'S' is for Space Station

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are helping children learn their ABC's and vocabulary through educational demonstrations of how they live and work in space.NASA collaborated with Sesame Workshop, including the popular children’s television programs, "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company," to create science, technology, engineering and math-related education resources, or STEM, for children ages 2-5."The space station environment provides a unique classroom in space to teach...

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Where Over the World is Commander Scott Kelly?

Commander Scott Kelly is living off the planet aboard the International Space Station for a period of nearly six months. Traveling the world more than 230 miles above Earth and at 17,500 mph, he circumnavigates the globe more than a dozen times a day. During his stay on station, he will have opportunities to see and photograph various geographical locations on Earth from space. In fact, part of his job while in space will be to capture a kaleidoscope of geographical spots for Earth scientific observations.›...

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A Galaxy for Everyone

This collage of galaxies from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, showcases the many "flavors" that galaxies come in, from star-studded spirals to bulging ellipticals to those paired with other companion galaxies. The WISE team put this collage together to celebrate the anniversary of the mission's launch on Dec. 14, 2009.After launch and a one-month checkout period, WISE began mapping the sky in infrared light. By July of this year, the entire sky had been surveyed, detecting hundreds...

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Mars Movie - I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset

A new Mars movie clip gives us a rover's-eye view of a bluish Martian sunset, while another clip shows the silhouette of the moon Phobos passing in front of the sun.America's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, carefully guided by researchers with an artistic sense, has recorded images used in the simulated movies.These holiday treats from the rover's panoramic camera, or Pancam, offer travel fans a view akin to standing on Mars and watching the sky."These visualizations of an alien sunset show...

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Cassini Finishes Sleigh Ride by Icy Moons

On the heels of a successful close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is returning images of Enceladus and the nearby moon Dione.Several pictures show Enceladus backlit, with the dark outline of the moon crowned by glowing jets from the south polar region. The images show several separate jets, or sets of jets, emanating from the fissures known as "tiger stripes." Scientists will use the images to pinpoint the jet source locations on the surface and learn more about their...

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Cassini Takes Close-Up of Enceladus Northern Hemisphere

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be making its close flyby of the northern hemisphere of Saturn's moon Enceladus today, Monday, Dec. 20. The closest approach will take place at 5:08 PM PST (8:08 EST) on Dec. 20, or 1:08 AM UTC on Dec. 21. The spacecraft will zip by at an altitude of about 48 kilometers (30 miles) above the icy moon's surface.Cassini's fields and particles instruments will get priority during this flyby. They will be trying to characterize the particles that may form a tenuous atmosphere...

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NASA Scientists Theorize Final Growth Spurt for Planets

A team of NASA-funded researchers has unveiled a new theory that contends planets gained the final portions of their mass from a limited number of large comet or asteroid impacts more than 4.5 billion years ago. These impacts added less than one percent of the planets' mass.Scientists hope the research not only will provide a better historical picture of the birth and evolution of Earth, the moon and Mars, but also allow researchers to better explore what happened in our solar system's beginning...

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WISE Sees an Explosion of Infrared Light

A circular rainbow appears like a halo around an exploded star in this new view of the IC 443 nebula from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.When massive stars die, they explode in tremendous blasts, called supernovae, which send out shock waves. The shock waves sweep up and heat surrounding gas and dust, creating supernova remnants like the one pictured here. The supernova in IC 443 happened somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago.In this WISE image, infrared light has been...

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Pits, Flows, Other Scenes in New Set of Mars Images

Newly released images from 340 recent observations of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show details of a wide assortment of Martian environments.Strewn boulders and rippled sand lie on the floors of two shadowy, steep-walled pits. Mounds in another region appear to be mud volcanoes, which may have brought fine-grained material to the surface from deep underground. In the Tharsis volcanic region, the intersection of a...

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NASA Aids in Characterizing Super-Earth Atmosphere

PASADENA, Calif. -- A team of astronomers, including two NASA Sagan Fellows, has made the first characterizations of a super-Earth's atmosphere, by using a ground-based telescope. A super-Earth is a planet up to three times the size of Earth and weighing up to 10 times as much. The findings, reported in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Nature, are a significant milestone toward eventually being able to probe the atmospheres of Earth-like planets for signs of life.The team determined the planet, GJ...

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So you Think you can Solve a Cosmology Puzzle?

Cosmologists have come up with a new way to solve their problems. They are inviting scientists, including those from totally unrelated fields, to participate in a grand competition. The idea is to spur outside interest in one of cosmology's trickiest problems -- measuring the invisible dark matter and dark energy that permeate our universe.The results will help in the development of new space missions, designed to answer fundamental questions about the history and fate of our universe."We're hoping...

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LRO Supports Historic Lunar Impact Mission

The lunar rocks brought back to the Earth by the Apollo astronauts were found to have very little water, and to be much drier than rocks on Earth. An explanation for this was that the Moon formed billions of years ago in the solar system's turbulent youth, when a Mars-sized planet crashed into Earth. The impact stripped away our planet's outer layer, sending it into orbit. The pieces later coalesced under their own gravity to form our Moon. Heat from all this mayhem vaporized most of the water in...

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Cassini Back to Normal, Ready for Enceladus

NASA's Cassini spacecraft resumed normal operations today, Nov. 24. All science instruments have been turned back on, the spacecraft is properly configured and Cassini is in good health. Mission managers expect to get a full stream of data during next week's flyby of the Saturnian moon Enceladus.Cassini went into safe mode on Nov. 2, when one bit flipped in the onboard command and data subsystem computer. The bit flip prevented the computer from registering an important instruction, and the spacecraft,...

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Pits, Flows, Other Scenes in New Set of Mars Images

Newly released images from 340 recent observations of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show details of a wide assortment of Martian environments.Strewn boulders and rippled sand lie on the floors of two shadowy, steep-walled pits. Mounds in another region appear to be mud volcanoes, which may have brought fine-grained material to the surface from deep underground. In the Tharsis volcanic region, the intersection of a...

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Solar Observation Mission Celebrates 15 Years

On December 2, 1995, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO was launched into space from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas IIAS rocket. The joint ESA/NASA project began its work observing the sun at a time when the term "solar weather" was almost never used.Fifteen years later, SOHO has revolutionized what we know about the solar atmosphere and violent solar storms produced by the sun. SOHO has become an expert comet-hunter, nightly news leader and a workhorse that helped create the field of...

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