Wednesday, 31 December 2014

NASA Highlights Astrophysics Discoveries at American Astronomical Society Meeting

NASA researchers will present a wide range of new astrophysics findings at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).



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Technology Innovations Spin NASA's SMAP into Space

Artist's rendering of the SMAP instrument



It's active. It's passive. And it's got a big, spinning lasso.










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Tuesday, 30 December 2014

Dawn Spacecraft Begins Approach to Dwarf Planet Ceres

On the Way to Ceres



NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft.










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NASA Updates Pre-Launch Briefings for Upcoming Resupply Mission to Space Station

The fifth SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract now is scheduled to launch about 6:18 a.m. EST Tuesday, Jan. 6, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.



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NASA Finds Good News on Forests and Carbon Dioxide

Image of a tropical forest



A NASA-led study suggests that tropical forests absorb more carbon dioxide than scientists thought. That means, if left undisturbed, the tropical trees should be able to continue reducing the rate of global warming.










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Tuesday, 23 December 2014

NASA Selects Commercial Space Partners for Collaborative Partnerships

NASA announced Tuesday the selection of four U.S. companies to collaborate with NASA through unfunded partnerships to develop new space capabilities available to the government and other customers. The partnerships build on the success of NASA's commercial spaceflight initiatives to leverage NASA experience and expertise into new capabilities.



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NASA Takes Giant Leaps on the Journey to Mars, Eyes Our Home Planet and the Distant Universe, Tests Technologies and Improves the Skies Above in 2014

In 2014, NASA took significant steps on the agency’s journey to Mars -- testing cutting-edge technologies and making scientific discoveries while studying our changing Earth and the infinite universe as the agency made progress on the next generation of air travel.



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Monday, 22 December 2014

NASA Commercial Crew Partners Complete 23 Milestones in 2014, Look Ahead to 2015

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the agency’s industry partners completed 23 agreement and contract milestones in 2014 and participated in thousands of hours of technical review sessions. The sessions focused on creating a new generation of safe, reliable and cost-effective crew space transportation systems to low-Earth orbit destinations.



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Saturday, 20 December 2014

Gecko Grippers Get a Microgravity Test Flight

This is an image of a gecko foot.



Gecko-inspired grippers might one day help service satellites and collect orbital debris.










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Horsehead of a Different Color

Horsehead Nebula Disappears in Infrared Light



The famous Horsehead nebula takes on a ghostly appearance in this newly released image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.










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Video Gives Astronaut’s-Eye View Inside NASA’s Orion Spacecraft

New video recorded during the return of NASA’s Orion through Earth’s atmosphere this month provides a taste of the intense conditions the spacecraft and the astronauts it carries will endure when they return from deep space destinations on the journey to Mars.



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Year-end break

A short note from the blog team here at ESA: we expect to take a year-end break between Monday, 22 December 2014 and Monday, 5 January 2015.



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Friday, 19 December 2014

SpaceX Completes First Milestone for Commercial Crew Transportation System

NASA has approved the completion of SpaceX’s first milestone in the company’s path toward launching crews to the International Space Station (ISS) from U.S. soil under a Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with the agency.



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CometWatch – the movie

As the incredible year of 2014 draws to a close, we have prepared a small treat for all of the readers of this blog who have followed Rosetta's progress over the months, in particular those who like to download images and play with them. We started our CometWatch in July, when Rosetta was still a few thousand kilometres away from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We saw this curiously-shaped comet grow larger and richer in details as the spacecraft got closer and closer until rendezvous at 100 km on 6 August. The NAVCAM images released over that period provided a good overview of our approach this amazing new world. In September, as we drew closer to the comet, we had to switch to taking four-image mosaics in order to ensure that we could cover enough of it for navigation purposes. Since then, we have been publishing some of these four-image sets as montages and mosaics, as well as releasing the individual frames so that you could work with them and create your own mosaics. Some have been taken within 8 km of the surface of 67P/C-G, providing amazing views. But to mark the end of this exciting year, instead of just one new image, montage, or mosaic, the last CometWatch release of the year is ... a movie, featuring no less than 24 montages based on NAVCAM images taken between 19 November and 3 December 2014. A reduced version of the movie can be seen inline here, but the full-sized version is available if you click through. These images were taken while Rosetta was in a 30-km orbit around the comet (see this video showing the trajectory of the spacecraft after 12 November). As usual, each montage comprises four individual images taken over a 20-minute period, at either around 11:00 UT (12:00 CET) […]



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Music of the Irregular Spheres

This blog post is contributed by Mark McCaughrean, senior science advisor in the Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration at ESA. The rather tortured title of this post is intended as a humorous reference to the decidedly non-spherical shape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target of our Rosetta mission. It also refers to the philosophical concept of ‘musica universalis’ or ‘music of the spheres’, usually attributed to Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and other ancient philosophers and scientists. They suggested that the proportions of the distances of the celestial bodies in the Solar System thought to be orbiting the Earth could be assigned tones, much as the pitch of a note coming from a plucked string is related to the length of that string. This theory was later developed further by Johannes Kepler in his works ‘Mysterium Cosmographicum’ (1596) and ‘Harmonices Mundi’ (1619). In these, Kepler proposed that a series of nested regular polygons provided the basis for the proportions observed in the heavens in a Copernican, Sun-centred Universe, and that the geometrical properties of these polygons could be linked to the ‘music of the spheres’. Kepler’s work on Tycho Brahe’s astronomical data later led him to his famous laws of planetary motion, which describe the elliptical orbits of objects around the Sun; astronomers would later realise that they even apply to the very elliptical orbits of comets like 67P/C-G. It's interesting to note that one of Kepler’s formative astronomical experiences was seeing the Great Comet of 1577 when he was just six years old. (To read a brief history of comets, please see our earlier blog post "Chasing comets - across history"). In the theory of the ‘music of the spheres’, the sounds are not supposed to be directly audible. That provides a nice link to the now famous “Singing Comet” as presented […]



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Behind the scenes of ‘The singing comet’

Last month, shortly before Rosetta released Philae to land on Comet 67P/C-G, we posted an article on this blog titled “The singing comet”. It presented an audio track based on data collected with one of the instruments from the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) on board the orbiter. Perhaps because it added a new layer to the Rosetta story, by engaging another of our human senses to the immersive experience of “being there” at the comet with the spacecraft, this ‘song’ became a worldwide sensation. By now, it has been listened to more than 5.6 million times on SoundCloud. But what does this ‘music’ mean, and how is it possible to ‘record’ sounds in space at all? Readers of this blog have asked a number of questions about “The singing comet”, so we’ve written this post to provide some more details about the production of this unusual audio track. “Clearly, there is no sound as we know it, because acoustic waves need a medium to propagate through, such as an atmosphere, whereas the (almost) empty space around the comet does not allow for that,” explains RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier from the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany. “But there is another type of wave that can propagate in the tenuous mixture of charged particles and ions, or plasma, present in the comet’s environment. These magneto-acoustic waves are caused by the interaction of the local plasma around the comet with the magnetic field carried by the solar wind, a stream of electrically charged particles blown by the Sun,” says Karl-Heinz. While probing the magnetic environment of the comet, the magnetometer on Rosetta (RPC-Mag) detected these waves as very regular oscillations in the local magnetic field. At only a few nanotesla, this field is very weak, roughly a million times less than from a […]



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NASA's Kepler Reborn, Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission

Reborn Kepler Can Still Find Planets



NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2.










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Signs of Europa Plumes Remain Elusive in Search of Cassini Data

Jupiter's icy moon Europa displays many signs of activity



A new study suggests that the thin, hot gas around Jupiter's moon Europa does not show evidence of plume activity occurring in 2001, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew past.










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NASA's Spaceborne Carbon Counter Maps New Details

Global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations



The first global maps of atmospheric carbon dioxide from NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 mission demonstrate its performance and promise.










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Updates from AGU

Yesterday, 17 December, there was a special session dedicated to Rosetta at the 2014 autumn meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. Many scientists from the Rosetta and Philae instrument teams reported on their latest results. To kick the Rosetta day off, some of the results were also presented in a press conference featuring Matt Taylor, ESA Rosetta Project Scientist, Claudia Alexander, US Rosetta Project Scientist at NASA, Kathrin Altwegg, ROSINA Principal Investigator at the University of Bern, Switzerland and Jean-Pierre Bibring, Lead Lander Scientist at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay, France. Matt Taylor introduced the past, exciting year of Rosetta leading to the comet landing on 12 November, and Claudia Alexander summarised what we know about comets so far and the science goals of the mission. Then Kathrin Altwegg talked about the status of the ROSINA instruments and the recent result on the measurement of the isotopic composition of water vapour coming from Comet 67P/C-G. Finally, Jean-Pierre Bibring summarised the landing of Philae, the scientific experiments that were performed during descent and on the comet's surface, and possible future plans in the case that the lander will wake up. You can watch a replay of the press conference here: Posted below are some of the images presented during the press conference: the first blurred CIVA image, taken shortly after Philae’s first bounce, a reprocessed version of one of the frames in the panorama taken by CIVA at Philae’s final resting place, showing the so-called “Perihelion Cliff”, and an illustration showing the lander's likely position on the comet's surface. You can also view a replay of some presentations from the science sessions on the Virtual Options environment of the AGU website. (You will need to register to view the videos, but registration is free.)



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NASA, Planetary Scientists Find Meteoritic Evidence of Mars Water Reservoir

NASA and an international team of planetary scientists have found evidence in meteorites on Earth that indicates Mars has a distinct and global reservoir of water or ice near its surface.



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Thursday, 18 December 2014

NASA’s Orion Arrives Back at Kennedy, Media Invited to View Spacecraft

After traveling more than 3,600 miles above Earth and 600 miles over sea, NASA’s Orion spacecraft completed the final leg of its journey by land Thursday, arriving home at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Media representatives are invited to attend an event at 10:30 a.m. EDT Friday, Dec. 19, marking the arrival.



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NASA, SpaceX Update Launch of Fifth SpaceX Resupply Mission to Space Station

NASA and SpaceX announced today the launch of SpaceX's fifth commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station now will occur no earlier than Tuesday, Jan. 6.



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NASA’s Kepler Reborn, Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2.



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MIDAS and its first dust grain

This blog post is contributed by Mark Bentley, MIDAS Principal Investigator at the Space Research Institute (IWF) in Graz, Austria. One of the big challenges in planning MIDAS operations is predicting the amount of dust that we collect during an exposure. Measuring the rate of dust grains flying past Rosetta and their size distribution is, of course, part of our science, but to plan our operations, we need to have some idea of what to expect beforehand! This is particularly complicated because with MIDAS, we are interested in measuring the smallest cometary dust particles, less than 1 µm (micrometre or millionth of a metre) in size, and ground-based telescope observations that are used to study dust remotely are almost blind to these sizes. So with that in mind, we started our first exposure in mid-September, opening the shutter for about 4 days. MIDAS works by collecting dust grains on sticky targets that are then scanned at very high resolution using an atomic force microscope. Initial calculations suggested that we might find one particle of around 1 µm in an 80x80 µm scan. The “before” and “after” images are shown in the panel below - as you can see, nothing jumps out, as most of the features seen in the after image were also there before we opened the shutter, meaning that they are background contamination (this is why we need to take a scan before!). If you look closely, you might even convince yourself that one or more particles have disappeared, but this is just a result of small offsets in the position of each pixel. During the following weeks, the same target was exposed and scanned several more times to search for particles. Again, we didn’t see anything obvious. Then, as you may recall, something special happened in mid-November: […]



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CometWatch 14 December

This four-image mosaic comprises images taken from a distance of 19.4 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 14 December. The image resolution at that distance is 1.66 m/pixel and the individual 1024 x 1024 frames measure 1.7 km across. The mosaic is slightly cropped and measures 3.0 x 3.1 km. As usual, rotation and translation of the comet during the image sequencing make it difficult to create an accurate mosaic. As always, refer to the individual images below before drawing conclusions about strange structures seen on the comet or low intensity extended emission. Today’s mosaic shows the underside of the larger lobe of Comet 67P/C-G, providing yet another view of the region that is home to Cheops and its neighbouring boulders. In line with the Ancient Egyptian naming scheme agreed by Rosetta scientists for features on the comet, this smooth region and the rougher terrain towards the upper right from there has been named Imhotep, after the famous architect of Egyptian pyramids from the 27th century BC. The name of this region was revealed during a talk at AGU today. The image also highlights the difference between the smooth region where Cheops is located and the areas around it, rich in craters, pits and cliffs. In addition, it is interesting to note that the Cheops boulder (upper and lower left frames in the montage above; see here, here and here for previous views) has now become an essential element in the proposal for establishing a scientific coordinate reference frame on the comet. In fact, one of the axes of this reference frame runs from the centre of mass of Comet 67P/C-G through the Cheops boulder. The individual image frames are provided below.



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Wednesday, 17 December 2014

NASA to Discuss Today Asteroid Redirect Mission Capture Concept, Next Step in Journey to Mars

NASA will host a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EST today during which agency officials will discuss and answer questions on the selection of an Asteroid Redirect Mission concept.



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NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. TESS will launch aboard a Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle, with liftoff targeted for August 2017 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.



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NASA Rover Finds Active, Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill.



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Tuesday, 16 December 2014

NASA Analysis: 11 Trillion Gallons to Replenish California Drought Losses

It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) -- around 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir -- to recover from California's continuing drought, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.



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NASA Voyager: 'Tsunami Wave' Still Flies Through Interstellar Space

Voyager in Space (Artist Concept)



The "tsunami wave" that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft began experiencing earlier this year is still propagating outward, according to new results










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Monday, 15 December 2014

CometWatch – 10 December

This four-image mosaic comprises images taken from a distance of 20.1 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 10 December. The image resolution is 1.71 m/pixel and the individual 1024 x 1024 frames measure 1.75 km across. The mosaic is slightly cropped and measures 2.9 x 2.6 km. As usual, rotation and translation of the comet during the image sequencing make it difficult to create an accurate mosaic. In this particular instance, some distortion terms were introduced to make the mosaic, and careful inspection may reveal some slight mismatches in features at the seams. In addition, some cleaning has been applied to lower the impact of NAVCAM scattering and make the boundaries between images continuous. So, be cautious in pushing the intensities too far to look at very faint features: in particular, an apparent discontinuity in the main outflow from the neck of the comet is an artefact. In this orientation, the smaller lobe of the comet is to the right, and the larger lobe to the left. The lower right part of the image provides a stunning view on the comet's 'neck' and its constellation of boulders, which were also visible in an image published last week. A hint of activity stemming from the neck is also visible. The four-frame montage and the individual image frames are provided below.



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NASA Tests Software That May Help Increase Flight Efficiency, Decrease Aircraft Noise

NASA researchers Friday began flight tests of computer software that shows promise in improving flight efficiency and reducing environmental impacts of aircraft, especially on communities around airports.



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Saturday, 13 December 2014

Signs of Ancient Mars Lakes and Quakes Seen in New Map

Geological Mapping of Hills in Martian Canyon



High-resolution geological mapping based on images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests lakes and "marsquakes" were part of the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.










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NASA Highlights Drought, Mars, Arctic Warming at American Geophysical Union





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Friday, 12 December 2014

What’s up with Rosetta

Contrary to the pre-landing phase, where the trajectories flown were designed with the lander delivery always in mind, we have now entered the science phase of the mission.



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Opportunity Working in No-Flash Mode for Now

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity



Persistent computer resets and "amnesia" events that have occurred after reformatting the flash memory on the Opportunity rover have prompted a shift to a working mode that avoids the flash data-storage system.










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NASA, SpaceX Update Launch of Resupply Mission to the Space Station





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Space Station Partners Hold Paris News Conference to Discuss Yearlong Mission

NASA and its International Space Station partners will hold a news conference in Paris at 10 a.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 18, to discuss the upcoming one-year expedition on the International Space Station. NASA Television and the agency's website will carry the briefing live.



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Thursday, 11 December 2014

Help U.S. Cope with Climate Change: Enter NASA-USGS Data App Challenge

NASA in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is offering more than $35,000 in prizes to citizen scientists for ideas that make use of climate data to address vulnerabilities faced by the United States in coping with climate change.



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Wednesday, 10 December 2014

NASA Awards the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport III Follow-On Contract

NASA has awarded a contract to the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority of Norfolk, Virginia for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport III (MARS III) follow-on contract.



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Saturn's Moons: What a Difference a Decade Makes

Maps of Enceladus



New color maps of Saturn's major icy moons demonstrate how much NASA's Cassini mission has changed our view of the Saturn system since the Voyager era.










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NASA Updates Briefings for Fifth SpaceX Resupply Mission to Space Station

The fifth SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract is scheduled to launch at 2:31 p.m. EST Tuesday, Dec. 16, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Television coverage of the launch begins at 1:15 p.m.



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OPALS: Light Beams Let Data Rates Soar

This artist's rendition shows OPALS operating from the International Space Station.



You may know opals as fiery gemstones, but something special called OPALS is floating above us in space.










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Two Robots, One Challenge, Endless Possibility

JPL's RoboSimian and Surrogate Robots



An innovative robot developed at JPL will perform several disaster-relief tasks in next year's DARPA Robotics Challenge finals.










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Tuesday, 9 December 2014

CometWatch 7 December

This four-image mosaic comprises images taken by Rosetta’s NAVCAM on 7 December from a distance of 19.7 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image scale is 1.68 m/pixel and each single 1024 x 1024 frame measures 1.7 km across. The mosaic has been cropped and measures 3.2 x 3.1 km, at roughly the same scale per pixel. As usual, before interpreting the mosaic, do check the original frames (provided below), because the rotation and translation of the comet during the image sequencing makes it difficult to create an accurate mosaic. In this particular instance, some distortion terms were introduced to make the mosaic, albeit still leaving a slight mismatch error at one of the peaks on the top edge of the mosaic. Internal scattering in NAVCAM also leads to some spurious broad intensity features and thus some cleaning has been applied to lower the impact of the scattering and make the boundaries between images continuous. So, be cautious in pushing the intensities too far to look at very faint features: there will be some artefacts. The scene shows a great side-on view of the inside rim of the large depression on the smaller of the comet’s lobes (far top right). This viewing angle highlights two different surface textures visible inside the depression – the right hand side (in this orientation) seemingly dominated by rougher terrain and the majority of boulders, while the left hand side is apparently much smoother. Finally, streams of dust and gas can be seen rising from both the large (lower left) and small (upper right) lobes of the comet. The site at which Philae first touched down is also visible in the top right frame (see here for a labelled image).



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NASA Delivers Futuristic Aircraft Part to Virginia for Structural Testing

Media are invited to view the unloading of a representative test article of a futuristic hybrid wing body aircraft Thursday, Dec. 11 at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.



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Monday, 8 December 2014

NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape

Sedimentary Signs of a Martian Lakebed



Observations by NASA's Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.










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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Clues to How Water Helped Shape Martian Landscape

Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars' Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.



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Saturday, 6 December 2014

Dawn Snaps Its Best-Yet Image of Dwarf Planet Ceres

Enhanced Early View of Ceres from Dawn



The Dawn spacecraft has delivered a glimpse of Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, in a new image taken 740,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from the dwarf planet.










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Students 'Keep It Moving' for Contest at JPL

Crescenta Valley High School and their contraption placed second in the 2014 JPL Invention Challenge.



Twenty teams of students from Southern California middle and high schools, plus seven JPL teams, competed in the JPL Invention Challenge, called "Keep It Moving."










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NASA Invites Media to View Orion Spacecraft Recently Returned From Space

Media are invited to view NASA's Orion spacecraft Monday, Dec. 8 at Naval Base San Diego. Orion successfully completed its first flight test Friday, traveling 3,600 miles above Earth to test the spacecraft’s systems before it carries astronauts on deep space missions.



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Statement by John P. Holdren on the Successful Test Launch and Recovery of the Orion Spacecraft

Upon successful launch and recovery of the Orion spacecraft on Friday White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John P. Holdren issued the following statement.



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Warm Gas Pours 'Cold Water' on Galaxy's Star-Making

A new feature in the evolution of galaxies has been captured in this image of galactic interactions.



One galaxy devoured remnants of another galaxy, quenching the formation of new stars.










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NASA’s New Orion Spacecraft Completes First Spaceflight Test

NASA marked a major milestone Friday on its journey to Mars as the Orion spacecraft completed its first voyage to space, traveling farther than any spacecraft designed for astronauts has been in more than 40 years.



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Friday, 5 December 2014

Orion Flight Test, NASA TV Coverage Reset for Friday, Dec. 5

The first flight test of Orion, NASA’s next-generation spacecraft capable of sending astronauts on future missions to an asteroid and the journey to Mars, now is scheduled to launch Friday, Dec. 5 at 7:05 a.m. EST, atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Television coverage will begin at 6 a.m. There is a two-hour, 39-minute window for the launch.



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Thursday, 4 December 2014

Mini Rovers Hold Big Promise for Community College Students

NCAS students pose in front of the Curiosity rover model at JPL



Four miniature rovers will go head-to-head this week at JPL as community college students get a first-hand look at what it's like to work on a robotic space mission.










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NASA to Hold Dec. 8 Media Teleconference on Mars Rover Curiosity Observations

NASA will host a media teleconference at noon EST Monday, Dec. 8, to discuss geological observations made by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.



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Wednesday, 3 December 2014

NASA to Hold Dec. 8 Media Teleconference on Mars Rover Curiosity Observations

Curiosity Self-Portrait at 'Windjana' Drilling Site



NASA will host a media teleconference at 9 a.m. PST (noon EST) Monday, Dec. 8, to discuss geological observations made by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.










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Stardust Not Likely to Block Planet Portraits

Seeking Planets in the Dust



A new NASA study concludes that stars aren't all that dusty -- a step forward to finding planets that might harbor life.










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West Antarctic Melt Rate Has Tripled: NASA-UC Irvine

Glaciers seen during NASA's Operation IceBridge research flight to West Antarctica on Oct. 29, 2014.



A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade.










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Tuesday, 2 December 2014

The quest for organic molecules on the surface of 67P/C-G

This blog post is contributed by Ian Wright and his colleagues from the Ptolemy team. For scientists engaged with large complex projects like Rosetta, there is always a delightful period early on when, unbound by practical realities, it is possible to dream. And so it was that at one time the scientists were thinking about having a lander with the capability to hop around a comet’s surface. In this way it would be possible to make measurements from different parts of the comet. Interestingly, this unplanned opportunity presented itself on 12 November 2014, when Philae landed not once but three times on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Ptolemy instrument on Philae is a compact mass spectrometer designed to measure the composition of the materials making up 67P/C-G, with a particular focus on organic molecules and mineral components. Earlier in 2014, Ptolemy had collected data at distances of 15,000, 13,000, 30, 20, and 10 km from the comet, while Philae was still attached to Rosetta. But from 12 to 14 November, along with some other instruments on the lander, Ptolemy had the chance to operate at more than one location on the comet’s surface. Ptolemy performed its first 'sniffing' measurements on the comet just after the initial touchdown of Philae. At almost exactly the same moment, the OSIRIS camera on Rosetta was imaging Philae flying back above the surface after the first bounce. Later, once Philae had stopped at its final landing site, Ptolemy then made six subsequent sets of measurements, sniffing the comet's atmosphere at the surface between 13 and 14 November. Finally, a slightly different experiment was also conducted on 14 November, which was completed only 45 minutes before Philae went into hibernation as its primary battery was exhausted. For this “last gasp” experiment, the team used a specialised oven, the […]



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CometWatch 30 November

This four image montage comprises images taken with Rosetta’s NAVCAM on 30 November from a distance of 30.2 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image resolution is 2.6 m/pixel and each original 1024 x 1024 pixel frame measures just over 2.6 km across. In this orientation, the smaller of the two comet lobes is in the lower left of the montage, with the larger lobe occupying the upper frames as well as the lower right frame, albeit mostly cast in shadow. The view affords a particularly nice view down onto the ‘neck’ region of the comet, where low plateaus of material with layered walls appear to rise from the smoother material that surrounds them. Similarly, some of the boulder-like features seen in the foreground of the scene have the appearance of being exposed from the underlying surface, partially covered by the finer-grained material. In the far left of the lower left frame, this fine-grained material appears to have been shaped into a beautiful rippled pattern; perhaps as result of the underlying topography and/or due to differences in erosion by sublimation across the surface. Due to rotation and translation of the comet during the image-taking sequence, it is again difficult to make an accurate mosaic of this set. Evidence for this can be seen in the neck region, where the shadows and fraction of the boulder field visible have clearly changed between the first (lower-left) and last (lower-right) images. Also, stretching the contrast reveals some details in the shadowed regions, as well as some fine jet-like structures from the upper limb of the main body. But at high contrast, internal scattering in the NAVCAM optics also becomes apparent, in the form of large-scale diffuse blobs. These also make it difficult to mosaic well.



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Boeing Completes First Milestone for NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Systems

NASA has approved the completion of Boeing’s first milestone in the company’s path toward launching crews to the International Space Station from the United States under a groundbreaking Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract.



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