Powerful Auroras Found at Brown Dwarf

Mysterious objects called brown dwarfs are sometimes called "failed stars."

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Earth Flyby of 'Space Peanut' Captured in New Video

New NASA video shows a rotating, two-lobed asteroid that recently flew past Earth.

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Exoplanets 20/20: Looking back to the future

Two decades into the study of planets that orbit other stars, scientists recall that the discovery of the first such planet seemed almost unbelievable at the time.

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NASA Selects Proposals to Study Neutron Stars, Black Holes and More

NASA has selected five proposals submitted to its Explorers Program to conduct focused scientific investigations and develop instruments that fill the scientific gaps between the agency’s larger missions.

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NASA's Spitzer Confirms Closest Rocky Exoplanet

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the nearest rocky planet outside our solar system, larger than Earth and a potential gold mine of science data.

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Science on the surface of a comet

Complex molecules that could be key building blocks of life, the daily rise and fall of temperature, and an assessment of the surface properties and internal structure of the comet are just some of the highlights of the first scientific analysis of the data returned by Rosetta’s lander Philae last November. This article is mirrored from the main ESA Web Portal.  Early results from Philae’s first suite of scientific observations of Comet 67P/Churyumov­-Gerasimenko were published today in a special edition of the journal Science. Data were obtained during the lander’s seven-hour descent to its first touchdown at the Agilkia landing site, which then triggered the start of a sequence of predefined experiments. But shortly after touchdown, it became apparent that Philae had rebounded and so a number of measurements were carried out as the lander took flight for an additional two hours some 100 m above the comet, before finally landing at Abydos. Some 80% of the first science sequence was completed in the 64 hours following separation before Philae fell into hibernation, with the unexpected bonus that data were ultimately collected at more than one location, allowing comparisons between the touchdown sites. Inflight science After the first touchdown at Agilkia, the gas-sniffing instruments Ptolemy and COSAC analysed samples entering the lander and determined the chemical composition of the comet’s gas and dust, important tracers of the raw materials present in the early Solar System. COSAC analysed samples entering tubes at the bottom of the lander kicked up during the first touchdown, dominated by the volatile ingredients of ice-poor dust grains. This revealed a suite of 16 organic compounds comprising numerous carbon and nitrogen-rich compounds, including four compounds – methyl isocyanate, acetone, propionaldehyde and acetamide – that have never before been detected in comets. Meanwhile, Ptolemy sampled ambient gas entering […]

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California 'Rain Debt' Equal to Average Full Year of Precipitation

A new NASA study has concluded California accumulated a debt of about 20 inches of precipitation between 2012 and 2015.

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NASA's Spitzer Confirms Closest Rocky Exoplanet

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the nearest rocky planet outside our solar system, larger than Earth and a potential gold mine of science data.

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California “Rain Debt” Equal to Average Full Year of Precipitation

A new NASA study has concluded California accumulated a debt of about 20 inches of precipitation between 2012 and 2015 -- the average amount expected to fall in the state in a single year. The deficit was driven primarily by a lack of air currents moving inland from the Pacific Ocean that are rich in water vapor.

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Unusual Red Arcs Spotted on Icy Saturn Moon

Unexplained arc-shaped, reddish streaks are visible on the surface of Saturn's icy moon Tethys in new, enhanced-color images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

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Rosetta shows how comet interacts with the solar wind

This blog post is based on the papers “Evolution of the ion environment of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Observations between 3.6 and 2.0 AU ” by H. Nilsson et al.; “Rosetta observations of solar wind interaction with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko” by T.W. Broiles et al.; and “Solar Wind Sputtering of Dust on the Surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko ” by Peter Wurz et al., which have all been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and “Dynamical features and spatial structures of the plasma interaction region of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and the solar wind” by C. Koenders et al, which is published in Planetary and Space Science. Rosetta is making good progress in one of its key investigations, which concerns the interaction between the comet and the solar wind. The solar wind is the constant stream of electrically charged particles that flows from the Sun, carrying its magnetic field out into the Solar System. Like all comets, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko must navigate this flow in its orbit around the Sun. It is the constant battle fought between the comet and the solar wind that helps to sculpt the comet’s ion tail. Rosetta’s instruments are monitoring the fine detail of this process. Using the Rosetta Plasma Consortium Ion Composition Analyzer, Hans Nilsson from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and his colleagues have been studying the gradual evolution of the comet’s ion environment. They have seen that the number of water ions – molecules of water that have been stripped of one electron – accelerated away from the comet increased hugely as 67P/C-G moved between 3.6AU (about 538 million km) and 2.0AU (about 300 million km) from the Sun. Although the day-to-day acceleration is highly variable, the average 24-hour rate has increased by a factor of 10,000 during the study, which covered the period August 2014 to March 2015. The water […]

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NASA Awards Aerospace Propulsion, Communications Research Contracts

NASA has awarded contracts to 13 companies to provide advanced propulsion and communications system technologies as part of ongoing long-term aerospace research activities at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

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NASA Awards Contract to Support Agency’s Human Spaceflight Programs

NASA has selected Wyle Laboratories Inc., of El Segundo, California, to provide biomedical, medical and health services in support of all human spaceflight programs at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The work supports ongoing research aboard the International Space Station and helps enable the journey to Mars.

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NASA Mars Orbiter Preparing for Mars Lander's 2016 Arrival

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will fire thrusters on Wednesday for a maneuver to get into position for the 2016 arrival of NASA's next Mars lander.

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New Names and Insights at Ceres

Colorful new maps of Ceres, based on NASA's Dawn spacecraft data, showcase a diverse topography, with dramatic height differences between crater bottoms and mountain peaks.

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CometWatch 20 July

Today’s CometWatch entry was captured by Rosetta’s NAVCAM on 20 July 2015 from a distance of 171 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image scale is 14.5 m/pixel and the image measures 14.9 km across. Although the activity is visible to some extent in the original image (provided at the end of the post), we have increased the contrast in the above image to better show off the details. In this orientation the comet’s small lobe is to the left and the large lobe is to the right, with several distinct streams of activity visible around the sunlit portion of the small lobe. The activity streaming from around the neck region appears to extend to at least the edge of the field of view, several kilometres away. Scientists are studying how these fine details close to the nucleus relate to the vast coma observed from afar, such as from ground-based telescopes on Earth. It is interesting to compare details of the activity in this entry to that on 7 July, where the comet is seen in a similar orientation. Similar details in the comet’s nucleus can also be picked out. For example, the transition between the Seth and Anubis regions on the large lobe is quite clear in this orientation, with a distinct ridge separating the quasi-circular depressions in Seth (left) from the smoother surface of Anubis (right). The silhouette of the comet to the bottom of the scene is also framed against the background glow of activity. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel image is provided below.

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NASA Astronauts Speak with Ohio Summer Camp Students from Space Station

Summer camp students at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland and students from the city’s MC2 STEM High School will speak with Expedition 44 crew members aboard the International Space Station at 11:40 a.m. EDT Friday, July 31.

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NASA’s New Horizons Team Finds Haze, Flowing Ice on Pluto

Flowing ice and a surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of wonders.

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Crew of Underwater NASA Mission Available for Interviews

NASA currently is working in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to evaluate tools and techniques in preparation for future spacewalks on a variety of surfaces and levels of gravity, ranging from asteroids to the moons and surface of Mars.

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NASA Hosts ‘Quest for Quakes’ Data Challenge

A new NASA challenge is looking for evidence to support a theory that electromagnetic pulses (EMP) may precede an earthquake, potentially offering a warning to those in the quake’s path.

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Chasing a comet from Earth – update on the professional observing campaign

An interview with Colin Snodgrass of the Open University, UK, who coordinates a consortium of professional astronomers observing Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Earth in support of the Rosetta mission. Q: Rosetta has been 'living' with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for almost a year now. How was this year from the perspective of the professional astronomers observing the comet with telescopes on Earth? A: It has been a very exciting year for everyone in comet science, following the results from Rosetta, but thankfully the ground-based view of 67P didn’t get too exciting yet – the comet largely followed our predictions in terms of its total brightness, which is reassuring as it allows us to have confidence in our plans for observing (and for Rosetta). We watched the comet grow from a single dot to show a clear comet-like shape in 2014, and then had a relatively long winter where we couldn’t observe the comet (between November and April). Now that the comet is back within reach of our telescopes, it is an even more impressive sight, with a long tail visible in deeper images. Recently, as the comet is approaching perihelion, it is much more active. We can now study the gasses and large-scale dust jets in the coma from ground-based observations. Q: How many observatories were involved and how often have they observed the comet? A: In 2014, the comet was still relatively faint, with a magnitude of around 20, approximately 400,000 times fainter than the naked eye can detect, so most of the observations were performed with some of the biggest telescopes available on the ground: the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy's Gemini South telescope, both located in Chile. Other observatories were also used, including the TRAPPIST comet-chasing telescope, also in Chile, […]

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Inspects Unusual Bedrock

The laser-firing instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has identified a rock target that is rich in silica, prompting further investigation with the rover.

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Less Algae, Not Clearer Water, Keeps Tahoe Blue

Lake Tahoe's iconic blueness is more strongly related to the lake's algal concentration than to its clarity.

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NASA Awards Contract for Office Support Services

NASA has selected American Paragon Protective Services, LLC, of Austin, Texas to receive a contract to support the Protective Services Office Support Services at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

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NASA Invites Media to Emergency Locator Transmitters Crash Test

Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will crash test a small plane Wednesday, July 29, to test the performance of five emergency locator transmitters (ELTs) installed onboard.

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NASA Invites Media to Emergency Locater Transmitters Crash Test

Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will crash test a small plane Wednesday, July 29, to test the performance of five emergency locater transmitters (ELTs) installed onboard.

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Finding Another Earth

Kepler's newest planetary find joins a pantheon of planets with similarities to Earth.

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NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the "habitable zone" around a sun-like star.

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NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”

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Video report: Rosetta orbiter science

It is almost a year since the Rosetta spacecraft began orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014. The orbiter’s eleven instruments are studying the comet at different wavelengths - infrared, ultraviolet, microwave and radio – as well as gathering high-resolution images and information about its shape, density, temperature and chemical composition. This video outlines the mission’s scientific highlights so far – “a geologist’s playground” - and some of the latest science from three of the orbiter’s instruments: the Osiris camera, the microwave MIRO instrument and VIRTIS (visible and infrared thermal imaging spectrometer), which is studying the comet’s nucleus. It contains footage from the first Rosetta science workshop, which was recently held in Rome, as well as the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany – where a copy of Osiris is maintained in a vacuum chamber to test commands.

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New Website Gathering Public Input on NASA Mars Images

Mars researchers are soliciting volunteers to locate odd polar-area features on Mars that have names such as "Swiss cheese terrain" and "spiders."

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NASA Invites Media to 2015 Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management Convention

NASA and the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International will cosponsor the 2015 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management Convention: A New Era in Aviation. The event will be held Tuesday, July 28 through Thursday, July 30, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

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A Wi-Fi Reflector Chip To Speed Up Wearables

Researchers at JPL and UCLA have developed a technology that could reduce the power needed to send information from wearable devices.

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Could 'Windbots' Someday Explore the Skies of Jupiter?

Wind-harvesting robotic probes might someday explore the atmospheres of other planets, as well as our home planet, thanks to an innovative NASA JPL study.

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CometWatch 14 July

Today’s CometWatch entry was captured by Rosetta’s NAVCAM on 14 July 2015 from a distance of 161 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image scale is 13.7 m/pixel and the image measures 14 km across. It has been processed in LightRoom to bring out the details of the activity, which is visible all around the sunlit side of the comet. The large lobe is particularly aglow with activity in this view, with numerous individual streams of gas and dust sweeping away from the nucleus. In some cases they appear to merge together some distance away. Although line-of-sight viewing conditions may contribute to this observation, higher-resolution images acquired with OSIRIS earlier in the mission also revealed this kind of detail. The elongated depression known as Aten is also visible on the comet’s large lobe in this view, its interior walls partially cast in shadow. The large lobe is itself casting a shadow across the comet’s neck and onto part of the small lobe ‘below’. The silhouette of the comet towards the bottom left of the image is also clearly visible against the background glow of activity. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel image is provided below:

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Greenland's Undercut Glaciers Melting Faster than Thought

Greenland's glaciers are badly undercut and melting faster than thought, raising sea levels faster than currently estimated.

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NASA Views Complex World: New Horizons Pluto Science Update Set for July 24

Members of NASA’s New Horizons team will hold a science update at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, July 24, to reveal new images and discuss latest science results from the spacecraft’s historic July 14 flight through the Pluto system.

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NASA Hosts Media Telecon About Latest Kepler Discoveries

NASA will host a news teleconference at 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) Thursday, July 23, to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

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NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries

NASA will host a news teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 23 to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

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NASA Satellite Camera Provides “EPIC” View of Earth

A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away.

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Inside Imhotep

Imhotep, on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's large lobe, is one of the most geologically diverse regions observed by Rosetta. This blog post presents the results of a new paper by Anne-Thérèse Auger from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM, France) et al, which describes Imhotep's key features and discusses possible scenarios for this region's evolution. The post was prepared with inputs from Anne-Thérèse and co-author Olivier Groussin, also from LAM. Imhotep is located close to the comet’s equator and is relatively flat compared to the overall shape of the nucleus. It caught the attention of scientists on the approach to the comet with its broad smooth area, covering about 0.8 square km, standing out in the first close images of this region. Within this intriguing area, a variety of diverse features can be found. This diverse geomorphology holds fundamental clues to understanding the cometary processes that lead to the formation of the surface as we see it today, and also provides insights for the underlying and possibly primordial structure of the comet. The graphic below maps the geomorphology of the region, indicating the different types of features identified in Imhotep. The context image at the start of this post showcases some examples of each of these features. Short descriptions follow. Smooth terrains Smooth terrains cover about one-third of Imhotep and are located in the gravitational lows. High-resolution (30 cm/pixel) images show that it comprises fine-grained material with a size of up to a few tens of centimetres for the largest grains. As seen elsewhere on the comet, the thickness of the dust seems to vary, with the underlying surface revealed in places. Within the smooth terrains a number of curvilinear features are seen, spanning hundreds of metres to a km in length. In some places they cross the interface between smooth and more […]

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Rosetta and Philae status update

Over the last few weeks, Rosetta has been flying along the terminator plane of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, at distances from 180 km down to 153 km and at latitudes between 0 and 54 degrees, in order to find the best location to communicate with Philae. However, over the weekend of 10–11 July, the star trackers again struggled to lock on to stars at the closer distances thanks to confusion due to dust particles in the comet’s increasingly-active environment. Because safety of the spacecraft is the first priority, it is therefore being moved back to safer distances of 170–190 km. No contact has been made with Philae since Thursday 9 July. The data acquired at that time are being investigated by the lander team to try to better understand Philae’s situation. For example, included in the latest data set was information on the sunlight reaching the lander’s different solar panels. “The profile of how strongly the Sun is falling on which panels has changed from June to July, and this does not seem to be explained by the course of the seasons on the comet alone,” explains Philae’s project manager, Stephan Ulamec at DLR. One possible explanation being discussed at DLR’s Lander Control Center is that the position of Philae may have shifted slightly, perhaps by changing its orientation with respect to the surface in its current location. The lander is likely situated on uneven terrain, and even a slight change in its position – perhaps triggered by gas emission from the comet – could mean that its antenna position has also now changed with respect to its surroundings. This could have a knock-on effect as to the best position Rosetta needs to be in to establish a connection with the lander. Another separate issue under analysis is that one of the […]

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NASA Aircraft Assists in FAA-Approved Drone Medical Supply Delivery Research

Some underserved Virginia patients were among the first to be officially helped by an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), more commonly known as a drone, during research flights to a medical clinic in Wise County Friday.

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NASA’s New Horizons Discovers Frozen Plains in the Heart of Pluto’s ‘Heart’

In the latest data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, a new close-up image of Pluto reveals a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes.

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Rosetta/Philae outreach team win Sir Arthur Clarke Award

We are delighted to let you know that the team working on outreach for ESA’s Rosetta mission has been awarded the UK’s Sir Arthur Clarke Award 2015 in the category of “Space Achievement – Education and Outreach.” The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards have been presented annually in the UK since 2005 to recognise and reward notable or outstanding achievements in, or contributions to, all space activities. This year’s awards were announced to an audience of 600 delegates and guests at the UK Space Conference Gala Dinner and Awards in St George’s Hall, Liverpool on Tuesday 14 July 2015 by Rob Douglas, Chairman of the Board of the UK Space Agency, and presented by Dr Helen Sharman, the UK’s first cosmonaut. The Awards are sponsored by the UK Space Agency in collaboration with the British Interplanetary Society and Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. ESA’s Professor Mark McCaughrean, senior science advisor in the Directorate of Science & Robotic Exploration, was in Liverpool to give an invited dinner presentation on Rosetta and collected the award on behalf of everyone who has contributed to the mission’s outreach and education. Mark said: “It's an enormous honour to have picked up this award on behalf of the many talented people who help bring the amazing story of Rosetta and Philae into schools and to the wider public around the world. In addition to the communications and education teams at ESA, this includes all of our partner space agencies, the Rosetta and Philae scientists and their institutes, and the many creative individuals and companies who put together art, graphics, film, documentaries, music, and poetry to engage and inspire.” The award committee’s citation read: “The Rosetta/Philae Outreach Team turned a great scientific achievement into a really great popular science outreach achievement. They had the most engaged audience for a […]

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NASA to Release New Pluto Images, Science Findings at July 17 NASA TV Briefing

NASA will hold a media briefing at 1 p.m. EDT Friday, July 17, to reveal new images of Pluto and discuss new science findings from Tuesday’s historic flyby.

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Battling Wildfires from Space: NASA Adds to Firefighters’ Toolkit

U.S. firefighters battling wildfires this year will get a clearer view of these threats with new NASA-funded satellite-based tools to better detect fires nationwide and predict their behavior.

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NASA Television Coverage Set for Next International Space Station Crew Launch

The next three crew members bound for the International Space Station are set to launch Wednesday, July 22. NASA Television will provide coverage of the launch and the crew’s arrival at the orbiting laboratory less than six hours later.

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From Mountains to Moons: Multiple Discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons Pluto Mission

Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon, Charon, are among the several discoveries announced Wednesday by the NASA's New Horizons team, just one day after the spacecraft’s first ever Pluto flyby.

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Getting to know Rosetta’s comet: boundary conditions

In January the first maps of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were published, identifying 19 geomorphologically distinct regions on its surface. Six months on and much more work has been done on refining the boundaries between these regions. This blog post showcases some of the OSIRIS images acquired from close orbit and presented in a new paper that have enabled an in-depth study of the different regions and their boundaries. This post was prepared with inputs from lead author M. Ramy El-Maarry from the University of Bern, who introduces this post with an inside story on how some of the regional names were chosen: “Early on in the mapping phase, we decided on naming the regions of the comet using names of ancient Egyptian deities. We wanted to adhere to the ancient Egyptian theme of the mission and have a large inventory of names if needed. Luckily, ancient Egyptians had so many deities in their long history that made this an easy decision. Moreover, many of the names were catchy, easy to remember, and more importantly, easy to pronounce. I remember we initially tried using names of ancient cities and we were coming across a lot of names that were very difficult to wrap your tongue around, even for an Egyptian like me! So we decided to use the following naming convention: gods for the ‘body’ lobe and goddesses for the ‘head’. We picked Hapi for the neck since Hapi is the Nile god, and we figured that he should separate the lobes in the same way that the Nile splits Egypt into an eastern and western side. Of course, there were obvious names to discard (such as Osiris!) so we decided to skip on all 'world-famous' gods such as R’a and Amun, partly because they have been used before in other missions, […]

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CometWatch 7 July

Today’s CometWatch entry was taken on 7 July, from a distance of 154 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image resolution is 13.1 m/pixel and the image measures 13.4 km across. The image has been processed to bring out the details of the comet’s activity. In this orientation the comet’s small lobe is to the top left, while the large lobe is to the bottom right. The transition between the Seth and Anubis regions on the large lobe is quite prominent, with a distinct ridge separating the numerous quasi-circular depressions in Seth (left) from the smoother surface of Anubis (right). The original 1024 x 1024 image is provided below.

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Claudia Alexander (1959–2015)

It is with great sadness that we share the news of Dr Claudia Alexander’s passing on 11 July 2015. Claudia worked for NASA at JPL. She was an eminent planetary scientist and was deeply involved with the Rosetta Mission as US Rosetta project scientist. She was passionate about outreach, including engaging amateur astronomers through the ground-based observing campaign of Rosetta’s target comet, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Claudia was also very well known for her role in NASA’s Galileo and Cassini projects. Here, some of her ESA colleagues pay tribute: “We have lost a great colleague and friend who will live on within us and the missions to the stars she made possible.” Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist “Although I did not know Claudia very well, I quickly noticed her strong enthusiasm for the Rosetta mission. The science of this mission has lost a major contributor and we will all miss her.” Patrick Martin, ESA’s Rosetta mission manager “When I was asked to join Rosetta and address some challenges in June 2013, Claudia, who was well aware of the pending items, supported me in the most professional way. She was involved in Rosetta for a very long time and always had the best interest of the overall project at heart. Although I am currently no longer involved in Rosetta, I know she will be dearly missed by the team for her heartfelt drive to further cometary science. The impact of her loss to planetary science and us as direct colleagues is of little significance compared to the impact this must have on her loved ones.” Fred Jansen, former Rosetta mission manager “I was deeply shocked when I learned that Claudia had passed away. She was for many years my counterpart at NASA as mission manager and project scientist for NASA’s contribution to Rosetta. Claudia […]

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NASA's Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Reaches Historic Encounter

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto. After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto Tuesday, about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India – making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.

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Hello, Pluto!

Images obtained by OSIRIS, Rosetta’s scientific imaging system, show dwarf planet Pluto shortly before the flyby of NASA's New Horizons.  On Sunday 12 July 2015, OSIRIS, the scientific imaging system on board ESA’s spacecraft Rosetta, took a glance away from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko to the edge of our Solar System, towards Pluto. Over five billion kilometres away, an exposure time of more than three hours, and sophisticated image processing, was necessary to detect Pluto in the images. Twenty images, each exposed for ten minutes, had to be stacked and carefully processed to reveal the tiny world. Pluto is thus the most distant body within the Solar System that Rosetta has ever looked at. NASA’s space probe New Horizons made its historic flyby of this distant world today, passing within about 12500 km. Being able to discern the 2370 km-wide body in OSIRIS images comes close to a small miracle, say the imaging team. “After all, OSIRIS is not a telescope, but a camera system designed to study Rosetta’s comet from up close," says OSIRIS Principal Investigator Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. "Apart from the huge distance there was another difficulty," says OSIRIS team member Dennis Bodewits from the University of Maryland who worked on the images. “Comet 67P and Rosetta are by now surrounded by a dense atmosphere of gas and dust. It’s like watching Pluto through a blizzard.” The observation is particularly symbolic given that both Pluto and Comet 67P/C-G hail from the Kuiper Belt in the Outer Solar System. Comet 67P/C-G is now a Jupiter Family Comet and is currently in the inner Solar System, a month away from perihelion, the closest point to the Sun along its orbit. Pluto is a dwarf planet residing in the Kuiper Belt, and has an elliptical orbit around the Sun. Rosetta has imaged a number […]

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NASA, Agriculture Department Deputies to Sign Interagency Agreement for Earth Science, Agricultural Research

NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Krysta Harden will sign an interagency agreement and hold a media availability from 10 to 11 a.m. PDT on Thursday, July 16, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

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Sen. Mikulski, NASA Deputy Administrator Tour NASA’s New Horizons Mission Operations Center Today

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski will join NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and Ralph Semmel, director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland today for a briefing on New Horizons and a tour of the mission operations center.

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Preparing for perihelion

This article is mirrored from the main ESA web portal. Rosetta’s investigations of its comet are continuing as the mission teams count down the last month to perihelion – the closest point to the Sun along the comet’s orbit – when the comet’s activity is expected to be at its highest. Rosetta has been studying Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for over a year now, with observations beginning during the approach to the comet in March 2014. This included witnessing an outburst in late April 2014 and the revelation of the comet’s curious shape in early July. After arriving at a distance of 100 km from the double-lobed comet on 6 August, Rosetta has spent an intense year analysing the properties of this intriguing body – the interior, surface and surrounding dust, gas and plasma. Comets are known to be made of dust and frozen ices. As these ices are warmed by the Sun, they turn directly to vapour, with the gases dragging the comet’s dust along with it. Together, the gas and dust create a fuzzy atmosphere, or coma, and often-spectacular tails extend tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometres into space. While ground-based observations can monitor the development of the coma and tail from afar, Rosetta has a ringside seat for studying the source of this activity directly from the nucleus. One important aspect of Rosetta’s long-term study is watching how the activity waxes and wanes along the comet’s orbit. The comet has a 6.5 year commute around the Sun from just beyond the orbit of Jupiter at its furthest, to between the orbits of Earth and Mars at it closest. Rosetta rendezvoused with the comet around 540 million km from the Sun. Today, 13 July, a month from perihelion, this distance is much smaller: 195 million km. Currently travelling at […]

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NASA Pluto New Horizons July 13 Media Briefing Time Change, Media Center Open

NASA will provide comprehensive television, Internet and social media coverage this week of the agency’s New Horizons spacecraft historic July 14 flyby of Pluto. The time for the flyby preview news briefing on NASA Television Monday, July 13 has moved up 30 minutes, and now will start at 10:30 a.m. EDT.

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NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Tracks Sunspots

Curiosity is monitoring sunspots on the side of the sun facing away from Earth, during weeks when sun-monitoring spacecraft can't provide that information.

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NASA Missions Have Their Eyes Peeled on Pluto

NASA's New Horizons will have the support of other spacecraft during its historic Pluto flyby, with observations from their outposts across the solar system.

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NASA Finds Oceans Slowed Global Temperature Rise

A NASA study shows heat has been trapped in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The finding explains the recent slowdown in global temperature rise.

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CometWatch 25 June

Today’s CometWatch entry presents an image taken on 25 June from a distance of 168 km from the comet centre. The image scale is 14.3 m/pixel and the image measures 14.6 km across. The image has been processed to highlight the details of the comet’s activity. In this orientation the unmistakable outline of the Hatmehit depression on the comet’s small lobe can be seen towards the ‘top’ of the scene. In the foreground, the ‘Nut’ depression is visible while Serqet is cast in dappled shadow. Much of the large lobe is obscured by shadow, but a glimpse of Seth can just be seen on the bottom left with Babi in the distance. On the right hand side a sharp transition between Seth and Anubis is seen, with a small patch of Atum just catching the sunlight at bottom right. The section in the background comprises areas previously in shadow and as such the boundaries are less well defined. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel image is provided below.

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New communication with Philae – commands executed successfully

This report is provided by the German Aerospace Center, DLR. The Philae lander communicated with the Rosetta orbiter again between 19:45 and 20:07 CEST on 9 July 2015 and transmitted measurement data from the COmet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radiowave Transmission (CONSERT) instrument. Although the connection failed repeatedly after that, it remained completely stable for those 12 minutes. “This sign of life from Philae proves to us that at least one of the lander’s communication units remains operational and receives our commands,” said Koen Geurts, a member of the lander control team at DLR Cologne. The mood had been mixed over the last few days; Philae had not communicated with the team in the DLR Lander Control Center (LCC) since 24 June 2015. After an initial test command to turn on the power to CONSERT on 5 July 2015, the lander did not respond. Philae’s team began to wonder if the lander had survived on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. “We never gave up on Philae and remained optimistic,” said Geurts. There was great excitement when Philae ‘reported in’ on 13 June 2015 after seven months of hibernation and sent data about its health. The lander was ready to perform its tasks, 300 million kilometres away from Earth. However, Philae has to communicate with the ground stations through Rosetta, which acts as a radio relay. Restrictions on the orbiter’s approach to and orbit around the comet have not permitted regular communication with the lander. The data sent on 24 June did not suggest that the lander had experienced technical difficulties. Now, Philae’s internal temperature of zero degrees Celsius gives the team hope that the lander can charge its batteries; this would make scientific work possible regardless of the ‘time of day’ on the comet. The received data is currently being evaluated. “We can already see that the […]

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NASA Study Finds Indian, Pacific Oceans Temporarily Hide Global Warming

A new NASA study of ocean temperature measurements shows in recent years extra heat from greenhouse gases has been trapped in the waters of the Pacific and Indian oceans. Researchers say this shifting pattern of ocean heat accounts for the slowdown in the global surface temperature trend observed during the past decade.

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Distant Black Hole Wave Twists Like Giant Whip

Magnetic waves from a black hole are set in motion as if a whip is being cracked.

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NASA Selects Astronauts for First U.S. Commercial Spaceflights

NASA has selected four astronauts to train and prepare for commercial spaceflights that will return American launches to U.S. soil and further open up low-Earth orbit transportation to the private sector.

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NASA Announces Updated Television Coverage, Media Activities for Pluto Flyby

NASA is inviting media to cover the New Horizons spacecraft’s closest approach and July 14 Pluto flyby from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, site of the mission operations center.

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Searing Sun Seen in X-rays

A bouquet of colors highlights X-rays streaming off our sun.

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CometWatch 24 June

Today's CometWatch entry was taken on 24 June, when Rosetta was 183 km from the comet Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This single frame NAVCAM image has a resolution of 15.6 m/pixel and it measures 16.0 km across. The view shows the large comet lobe pointing to the top left corner and the small lobe to the bottom right. The image has been processed in LightRoom to bring out the comet's activity, which is especially evident in the top right part of the frame, with several jets of outflowing material streaming away from the nucleus. On the large lobe, towards the upper edge as shown in this view, is the elongated depression of Aten. Besides Aten, to the right, the smoother terrains of Babi can be seen, and even further to the right is the slab-like feature that was featured in some previous CometWatch entries (here and here, for example), comprising portions of the Aker and Khepry regions. On the small lobe, parts of the Bastet and Ma'at regions are visible – Bastet on the right side, Ma'at on the left – while the circular depression of Hatmehit, pointing to the lower right, is completely cast in shadow. In the past few days, Rosetta has been as close as 155 km to the comet centre, and it will move down to 150 km this week. The original 1024 x 1024 image of today's CometWatch is provided below:

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NASA Book Shows How Space Station Research Offers "Benefits for Humanity"

A new book from NASA is showing how research aboard the International Space Station helps improve lives on Earth while advancing NASA's ambitious human exploration goals.

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NASA Selects Leading-Edge Technology Concepts for Continued Study

NASA has selected seven technology proposals for continued study under Phase II of the agency's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, including one from JPL.

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With One Year to Jupiter, NASA's Juno Team Prepares

With one year remaining in a five-year trek, NASA's Juno mission team is preparing for the spacecraft's expedition to the solar system's largest planet.

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NASA Book Shows How Space Station Research Offers "Benefits for Humanity"

A new book from NASA is showing how research aboard the International Space Station helps improve lives on Earth while advancing NASA's ambitious human exploration goals.

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Dawn Holding in Second Mapping Orbit

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is healthy and stable, after experiencing an anomaly in the system that controls its orientation.

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Opportunity Rover's 7th Mars Winter to Include New Study Area

NASA's Opportunity rover has resumed driving after Mars emerged from behind the sun. Plans call for the rover to examine sites in Marathon Valley during the upcoming winter.

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From Satellite Swarms to Interstellar Submarines, NASA Selects Leading-Edge Technology Concepts for Continued Study

NASA has selected seven technology proposals for continued study under Phase II of the agency's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program. The selections are based on the potential to transform future aerospace missions, introduce new capabilities or significantly improve current approaches to building and operating aerospace systems.

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NuSTAR Stares Deep into Hidden Lairs of Black Holes

The high-energy X-ray eyes of NASA's NuSTAR have peered into some of the most heavily buried supermassive black holes known.

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NASA to Hold Media Call Today to Discuss New Horizons Mission Plans Following Spacecraft Anomaly

NASA will host a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT today to discuss the New Horizons spacecraft returning to normal science operations after a July 4 anomaly. The mission remains on track to conduct the entire close flyby sequence as planned, including the July 14 flyby of Pluto.

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NASA Hosts Media Day Featuring Airborne Storm Mission

NASA will host a media event Saturday, July 11 showcasing Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN), a new multi-agency airborne research campaign currently studying summer storm systems in the U.S. Great Plains.

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Lander update – 6 July

Is there any news from @Philae2014 on Comet #67P? Video update from the LCC: (FW) #Philae #Rosetta http://pic.twitter.com/7tENTWrAd1 — DLR - English (@DLR_en) July 6, 2015

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CometWatch 23 June

Today's CometWatch entry shows a view of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken on 23 June, when Rosetta was 197 km from the comet centre. This single frame NAVCAM image has a resolution of 16.8 m/pixel and it measures 17.2 km across. In this orientation, the small comet lobe points to the bottom left, and the large lobe to the top right. The comet's activity, enhanced through image processing in LightRoom, is visible all around the nucleus. In the foreground, the image shows parts of the Ash region on the large lobe, as well as providing an oblique view on the smooth plains of Imhotep towards the right. Parts of the large lobe, as well as the neck and small lobe, are cast in shadow, and only a small portion of the rough Anuket region is lit. Nevertheless, the full outline of the nucleus can be unmistakably seen as a silhouette against the diffuse glow of the coma. Today, Rosetta is at around 160 km from the comet and is continuing to fly over the region which is thought to be most optimal to receive a signal from Philae, which is located on the small lobe. However, no further signals from the lander have been received since 24 June and the mission teams are working hard to understand the situation. After careful study of the comet environment, Rosetta will decrease its minimum distance to the comet during next week, up to a closest approach at 155 km. The original 1024 x 1024 image of today's CometWatch is provided below:

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NASA Awards Evaluations, Assessments, Studies, Services Support Contract

NASA has announced the selection of Cornell Technical Services, LLC, in Columbia, Maryland, to provide support for NASA's Science Office for Mission Assessments at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

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NASA Awards Contract for Consolidated Facility, Maintenance Services

NASA has awarded the Synergy-Achieving Consolidated Operations and Maintenance (SACOM) contract to Syncom Space Service LLC of Fort Worth, Texas.

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Stellar Sparklers That Last

A new image containing data from NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes shows a cluster of young stars expected to burn for billions of years.

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NASA Maps Beach Tar from California Oil Pipeline Spill

When an oil spill sullied beaches near Santa Barbara, California, in May, a JPL airborne instrument tested new techniques that may help responders after future oil spills.

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NASA Takes to Kansas Skies to Study Nighttime Thunderstorms

In most of the U.S., summer thunderstorms form on hot days. In the Great Plains, they often form at night. NASA is joining a multi-agency field campaign to learn why.

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NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft Stays the Course to Pluto

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is getting a final “all clear” as it speeds closer to its historic July 14 flyby of Pluto and the dwarf planet’s five moons.

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NASA Awards Earth Science Data and Information Contract

NASA has awarded the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Evolution and Development (EED)-2 contract to Raytheon Company of Riverdale, Maryland.

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NASA Takes to Kansas Skies to Study Nighttime Thunderstorms

NASA has joined a multi-agency field campaign studying summer storm systems in the U.S. Great Plains to find out why they often form after the sun goes down instead of during the heat of the day.

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NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Studies Rock-Layer Contact Zone

As Mars emerges from passing nearly behind the sun, NASA has resumed full operations of the Curiosity rover, which has reached a site where at least two rock types meet.

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Comet sinkholes generate jets

This story is mirrored from the main ESA web portal and is based on a paper just published in the journal Nature. A number of the dust jets emerging from Rosetta’s comet can be traced back to active pits that were likely formed by a sudden collapse of the surface. These ‘sinkholes’ are providing a glimpse at the chaotic and diverse interior of the comet. Rosetta has been monitoring Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko’s activity for over a year, watching how its halo of dust and gas grows as the comet moves closer to the Sun along its orbit. From a distance of a few hundred kilometres, Rosetta observes an intricate pattern of the dust jets emitted from the nucleus as they stream out into space. But now, thanks to high-resolution images from the OSIRIS camera from distances of just 10–30 km from the comet centre last year, at least some of these dust jets can be traced back to specific locations on the surface, the first time this has ever been seen. In a study reported today in the science journal Nature, 18 quasi-circular pits have been identified in the northern hemisphere of the comet, some of which are the source of continuing activity. The pits are a few tens to a few hundreds of metres in diameter and extend up to 210 m below the surface to a smooth dust-covered floor. Material is seen to be streaming from the most active pits. “We see jets arising from the fractured areas of the walls inside the pits. These fractures mean that volatiles trapped under the surface can be warmed more easily and subsequently escape into space,” says Jean-Baptiste Vincent from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, lead author of the study. Scientists analysing the images think that the pits are formed […]

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Video update from Lander Control Centre

As tweeted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) yesterday, a mini status update direct from the Lander Control Center in Cologne. In short, the teams are still working hard on trying to re-establish contact with the lander. Update on status of @Philae2014 on #67P directly from #LCC in Cologne (video) #lifeonacomet (FW) http://pic.twitter.com/sEuNeFL7l3 — DLR - English (@DLR_en) June 30, 2015

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NASA Signs Scientific and Education Agreements with Brazil

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) President José Raimundo Braga Coelho have signed agreements to further research into heliophysics and space weather and to enhance global climate study and educational opportunities.

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