency, was designed with this particular question in mind. Recently it captured a view of stars and galaxies that provides a tantalizing glimpse at what the telescope’s science instruments will reveal in the coming weeks, months, and years.
FGS has always been capable of capturing imagery, but its primary purpose is to enable accurate science measurements and imaging with precision pointing. When it does capture imagery, it is typically not kept: given the limited communications bandwidth between L2 and Earth, Webb only sends data from up to two science instruments at a time. But during the week-long stability test in May, it occurred to the team that they could keep the imagery that was being captured because there was available data transfer bandwidth.
The engineering test image – produced during a thermal stability test in mid-May – has some rough-around-the-edges qualities to it. It was not optimized to be a science observation, rather the data were taken to test how well the telescope could stay locked onto a target, but it does hint at the power of the telescope. It carries a few hallmarks of the views Webb has produced during its postlaunch preparations. Bright stars stand out with their six, long, sharply defined diffraction spikes – an effect due to Webb’s six-sided mirror segments. Beyond the stars – galaxies fill nearly the entire background.
The result – using 72 exposures over 32 hours – is among the deepest images of the universe ever taken, according to Webb scientists. When FGS’ aperture is open, it is not using color filters like the other science instruments – meaning it is impossible to study the age of the galaxies in this image with the rigor needed for scientific analysis. But: Even when capturing unplanned imagery during a test, FGS is capable of producing stunning views of the cosmos.
In this image, the FGS image was acquired in parallel with NIRCam imaging of the star HD147980 over a period of 8 days at the beginning of May. This image represents 32 hours of exposure time at several overlapping pointings of the Guider 2 channel. The observations were not optimized for detection of faint objects, but nevertheless the image captures extremely faint objects and is, for now, the deepest image of the infrared sky. The unfiltered wavelength response of the guider, from 0.6 to 5 micrometers, helps provide this extreme sensitivity. The image is mono-chromatic and is displayed in false color with white-yellow-orange-red representing the progression from brightest to dimmest. The bright star (at 9.3 magnitude) on the right hand edge is 2MASS 16235798+2826079. There are only a handful of stars in this image – distinguished by their diffraction spikes. The rest of the objects are thousands of faint galaxies, some in the nearby universe, but many, many more in the high redshift universe.
A new NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks your help spotting vortices – spiral wind patterns – and other phenomena in photos of the planet Jupiter.
Another NASA citizen science project, called Junocam, seeks help from members of the public processing images from NASA’s Juno Mission and choosing targets for the spacecraft. However, the new Jovian Vortex Hunter project provides images that have already been processed by the science team, making it quick and easy for anyone to lend a hand. Categorizing the images will help scientists understand the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry on Jupiter, which create dazzling features like bands, spots and “brown barges.”
In this image from 2019, citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. This stunningly detailed look at a cyclonic storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere was taken during its 23rd close flyby of the planet (also referred to as “perijove 23”). Juno observed this vortex in a region of Jupiter called the “north north north north temperate belt,” or NNNNTB, one of the gas giant planet’s many persistent cloud bands. These bands are formed by the prevailing winds at different latitudes. The vortex seen here is roughly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
The last rays of an orbital sunset burst through Earth’s horizon as the International Space Station flew 258 miles above Brazil in this image from June 2022.
In this image from 2014, an adult osprey, carrying a fish in its talons, prepares to land in its nest atop a speaker platform in the press site parking lot at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the background is the 209-foot-tall U.S. flag painted on the side of the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building, which serves as the central hub of NASA’s premier multi-user spaceport, capable of hosting several different kinds of rockets and spacecraft at the same time. The parking lot borders the water of the Launch Complex 39 turn basin, making it an ideal source of food for the osprey. The undeveloped property on Kennedy Space Center is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge provides a habitat for a plethora of wildlife, including 330 species of birds. For information on the refuge, visit http://www.fws.gov/merrittisland/Index.html.
NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland, or OMG, airborne mission found that most of Greenland’s glaciers that empty into the ocean are at greater risk of rapid ice loss than previously understood. OMG’s six-year field campaign studied the ocean’s role in glacial ice loss by gathering precise measurements of ocean depth, temperature, and salinity in front of more than 220 glaciers. The mission’s goal was to clarify our understanding of sea level rise over the next 50 years. This photo of Apusiaajik Glacier was taken near Kulusuk, Greenland, on Aug. 26, 2018, during OMG’s field operations.
The brightly glowing plumes seen in this image are reminiscent of an underwater scene, with turquoise-tinted currents and nebulous strands reaching out into the surroundings. However, this is no ocean. This image actually shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small nearby galaxy that orbits our galaxy, the Milky Way, and appears as a blurred blob in our skies. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has peeked many times into this galaxy, releasing stunning images of the whirling clouds of gas and sparkling stars (opo9944a, heic1301, potw1408a). This image shows part of the Tarantula Nebula’s outskirts. This famously beautiful nebula, located within the LMC, is a frequent target for Hubble (heic1206, heic1402). In most images of the LMC the colour is completely different to that seen here. This is because, in this new image, a different set of filters was used. The customary R filter, which selects the red light, was replaced by a filter letting through the near-infrared light. In traditional images, the hydrogen gas appears pink because it shines most brightly in the red. Here however, other less prominent emission lines dominate in the blue and green filters. This data is part of the Archival Pure Parallel Project (APPP), a project that gathered together and processed over 1000 images taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, obtained in parallel with other Hubble instruments. Much of the data in the project could be used to study a wide range of astronomical topics, including gravitational lensing and cosmic shear, exploring distant star-forming galaxies, supplementing observations in other wavelength ranges with optical data, and examining star populations from stellar heavyweights all the way down to solar-mass stars. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Josh Barrington.
In this image from 2014, brightly glowing plumes of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) appear almost like an ocean current with turquoise-tinted currents and nebulous strands reaching out into the surroundings.
This image shows part of the Tarantula Nebula’s outskirts located within the LMC, a small nearby galaxy that orbits the Milky Way and appears as a blurred blob in our skies. The Hubble Space Telescope has peeked many times into this galaxy, releasing stunning images of the whirling clouds of gas and sparkling stars.
In most images of the LMC the color is completely different to that seen here. For this image, researchers substituted the customary R filter, which selects the red light, and replaced it by a filter letting through the near-infrared light. In traditional images, the hydrogen gas appears pink because it shines most brightly in the red. Here however, other less prominent emission lines dominate in the blue and green filters.
This data is part of the Archival Pure Parallel Project (APPP), a project that gathered together and processed over 1,000 images taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, obtained in parallel with other Hubble instruments. Much of the data in the project could be used to study a wide range of astronomical topics, including gravitational lensing and cosmic shear, exploring distant star-forming galaxies, supplementing observations in other wavelength ranges with optical data, and examining star populations from stellar heavyweights all the way down to solar-mass stars.
“A piece of my story that I think needs to get told is that broken crayons still color. “So often we hear that there’s this cycle of hurt, and hurt people hurt people, and if you came from something, you have to be a product of your environment. “I do feel like, in a lot of ways, we are, whether you want to be or not. The people that raise you give you a bag, and they put things in it, and you carry those things with you, good or bad, for the rest of your life. But just because my dad struggled with addiction and just because my mom wasn’t always there didn’t mean that I had to be either of those things. “I didn’t have an example, a great example, of what love looked like all the time, but I did, right? I didn’t have the Cosbys, but I had exactly what I needed to be who I needed to be. I think that part of my story is what I’d like to tell more of. “Yeah, I came from brokenness, but I’m not broken.” NASA Public Affairs Specialist, Tyrone McCoy, poses for a portrait, Tuesday, June 14, 2022, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
“A piece of my story that I think needs to get told is that broken crayons still color.
“So often we hear that there’s this cycle of hurt, and hurt people hurt people, and if you came from something, you have to be a product of your environment.
“I do feel like, in a lot of ways, we are, whether you want to be or not. The people that raise you give you a bag, and they put things in it, and you carry those things with you, good or bad, for the rest of your life. But just because my dad struggled with addiction and just because my mom wasn’t always there didn’t mean that I had to be either of those things.
“I didn’t have an example, a great example, of what love looked like all the time, but I did, right? I didn’t have the Cosbys, but I had exactly what I needed to be who I needed to be. I think that part of my story is what I’d like to tell more of.
“Yeah, I came from brokenness, but I’m not broken.”
– Tyrone McCoy, Public Affairs Specialist, NASA Headquarters
Image Credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls Interviewer: NASA / Tahira Allen
Rebecca Rogers, systems engineer, left, takes dimension measurements of the CAPSTONE spacecraft at Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc., in Irvine, California.
CAPSTONE, the pathfinder for NASA’s lunar outpost, will test an orbit around the Moon that has never been flown before.
In this image from April 2022, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, was undergoing final construction – and with solar panel installation and vibration testing now complete, the small satellite was shipped to its launch location in New Zealand.
CAPSTONE is slated to launch on Monday, June 27, aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand. Live coverage will begin at 5 a.m. EDT on NASA Television, the agency’s website, and the NASA app.
The destination for this microwave oven-size CubeSat is a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). That same orbit is planned for Gateway, a multipurpose outpost for long-term lunar missions as part of the agency’s Artemis program.
Six days after launch, the Photon upper stage will release CAPSTONE into space for the first portion of the spacecraft’s solo flight. After a four-month journey to the Moon, CAPSTONE will test the dynamics of the NRHO for at least six months, helping reduce risk for future spacecraft. CAPSTONE will also demonstrate innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation technology and one-way ranging capabilities that could help future spacecraft fly near the Moon with reduced need for communication with Earth.
Mirrors Aligned: Webb Telescope’s First Full-Color Images Due in July
After completing two additional mirror alignment steps in March 2022, the team confirmed the James Webb Space Telescope’s optical performance will be able to meet or exceed the science goals the observatory was built to achieve.
This “selfie” was created using a specialized pupil imaging lens inside of Webb’s Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, instrument, which was designed to take images of the primary mirror segments instead of images of the sky. This configuration is not used during scientific operations and is used strictly for engineering and alignment purposes. In this image, all of Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments are shown collecting light from the same star in unison.
Now, we’re counting down to the release of the Webb Telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data during a broadcast beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, July 12.
This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, towards the centre of the Milky Way. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this glittering scene using its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groupings of tens of thousands to millions of stars. As this image demonstrates, the hearts of globular clusters can be densely packed with stars; the night sky in this image is strewn with so many stars that it resembles a sea of sequins or a vast treasure chest crammed with gold. This starry snapshot is from a Hubble programme investigating globular clusters located towards the heart of the Milky Way. The central region of our home galaxy contains a tightly packed group of stars known as the Galactic bulge, which is also rich in interstellar dust. This dust has made globular clusters near the Galactic centre difficult to study, as it absorbs starlight and can even change the apparent colours of the stars in these clusters. Hubble’s sensitivity at both visible and infrared wavelengths has allowed astronomers to measure how the colours of these globular clusters have been changed by interstellar dust, and thereby to establish their ages.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this glittering scene using its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars. As this image demonstrates, the hearts of globular clusters are densely packed with stars. Terzan 9 is dotted with so many glittering stars that it resembles a sea of sequins.
This starry snapshot is from a Hubble program investigating globular clusters located toward the heart of the Milky Way, in which its central region holds a tightly packed group of stars known as the galactic bulge, an area rich in interstellar dust. This dust makes globular clusters near the galaxy’s center difficult to study, as it absorbs starlight and can even change the apparent colors of stars in these clusters. Hubble’s sensitivity at both visible and infrared wavelengths allows astronomers to measure how star colors change due to interstellar dust. Knowing a star’s true color and brightness allows astronomers to estimate its age, and thereby estimate the globular cluster’s age.
The issue of General Order No. 3 by Union troops on June 19, 1865, marked the official end of slavery in Texas and the U.S.
On that Monday, enslaved African Americans in Texas learned of their freedom. That day of liberation became known as Juneteenth, when the Emancipation Proclamation was announced by Union troops in Galveston, Texas.
On Thursday, June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in this year’s Juneteenth Workforce Message:
“Last year, President Biden signed legislation into law that established June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day – a federal holiday. On this day, we reckon with the moral stain of slavery on our country. We reflect on centuries of racial injustice, inequality, and struggle that unfortunately still exist today.
“There is still more work to do, and it is work we must all do. I encourage all members of the NASA family to participate in a Juneteenth celebration and reflect on this historic event in our history. Let us reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to building a more perfect union.”
This image of Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula, separated by the Galveston Bay, were taken by the crew of the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above. In the image, Galveston Island is at right, Bolivar Peninsula at left, with the top of the picture being southeast.
Premiering on Juneteenth, Sunday, June 19, “The Color of Space” is a 50-minute inspirational documentary by NASA that tells the stories of Black Americans determined to reach the stars. It will be available to watch starting at noon EDT on NASA TV, the NASA app, NASA social media channels, and the agency’s website.
NASA, BBC News, Veritasium, Live Science, and Ocean Action News
May 15-16, 2022 Total Lunar Eclipse: Shadow View
Visualizations by Ernie Wright Released on March 24, 2022
Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The Moon moves right to left, passing through the penumbra and umbra, leaving in its wake an eclipse diagram with the times at various stages of the eclipse.
Both movies and high-resolution still images are available for Eastern (above), Central, Mountain, and Pacific Daylight Time, as well as UTC. Also see the visibility map and Dial-a-Moon for this eclipse.
On May 16, 2022 (the night of May 15 in the Western Hemisphere), the Moon enters the Earth’s shadow, creating a total lunar eclipse, the first since May of 2021. This animation shows the changing appearance of the Moon as it travels into and out of the Earth’s shadow, along with times at various stages.
The penumbra is the part of the Earth’s shadow where the Sun is only partially covered by the Earth. The umbra is where the Sun is completely hidden. The Moon’s appearance isn’t affected much by the penumbra. The real action begins when the Moon starts to disappear as it enters the umbra at about 10:28 p.m. EDT on the 15th. An hour later, entirely within the umbra, the Moon is a ghostly copper color. Totality lasts for an hour and a half before the Moon begins to emerge from the central shadow. Throughout the eclipse, the Moon is moving throught the constellation Libra.
The total lunar eclipse of May 16, 2022 (the night of May 15 in the Western Hemisphere) occurs near perigee, making the Moon appear about 7% larger than average. This eclipse is ideally timed for viewing from most of the Western Hemisphere, including the Lower 48 of the United States. The total phase occurs near moonset in Africa and western Europe.
The sublunar point, the last line of the table above, is the point on the Earth’s surface where the Moon is directly overhead. It’s also the center of the hemisphere of the Earth where the eclipse is visible. The closer you are to that location, the higher the Moon will be in your sky. The eclipse percentage in the table is the fraction of the Moon covered by the Earth’s umbra, the part of its shadow in which the Sun is completely blocked. The part of the shadow in which the Sun is only partially blocked is called the penumbra.
The animations on this page run from 1:00:00 to 7:29:50 UTC, which is also the valid range of times for this Dial-a-Moon. The exposure setting of the virtual camera changes around totality in order to capture the wide dynamic range of the eclipse. The parts of the Moon outside the umbra during the partial phases are almost as bright as an ordinary full moon, making the obstructed parts appear nearly black. But during totality, our eyes adjust and reveal a range of hues painted on the Moon by all of Earth’s sunrises and sunsets.
All phases of a lunar eclipse are safe to view, both with your naked eye and an unfiltered telescope.
When the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth, a solar eclipse takes place. (NEVER look at the sun during any type of solar eclipse! Looking at the sun is dangerous. It can damage your eyes.)
Partial Lunar Eclipse
When only a part of the moon enters Earth’s shadow, the event is called a partial lunar eclipse. Image Credit: Brad Riza
Total Lunar Eclipse
A total lunar eclipse happens when the whole moon enters Earth’s shadow. Some sunlight still reaches the moon, but first it goes through Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere filters out most of the sun’s blue light, so the moon looks red.
In this time-lapsed image, the moon changes color as it moves through Earth’s shadow. Image Credit: Fred Espenak
Solar Eclipse Diagram
When the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth, a solar eclipse takes place. (NEVER look at the sun during any type of solar eclipse! Looking at the sun is dangerous. It can damage your eyes.)
Partial Solar Eclipse
A partial solar eclipse takes place when the sun, moon and Earth are not exactly lined up. (NEVER look at the sun during any type of solar eclipse! Looking at the sun is dangerous. It can damage your eyes.)
May 12, 2022
Total Solar Eclipse
For a total eclipse to take place, the sun, moon and Earth must be in a direct line. During a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks the sun’s glare, making the sun’s corona more visible. (NEVER look at the sun during any type of solar eclipse! Looking at the sun is dangerous. It can damage your eyes.) Image Credit: Steve Albers, Dennis DiCicco and Gary Emerson
Annular Eclipse
An annular eclipse happens when the moon is farthest from Earth. Because the moon is farther away from Earth, it seems smaller and does not block the entire view of the sun. (NEVER look at the sun during any type of solar eclipse! Looking at the sun is dangerous. It can damage your eyes.) Image Credit: Stefan Seip
Moon’s Shadow on Earth During Solar Eclipse
During a solar eclipse, the moon casts a large shadow onto Earth’s surface. Image Credit: Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES)
Diagram of Umbra and Penumbra
During an eclipse, two shadows are cast. The first is called the umbra (UM bruh). This shadow gets smaller as it goes away from the sun. It is the dark center of the eclipse shadow. The second shadow is called the penumbra (pe NUM bruh). The penumbra gets larger as it goes away from the sun.
Go outside with NASA and watch the total lunar eclipse! On the evening of May 15, Earth will pass between the Sun and the Moon, blocking sunlight and casting a shadow on the lunar surface. Starting at 9:32 p.m. EDT (1:32 UTC on May 16), people with clear skies in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Africa will begin to see the Moon get bathed in the red glow of every sunrise and sunset refracted through Earth’s atmosphere. Totality will occur at 12:12 a.m. EDT on May 16 (4:12 UTC). Join NASA experts to learn about this incredible natural phenomenon, look through telescope views across the world, and hear about plans to return humans to the lunar surface with the Artemis program. Have questions? Ask them in our live chat. https://nasa.gov/moon
AXiOS AM & PM: Mike Allen <mike@axios.com> May 16, 2022
1,000 words
Photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP
This combination of photos shows the moon in various stages of a total lunar eclipse during last night’s first blood moon of the year, as seen from Temple City, Calif.
The moon was bathedin reflected red and orange hues of Earth’s sunsets and sunrises for about 90 minutes — one of the longest totalities of the decade.
These photosshow the Moon last night during a full lunar eclipse (upper left) … and at various stages as it emerges from Earth’s shadow — as seen near Moscow, Idaho.
The orange results from the Moon passing into Earth’s shadow.
Earth from Orbit: NOAA Debuts First Imagery from GOES-18
On May 11, 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, shared the first images of the Western Hemisphere from its Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-T (GOES-T). Later designated GOES-18, the satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument recently captured stunning views of Earth.
The crew aboard the International Space Station has a window on Planet Earth. In this image an orbital sunrise beams across Earth’s horizon revealing silhouetted clouds above the South China Sea.
Every 24 hours, the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets.
Astronaut Victor Glover: Inspiring Washington Area Students
NASA astronaut Victor Glover fist pumps with 3-year-old Ezra Garrel at the conclusion of an educational event, Thursday, April 28, 2022, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Glover most recently served as pilot and second-in-command on the Crew-1 SpaceX Crew Dragon, named Resilience, which landed after a long duration mission aboard the International Space Station, May 2, 2021. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
NASA astronaut Victor Glover greets one of his youngest fans, 3-year-old Ezra Garrel, with a fist bump at the conclusion of an educational event for students in the Washington, DC area, Thursday, April 28, 2022, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Glover most recently served as pilot and second-in-command on the Crew-1 SpaceX Crew Dragon, named Resilience. The long-duration mission aboard the International Space Station returned to Earth on May 2, 2021.
Two merging galaxies in the VV689 system — nicknamed the Angel Wing —feature in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In this view, the focus is placed on the system itself, allowing a closer look at it’s unique morphology.
This Hubble Space Telescope image features two merging galaxies in the VV-689 system, nicknamed the Angel Wing. Unlike chance alignments of galaxies, which only appear to overlap when viewed from our vantage point on Earth, the two galaxies in VV-689 are in the midst of a collision. The galactic interaction has left the VV-689 system almost completely symmetrical, giving the impression of a vast set of galactic wings.
“Zoo Gems,” interesting galaxies from the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project is a crowdsourced program and relies on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to classify galaxies and help astronomers wade through a deluge of data from robotic telescopes. In the process, volunteers discovered a gallery of weird and wonderful galaxy types, some not previously studied. A similar, project called Radio Galaxy Zoo: LOFAR is using the same crowdsourcing approach to locate supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt
Text Credit: ESA
We’re celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope‘s 32nd birthday with a stunning look at an unusual close-knit collection of five galaxies, called The Hickson Compact Group 40.
This eclectic galaxy grouping includes three spiral-shaped galaxies, an elliptical galaxy, and a lenticular (lens-like) galaxy. Somehow, these different galaxies crossed paths in their evolution to create an exceptionally crowded and eclectic galaxy sampler.
Black holes are hard to find. They have such strong gravity that light can’t escape them, so scientists must rely on clues from their surroundings to find them.
This image from 2001 is an artist’s impression of a black hole accretion disk. Around many black holes is an accretion disk of material emitting energy as it falls into the black hole.
Black Hole Image Makes History; NASA Telescopes Coordinated Observations
A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation.
Using the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists obtained an image of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87, outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon.
Credits: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.
A black hole is an extremely dense object from which no light can escape. Anything that comes within a black hole’s “event horizon,” its point of no return, will be consumed, never to re-emerge, because of the black hole’s unimaginably strong gravity. By its very nature, a black hole cannot be seen, but the hot disk of material that encircles it shines bright. Against a bright backdrop, such as this disk, a black hole appears to cast a shadow.
The stunning new image shows the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87 (M87), an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. Catching its shadow involved eight ground-based radio telescopes around the globe, operating together as if they were one telescope the size of our entire planet.
“This is an amazing accomplishment by the EHT team,” said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Years ago, we thought we would have to build a very large space telescope to image a black hole. By getting radio telescopes around the world to work in concert like one instrument, the EHT team achieved this, decades ahead of time.”
To complement the EHT findings, several NASA spacecraft were part of a large effort, coordinated by the EHT’s Multiwavelength Working Group, to observe the black hole using different wavelengths of light. As part of this effort, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory space telescope missions, all attuned to different varieties of X-ray light, turned their gaze to the M87 black hole around the same time as the EHT in April 2017. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was also watching for changes in gamma-ray light from M87 during the EHT observations. If EHT observed changes in the structure of the black hole’s environment, data from these missions and other telescopes could be used to help figure out what was going on.
Chandra X-ray Observatory close-up of the core of the M87 galaxy.
Credits: NASA/CXC/Villanova University/J. Neilsen
While NASA observations did not directly trace out the historic image, astronomers used data from NASA’s Chandra and NuSTAR satellites to measure the X-ray brightness of M87’s jet. Scientists used this information to compare their models of the jet and disk around the black hole with the EHT observations. Other insights may come as researchers continue to pore over these data.
There are many remaining questions about black holes that the coordinated NASA observations may help answer. Mysteries linger about why particles get such a huge energy boost around black holes, forming dramatic jets that surge away from the poles of black holes at nearly the speed of light. When material falls into the black hole, where does the energy go?
“X-rays help us connect what’s happening to the particles near the event horizon with what we can measure with our telescopes,” said Joey Neilsen, an astronomer at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, who led the Chandra and NuSTAR analysis on behalf of the EHT’s Multiwavelength Working Group.
Chandra X-ray Observatory close-up of the core of the M87 galaxy.
Credits: NASA/CXC/Villanova University/J. Neilsen
NASA space telescopes have previously studied a jet extending more than 1,000 light-years away from the center of M87. The jet is made of particles traveling near the speed of light, shooting out at high energies from close to the event horizon. The EHT was designed in part to study the origin of this jet and others like it. A blob of matter in the jet called HST-1, discovered by Hubble astronomers in 1999, has undergone a mysterious cycle of brightening and dimming.
Chandra, NuSTAR, Swift and Fermi, as well as NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) experiment on the International Space Station, also looked at the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, in coordination with EHT.
Getting so many different telescopes on the ground and in space to all look toward the same celestial object is a huge undertaking in and of itself, scientists emphasize.
“Scheduling all of these coordinated observations was a really hard problem for both the EHT and the Chandra and NuSTAR mission planners,” Neilsen said. “They did really incredible work to get us the data that we have, and we’re exceedingly grateful.”
Neilsen and colleagues who were part of the coordinated observations will be working on dissecting the entire spectrum of light coming from the M87 black hole, all the way from low-energy radio waves to high-energy gamma rays. With so much data from EHT and other telescopes, scientists may have years of discoveries ahead.
Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters, Washington
818-359-3241 elandau@jpl.nasa.gov
The first image of Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Source: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Astronomers have captured the first image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Axios Science author Alison Snyder reports.
Why it matters: The “historic breakthrough” offers an unprecedented look at the extreme object driving the evolution of our galaxy.
· Astronomers imaged Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) using the Event Horizon Telescope.
Most galaxies are thought to have a supermassive black hole at their center.
· The false orange-yellow color in the image is the silhouette of the black hole created by matter teetering on its edge, or event horizon.
· Light can’t escape a black hole, but hot plasma swirling around it emits short radio waves that radio telescopes can pick up. In the image, the gas silhouettes the black hole itself.
Astronomers have captured the first ever image of the colossal black hole at the center of our galaxy, providing the first direct evidence of the cosmic giant’s existence.
Located 26,000 light-years away, Sagittarius A* is a gargantuan tear in space-time that is four million times the mass of our sun and 40 million miles (60 million kilometers) across. The image was captured by the Event Horizon telescope (EHT), a network of eight synchronized radio telescopes placed in various locations around the world.
A supermassive black hole that lives at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, has been pictured for the very first time. Known as Sagittarius A*, the object is a staggering four-million times the mass of our Sun. For scale, the ring is roughly the size of Mercury’s orbit around our star. Fortunately, this monster is a long, long way away – some 26,000 light-years in the distance – so there’s no possibility of us ever coming to any danger. The BBC’s Science correspondent Pallab Ghosh reports. Please subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog#BBCNews
A Picture of the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
This is an image of the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Visit https://www.kiwico.com/veritasium30 to get 30% off your first month of any crate! ??? Image of Sgr A* from EHT collaboration Event Horizon Telescope collaboration: https://ve42.co/EHT Animations from The Relativistic Astrophysics group, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Massive thanks to Prof. Luciano Rezzolla, Dr Christian Fromm and Dr Alejandro Cruz-Osorio. A huge thanks to Prof. Peter Tuthill and Dr Manisha Caleb for feedback on earlier versions of this video and helping explain VLBI. Great video by Thatcher Chamberlin about VLBI here – https://youtu.be/Y8rAHTvpJbk Animations and simulations with English text: L. R. Weih & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt) https://youtu.be/jvftAadCFRI Video of stars going around Sgr A* from European Southern Observatory https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso… Video zooming into the center of our galaxy from European Southern Observatory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXAU0… Video of observation of M87 courtesy of: C. M. Fromm, Y. Mizuno & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt) https://youtu.be/meOKmzhTcIY Video of observation of SgrA* courtesy of C. M. Fromm, Y. Mizuno & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt) Z. Younsi (University College London) https://youtu.be/VnsZj9RvhFU Video of telescopes in the array 2017: C. M. Fromm & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt) https://youtu.be/Ame7fzBuFnk Animations and simulations (no text): L. R. Weih & L. Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt) https://youtu.be/XmvpKFSvB7A ??? Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Inconcision, Kelly Snook, TTST, Ross McCawley, Balkrishna Heroor, Chris LaClair, Avi Yashchin, John H. Austin, Jr., OnlineBookClub.org, Dmitry Kuzmichev, Matthew Gonzalez, Eric Sexton, john kiehl, Anton Ragin, Diffbot, Micah Mangione, MJP, Gnare, Dave Kircher, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Bill Linder, Paul Peijzel, Josh Hibschman, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, jim buckmaster, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Stephen Wilcox, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Clayton Greenwell, Michael Krugman, Cy ‘kkm’ K’Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal ??? Written by Derek Muller Animation by Ivy Tello, Mike Radjabov, Maria Raykova Filmed by Petr Lebedev
You might love charred, broiled sirloin; crisp, oven-roasted veggies; or flaky, baked salmon, all of which generally require an oven. But when you are in a hurry or famished, you may turn to a faster cooking method, the hallmark of culinary convenience: the microwave.
The microwave has made it possible to nourish ourselves with cooked food in a matter of seconds. But how, exactly, does it work so much quicker than an oven?
A rare solar eclipse Saturday (April 30) stunned viewers across Antarctica, the southern tip of South America, and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
While much of the event took place in remote areas, live cameras on Earth and satellites in space allowed people around the world to witness the moon blocking as much as 64% of the sun. The eclipse happened during a Black Moon, which is the second new moon in a single month.
On clear Martian nights, long, snake-like ribbons of light may streak through the sky for thousands of miles. It’s a pretty sight, according to new observations from the United Arab Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) — and it represents a strange new type of aurora never seen before on any planet.
Auroras — also known on Earth as the southern or northern lights — occur when charged particles from solar wind collide with molecules in a planet’s atmosphere. Several different types of auroras have been detected on Mars, including planet-wide “diffuse auroras,” which glow faintly through the entire Martian sky during intense solar storms, as well as patchy “discrete auroras,” which only glow above certain spots of Martian crust thought to contain magnetized minerals, according to EMM.
This new type of aurora — which EMM researchers dubbed a “sinuous discrete aurora” — seems to be a strange mishmash of the others, the researchers said.
The earliest documented case of an aurora, the fleeting but brilliantly colored lights that sometimes illuminate the night sky, dates to the early 10th century B.C., a new study on an ancient Chinese text reveals.
The text describes “five-colored light” witnessed in the northern part of the night sky toward the end of the reign of King Zh?o, the fourth king of the Chinese Zhou dynasty. The exact dates of Zh?o’s reign aren’t known, but it’s likely that this “five-colored light” event happened in either 977 B.C. or 957 B.C., according to the study.
Kane Tanaka of Japan, who was the world’s oldest living person, has died at age 119, according to news reports.
Tanaka was born on Jan. 2, 1903 and died on April 19, according to CNN.
According to Guinness World Records, Tanaka became the world’s oldest living person on Jan. 30, 2019 at 116 years and 28 days old. She held the title for three years, until her death last week.
With the month of May comes Mother’s Day, a special time to celebrate all the wonderful moms out there. Did you know our ocean has some stand-out moms, too? Dive in with us and take a look at some of the hardest working moms in the sea.
Rose, Rhododendron, and John’s Sculpture in our garden, Spring May 2022
I enjoy studying and reading about technology, realizing that many thousands of educated people around the world are busy working on different kinds of experiments and research to advance their projects. This in return, will help human kind to progress, and hopefully, we will be able to appreciate one another and keep us together as a human race.
Hopefully, we will be able to live together without wars all over the world, and be able to focus our attention to prevent global warming.
We may then realize that we are the care-takers keeping the world healthy for ourselves, younger generations, and all creatures on earth that cohabitant with us on this planet.
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Saturday, May 21, 2022, 9:45 PM
Above Santa Barbara County, the Surface Biology and Geology High-Frequency Time Series, or SHIFT, campaign collects data to understand land and aquatic ecosystems. Read More
A research plane collecting spectral imaging data of vegetation on land and in the ocean as part of the SHIFT campaign flies just off the Central Coast of California near Point Conception and the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve in February. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Full Image Details
The SHIFT campaign uses a research plane carrying the AVIRIS-NG instrument to collect data on the function, health, and resilience of plant communities in the 640-square-mile (1,656-square-kilometer) area of Santa Barbara County and the nearby ocean shown in this annotated map. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Full Image Details
To assess how climate warming will change risks such as crop failures and wildfires, it’s necessary to look at how the risks are likely to interact. Read More
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter scouted this ridgeline near the ancient river delta in Jezero Crater because it is of interest to Perseverance rover scientists. Enlarged at right is a close-up of one of the ridgeline’s rocky outcrops. The image was captured on April 23, during the rotorcraft’s 27th flight.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
For more information, please visit the following link:
Eyeing some of the components that enabled the rover to get safely to the Martian surface could provide valuable insights for future missions. Read More
This image of Perseverance’s backshell and parachute was collected by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 26th flight on April 19, 2022.
This image of Perseverance’s backshell and supersonic parachute was captured by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 26th flight on Mars on April 19, 2022.
Parallel ice ridges, a common feature on Jupiter’s moon Europa, are found on Greenland’s ice sheet – and could bode well for Europa’s potential habitability. Read More
The surface geology of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is on display in this view made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s.
A double ridge cutting across the surface of Europa is seen in this mosaic of two images taken by NASA’s Galileo during the spacecraft’s close flyby on Feb. 20, 1997. Analysis of a similar feature in Greenland suggests shallow liquid water may be ubiquitous across the Jovian moon’s icy shell.
An illustration shows our solar system (not to scale).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Among the missions are InSight, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Curiosity, all of which have been critical to expanding our understanding of the Red Planet. Read More
For more information, please visit the following link:
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars
April 20, 2022
The Mastcam-Z camera recorded video of Phobos, one of the Red Planet’s two moons, to study how its orbit is changing over time.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest-frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI Full Image Details
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface. Several Mars rovers have observed Phobos crossing in front of the Sun over the past 18 years. Spirit and Opportunity made the first observations back in 2004; Curiosity in 2019 was the first to record video of the event. Each time these eclipses are observed, they allow scientists to measure subtle shifts in Phobos’ orbit over time. The moon’s tidal forces pull on the deep interior of the Red Planet, as well as its crust and mantle; studying how much Phobos shifts over time reveals something about how resistant the crust and mantle are, and thus what kinds of materials they’re made of. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Arrives at Delta for New Science Campaign
The expanse of Jezero Crater’s river delta is shown in this panorama of 64 stitched-together images taken by the Mastcam-Z system on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on April 11, 2022, the 406th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Full Image Details
This image of the parachute that helped deliver NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover to the Martian surface was taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument on April 6, 2022.
Listen closely to new sounds from Mars recorded by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, including puffs and pings from a rover tool, light Martian wind, the whirring of the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, and laser zaps. Most of the sounds – best heard through headphones with the sound up – were recorded using the microphone belonging to Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument, mounted on the head of the rover’s mast. Other sounds, including the puffs and pings from the rover’s Gaseous Dust Removal Tool, or gDRT, blowing shavings off rock faces, were recorded by another microphone mounted on the chassis of the rover. A new study based on recordings made by the rover reveals that the speed of sound is slower on the Red Planet than on Earth and that, mostly, a deep silence prevails in the much thinner atmosphere. For more information on the study go to: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/what-so… For more about Perseverance go to mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ and nasa.gov/perseverance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/LANL/CNES/IRAP
This illustration indicates the placement of Perseverance’s two microphones. The microphone on the mast is part of the SuperCam science instrument. The microphone on the side of the rover was intended to capture the sounds of entry, descent, and landing for public engagement.
Interim Director Larry James joined 22 executives in a commitment to significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups by 2030. Read More
Inclusion is a JPL core value.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Interim Director Larry James joined 22 executives in a commitment to significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups by 2030.
Twenty-three space industry executives, including Larry James, interim director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, gathered at the 37th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April 5 to pledge their commitment to advancing diversity across the collective workforce in coming years.
The executives signed the “Space Workforce 2030” pledge, the first-ever space industry commitment of its kind to “significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups.” Each company will agree to annual reporting of data on diversity in our collective technical workforce, a regular cadence of exchanges of best practices, and work with universities to increase the number of diverse and underrepresented students graduating ready to join the space industry.
“We’re excited to be a part of this industry initiative and continuing to lead the way in growing our diverse and inclusive workforce,” said James. “We know that these qualities lead to stronger teams and innovative solutions – key things we need here at JPL as we tackle the toughest challenges in science and engineering.”
Cozette Hart, JPL’s director for human resources, is proud of JPL’s partnership in this effort.
“We’ve shared JPL DEI data in our annual report, so the unification and commitment of our industry to broaden this work is an extremely positive step for all of us,” said Hart.
Neela Rajendra, the Lab’s manager of diversity, equity, and inclusion, acknowledged the importance of being part of a cohort of other aerospace organizations where companies can identify trends and learn from each other.
“This is industry-specific and even more powerful,” she said. “There’s a recognition that if we can advance diversity, equity, and inclusion for the industry as a whole, we’ll all benefit from it.”
Collaboration also helps JPL refine its diversity focus areas as the Lab continues to develop its strategic plan, Rajendra added.
By signing the pledge, the companies vow to accomplish the following by 2030:
Significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups in our collective technical workforce.
Significantly increase the number of women and employees from underrepresented groups who hold senior leadership positions in our collective technical workforce.
Work with universities to increase the percentages of women and students from underrepresented groups receiving aerospace engineering degrees to levels commensurate with overall engineering programs.
Sponsor K-12 programs that collectively reach over 5 million underrepresented students annually.
Meet twice a year at the working level to exchange best practices on strengthening diversity recruitment, STEM education outreach, and representation at leadership levels.
Seek like-minded leaders and organizations to join this effort.
“This effort links to the DEI recruitment efforts already in place at JPL,” shared Hart. “In partnership with these companies and our universities, colleges, and organizations such as Society of Women Engineers (SWE), National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), etc., we will be implementing even more opportunities for current and potential employees in the future.”
“Essentially, we’re committing to continuing the focus on our talent pipeline and really supporting future employees,” said Rajendra. “It’s about ensuring that all students and future talent have the opportunity to join the technical fields in aerospace regardless of background, socioeconomic status, or self-identity.”
Find the full list of “Space Workforce 2030” signatories below:
Roy Azevedo, president of Raytheon Intelligence & Space
Payam Banazadeh, CEO at Capella Space
Peter Beck, CEO at Rocket Lab
Tory Bruno, CEO at United Launch Alliance
Jim Chilton, senior VP of Space & Launch at Boeing
Michael Colglazier, CEO at Virgin Galactic
Eileen Drake, CEO and president of AeroJet Rocketdyne
Tim Ellis, CEO at Relativity Space
John Gedmark, CEO at Astranis Space Technologies
Steve Isakowitz, CEO at The Aerospace Corporation
Larry James, acting director at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Daniel Jablonsky, CEO at Maxar Technologies
Dave Kaufman, president of Ball Aerospace
Chris Kemp, CEO at Astra
Robert Lightfoot, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space
Will Marshall, CEO at Planet
Dan Piemont, president of ABL Space Systems
Peter Platzer, CEO at Spire Global
John Serafini, CEO at HawkEye 360
Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of SpaceX
Melanie Stricklan, CEO at Slingshot Aerospace
Amela Wilson, CEO at Nanoracks
Tom Wilson, president of Space Systems at Northrop Grumman
With help from a cryocooler, the Mid-Infrared Instrument has dropped down to just a few degrees above the lowest temperature matter can reach and is ready for calibration. Read More
In this illustration, the multilayered sunshield on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope stretches out beneath the observatory’s honeycomb mirror. The sunshield is the first step in cooling down Webb’s infrared instruments, but the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) requires additional help to reach its operating temperature.
Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez
STARS AND GALAXIES.
What’s Up – May 2022
April 29, 2022
What are some skywatching highlights in May 2022? May provides some great planet spotting, including a conjunction of Jupiter a conjunction of Jupiter and Mars.
What are some skywatching highlights in May 2022? May provides some great planet spotting, including a close conjunction of Jupiter and Mars. At mid-month, a total eclipse of the Moon should delight skywatchers across the Americas, Europe, and Africa. And all month long, the Coma star cluster (aka, the Coma Berenices star cluster, or Melotte 111) is a great target for binoculars in the evening.
What are some skywatching highlights in May 2022? May provides some great planet spotting, including a close conjunction of Jupiter and Mars. At mid-month, a total eclipse of the Moon should delight skywatchers across the Americas, Europe, and Africa. And all month long, the Coma star cluster (aka, the Coma Berenices star cluster, or Melotte 111) is a great target for binoculars in the evening. YouTube Full Description (i.e., “Show More”) 0:00 Intro 0:11 Planet-spotting opportunities 1:02 Lunar eclipse 2:27 The Coma star cluster 3:33 May Moon phases Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatch….
What’s Up for May? The planets of dusk and dawn, a lunar eclipse, and the Coma star cluster.
May begins and ends with a couple of great planet-spotting opportunities. On May 2nd, look to the west about 45 minutes after sunset to find Mercury about 10 degrees off the horizon, accompanied by a slim crescent moon. Just to the south of the Moon is brilliant red giant star Aldebaran, which should be roughly the same brightness as Mercury. (And by the way, this is the only chance to spot a naked-eye planet in the early evening until August.)
Then in the last week of May, you can watch each morning as Jupiter and Mars get increasingly close in the predawn sky. Their morning meetup culminates in a close conjunction that you can watch on the 28th through the 30th, where they’ll be separated by barely the width of the full moon. Should look incredible with binoculars, where you can also see Jupiter’s largest moons.
Skywatchers in the Western Hemisphere can look forward to a total lunar eclipse in mid-May. The event will be visible across the Americas, Europe, and Africa – basically anywhere the Moon is above the horizon at the time.
The visible part of the eclipse begins about 10:30pm U.S. Eastern time on May 15th, with totality starting an hour later and lasting for about an hour and a half. Those in the Eastern U.S. will see the eclipse start with the Moon well above the horizon. For the Central U.S., the eclipse starts about an hour and a half after dark, with the Moon relatively low in the sky. On the West coast of the U.S., the Moon rises with totality beginning or already underway, so you’ll want to find a clear view toward the southeast if viewing from there.
Now, lunar eclipses are the ones that are safe to look at directly with your eyes, binoculars, or a telescope (unlike solar eclipses).
The Moon takes on a dim, reddish hue during the period of totality. Even though the Moon is fully immersed in Earth’s shadow at that time, red wavelengths of sunlight filter through Earth’s atmosphere and fall onto the Moon’s surface. One way to think of this is that a total lunar eclipse shows us a projection of all the sunrises and sunsets happening on the planet at that moment.
So check your local details for this eclipse, and find lots more eclipse info from NASA at the address on your screen.
Finally in May, a really nice target for binoculars: the Coma star cluster. This loose, open star cluster displays 40 or 50 stars spread over a region of sky about three finger-widths wide. The brightest stars in the cluster form a distinctive Y shape, as seen here.
The Coma star cluster is located about 300 light years away, making it the second closest open cluster to Earth after the Hyades cluster in Taurus.
To find the Coma star cluster, look southward for the constellation Leo. It can be easiest to start from the Big Dipper, toward the north, and use the two “pointer stars” on the end which always point you toward Leo. Once you’ve identified Leo, the Coma star cluster is about 15 degrees to the east of the triangle of stars representing the lion’s hindquarters. It’s relatively easy to find with binoculars, even under light-polluted urban skies – as long as it’s clear out.
So here’s wishing you clear skies for finding the Coma star cluster and any other wonders you discover in the night sky in May.
Here are the phases of the Moon for May.
Stay up to date with all of NASA’s missions to explore the solar system and beyond at nasa.gov. I’m Preston Dyches from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that’s What’s Up for this month.
Happy Earth Day Everyone, Let Us Have Peace on Earth
Photographs and Artwork by Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts
This is my studio, where I display some of my artworks. Avocado plant, tangerine, mango and more plants, keep me company in the wintertime. Now the weather is getting warmer I will move my plants to our little garden in the backyard. Some of the plants will be displayed in front of our shop with one of my artworks and one of John artworks on our shutter gate. I will miss not having the plants in my studio where I spend most of the evening and night, working on my Peace Project. But now spring has arrived, with roses blooming soon. The first flowers that appeared few weeks ago were daffodils. Our daughter Mali’s plant, called “Bleeding Heart”, is flowering with its second to bloom right now. I will plant the annuals such as Inpatients, Marigolds and a lot more soon. These annual plants produce beautiful flowers in a variety of colors. I am looking forward to the beauty of nature that gives us fresh and happy times to come.
Have A Happy Earth Day Everyone, Let Us Have Peace on Earth
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Friday, April 22, 2022
The construction below the Water Lily Pond, my artwork, is Bodhi’s House. I built this play house for my second grandson, Bodhi, after he was born. The pictures of families from both pairs of grandparents, are posted on all of the walls of this house. Bodhi likes to go inside of his play house to play hide and seek. The photos of Bodhi are integrated with the artwork by Grandpa John. Bodhi’s brother Kai, made one painting located at the top corner of the house.
With much Love,
Grandma Ing & Grandpa John, on Earth Day, Friday, April 22, 2022
This is Kai’s play house that was built in the same way I did with Bodhi’s house. This house is a preservation of memories of Kai, and all the family that had opportunities to be with Kai’s Great Grandparents, on his father’s side. Sadly, they both passed away few years ago. Hopefully, when Kai and Bodhi grow up, they will be able to look back to the past with all the pictures of events of the family gathering together when they were young.
With much Love,
Grandma Ing & Grandpa John, on Earth Day, Friday, April 22, 2022
Have A Happy Earth Day Everyone, Let Us Have Peace on Earth
Ever wonder what it’s like to see our planet from space? NASA’s astronauts will take you on a journey to the International Space Station, exploring the life-changing experience of an orbital perspective. View Earth as you’ve never seen it before: through the eyes of an astronaut.
Watch more shows on SDGs on NHK WORLD-JAPAN! https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/on… More quality content available on NHK WORLD-JAPAN! https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/on… Deep in the countryside of central Japan, an artisan makes the most of nature’s bounty while creating new items out of upcycled materials.
00:00 – Opening 00:32 – From a NY organic farm 01:45 – Carbon farming: What is it? 03:03 – Regenerative agriculture: A Minnesota Case Study 06:04 – Ray Archuleta: Visually comparing soil health 12:19 – Gabe Brown: The 5 principles 19:14 – Shinano Takuro: Visualized rhizosphere 23:05 – Carbon farming around the world 23:42 – Toshimichi Yoshida: Our dear friend bacteria 38:20 – The ‘4 per 1000’ Initiative 39:20 – Biochar: A Yamanashi Case Study 47:54 – Conclusion Regenerative agriculture, also known as carbon farming, is one way people are taking action against the climate crisis, turning harmful carbon emissions in the atmosphere into nutrient rich soil or biochar and using it to farm organic and sustainable food. Meet carbon farming pioneers like Gabe Brown in the US, Toshimichi Yoshida in Japan and more. Watch more shows on SDGs on NHK WORLD-JAPAN! https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/on… More quality content available on NHK WORLD-JAPAN! https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/on…
400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta’s fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife — accurate down to the block — when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn’t get delivery.
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Armed with an 18th-century map, a GPS and reams of data, Eric Sanderson has re-plotted the Manhattan of 1609, just in time for New York’s quadricentennial.
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Countdown Summit
October 2021
How to make radical climate action the new normal
A net-zero future is possible, but first we need to flip a mental switch to truly understand that we can stop the climate crisis if we try, says Nobel laureate Al Gore. In this inspiring and essential talk, Gore shares examples of extreme climate events (think: fires, floods and atmospheric tsunamis), identifies the man-made systems holding us back from progress and invites us all to join the movement for climate justice: “the biggest emergent social movement in all of history,” as he puts it. An unmissable tour de force on the current state of the crisis — and the transformations that will make it possible to find a way out of it.
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This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.
Given the scale of the challenge, the conversation around climate change is often tinged with doom and gloom. But climate tech investor Gabriel Kra thinks we need to reframe the crisis as a source of tremendous opportunity. He offers five big reasons to be optimistic about climate — starting with the fact that many of the world’s best minds are focused and working on building a clean future for all.
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This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.
Don’t be afraid to take a chance. Go out and get a job working at a company to solve climate change. Or advocate within your current company. But stand up and be a part of the solution. Companies can have an impact, positive or negative, and you can make a difference.
It was 50 years ago this weekend that giant pandas were first brought to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington. The historic program with China has fostered a collaboration between scientists and led to a conservation success story for the once endangered species. Geoff Bennett takes an up close look at these popular and precious animals. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
ABC News reporter Paul Lockyer mounted four separate filming expeditions to Lake Eyre, often with cameraman John Bean and pilot Gary Ticehurst. They captured extraordinary footage of nature at work on a grand scale, as the desert bloomed and water flowed all the way to the parched mouth of the Murray River in South Australia. Birds flocked to the outback in record numbers and the rivers and lakes were brimming with fish. Tragically, on the last of those expeditions in August 2011 the ABC helicopter crashed at Lake Eyre, killing Paul, John and Gary. This 90-minute documentary combines the best footage of those expeditions and shows off Lake Eyre in all its many moods. It also contains special tributes to the three men. Lake Eyre features the footage and commentary from Paul Lockyer that was filmed for the original news documentaries, Lake Eyre – Australia’s Outback Wonder produced in 2009, and the follow-up, Return to Lake Eyre – The Deluge produced in 2010. This special amended version pulls together the stunning images that captured history in the making, following the floodwaters from north Queensland down the great outback rivers to Lake Eyre and recording the extraordinary transformation of an environment that was desolate and stark, that turned into a flourishing oasis. And as producer, Ben Hawke says: “This commemorative edition is a fitting tribute to three great professionals, and three great blokes.” Please note the audio in this program is mono. 00:00:00 | Lake Eyre 00:03:48 | Donald Malcolm Campbell, Bluebird land speed record 00:08:15 | Flinders Ranges 00:11:27 | Australian outback floods 00:13:30 | Professor Richard Kingsford, environmental/ biological expert and river ecologist 00:16:55 | Elder Don Rowlands, Watti Watti and Wangkangurru Yarluyandi man 00:24:20 | David Brook, Birdsville 00:26:18 | Birdsville races 00:35:46 | Australian dry season 00:38:25 | Australian native wild flowers 00:41:43 | Australian desert storms 00:46:15 | Christmas storms 2009 01:05:59 | Birdsville races 01:07:30 | Lake Yamma Yamma on Channel Country in south-western Queensland 01:11:53 | 2010 Australian floods 01:13:30 | Darling River and desert rivers 01:14:48 | Dale McGrath, Glenn McGrath’s brother 01:16:06 | The Coorong, Murry River meets the sea 01:20:15 | Victoria and New South Wales September 2012 floods 01:27:24 | Commemorating Journalist Paul Lockyer, pilot Gary Ticehurst, and cameraman John Bean Subscribe ? and tap the notification bell ? to be delivered Australian stories every day: http://ab.co/ABCAus-subscribe ___________________________________________ Web: http://abc.net.au/ Facebook: http://facebook.com/abc Twitter: http://twitter.com/abcaustralia Instagram: http://instagram.com/abcaustralia ___________________________________________ This is an official Australian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube channel. Contributions may be removed if they violate ABC’s Online Conditions of Use http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm (Section 3).
Watch Al Roker’s extended interview with former President Barack Obama as they discuss climate change, politics and life after the White House. The 44th president gives Al heartfelt advice on dealing with an empty nest and sending kids off to college. Team Obama and Team Roker also hold a nature scavenger hunt with kids from the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington and the National Park Service. » Subscribe to TODAY: http://on.today.com/SubscribeToTODAY » Watch the latest from TODAY: http://bit.ly/LatestTODAY About: TODAY brings you the latest headlines and expert tips on money, health and parenting. We wake up every morning to give you and your family all you need to start your day. If it matters to you, it matters to us. We are in the people business. Subscribe to our channel for exclusive TODAY archival footage & our original web series. Connect with TODAY Online! Visit TODAY’s Website: http://on.today.com/ReadTODAY Find TODAY on Facebook: http://on.today.com/LikeTODAY Follow TODAY on Twitter: http://on.today.com/FollowTODAY Follow TODAY on Instagram: http://on.today.com/InstaTODAY#AlRoker#Obama#NationalParks
What’s Up – October 2021
What are some skywatching highlights in October? See several groupings of the Moon, planets, and stars at sunrise and sunset. Then get to know two bright stars that take turns with Polaris as North Star over thousands of years. Plus, Oct. 16 is International Observe the Moon Night! › Watch now
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Cameras Capture Mars Like Never Before
Sep 23, 2021
Using its WATSON camera, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie over a rock nicknamed “Rochette,” on Sept.10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Two holes can be seen where the rover used its robotic arm to drill rock core samples.
Scientists tap into an array of imagers aboard the six-wheeled explorer to get a big picture of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been exploring Jezero Crater for more than 217 Earth days (211 Martian days, or sols), and the dusty rocks there are beginning to tell their story – about a volatile young Mars flowing with lava and water.
That story, stretching billions of years into the past, is unfolding thanks in large part to the seven powerful science cameras aboard Perseverance. Able to home in on small features from great distances, take in vast sweeps of Martian landscape, and magnify tiny rock granules, these specialized cameras also help the rover team determine which rock samples offer the best chance to learn whether microscopic life ever existed on the Red Planet.
Altogether, some 800 scientists and engineers around the world make up the larger Perseverance team. That includes smaller teams, from a few dozen to as many as 100, for each of the rover’s cameras and instruments. And the teams behind the cameras must coordinate each decision about what to image.
“The imaging cameras are a huge piece of everything,” said Vivian Sun, the co-lead for Perseverance’s first science campaign at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We use a lot of them every single day for science. They’re absolutely mission-critical.”
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has been hard at work using the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument to help determine the best rocks to sample and look for signs of ancient life. Mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, SHERLOC is the only instrument that can directly detect organics, which are building blocks for life. Because it characterizes the chemical composition of rocks, SHERLOC can also help scientists understand whether any of the rocks formed in an ancient habitable environment. SHERLOC features spectrometers, a laser, and cameras, including WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering). WATSON is a color camera that takes close-up images of rock grains and surface textures. This video provides an instrument update by Eva Scheller, one of the science team members from Caltech. For more information on Perseverance, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Watch as Caltech’s Eva Scheller, a member of the Perseverance science team, provides a snapshot of the rover’s SHERLOC science instrument. Mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, SHERLOC features spectrometers, a laser, and cameras, including WATSON, which takes close-up images of rock grains and surface textures.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The storytelling began soon after Perseverance landed in February, and the stunning images have been stacking up as the multiple cameras conduct their scientific investigations. Here’s how they work, along with a sampling of what some have found so far:
The Big Picture
Perseverance’s two navigation cameras – among nine engineering cameras – support the rover’s autonomous driving capability. And at each stop, the rover first employs those two cameras to get the lay of the land with a 360-degree view.
Perseverance looks back with one of its navigation cameras toward its tracks on July 1, 2021 (the 130th sol, or Martian day, of its mission), after driving autonomously 358 feet (109 meters) – its longest autonomous drive to date. The image has been processed to enhance the contrast.
“The navigation camera data is really useful to have those images to do a targeted science follow-up with higher-resolution instruments such as SuperCam and Mastcam-Z,” Sun said.
Perseverance’s six hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams, include two pairs in front (with only a single pair in use at any one time) to help avoid trouble spots and to place the rover’s robotic arm on targets; the two rear Hazcams provide images to help place the rover in the context of the broader landscape.
Mastcam-Z, a pair of “eyes” on the rover’s mast, is built for the big picture: panoramic color shots, including 3D images, with zoom capability. It can also capture high-definition video.
Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to create this enhanced-color panorama, which scientists used to look for rock-sampling sites. The panorama is stitched together from 70 individual images taken on July 28, 2021, the 155th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Jim Bell at Arizona State University leads the Mastcam-Z team, which has been working at high speed to produce images for the larger group. “Part of our job on this mission has been a sort of triage,” he said. “We can swing through vast swaths of real estate and do some quick assessment of geology, of color. That has been helping the team figure out where to target instruments.”
Color is key: Mastcam-Z images allow scientists to make links between features seen from orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and what they see on the ground.
The instrument also functions as a low-resolution spectrometer, dividing the light it captures into 11 colors. Scientists can analyze the colors for clues about the composition of the material giving off the light, helping them decide which features to zoom in on with the mission’s true spectrometers.
For instance, there’s a well-known series of images from March 17. It shows a wide escarpment, aka the “Delta Scarp,” that is part of a fan-shaped river delta that formed in the crater long ago. After Mastcam-Z provided the broad view, the mission turned to SuperCam for a closer look.
The Long View
This image of an escarpment, or scarp – a long, steep slope – along the delta of Mars’ Jezero Crater was generated using data from the Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. The inset image at top is a close-up provided by the Remote Microscopic Imager, which is part of the SuperCam instrument.
Scientists use SuperCam to study mineralogy and chemistry, and to seek evidence of ancient microbial life. Perched near Mastcam-Z on Perseverance’s mast, it includes the Remote Micro-Imager, or RMI, which can zoom in on features the size of a softball from more than a mile away.
Once Mastcam-Z provided images of the scarp, the SuperCam RMI homed in on a corner of it, providing close-ups that were later stitched together for a more revealing view.
To Roger Wiens, principal investigator for SuperCam at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, these images spoke volumes about Mars’ ancient past, when the atmosphere was thick enough, and warm enough, to allow water to flow on the surface.
“This is showing huge boulders,” he said. “That means there had to have been some huge flash flooding that occurred that washed boulders down the riverbed into this delta formation.”
The chock-a-block layers told him even more.
“These large boulders are partway down the delta formation,” Wiens said. “If the lakebed was full, you would find these at the very top. So the lake wasn’t full at the time the flash flood happened. Overall, it may be indicating an unstable climate. Perhaps we didn’t always have this very placid, calm, habitable place that we might have liked for raising some micro-organisms.”
In addition, scientists have picked up signs of igneous rock that formed from lava or magma on the crater floor during this early period. That could mean not only flowing water, but flowing lava, before, during, or after the time that the lake itself formed.
These clues are crucial to the mission’s search for signs of ancient Martian life and potentially habitable environments. To that end, the rover is taking samples of Martian rock and sediment that future missions could return to Earth for in-depth study.
The (Really) Close-up
Perseverance took this close-up of a rock target nicknamed “Foux” using its WATSON camera on July 11, 2021, the 139th Martian day, r sol, of the mission. The area within the camera is roughly 1.4 by 1 inches (3.5 centimeters by 2.6 centimeters).
A variety of Perseverance’s cameras assist in the selection of those samples, including WATSON (the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering).
Located at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, WATSON provides extreme closeups of rock and sediment, zeroing in on the variety, size, shape, and color of tiny grains – as well as the “cement” between them – in those materials. Such information can lend insight into Mars’ history as well as the geological context of potential samples.
WATSON also helps engineers position the rover’s drill for extracting rock core samples and produces images of where the sample came from.
The imager partners with SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), which includes an Autofocus and Contextual Imager (ACI), the rover’s highest-resolution camera. SHERLOC uses an ultraviolet laser to identify certain minerals in rock and sediment, while PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), also on the robotic arm, uses X-rays to determine the chemical composition. These cameras, working in concert with WATSON, have helped capture geologic data – including signs of that igneous rock on the crater floor – with a precision that has surprised scientists.
“We’re getting really cool spectra of materials formed in aqueous [watery] environments – for example sulfate and carbonate,” said Luther Beegle, SHERLOC’s principal investigator at JPL.
Engineers also use WATSON to check on the rover’s systems and undercarriage – and to take Perseverance selfies (here’s how).
Beegle says not just the strong performance of the imaging instruments, but their ability to endure the harsh environment on the Martian surface, gives him confidence in Perseverance’s chances for major discoveries.
“Once we get over closer to the delta, where there should be really good preservation potential for signs of life, we’ve got a really good chance of seeing something if it’s there,” he said.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
Mars Perseverance Team Members to Be Recognized at Hispanic Heritage Awards
Sep 08, 2021
From left to right: Diana Trujillo, Christina Hernandez, and Clara O’Farrell are engineers with NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover team.
Credit: Hispanic Heritage Foundation
The three award recipients – Diana Trujillo, Christina Hernandez, and Clara O’Farrell – are engineers from the NASA rover team.
Three Latina engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are the 2021 recipients of STEM Awards from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. They will be honored for their significant roles in the agency’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission during the 34th Hispanic Heritage Awards broadcast on PBS Oct. 8, joined by Carlos Santana, Ivy Queen, and others.
NASA JPL recipients are:
Christina Hernandez began her work at JPL in the Natural Space Environments group and as mission assurance manager on STABLE (Sub arcsecond Telescope and Balloon Experiment). Her Mars-related work began with impact assessment to keep Mars spacecraft safe during the Comet Siding Spring event. As a payload systems engineer for Perseverance, she has worked on three of its seven science instruments. Her work on the rover’s PIXL (short for Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry) will help scientists hunt for signs of ancient microbial life by taking super-close images of rock and soil textures and using its X-ray spectrometer to identify chemical elements within them.
Clara O’Farrell, who is originally from Argentina, moved to the U.S. on her 19th birthday to start college. She studied aerospace engineering at Princeton and completed a doctoral degree at Caltech with research on fluid dynamics of jellyfish swimming. After joining JPL in 2013, she began her work on parachutes, aerodynamics, and trajectory simulation for Mars entry, descent, and landing. Her accomplishments as a guidance and control engineer include certifying a supersonic parachute to land Perseverance via supersonic sounding rocket tests.
Diana Trujillo, an aerospace engineer, is currently Technical Group Supervisor for Sequence Planning and Execution and a Tactical Mission Lead for Perseverance. Born and raised in Colombia, Trujillo immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 17 to pursue her dream of working for NASA. While enrolled in English-as-a-second-language courses, she also worked full time to support her studies in community college and later the University of Florida and University of Maryland. Diana has held several roles for NASA and JPL, including Mars Curiosity Mission Lead, Deputy Project System Engineer, and Deputy Team Chief of Engineering Operations on Curiosity. Trujillo has also been active in sharing the excitement and opportunities of STEM with the public. She created and hosted #JuntosPerseveramos, NASA’s first-ever Spanish-language live broadcast of a major mission milestone (Perseverance landing on Mars), attracting millions of viewers worldwide.
“Congratulations to Christina, Clara, and Diana on receiving this prestigious STEM award,” said Dr. Jim Green, NASA’s chief scientist. “Each of them was integral to the planning, development, and successful landing of our Mars Perseverance rover. Our Mars Perseverance mission will advance NASA’s quest to explore past habitability of the Red Planet. Because of the hard work and dedication of our team, we can now look for past microbial life through the collection of core rock and soil samples and test technologies that will pave the way for future human exploration of Mars. Thank you to the Hispanic Heritage Foundation for their consideration and for this outstanding recognition of our extremely talented, diverse, and inspirational NASA workforce.”
In the Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s news release, the organization’s president and CEO, Jose Antonio Tijerino, said, “As leaders in the STEM space, these inspirational Latinas demonstrate the great vision and value proposition our community presents America. These engineers also represent role models for aspiring Latinx engineers in expanding human knowledge and scientific discovery.”
The Hispanic Heritage Awards are produced by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and were created by the White House in 1988 to commemorate the establishment of Hispanic Heritage Month in America. The awards are among the highest honors by Latinos for Latinos and are supported by 40 national Hispanic-serving institutions. The Foundation’s programs focus on education, workforce, and social impact through the lens of leadership.
An oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida – a high-end Category 4 when it made landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, on Aug. 29, 2021 – appears as a green trail in the inset false-color graphic provided by NASA’s Delta-X project, while the surrounding seawater appears orange. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) regularly monitors U.S. coastal waters for potential spills and noticed slicks that appeared just off the coast after the hurricane. They were able to use this information from Delta-X to corroborate other data they had about oil slicks in the area (satellite image in the second inset picture). The blue-green swath crossing from the Gulf of Mexico over the Louisiana coast denotes the flight path of the Delta-X radar instrument on Sept. 1, just before 11:30 a.m. CDT.
Charged with studying the Mississippi River Delta, Delta-X was gearing up to collect data on Louisiana’s coastal wetlands when Hurricane Ida barreled ashore in late August. The storm damaged buildings and infrastructure alike, resulting in power outages, flooding, and oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil tends to smooth out the bumps on the ocean’s surface, which results in a distinct radar signal that the Delta-X mission was able to pick out of their data. Delta-X added flight paths to their planned schedule – with the support of NASA’s Applied Science Disaster Program – in order to collect information over the gulf in areas of interest to NOAA.
Delta-X is studying two wetlands – the Atchafalaya and Terrebonne Basins – by land, boat, and air to quantify water and sediment flow as well as vegetation growth. While the Atchafalaya Basin has been gaining land through sediment accumulation, Terrebonne Basin, which is right next to the Atchafalaya, has been rapidly losing land. The data collected by the project will be applied to models used to forecast which areas of the delta are likely to gain or lose land under various sea level rise, river flow, and watershed management scenarios.
The mission uses several instruments to collect its data. Affixed to the bottom of a Gulfstream-III airplane, one of those instruments, the all-weather Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), bounces radar signals off of Earth’s surface, forming a kind of image of a particular area. Repeated images of the same regions, captured at different times, enable researchers to detect changes in those areas, such as fluctuating water levels beneath the vegetation as the tides move in and out of these wetlands. In addition to radar measurements, teams from Caltech, Louisiana State University, Florida International University, and other collaborating institutions gather water and vegetation samples – among other data – by boat, other airborne sensors, and from instruments on the ground.
Funded by NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital (EVS-3) program, Delta-X is managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA. Fall 2021 was Delta-X’s last scheduled field campaign, although the five-year mission will run through the end of 2023.
On August 27, 2021 Ida crossed over Cuba as a Category 1 Storm. 48 hours later the storm intensified to a Category 4 before making landfall on the coast of Louisiana. The storm was the second most destructive storm to ever make landfall on the Louisiana coast with sustained winds over 150 mph (240 km/h).
The rapid intensification process that the storm system underwent is not well understood. Satellite images such as this are helpful as scientists attempt to understand new weather patterns that are emerging with Global Climate Change.
Tasked with detecting plant water use and stress, ECOSTRESS’s primary mission is to measure the temperature of plants heating up as they run out of water. But it can also measure and track heat-related phenomena like wildfires, heat waves, and volcanoes. ECOSTRESS observations have a spatial resolution of about 77 by 77 yards (70 by 70 meters), which enables researchers to study surface-temperature conditions down to the size of a football field. Due to the space station’s unique orbit, the mission can acquire images of the same regions at different times of the day, as opposed to crossing over each area at the same time of day like satellites in other orbits do. This is advantageous when monitoring plant stress in the same area throughout the day, for example.
The ECOSTRESS mission launched to the space station on June 29, 2018. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Collecting temperature readings in the atmosphere and at the surface, NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard the agency’s Aqua satellite captured the progression of a slow-moving heat dome across the southwestern U.S. from July 1 to July 12, 2021. The animation of the AIRS data shows surface air temperature anomalies – values above or below long-term averages. The hottest areas, shown in pink, experienced surface air temperatures more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.6 degrees Celsius) above average. Surface air temperature is something that people directly feel when they are outside.
AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at the planet’s weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations down to Earth’s surface. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations, and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly aboard NASA’s Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of Caltech.
NASA’s ECOSTRESS captured data over Northern California’s Dixie Fire, which had ballooned to over 220,000 acres as of July 29, 2021. In the data visualization, the red areas show the hottest pixels – and fire movement – from July 15 to July 24. The most heavily affected areas are south of Lake Almanor in Plumas County.
Tasked with detecting plant water use and stress from the vantage point of the International Space Station, ECOSTRESS’s primary mission is to measure the temperature of plants heating up as they run out of water. But it can also measure and track heat-related phenomena like wildfires, heat waves, and volcanoes. ECOSTRESS observations have a spatial resolution of about 77 by 77 yards (70 by 70 meters), which enables researchers to study surface-temperature conditions down to the size of a football field. Due to the space station’s unique orbit, the mission can acquire images of the same regions at different times of the day, as opposed to crossing over each area at the same time of day like satellites in other orbits do. This is advantageous when monitoring plant stress in the same area throughout the day, for example.
The ECOSTRESS mission launched to the space station on June 29, 2018. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
NASA’s ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) is aiding in the fight against fires in the Western U.S. As of July 27, 2021, the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon had ballooned to more than 410,000 acres, damaging hundreds of buildings and vehicles in its path.
ECOSTRESS measures surface temperature from the vantage point of the International Space Station. Researchers of the RADR-Fire team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been experimenting with ECOSTRESS data as part of a new tool now being implemented for first responders like the U.S. Forest Service.
In the visualization, ECOSTRESS is tracking the movement of the Bootleg Fire between July 7 and July and identifying its proximity to critical infrastructure — areas in red represent the hottest pixels ECOSTRESS detected. The extreme heat in those areas indicates the fire front, or where resources are most needed.
Tasked with detecting plant water use and stress, ECOSTRESS’s primary mission is to measure the temperature of plants heating up as they run out of water. But it can also measure and track heat-related phenomena like wildfires, heat waves, and volcanoes. ECOSTRESS observations have a spatial resolution of about 77 by 77 yards (70 by 70 meters), which enables researchers to study surface-temperature conditions down to the size of a football field. Due to the space station’s unique orbit, the mission can acquire images of the same regions at different times of the day, as opposed to crossing over each area at the same time of day like satellites in other orbits do. This is advantageous when monitoring plant stress in the same area throughout the day, for example.
The ECOSTRESS mission launched to the space station on June 29, 2018. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages the mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Friday on the NewsHour, the Taliban targets Afghans who worked with the United States as their desperation to flee the country intensifies. Then, despite soaring levels of new COVID cases in Florida, school officials face backlash to face cover mandates. And, Jonathan Capehart and Michael Gerson break down President Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis and the politics of mask mandates. WATCH TODAY’S SEGMENTS Anxious Afghans rush airport gates in bid to flee country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkUzA… News Wrap: FDA to grant full approval to Pfizer vaccine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBjlL… How the U.S. ignored corruption within the Afghan government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ4Y0… Examining Florida’s politicization of school mask mandates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doJkI… Gerson and Capehart on Afghanistan, school mask mandates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrrBu… Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
NBC Nightly News Full Broadcast – August 20th, 2021
President Biden pledges to evacuate all Americans trapped in Afghanistan, chaos outside Kabul airport with evacuations ongoing, and the battle over masks in schools intensifies across the South. Watch “NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt” at 6:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. CT (or check your local listings). 00:00 Intro 02:10 Biden: We Will Get You Home 09:06 Masks In Schools Debate 12:18 Jeopardy Host Backlash 13:58 Heat Wave Deaths 16:36 Families Of The Fallen 19:14 Inspiring America: Big Steps After An Injury » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews NBC News Digital is a collection of innovative and powerful news brands that deliver compelling, diverse and engaging news stories. NBC News Digital features NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, TODAY.com, Nightly News, Meet the Press, Dateline, and the existing apps and digital extensions of these respective properties. We deliver the best in breaking news, live video coverage, original journalism and segments from your favorite NBC News Shows. Connect with NBC News Online! NBC News App: https://apps.nbcnews.com/mobile Breaking News Alerts: https://link.nbcnews.com/join/5cj/bre… Visit NBCNews.Com: http://nbcnews.to/ReadNBC Find NBC News on Facebook: http://nbcnews.to/LikeNBC Follow NBC News on Twitter: http://nbcnews.to/FollowNBC Follow NBC News on Instagram: http://nbcnews.to/InstaNBC#NBCNews#Afghanistan#MaskMandates
Ransomware: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
John Oliver discusses ransomware attacks, why they’re on the rise, and what can be done about them. Connect with Last Week Tonight online… Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: www.youtube.com/lastweektonight Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: www.facebook.com/lastweektonight Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: www.twitter.com/lastweektonight Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: www.hbo.com/lastweektonight
3D printed rockets save on up front tooling, enable rapid iteration, decrease part count, and facilitate radically new designs. For your chance to win 2 seats on one of the first Virgin Galactic flights to Space and support a great cause, go to https://www.omaze.com/veritasium Thanks to Tim Ellis and everyone at Relativity Space for the tour! https://www.relativityspace.com/https://youtube.com/c/RelativitySpace Special thanks to Scott Manley for the interview and advising on aerospace engineering. Check out his channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/szyzyg ?????????????????????????? References: Benson, T. (2021). Rocket Parts. NASA. — https://ve42.co/RocketParts Boen, B. (2009). Winter Wonder: Rocket Icicles. NASA. — https://ve42.co/EngineIcicles Hall, N. (2021). Rocket Thrust Equation. NASA. — https://ve42.co/RocketEqn Benson, T. (2021). Rocket Thrust. NASA. — https://ve42.co/RocketThrust Regenerative Cooling — https://ve42.co/RegenCooling How A Gold Bullet Almost Destroyed A Space Shuttle by Scott Manley — https://ve42.co/ManleyEngine ?????????????????????????? Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Mike Tung, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Ismail Öncü Usta, Paul Peijzel, Crated Comments, Anna, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, Oleksii Leonov, Jim Osmun, Tyson McDowell, Ludovic Robillard, Jim buckmaster, fanime96, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Vincent, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Joar Wandborg, Clayton Greenwell, Pindex, Michael Krugman, Cy ‘kkm’ K’Nelson, Sam Lutfi, Ron Neal ?????????????????????????? Written by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Emily Zhang Animation by Mike Radjabov Filmed by Derek Muller, Raquel Nuno, Trenton Oliver, and Emily Zhang Edited by Trenton Oliver SFX by Shaun Clifford Additional video supplied by Getty Images & Pond5 Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, and Emily Zhang
Highlighting an upcoming Earth-observing mission, the science on the next resupply mission to the space station, and testing a new material to help future spacecraft land on distant worlds … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! Download Link: https://images.nasa.gov/details-Highl… Producer: Andre Valentine Editor: Lacey Young Music: Universal Production Music
Heat-related deaths around the world increased by 74% from 1980 to 2016, Axios’ Marisa Fernandez writes from a study published yesterday in The Lancet.
More than 356,000 people died from extreme heat-related causes in just nine countries in 2019, a death toll that’s expected to grow as temperatures increase worldwide.
1.3 million deaths were related to cold — a 31% increase since 1990.
Heat stress can lead to stroke, organ and brain damage. A pair of studies out of the University of Washington found it also causes several types of heart disease, diabetes and chronic kidney disease.
Live Science: Fusion experiment breaks record, blasts out 10 quadrillion watts of power and more, Aug 19 & 20, 2021
The Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way spirals out of our galaxy’s center, forming a swooping highway of gas that spans tens of thousands of light-years. This highway is dotted with the headlights of billions of stars, all seemingly moving along the same curvy track. But now, astronomers have found something unusual — a “break” in the arm, slashing perpendicularly through the spiral like a splinter poking through a piece of wood.
Spanning about 3,000 light-years, this stellar splinter makes up just a fraction of the Milky Way (which has a diameter of about 100,000 light-years). Still, the newfound break is the first major structure to be discovered disrupting the seemingly uniform flow of the galaxy’s Sagittarius arm, according to a study published online July 21 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Archaeologists in Poland have discovered a mass grave that the Nazis tried to destroy at the end of World War II, a new study finds.
The mass grave, filled with the remains of about 500 individuals, is linked to the horrific “Pomeranian Crime” that took place in Poland’s pre-war Pomerania province when the Nazis occupied the country in 1939. The Nazis killed up to 35,000 people in Pomerania at the beginning of the war, and they returned in 1945 to kill even more people, as well as to hide evidence of the prior massacres by exhuming and burning the bodies of victims.
Operators of satellite constellations are constantly forced to move their satellites because of encounters with other spacecraft and pieces of space junk. And, thanks to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, the number of such dangerous approaches will continue to grow, according to estimates based on available data.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellites alone are involved in about 1,600 close encounters between two spacecraft every week, that’s about 50 % of all such incidents, according to Hugh Lewis, the head of the Astronautics Research Group at the University of Southampton, U.K. These encounters include situations when two spacecraft pass within a distance of 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) from each other.
In March, the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) reported the breakup of Yunhai 1-02, a Chinese military satellite that launched in September 2019. It was unclear at the time whether the spacecraft had suffered some sort of failure — an explosion in its propulsion system, perhaps — or if it had collided with something in orbit.
We now know that the latter explanation is correct, thanks to some sleuthing by astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who’s based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Chinese astronomers hope to establish a major observatory program on the roof of the world, the Tibetan Plateau, with new research arguing for pristine observing conditions nestled in the uplands.
The analysis focuses on a study site near Lenghu Town in Qinghai Province at an altitude of more than 2.5 miles (4.2 kilometers) and some 1,900 miles (3,000 km) west of Beijing. In the paper, the scientists argue that three years of monitoring shows conditions on par with those at some of the most renowned scientific outposts on Earth.
Scientists used an unconventional method of creating nuclear fusion to yield a record-breaking burst of energy of more than 10 quadrillion watts, by firing intense beams of light from the world’s largest lasers at a tiny pellet of hydrogen.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California said they had focused 192 giant lasers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) onto a pea-size pellet, resulting in the release of 1.3 megajoules of energy in 100 trillionths of a second — roughly 10% of the energy of the sunlight that hits Earth every moment, and about 70% of the energy that the pellet had absorbed from the lasers. The scientists hope one day to reach the break-even or “ignition” point of the pellet, where it gives off 100% or more energy than it absorbs.
Physicists have created the first ever two-dimensional supersolid — a bizarre phase of matter that behaves like both a solid and a frictionless liquid at the same time.
Supersolids are materials whose atoms are arranged into a regular, repeating, crystal structure, yet are also able to flow forever without ever losing any kinetic energy. Despite their freakish properties, which appear to violate many of the known laws of physics, physicists have long predicted them theoretically — they first appeared as a suggestion in the work of the physicist Eugene Gross as early as 1957.
A female of the world’s largest squid — sometimes called the “kraken” after the mythological sea monster — that was caught off the coast of Japan apparently had just one amorous encounter in her lifetime.
The female had sperm packets from just one male giant squid embedded in her body, which surprised researchers. Because giant squid are solitary creatures that probably run across potential mates only occasionally, scientists expected that females would opportunistically collect and store sperm from multiple males over time.
Scientists recently grew mini brains with their own sets of “eyes,” according to a new study.
Organoids are miniature versions of organs that scientists can grow in the lab from stem cells, or cells that can mature into any type of cell in the body. Previously, scientists have developed tiny beating hearts and tear ducts that could cry like humans do. Scientists have even grown mini brains that produce brain waves like those of preterm babies.
Now, a group of scientists has grown mini brains that have something their real counterparts do not: a set of eye-like structures called “optic cups” that give rise to the retina — the tissue that sits in the back of the eye and contains light-sensing cells, according to a statement.
West Antarctica is one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. For evidence, you need look no further than Thwaites Glacier — also known as the “Doomsday Glacier.”
Since the 1980s, Thwaites has lost an estimated 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of ice, single-handedly contributing 4% to the annual global sea-level rise during that time, Live Science previously reported. The glacier’s rate of ice loss has accelerated substantially in the past three decades, partially due to hidden rivers of comparatively warm seawater slicing across the glacier’s underbelly, as well as unmitigated climate change warming the air and the ocean.
Now, new research suggests that the warming ocean and atmosphere aren’t the only factors pushing Thwaites to the brink; the heat of the Earth itself may also be giving West Antarctica’s glaciers a disproportionately nasty kick.
The saying “once in a blue moon” is especially pertinent this week: This Sunday (Aug. 22), the full Sturgeon Moon is expected to impress skygazers, particularly because of its “blue” designation.
Typically, the term “Blue Moon” refers to the second full moon within the same month. The last one rose on Oct. 31, 2020, when an eerie Blue Moon lit up the night sky on Halloween. But there’s a lesser-known definition, dating to 1528, which applies to the third full moon in a season with four full moons, according to NASA.
EARTH SCIENCE, Studying Our Home Planet at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of technology, NASA, Richard Branson makes historic spaceflight, ABC News, CNET Highlights, and NBC News
EARTH SCIENCE: Studying Our Home Planet at JPL, California Institute of technology
EARTH: Assembly of Satellite to Track World’s Water Shifts From US to France
TECHNOLOGY: Deep Space Atomic Clock Moves Toward Increased Spacecraft Autonomy
NASA has perfected new navigation technology that would make self-driving spacecraft and GPS beyond the Moon a reality. The Deep Space Atomic Clock is the first atomic clock small and stable enough to fly on a spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit. As NASA works to put humans on Mars and the Moon, the clock’s precise timekeeping will be key to these missions’ success. For more about the Deep Space Atomic Clock: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/td…
As the coronavirus pandemic slowed global commerce to a crawl in early 2020, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) – which create ozone, a danger to human health and to climate – decreased 15% globally with local reductions as high as 50%, according to a study led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As a result of the lower NOx emissions, by June 2020 global ozone levels had dropped to a level that policymakers thought it would take at least 15 years to reach by conventional means, such as regulations. Music credit: Universal Production Music: Waiting For Results – Adam John Salkeld [PRS], Neil Pollard [PRS] Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio Katie Jepson (KBRwyle): Lead Producer Carol Rasmussen (NASA/JPL CalTech): Lead Writer Trent L. Schindler (USRA): Lead Visualizer Kazuyuki Miyazaki (JPL): Scientist Kevin W Bowman (JPL): Scientist Kathryn Mersmann (KBRwyle): Associate Producer Katie Jepson (KBRwyle): Editor This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13871. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, some individual imagery is provided by pond5.com and is obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on stock footage may be found here https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13871. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guide… If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix · Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard · Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc
This animation shows the accumulation of five adjoining swaths of data over the Los Angeles metropolitan area that, when combined, create a map of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations that covers about 50 square miles (80 square kilometers). Researchers have used the data, collected by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3) instrument aboard the space station, to create one of the most accurate maps ever made from space of the human influence on CO2 abundances in the L.A. Basin. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In 2018, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano experienced its largest eruption in over 200 years. JPL scientists used data from the rare event to better understand what causes large-scale eruptions like this. The culprit? The collapse of a volcano’s caldera – the large, crater-like depression at the volcano’s summit. Kilauea is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Because of this and its relative ease of accessibility, it is also among the most heavily outfitted with monitoring equipment – instruments that measure and record everything from earthquakes and ground movement to lava volume and advancement. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission (SWOT) will help scientists monitor Earth’s ocean, as well as the amount of freshwater in its lakes and rivers when it launches in late 2022. After engineers put together the spacecraft’s payload of scientific instruments at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the satellite now moves to Cannes, France, to complete integration before it will be launched in late 2022. Project manager Parag Vaze explains. SWOT is a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatial (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA). To learn more about the mission, visit: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Clean Room Sneak Peek: International SWOT Satellite (Live Q&A)
Check out the new spacecraft we’re building. Targeting a late-2022 launch date, this SUV-size satellite will measure the height of Earth’s water. SWOT will help researchers understand and track the volume and location of water – a finite resource – around the world, making NASA’s first truly global survey of the planet’s surface water. SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA). https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/ Speakers: Parag Vaze, SWOT project manager, JPL Dr. Karen St. Germain, Earth science division director, NASA Marina Jurica, host Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Study Identifies Methane ‘Super-Emitters’ in Largest US Oilfield
Jun 02, 2021
Gas flaring during oil and gas production is a known source of methane emissions.
Pasadena, CA 91109
Credit: Leslie Von Pless
Fixing just the worst leaks in the Permian Basin oilfield’s infrastructure could cut methane emissions by 55 tons an hour, according to a study by NASA, University of Arizona, and ASU.
About half of the biggest sources of the potent greenhouse gas methane in the Permian Basin oilfield are likely to be malfunctioning oilfield equipment, according to a month-long airborne study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University.
Repeatedly measuring the size and persistence of emission sources using sensor-equipped aircraft, researchers found that repairing only the 123 sources that they found leaking most persistently on their flights would reduce methane emissions by 55 tons (50 metric tons) an hour. That’s equivalent to 5.5% of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates of all methane emissions from oil and gas production in the entire United States.
The research team measured methane concentrations around “super-emitter” methane sources – those emitting more than 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of methane per hour – in the oilfield, which is located in Texas and New Mexico. They calculated the emission rates by combining observed methane concentrations with reported wind speeds. Using airborne imaging spectrometers that identify methane and other gases by their effects on reflected sunlight, the campaign located a total of 1,756 super-emitters in a 22,000-square-mile (57,000-square-kilometer) section of the immense oilfield. As they resurveyed the area throughout the month, the team recorded emissions each time a plume was visible, whether once or a dozen times.
“Multiple revisits of these sites are the best way to discriminate between unplanned and planned emissions,” said Daniel Cusworth, a JPL scientist and lead author of an analysis published today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Cusworth explained that while some regular operations in an oilfield, such as venting pressure-relief valves, release methane, plumes from these planned operations would probably be visible on only one or two consecutive flights. If an emission plume persists, by far the most likely cause is malfunctioning or broken oil and gas equipment. There’s no other industry in the region that could produce such large plumes, and there are more than 60,000 oil and gas wells as well as compressors, pipelines, and other types of equipment – all of which can potentially leak.
For their analysis, Cusworth and colleagues focused on 1,100 sources seen emitting methane plumes on at least three flights. Just 123 of these were classified as most persistent, with plumes visible on 50 to 100% of revisits. These few sources emitted about 29% of all the methane detected from the entire group. The 258 plumes in the next most persistent class produced an additional 23% of detected emissions; the researchers think these sources are leaks or a mixture of leaks and planned operations. They classified the remaining two-thirds of the sources as least persistent and most likely to be the result of planned operations. This last and largest class produced 48% of emissions.
Once methane sources have been located and verified on the ground by facility operators, there’s a good chance that leaks can be repaired, said Riley Duren of the University of Arizona, who designed and led the flight campaign. “We’ve done cooperative studies with oil and gas operators in California and the Permian where they independently report that 50% of the sources we’re finding are fixable.”
The campaign also recorded surprisingly large variations in the extent of emissions. In one part of the basin, emissions almost doubled over a five-day period and then dropped back almost to the original value over another 10 days. These large, unpredictable variations prove that a single snapshot of methane emissions from any location is inadequate for decision-makers to monitor and regulate emission sources, Duren said. “You need measurements daily or weekly,” he added. “That’s a big argument for using airborne and satellite remote sensing.”
The imaging spectrometers used in the study, NASA’s Next-Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer and ASU’s Global Airborne Observatory, are able to pinpoint methane sources to within about 15 to 30 feet (5 to 10 meters) while flying at the altitude of a commercial airliner. When methane emission plumes were detected, researchers used a high-resolution camera to relate the plumes to individual pieces of equipment on the ground.
Data from this study can be viewed and downloaded at the team’s data portal.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson celebrated with a crowd after his first ride on the VSS Unity to space. 0:00 Riding along with Branson to space 0:58 Branson’s message 1:26 Zero-G 2:58 Returning from space 3:13 Post-flight conference
Live: Richard Branson Holds News Conference After Historic Virgin Galactic Space Flight | NBC News
Watch live coverage of Sir Richard Branson’s news conference following his successful landing in New Mexico. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews NBC News Digital is a collection of innovative and powerful news brands that deliver compelling, diverse and engaging news stories. NBC News Digital features NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, TODAY.com, Nightly News, Meet the Press, Dateline, and the existing apps and digital extensions of these respective properties. We deliver the best in breaking news, live video coverage, original journalism and segments from your favorite NBC News Shows. Connect with NBC News Online! NBC News App: https://apps.nbcnews.com/mobile Breaking News Alerts: https://link.nbcnews.com/join/5cj/bre… Visit NBCNews.Com: http://nbcnews.to/ReadNBC Find NBC News on Facebook: http://nbcnews.to/LikeNBC Follow NBC News on Twitter: http://nbcnews.to/FollowNBC Follow NBC News on Instagram: http://nbcnews.to/InstaNBC Live: Richard Branson Holds News Conference After Historic Virgin Galactic Space Flight | NBC News
Have A Happy Earth Day Everyone, Greeting from Kai and Bodhi with the blooming flowers in our garden, Washington Post, NASA, PBS News, NBC News, NowThis News, NASA Johnson, AXIOS, Google Doodles, BBC News, andThe New York Times
Biden hosts world leaders for virtual climate summit
Streamed live on Apr 22, 2021 Washington Post, 8:20:10, 1st Day
Biden hosts world leaders for virtual climate summit
Streamed live 17 hours ago, 4.23.2021 Washington Post , 3:36:35, 2nd Day
The New York Times: Biden’s Intelligence Director Vows to Put Climate at ‘Center’ of Foreign Policy, April 22, 2021
🙂 Have A Happy Earth Day Everyone 🙂
Greetings from our two grandsons, five-year-old Kai, and, one-year-old Bodhi, with the flowers blooming in our garden.
Kai, our 5-year-old Grandson brought the tangerine plant outdoors to the garden on Thursday, April 19, 2021. We keep our plants inside the apartment during winter. Now that the weather is about 55 – 60-degree Fahrenheit, I decide to move some of the plants outdoors to the garden.
Kai was surprised to see the Bleeding-Heat plant brooming. Daffodils are the first flowers blooming in our garden. The Bleeding-Heart Plant produced the second blooming of flowers.
This is the first time that Bodhi sees the flowers bloom. He was very excited to see new things in his one-year-old life. He wanted to pull the flowers as a young baby accustom to do. This Bleeding-Heart Plant is a gift from his mother to us many years ago. We always enjoy to see these beautiful flowers blooming in the early spring. Because of staying so long inside during winter and the COVID-19 lockdown, we are eager to be outdoor in our garden. It is really such a pleasure for us to see our daughter’s plant blooming into beautiful flowers.
WATCH: Biden hosts world leaders for virtual climate summit
Streamed live on Apr 22, 2021 Washington Post, 8:20:10, 1st Day
This year at NASA, EarthDay is about connections—to our planet and to each other. Our planet is home to over 7 billion people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, but we are all #ConnectedByEarth?. Join NASA climate experts to learn about the connections between human activity and climate change. Dr. Kimberley R. Miner will host this episode and is a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). While she’s been at JPL since July 2020, she has been studying and exploring the Earth since…forever! Dr. Miner loves working outside, asking questions about nature and protecting the animals and plants all around us. She loves that being an Earth Scientist lets her do all these things. Dr. Lesley Ott is a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center where she’s worked since getting her PhD 15 years ago. She studies the processes that control greenhouse gas concentrations and always loves seeing the ways that springtime changes in vegetation show up in satellite data. Ms. Equisha Glenn is a graduate student research assistant at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) and is finishing her PhD in Civil Engineering. Growing up, Ms. Glenn used to watch TV shows about the environment and loves how diverse Earth is, yet everything works together. Ms. Glenn is passionate about bridging the gap between data, climate and end users to help build a more resilient future for cities and society.
AllNational Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S.A.PlanetsScienceRelatedFrom NASALiveRecently uploadedWatched
We are all connected to and by Earth — whether it’s the trees and plants that give us the oxygen we breathe, the snow-capped mountains that provide the water we drink, or the breathtaking geophysical forces that shape the land beneath our feet. NASA has over 20 satellites measuring the height of oceans and inland water, clouds and precipitation, carbon dioxide and much more. By understanding our changing world, we improve lives and safeguard our future. https://images.nasa.gov/details-Our%2…? Video Credits: Producer/Editor: Amy Leniart Writer: Jim Wilson Co-Writers: Karen Fox, Amy Leniart, Tylar Greene
Our backyard garden is small. We have only few daffodils. But I am happy to see the flowers bloom.
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts
Earth Day Q&A with Astronauts in Space | Hosted by Shawn Mendes
Need Earth Day plans? ? We’ve got you covered. On April 22 at 11 a.m. EDT, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mark Vandehei, and Soichi Noguchi of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will go LIVE from space for a special Earth focused Q&A with guest host Shawn Mendes! The International Space Station live stream will feature your questions sent in from around the world! Don’t miss this opportunity to hear how NASA Earth and astronauts use space to monitor the health of our planet, what life is like on the orbiting lab, and more!
Growing debate over CDC guidance on wearing masks outdoors, Daunte Wright remembered in emotional Minneapolis funeral service, and alternate juror in Chauvin case speaks out after guilty verdict. Watch “NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt” at 6:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. CT (or check your local listings). 00:00? Intro 02:09? CDC ‘Looking’ At Revising Outdoor Mask Guidance 02:53? U.S Vaccine Supply Beginning To Outpace Demand 03:24? MLB Team Opening Fully Vaccinated Section At Stadium 03:36? 22 Fully Vaccinated People Infected At Nursing Home 04:00? CDC Panel Meets Tomorrow To Discuss J&J Vaccine Pause 04:30? India Hits World Record 314,000+ Daily Covid Cases 04:56? Daunte Wright Remembered At Emotional Funeral Service 06:39? Alternate Chauvin Juror: ‘I Would Have’ Voted Guilty 08:47? New Fallout After Police Shoot Black Teen Holding Knife 11:10? Biden Pledges To Cut U.S. Carbon Emissions In Half By 2030 12:42? Americans Flee Extreme Weather Amid Climate Change 14:46? Russian Military Plane’s Close Encounter With U.S. Boats 17:08? Inside Covid Vaccine Trials In Young Children » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC? » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews?
What Can We Do To Help Protect Polar Bears? | Nightly News: Kids Edition, Premiered 12 hours ago, 4.22.2021 NBC News
Ask The Doc: Dr. John Torres answers viewers’ weekly questions. Lift off: NASA launches tiny Mars chopper ‘Ingenuity’ on a historic flight. We introduce you to Blizzard the polar bear and share fun facts about the fuzzy guy! Inspiring Kids series continues: We give you an update on twins Max and Miles who are planting seeds of kindness this spring. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC? » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews? NBC News is a leading source of global news and information. Here you will find clips from NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and original digital videos. Subscribe to our channel for news stories, technology, politics, health, entertainment, science, business, and exclusive NBC investigations. Connect with NBC News Online! Visit NBCNews.Com: http://nbcnews.to/ReadNBC? Find NBC News on Facebook: http://nbcnews.to/LikeNBC? Follow NBC News on Twitter: http://nbcnews.to/FollowNBC? Follow NBC News on Instagram: http://nbcnews.to/InstaNBC? What Can We Do To Help Protect Polar Bears? | Nightly News: Kids Edition
After a year of racial reckoning sparked by George Floyd’s murder, the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict flooded the nation with an emotional sense of relief. We’re covering this story and more on this week’s segment with Zinhle Essamuah. » Subscribe to NowThis: http://go.nowth.is/News_Subscribe? » Sign up for our newsletter KnowThis to get the biggest stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox: https://go.nowth.is/KnowThis? 0:00? Intro 0:20? Helicopter Makes Historic Landing 1:38? Rescue Mission Underway 2:30? Surpassing 200M Vaccines Administered 3:44? Biden Hosts Climate Summit 5:40? Derek Chauvin Found Guilty Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. This week, Derek Chauvin was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs after the jury laid down his guilty verdict. President Joe Biden is hosting a two-day Earth Day climate summit with 40 world leaders. The U.S. surpassed 200 million COVID-19 vaccine shots. Rescuers are scrambling to find an Indonesian submarine and its 53 crew members lost at sea. And, the tiny Ingenuity helicopter made history on Mars, flying over the planet for 39 seconds before nailing the perfect landing. #DerekChauvin? #ClimateChange? #COVID19? #KnowThis? #News? #NowThis?
Everything that happens on the International Space Station revolves around one thing: Earth, sixteen times a day! So for Earth Day 2021, NASA offers a gift you can’t get anywhere else with this leisurely view of our home planet, from 250 miles up, rendered in extraordinary ultra-high definition video. Hit play, relax and enjoy. This 4K footage was recorded between 2019 and 2020. _______________________________________ FOLLOW THE SPACE STATION! Twitter: https://twitter.com/Space_Station? Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ISS? Instagram: https://instagram.com/iss/? HD Download: https://archive.org/details/jsc2021m0…? 2021_210422-
Good afternoon: Today’s PM — edited by Justin Green — is 497 words, a 2-minute read.
· Stocks fell modestlytoday after reports that President Biden wants to nearly double the capital gains tax paid by wealthy Americans.
· Sen. Tim Scott will deliver the GOP’s rebuttal to Biden’s joint address to Congress.
Please join Axios’ Joann Muller and Erica Pandey tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. ET for conversations about electric and autonomous vehicles with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and San Francisco-Marin Food Bank executive director Tanis Crosby.Sign up here.
5 new climate pledges, 4.22.2021
German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in the virtual international climate summit with President Biden. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/Pool via Getty Images
1. Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would increase its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 40% to 45% of its 2005 levels by 2030.
2. Japan: Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Japan would cut its emissions by 46% from 2013 levels by 2030.
3. South Korea: President Moon Jae-in pledged to end all new public financing for overseas coal projects, and will submit new emissions targets later this year.
4. Brazil: President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to end illegal deforestation by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
5. China: President Xi Jinping said his country — the world’s largest consumer of coal — will attempt to “strictly limit increasing coal consumption” over the next five years.
Go deeper: More details on the pledges, via Axios’ Jacob Knutson.
WATCH LIVE: Greta Thunberg, climate experts testify before House on fossil fuel subsidies
Streamed live 16 hours ago, 4.22.2021 PBS NewsHour
President Biden has opened a major global climate summit with a call to other world leaders to step up to the challenge. Joe Biden pledged to cut US emissions by at least half from 2005 levels by the end of this decade but he warned that his country couldn’t take action alone. He told world leaders that scientists were calling this the “decisive decade” for tackling climate change and action was needed now. The latest data shows China is the world’s biggest producer of carbon dioxide, emitting 28% of global output. China is second biggest, producing 15% with India producing 7%. Sophie Raworth presents BBC News at Ten reporting by science editor David Shukman and North America editor Jon Sopel. Please subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1rbfUog? #BBCNews?
It’s time to ‘get serious’ about climate change, Boris Johnson @BBC News? live ? BBC
The New York Times: Biden’s Intelligence Director Vows to Put Climate at ‘Center’ of Foreign Policy,
Last Updated
April 22, 2021, 10:01 p.m. ET 5 hours ago
Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, struck a note of urgency in telling world leaders that climate change must be “fully integrated” with national security. President Biden committed the United States to cutting emissions by half by the end of the decade at a virtual Earth Day summit.
President Biden speaking on Thursday during a virtual summit on climate change from the East Room of the White House.Credit…Pool photo by Al Drago
Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, speaking on Capitol Hill last week.Credit…Pool photo by Graeme Jennings
Avril Haines, President Biden’s director of national intelligence, told world leaders on Thursday that climate change was no longer a peripheral issue but now “at the center” of U.S. foreign policy, with far-reaching impacts on force deployments and the stability of hard-hit regions.
Ms. Haines, speaking at this week’s virtual global climate conference, struck a tone of urgency at variance with the attitudes of many of her predecessors, who downplayed the role of rising sea levels, droughts, crop failures, fires, diseases and more frequent severe weather events.
“To address climate change properly it must be at the center of a country’s national security and foreign policy,” she said, echoing the words of Lloyd J. Austin III, the defense secretary, who addressed the conference a few minutes earlier.
“It needs to be fully integrated with every aspect of our analysis in order to allow us not only to monitor the threat but also, critically, to ensure that policymakers understand the importance of climate change on seemingly unrelated policies,” Ms. Haines said.
Her comments came after NATO officials announced they would likely agree on a climate “action plan” to reduce emissions by military units and conduct an alliance-wide assessment of the potential threats arising from climate disruptions.
On Thursday, the C.I.A. announced it was adding a new category covering the environment to its World Factbook. The agency’s unclassified guide will now provide the latest country data on climate, air pollutants, infectious diseases, food security, waste and other environmental topics.
Ms. Haines began by saying that the intelligence services had long recognized the importance of climate change — and praised efforts by the C.I.A. over the last three decades to identify the geopolitical impact of climate-based changes in Russia, Asia, Africa and the Arctic.
“We have not always made it a key priority,” she added.
The Biden administration has promised to put a new focus on climate change at the nation’s intelligence agencies. Top intelligence officials all pledged in their confirmation hearings to increase their agencies’ focus on climate.
A pair of recent intelligence reports have presented a grim picture of climate change. The annual worldwide threat assessment, which looks at short-term challenges, said extreme weather caused by climate change would increase the potential for surges in migration and cause instability around the globe.
The changes will “exacerbate political instability and humanitarian crises,” the annual threat report said.
The intelligence agencies issued even more dire warnings with the quadrennial Global Trends report issued on April 8, which argued that climate change would contribute to instability, strain military readiness and encourage new political movements. It said that all societies would be forced to adapt to a warmer planet through changes both small and complex, including the building of massive new sea walls and the relocation of cities and towns.
The report said the physical effects of climate change would intensify over the next 20 years, particularly in the 2030s, and the impact would fall disproportionately on poor parts of the world.
Some Republicans have expressed reservations at expanding the intelligence community’s focus on climate change. At a hearing last week, Ms. Haines argued that while there was partisan division over the issue, intelligence analysts have been examining the issue for decades during administrations of both parties.
“It’s just become increasingly accepted as something that is part of the national security landscape,” she said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in the virtual international climate summit with President Biden on Thursday.Credit…Pool photo by Kay Nietfeld
President Biden on Thursday declared America “has resolved to take action” on climate change, and the White House said it would substantially increase the money it offers to developing countries to address the issue.
In a show of renewed resolve after four years of the Trump administration’s unvarnished climate denial, Mr. Biden formally pledged that the United States would cut its emissions at least in half from 2005 levels by 2030. His administration also announced it intends to double by 2024 the amount of money it offers to help developing countries, compared with what the United States spent annually in the second half of the Obama administration.
Barely three months into Mr. Biden’s presidency, the contrast with his science-denying predecessor, President Donald J. Trump, could not have been more striking.
“The signs are unmistakable, the science is undeniable and the cost of inaction keeps mounting,” Mr. Biden said.
John Kerry, President Biden’s global climate change envoy, said he believes the United States will meet and possibly even surpass the new goal.
Speaking at the conclusion of the first day of the summit, Mr. Kerry called the goal “ambitious but appropriate and achievable” and said the market is moving faster than expected in creating renewable energy and new breakthroughs are likely on the horizon in battery storage and other areas.
“Is it doable? Will we probably exceed it? I expect yes,” Mr. Kerry said.
Asked what the Biden administration can do now to prevent a future president from gutting the climate plans as President Trump did to the Obama administration, Mr. Kerry noted that he fielded that question in virtually every diplomatic discussion over the past three months.
“You destroyed your credibility, you left the Paris Agreement, how can we trust you?” Mr. Kerry said other leaders asked him. He insisted the private sector will cement clean energy policies into reality even if Mr. Bidens’ policies stall or are someday overturned.,
“No politician, I think, can change what is now happening in the marketplace.”
The Biden administration said it plans to offer an estimated $5.7 billion a year by 2024. In a statement, the White House said that it would “work closely with Congress to meet these goals.”
Between 2013 and 2016, U.S. international climate finance was around $2.5 billion a year, including in the form of export credit and loans, based on government data from that time.
Joe Thwaites from the World Resources Institute said the foreign aid pledges were not especially ambitious. “The climate finance plan the Biden administration launched today starts to play catch up after the U.S. was largely absent for the last four years — when many other developed countries already doubled their climate finance, and some committed to doubling again before 2025,” he said.
The two-day summit comes at a time when scientists are warning that governments must take decisive action to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. The consequences of exceeding that threshold includes mass species extinctions, water shortages and extreme weather events that will be most devastating to the poorest countries least responsible for causing global warming.
Officially, nations that are party to the Paris agreement are obligated to announce their new targets for emissions cuts in time for a United Nations conference in Scotland in November.
In an executive order announced late Thursday morning, the White House also said it would “seek to” end investments in “carbon-intensive” fossil fuel projects abroad. It was also not clear if that referred to money for gas pipelines and terminals. The United States is a leading exporter of gas, and development aid has been used to promote the expansion of gas, including in Africa.
Mr. Kerry said in his remarks that no country alone would be able to finance the transition to a green economy, adding that private banks and asset managers would have to align their investments accordingly.
The summit is the first of its kind to be convened by a United States president, and Mr. Biden is joined by other world leaders like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.
While the summit is an international one, Mr. Biden’s speech was also aimed at a domestic audience, focusing not just on America’s obligation to help cut its global emissions but on the jobs he believes are available in greening the U.S. economy.
“The countries that take decisive actions now” to tackle climate change, Mr. Biden said, “will be the ones that reap the clean energy benefits of the boom that’s coming.”
Mr. Biden’s target of 50 percent to 52 percent by the end of the decade calls for a steep and rapid decline of fossil fuel use in virtually every sector of the American economy and marks the start of what is sure to be a bitter partisan fight over achieving it.
One of Mr. Biden’s biggest political obstacles is international: Republicans say the United States should not be asked to sacrifice if the world’s largest emitters will swallow U.S. efforts in their pollution.
By 2030, half of the country’s electricity would come from renewable sources such as wind.Credit…Bing Guan/Reuters
President Biden’s new pledge to slash the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade is long on ambition and short on specifics, but experts say that success would require rapid and sweeping changes to virtually every corner of the nation’s economy, transforming the way Americans drive to work, heat their homes and operate their factories.
In several recentstudies, researchers have explored what a future America might look like if it wants to achieve Mr. Biden’s goal: cutting the nation’s planet-warming emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2030.
By the end of the decade, those studies suggest, more than half of the new cars and S.U.V.s sold at dealerships would need to be powered by electricity, not gasoline. Nearly all coal-fired power plants would need to be shut down. Forests would need to expand. The number of wind turbines and solar panels dotting the nation’s landscape could quadruple.
It’s achievable in theory, researchers say, but it’s an enormous challenge. To get there, the Biden administration would probably need to put in place a vast array of new federal policies, many of which could face obstacles in Congress or the courts. And policymakers would have to take care in crafting measures that do not cause serious economic harm, such as widespread job losses or spikes in energy prices, that could lead to blowback.
“It’s not an easy task,” said Nathan Hultman, the director of the University of Maryland’s Center on Global Sustainability. “We won’t be able to sit back and hope that market forces alone will do the job.”
In two recent studies, Mr. Hultman and his colleagues modeled possible paths to achieving at least a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. The changes would be far-reaching:
· By 2030, half of the country’s electricity would come from renewable sources such as wind, solar or hydropower, up from one-fifth today.
· New natural gas plants would be built largely with technology that can capture carbon dioxide instead of releasing it into the atmosphere — technology that is still in its infancy.
· Virtually all of the 200 remaining coal plants in the U.S. would shut down unless they, too, can capture their emissions and bury them underground.
· By 2030, two-thirds of new cars and S.U.V.s sold would be battery-powered, up from roughly 2 percent today.
· All new buildings would be heated by electricity rather than natural gas.
· The nation’s cement, steel and chemical industries would adopt stringent new energy-efficiency targets.
· Oil and gas producers would slash emissions of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, by 60 percent.
· The nation’s forests would expand, and farming practices would be reworked, so that they pull 20 percent more carbon dioxide out of the air than they do today.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, delivered a speech during the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia on Tuesday. Mr. Xi promised Thursday that China would limit coal consumption.Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
President Xi Jinping of China said his country would “strictly limit increasing coal consumption” in the next five years and phase it down in the following five years.
That’s significant because China is, by far, the world’s largest coal consumer and is continuing to expand its fleet of coal-fired power plants. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Mr. Xi repeated his pledge from last year to draw down carbon emissions to net zero by 2060. And, in a pointed reminder to his host, President Biden, he said that the industrialized countries of the West had a historic responsibility to act faster to reduce emissions.
The United States is history’s largest emitter. China is today’s largest emitter.
Mr. Xi added a conciliatory note by saying “China looks forward to working with the international community, including with the United States” on addressing climate change.
Neither China nor India, whose prime minister, Narendra Modi, spoke after Mr. Xi, made any new commitments to ramp up their climate ambitions. Mr. Modi repeated India’s pledge to expand its fleet of renewable energy projects, urged people to make lifestyle changes to address climate change, and announced a vague new partnership with the United States on green energy projects.
India’s once-galloping economy has slowed sharply and the country is currently in the throes of a deadly coronavirus surge.
A video monitor in the East Room of the White House showed the heads of state participating in the virtual climate summit on Thursday.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times
Beyond the big two of the United States and China, here’s an overview of what some American allies and adversaries have said so far at President Biden’s virtual climate summit with world leaders on Thursday.
· Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged that Canada would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, a step up from its previous target of a 30 percent reduction in the same time frame. This is a significant increase in ambition for an economy that is still highly dependent on oil extraction, and a sign that Mr. Biden’s decision to increase the United States’ target is having an influence on his closest allies.
· Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India reiterated his country’s promise to install 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, but made no new commitments. He argued that India’s per capita emissions were far smaller than those of other major emitters and said, “We, in India, are doing our part.”
· Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that Japan would cut emissions 46 percent below 2013 levels by the end of the decade, a significant show of solidarity with the United States.
· President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas polluter, made only a vague pledge to “significantly reduce the net accumulated emissions in our country by 2050.” He highlighted a carbon pricing pilot program that he said would allow the Sakhalin region to become carbon neutral by 2025, but he said nothing about construction of the Nord Stream 2, a major natural gas pipeline that is opposed by both climate advocates and United States national security advisers.
· President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil pledged to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030, a promise that was met with extreme skepticism by those in the environmental community who have seen the destruction of the Amazon skyrocket under his watch. Mr. Bolsonaro also vowed that Brazil would become carbon neutral by 2050, a decade earlier than it had previously said it would. Ending deforestation by 2030, he claimed, would cut Brazil’s emissions 50 percent.
Coral Davenport, Lisa Friedman and Somini Sengupta contributed reporting.
My two grandsons, Bodhi and Kai enjoyed to be in the garden. That make me very happy. I wish children all over the world would be able to enjoy nature. Parents and otheradults should cultivate and take care of nature for younger generations to have a chance to appreciate a beautiful and peaceful world.
A Russian cosmonaut joined two NASA crewmates and a Japanese space veteran on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Wednesday to the International Space Station
Expedition 68 – NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 Flight Day 2 Highlights – Oct. 6, 2022
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts docked autonomously to the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 4:57 p.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 6. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, arrived after a one-day journey to begin a long-duration science mission on the space station. Following docking, Mann, Cassada, Wakata, and Kikina joined the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, Frank Rubio, and Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and station commander Samantha Cristoforetti, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.
