NASA Arctic Field Campaign to Examine Ecosystem Impacts of Changing Climate

As part of a broad effort to study the environmental and societal effects of climate change, NASA has begun a multi-year field campaign to investigate ecological impacts of the rapidly changing climate in Alaska and northwestern Canada, such as the thawing of permafrost, wildfires and changes to wildlife habitats.

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NASA to Study Arctic Climate Change Ecosystem Impacts

NASA has begun a multi-year field campaign to investigate ecological impacts of the rapidly changing climate in Alaska and northwestern Canada.

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NASA, USAID Open Environmental Information Hub for Southeast Asia

NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Monday launched SERVIR-Mekong, a joint project to strengthen regional environmental monitoring in five countries in the lower Mekong region of Southeast Asia.

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Greenland Campaign Takes Flight to Measure Ice Sheet

An airborne campaign over Greenland this summer helps scientists prepare for a satellite mission that will monitor global ice sheets.

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NASA's Summer Research on Sea Level Rise in Greenland

Researchers camped on Greenland's ice sheet this summer studied streams that form atop the ice and carry meltwater to the ocean, where it adds to sea level rise.

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CometWatch 22 August

Today's CometWatch entry, featuring a dramatic outburst from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, was taken by Rosetta’s NAVCAM on 22 August 2015, about 336 km from the nucleus. The image scale is 28.6 m/pixel and the image measures 29.3 km across. Although the activity is extraordinarily bright even in the original (below), the image above has been lightly enhanced to give a better view of the outline of the nucleus in the lower part of the image, as well as to show the full extent of the activity. In this view, the comet is oriented with the large lobe up, revealing the Imhotep region as well as parts of Ash to the left, Aten at the centre (close to the edge and partly in shade), and Khepry to the right. The outburst seems to originate from a patch of the comet's surface between Imhotep and Khepry. The smaller lobe can be seen in the lower right part of the image, where indications of the ongoing activity over much of the comet can also be seen. Comet 67P/C-G made its closest approach to the Sun, or perihelion, on 13 August 2015, just nine days before this image was taken. Based on observations made during previous passages of the comet through the inner solar system, scientists expect the activity to remain high for several weeks after perihelion, and the comet is likely to produce more of these sudden outbursts and peaks of activity. The science instruments on Rosetta have also observed these outbursts and the teams are busy analysing the data to understand the nature of these events. These in-situ measurements are being complemented by astronomical observations from ground-based and near-Earth telescopes to try and understand the global impact of these events on the much larger coma of 67P/C-G. The original 1024 x 1024 image […]

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NASA Awards Contract for Construction of New Mission Launch Command Center at Wallops Flight Facility

NASA has awarded a contract to Harkins Contracting Inc. of Salisbury, Maryland, for the construction of a new Mission Launch Command Center (MLCC) at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia.

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Smallest 3-D Camera Offers Brain Surgery Innovation

A tiny 3-D camera for potential use in brain surgery, has been honored with a technology award.

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NASA Concludes Series of Engine Tests for Next-Gen Rocket

NASA has completed the first developmental test series on the RS-25 engines that will power the agency’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on missions deeper into space than ever before.

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NASA Television to Air Launch of Next International Space Station Crew

The next three crew members bound for the International Space Station are set to launch to the orbital outpost Wednesday, Sept. 2.

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The Fingerprints of Sea Level Rise

When you fill a sink, the water rises at the same rate to the same height in every corner. That's not the way it works with our rising seas.

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NASA Invites Student Teams to Participate in Underwater Research

NASA is offering undergraduate students an opportunity to work in the deep end of spacewalk training through the Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) activity.

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NASA Zeroes in on Ocean Rise: How Much? How Soon?

Intensive research, aided by NASA observations and analysis, points to an unavoidable future sea level rise of several feet. The question is, how quickly will it happen?

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Warming Seas and Melting Ice Sheets

NASA is applying its unique capabilities to the challenge of understanding global sea level rise.

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NASA's OMG Mission Maps Greenland's Coastline

NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland program will study how the oceans are eating away at Greenland's ice sheet and help scientists predict sea level rise.

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CometWatch 12 August – Animated

Today's CometWatch entry features three images taken over a forty-minute span on 12 August 2015, one day before the perihelion of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. They were taken by Rosetta's NAVCAM at 336 km from the comet; the images have an average resolution of 28.7 m/pixel and measure about 29.3 km across. The images were processed to enhance the comet's activity, and are presented here as an animated GIF file. Another animated file was compiled with the three unprocessed images, revealing more details on the nucleus surface. The individual images, both processed and in the original version, are provided below. In this orientation, the comet appears with the small lobe on the left and the large lobe on the right. The sequence of images gives a hint of the rotation of Comet 67P/C-G, which takes about 12.4 hours to complete a full spin. On the small lobe, we can see parts of the Ma'at, Serqet and Nut regions, while the large circular depression known as Hatmehit is cast in shadow; the smooth terrains of Anubis dominate the view of the large lobe. The original 1024 x 1024 images used in today's CometWatch animation are provided below:

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NASA Science Zeros in on Ocean Rise: How Much? How Soon?

Seas around the world have risen an average of nearly 3 inches since 1992, with some locations rising more than 9 inches due to natural variation, according to the latest satellite measurements from NASA and its partners. An intensive research effort now underway, aided by NASA observations and analysis, points to an unavoidable rise of several fee

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Soyuz Move Sets Stage for Arrival of New Space Station Crew

Half of the residents of the International Space Station will take a spin around their orbital neighborhood in the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft on Friday, Aug. 28. NASA Television coverage will begin at 2:45 a.m. EDT.

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Dawn Sends Sharper Scenes from Ceres

The closest-yet views of Ceres, delivered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, show the small world's features in unprecedented detail, including Ceres' tall, conical mountain; crater formation features and narrow, braided fractures.

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NASA Extends Contract for Training Facility Support at Johnson Space Center

NASA has signed an extension of its contract with Raytheon Company in Houston to provide support for training facilities at the agency’s Johnson Space Center, also in Houston.

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NASA Awards Contract for Engineering, Trades Support Services

NASA has selected Aerie Aerospace LLC of Huntsville, Alabama to provide engineering technicians and trades support services at the Marshall Space Flight Center, also in Huntsville, and Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

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NASA to Test Emergency Locator Transmitters by Crashing Airplane

Using a Cessna 172 dropped from a height of 100 feet, NASA’s Search and Rescue Mission Office will simulate a severe but survivable plane accident Wednesday, Aug. 26 to test emergency locator transmitters (ELTs). NASA Television will air live coverage of the test, which is scheduled to happen between 1 and 2 p.m. EDT.

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CometWatch 16 August

Today's CometWatch entry was taken three days after the perihelion of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, on 16 August 2015. At the time, Rosetta was 331 km from the comet, which in turn was just over 186 million km from the Sun and almost 265 million km from Earth. This single frame NAVCAM image has a resolution of 28.2 m/pixel and it measures 28.9 km across. With the large comet lobe pointing to the top left of the image and the small lobe to the bottom right, this spectacular view shows the activity of 67P/C-G just a few days after its closest approach to the Sun. The image has been processed in Lightroom to bring out the jets of dust streaming away from the nucleus. It is interesting to compare today's image with previous CometWatch entries, in particular those from 24 June and 14 July, in which the comet appears in a similar orientation. With that in mind, you might want to compare the images for evidence of increased activity. But take care to use the unprocessed images shown at the bottom of each CometWatch entry, not the Lightroom processed ones. In today's view, the elongated depression of Aten stands out on the large lobe, partly in shade; to its right, parts of the Aker and Khepry regions are also visible. On the small lobe, Bastet is well in sight while Ma'at and Hatmehit are cast in shadow, as are also Hapi on the neck and parts of Babi, Seth and Ash on the large lobe. To find your way around the regions of 67P/C-G, you can explore the recently released interactive comet viewer. The original 1024 x 1024 image of today's CometWatch is provided below:

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NASA Holds Media Opportunities to Discuss Rising Sea Levels

In a series of media opportunities Wednesday, Aug. 26, through Friday, Aug. 28, NASA experts will present an up-to-date global outlook on current conditions and future projections of sea level rise.

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Cassini's Final Breathtaking Close Views of Dione

A pockmarked, icy landscape looms beneath NASA's Cassini spacecraft in new images of Saturn's moon Dione taken during the mission's last close approach to the small, icy world.

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NASA Holds Media Opportunities to Discuss Rising Sea Levels

In a series of media opportunities Wednesday, Aug. 26 through Friday, Aug. 28, NASA experts will present an up-to-date global outlook on current conditions and future projections of sea level rise.

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Colorful Calendar Celebrates 12th Anniversary of NASA's Spitzer

Relive the highlights of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope mission with a new digital calendar.

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NASA: California Drought Causing Valley Land to Sink

A new NASA report shows land in California's San Joaquin Valley is sinking faster than ever as Californians continue pumping groundwater in response to the historic drought.

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NASA: There is No Asteroid Threatening Earth

NASA scientists provide real science to debunk wild Internet rumors about an alleged September asteroid impact.

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NASA Begins to Build Satellite Mission to Improve Hurricane Forecasting

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina formed in the Atlantic, construction of NASA’s next-generation hurricane-observing satellite mission now is underway in Texas.

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Send Your Name to Mars on NASA's Next Red Planet Mission

Mars enthusiasts can participate in NASA's journey to Mars by adding their names to a silicon microchip headed to Mars aboard NASA's InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch next year.

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NASA Mars Rover Moves Onward After 'Marias Pass' Studies

After taking a low-angle selfie at its latest drilling site, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has departed the area called "Marias Pass," where it had been working since May.

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What made the comet sing?

This blog post is contributed by Bárbara Ferreira, EGU Media and Communications Manager. Late last year the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) announced that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has been studying in detail since August 2014, was singing in space. Now, in a paper published in the European Geosciences Union’s open access journal Annales Geophysicae, the RPC team reveals more details about 67P/C-G’s song, including why the comet was singing. The sounds ‘emitted’ by 67P/C-G are oscillations in the magnetic field around the comet. Its space environment is permeated by the solar wind – a continuous stream of electrically charged gas (called plasma) and magnetic field lines strung along from the Sun – which interacts with the comet’s gas-dust atmosphere. A consequence of this interaction is an induced cometary magnetosphere. In other words, even though the nucleus of 67P/C-G has no magnetic field of its own (as announced at this year’s EGU General Assembly), the comet’s atmosphere or coma is magnetised. As reported in Annales Geophysicae, the RPC magnetometer on Rosetta started to detect large-amplitude fluctuations in this magnetic field upon arrival of the spacecraft at the comet on 6 August 2014. For four months, until November 2014, the RPC team detected about 3000 cases of wave activity with frequencies of about 40 millihertz. “This is exciting because it is completely new to us. We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening,” said RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glassmeier at the time ESA reported the discovery of the ‘singing comet’ waves on the Rosetta blog. Glassmeier is Head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, and the senior author of the Annales Geophysicae paper. This observation took the team somewhat by surprise because it is […]

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Send Your Name to Mars on NASA's Next Red Planet Mission

Mars enthusiasts around the world can participate in NASA’s journey to Mars by adding their names to a silicon microchip headed to the Red Planet aboard NASA's InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch next year.

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NASA Awards Grants to Expand STEM Education at Minority Serving Institutions

NASA's Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) has selected five universities for cooperative agreement awards totaling $6 million to provide educator training and expand course offerings in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

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Do comet fractures drive surface evolution?

Extreme thermal stresses experienced by a comet as it orbits around the Sun could explain the extensive fracturing thought to drive its long-term surface erosion, say Rosetta scientists analysing high-resolution images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s surface. The study, which is published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is based on images taken between 6 August 2014 – when Rosetta first arrived at the comet – and 1 March 2015, and includes detailed images acquired from between just 8 and 18 km from the comet’s surface. Ramy’s team identified three distinct settings in which the fractures occur: networks of long narrow fractures, fractures on cliffs and fractured boulders. In addition, several unique features were identified: the parallel fractures running across Hathor’s 900 m-high cliffs, an isolated 500 metre-long crevice in the Anuket region of the comet’s neck, and a 200 m-long complex crack system in Aker on the large lobe. “The fractures show a variety of morphologies and occur all over the surface and at all scales: they are found in the towering 900 m-high cliffs of Hathor right down to the surfaces of boulders a few metres across,” describes lead author M. Ramy El-Maarry from the University of Bern. The most prevalent setting appears to be networks of narrow fractures that extend for a few metres to 250 m in length, typically on relatively flat surfaces. Interestingly, in some locations, the fractures appear to cross cut each other in polygonal patterns at angles of 90º – on Earth and Mars this is often an indicator of ice that has contracted below the surface. Another family of cross-cutting fractures is observed on cliff faces, such as in the Seth region on the comet’s large lobe, with debris deposits littering their bases. Fractured cliff faces were also observed at Abydos, the final […]

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Bad Weather Again Delays Launch of Japanese Cargo Ship to Space Station

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has postponed the launch of its H-II Transport Vehicle (HTV)-5 to the International Space Station to 7:50 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Aug. 19. NASA Television will carry live coverage of the event beginning at 7 a.m.

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Foul Weather Forecast Delays Launch of Japanese Cargo Ship to Space Station

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has pushed the launch of its H-II Transport Vehicle (HTV)-5 to the International Space Station to 8:35 a.m. EDT on Monday, Aug. 17. NASA Television will carry live coverage of the event beginning at 7:45 a.m.

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NASA Awards Grants for Technologies That Could Transform Space Exploration

NASA has selected eight university-led proposals to study innovative, early stage technologies that will address high-priority needs of America's space program.

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NASA Selects Contractor for Propellants, Life Support Services

NASA has selected URS Federal Technical Services, Inc. of Germantown, Maryland, an AECOM company, to fulfill the KSC Propellants and Life Support Services Contract (KPLSS) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

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NASA Awards Contract for IT Services at Langley Research Center

NASA has awarded its Langley Information Technology Enhanced Services II (LITES II) contract to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of McLean, Virginia for information technology (IT) services at the agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

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NASA Awards Contract for Support Services at Glenn Research Center

NASA has selected Alcyon Technical Services JV, LLC of Huntsville, Alabama to provide technical information, administrative and logistics support services at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

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Cassini to Make Last Close Flyby of Saturn Moon Dione

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will zip past Saturn's moon Dione on Monday, Aug. 17 -- the final close flyby of this icy satellite during the spacecraft's long mission.

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Rosetta’s big day in the Sun

ESA’s Rosetta today witnessed Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko making its closest approach to the Sun. The exact moment of perihelion occurred at 02:03 GMT this morning when the comet came within 186 million km of the Sun. Read the full story and see the latest images on the ESA Web Portal. (coming soon on the blog too)

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NASA TV Coverage Set for Japanese Cargo Craft Launch to Space Station

The launch of a Japanese cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station will be broadcast live on NASA Television on Sunday, Aug. 16, followed by live coverage of its arrival at the orbiting laboratory Thursday, Aug. 20.

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New: Interactive viewer for comet 67P/C-G

In the week that we celebrate a year that Rosetta has been at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and mark their passage through perihelion, we are delighted to present a new interactive tool that allows you to explore the shape and surface of this intriguing comet. View Rosetta’s comet is based on images taken with Rosetta’s navigation camera, NAVCAM. Since November 2014, these images have been released under a Creative Commons license, which allows you to share them with whomever you like, to publish them on your blog or elsewhere, as well as to adapt, process, and modify them. As of 30 July this year, more than 6800 NAVCAM images are available to download from ESA’s Archive Image Browser, and that number will increase with the regular addition of many more as Rosetta's mission continues. From reactions that we’ve had on this blog, via social media, and meeting people at events we know that many of you are intrigued and fascinated by Comet 67P/C-G — as we are. As far back as August last year, when the unusual shape of this comet became clear, we saw the need for an interactive way of exploring the surface of the comet. More recently, we started to wonder about what could be done with the Rosetta images and 3D computer models of the shape of the comet. A conversation that started on a Friday evening as a "Wouldn’t it be great if we had an interactive way to view the comet?" set our colleague Oliver Jennrich thinking, and by the following Monday morning he had come up with a simple prototype tool using a shape model that had been developed by Mattias Malmer an image processing expert and space enthusiast living in Sweden. Mattias used publicly available NAVCAM images to generate his model and then made […]

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A shape model – what’s that?

Today, a new shape model of Rosetta’s comet is released by ESA. Some of you might immediately know what this is and how you might use it, and others will wonder ‘what’s that?’  This blog post, which has been prepared with the help of experts from the Rosetta Flight Dynamics team, explains what a shape model is, how it is created, and what you could use it for. At the most basic level, a shape model is a geometrical representation of an object. Shape models are commonly used in computer programmes where the motion or change of shape of a complex object needs to be represented. Applications can vary from medical imaging of organs, creating characters in cartoons and computer games, or — closer to home (at least for the Rosetta team) — modelling how the surface of a comet changes as it rotates. Back in the summer of 2014, the Rosetta mission operations and flight dynamics teams were faced with the mammoth task of figuring out how to approach and navigate around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After a year of marvellous close-up views of this comet it’s easy to forget that early models of the comet bore very little resemblance to the reality. The first hints that the comet might not have a simple shape came in July 2014, when images taken by the scientific camera, OSIRIS, revealed a double-lobed object. It was soon clear that navigation would be a challenge, and an important factor in successful navigation would be a robust shape model. The first, crude shape models were constructed by the flight dynamics team, using a method called silhouette carving. For this, software is used to map the silhouette of the comet, as seen in NavCam images, onto a large ‘virtual’ body and the parts of the body that […]

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Gecko Grippers Moving On Up

Geckos have inspired a technology to make things stick together in space.

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NASA Selects Proposals to Build Better Batteries for Space Exploration

NASA's Game Changing Development (GCD) program has selected two proposals for Phase II awards targeted toward developing new energy storage technologies to replace the battery systems currently used by America's space program.

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Rosetta Comet Outburst Captured

A dramatic outburst from Rosetta's target comet is recorded by several instruments, including the Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer, which uses NASA-built electronics.

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Space's Top 40: How CubeSats are Revolutionizing Radio Science

Next time you tune in to public radio or the hottest Top 40 radio station, you'll be using some of the same tools NASA uses to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

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NASA Selects Contractor to Prepare Launch Structure for Agency’s Journey to Mars

NASA has selected J. P. Donovan Construction, Inc., of Rockledge, Florida to begin work at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the ground structures that will launch NASA’s next generation rocket and spacecraft on the journey to Mars and other deep space destinations.

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NASA TV to Air Test of Space Launch System Engine

NASA Television will broadcast live coverage Thursday, Aug. 13 of the penultimate hot fire test of an RS-25 engine. This is one of four engines that will power the core stage of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), and carry the agency’s Orion crew capsule as part of the journey to Mars and other deep space destinations.

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NASA TV Airs Test of Space Launch System Engine

NASA Television will broadcast live coverage Thursday, Aug. 13 of the penultimate hot fire test of an RS-25 engine. This is one of four engines that will power the core stage of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), and carry the agency’s Orion crew capsule as part of the journey to Mars and other deep space destinations.

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Oxymoronic Black Hole Provides Clues to Growth

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the 6.5-meter Clay Telescope in Chile have identified the smallest supermassive black hole ever detected in the center of a galaxy. This oxymoronic object could provide clues to how larger black holes formed along with their host galaxies 13 billion years or more in the past.

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NASA TV to Host Perseid Meteor Shower Program

Thanks to a new moon, this week’s Perseid meteor shower is expected to be one of the best in years, and NASA Television will bring viewers a front row seat.

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One Decade after Launch, Mars Orbiter Still Going Strong

Ten years after launch, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed the Red Planet's diversity and activity, and its work is far from over.

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Comet’s firework display ahead of perihelion

This article is mirrored from the main ESA Web Portal. In the approach to perihelion over the past few weeks, Rosetta has been witnessing growing activity from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, with one dramatic outburst event proving so powerful that it even pushed away the incoming solar wind. The comet reaches perihelion on Thursday, the moment in its 6.5-year orbit when it is closest to the Sun. In recent months, the increasing solar energy has been warming the comet’s frozen ices, turning them to gas, which pours out into space, dragging dust along with it. The period around perihelion is scientifically very important, as the intensity of the sunlight increases and parts of the comet previously cast in years of darkness are flooded with sunlight. Although the comet’s general activity is expected to peak in the weeks following perihelion, much as the hottest days of summer usually come after the longest days, sudden and unpredictable outbursts can occur at any time – as already seen earlier in the mission. On 29 July, Rosetta observed the most dramatic outburst yet, registered by several of its instruments from their vantage point 186 km from the comet. They imaged the outburst erupting from the nucleus, witnessed a change in the structure and composition of the gaseous coma environment surrounding Rosetta, and detected increased levels of dust impacts. Perhaps most surprisingly, Rosetta found that the outburst had pushed away the solar wind magnetic field from around the nucleus. A sequence of images taken by Rosetta’s scientific camera OSIRIS show the sudden onset of a well-defined jet-like feature emerging from the side of the comet’s neck, in the Anuket region. It was first seen in an image taken at 13:24 GMT, but not in an image taken 18 minutes earlier, and has faded significantly in an image […]

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CometWatch 6 August

Today's CometWatch entry is an image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken on 6 August 2015, exactly a year to the day of Rosetta's historic rendezvous. The image was taken 261 km from the comet centre. Currently, the comet is around 186 million km from the Sun, and it will reach perihelion – the closest point to the Sun along its orbit – next Thursday. This image shows an intense comet activity, with prominent outflows and jets of material and the unlit patches of the nucleus standing out as a silhouette against the overall bright background. Due to the increased concentration of gas and dust over the last few months, Rosetta is now studying the comet from safer distances, and is currently operating some 300 km out. In the spirit of celebrating Rosetta's first year at the comet, we tried to compare this image with one that was taken exactly one year ago, on rendezvous day, 6 August 2014. The result was posted as ESA's Space Science Image of the Week. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel image for today’s CometWatch entry is provided below:  

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NASA's Europa Mission Team Joins Forces for the First Time

Like legendary superheroes, all space missions have origin stories. NASA's Europa mission team recently wrote the final chapter of theirs, with their first team meeting.

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NASA Astronauts Speak with Challenger Center Conference from Space Station

Students, members of the public and attendees at the Challenger Center’s International Conference will speak with Expedition 44 crew members aboard the International Space Station at 9 a.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 13.

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Nature, Chinese Pollution Offset U.S. West Ozone Gains

An expected reduction in atmospheric ozone levels over the western U.S. was offset by natural atmospheric processes and pollutants crossing the Pacific Ocean from China.

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NASA Invites Education Reporters to Get #spacED at Johnson

NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is inviting education-focused media to attend a two-day #spacED event on Sept. 15 and 16. The event will highlight the International Space Station and the one-year mission with astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko.

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NASA Opens New CubeSat Opportunities for Low-Cost Space Exploration

Space enthusiasts have an opportunity to contribute to NASA’s exploration goals through the next round of the agency’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. Applicants must submit their proposals electronically by 4:30 p.m. EST, Nov. 24.

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Join our Perihelion Hangout!

Join us for a Google hangout with Rosetta mission experts to celebrate perihelion – the closest point to the Sun along the comet’s orbit. The hangout will be streamed live on 13 August at 13:00 GMT / 15:00 CEST – watch it here. The Hangout will be hosted by Emily Baldwin (ESA Space Science Editor) who will be joined by: Nico Altobelli - Acting Rosetta Project Scientist, ESAC Michael Küppers - Rosetta Science Operations Coordinator, ESAC Sylvain Lodiot - Rosetta Spacecraft Operations Manager, ESOC Armelle Hubault - Rosetta Spacecraft Operations Engineer, ESOC Barbara Cozzoni - Philae Lander Engineer, DLR Holger Sierks - OSIRIS Principal Investigator, MPS Joel Parker - Alice instrument Deputy-PI, SwRI Colin Snodgrass - Professional ground-based observing campaign coordinator, Open University Aurelie Moussi-Soffys - Science activities manager for Philae, SONC (CNES) Background info on perihelion, including FAQ: http://ift.tt/1L1M55R Sign up on Google+: http://ift.tt/1gHmumt Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaBZbc6WGLs

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NASA to Share the Universe with Tumblr Users

NASA is launching an official Tumblr profile that will give Tumblr users a regular dose of space in a blog-like format through text, photos, videos and more.

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NASA to Share the Universe with Tumblr Users

NASA is launching an official Tumblr profile that will give Tumblr users a regular dose of space in a blog-like format through text, photos, videos and more.

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Veteran Russian Cosmonauts Set for Spacewalk on NASA TV

NASA Television will broadcast live coverage of a six-hour spacewalk by two Russian crew members aboard the International Space Station beginning at 9:45 a.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 10.

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Amateur astronomers keeping an eye on the comet

This post is an interview with Padma A. Yanamandra-Fisher, a Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute, USA, and the Rosetta Coordinator of Amateur Observations for 67P/C-G. Q: When did the amateur campaign to observe Rosetta's comet start? A: The first observations of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by amateur astronomers for this stretch of the comet's orbit, leading to the 2015 perihelion, were performed in March 2014. At the time, the comet was very faint and only visible from the southern hemisphere, with a magnitude around 20, just at the limit of detection by small telescopes. In addition, the comet was in a highly dense star field and not always easy to image. From March to November 2014, we received about a dozen or so decent images from amateurs located at various locations such as Australia, South America, the USA and some parts of Europe. We compiled these early amateur images of the comet in a short video produced by Carolyn Collins Petersen. Then, from the end of 2014 to April 2015, the comet was too close to the Sun on the sky to be observed from Earth. On 13 April, amateur astronomers Jean-Francois Soulier, Jean-Gabriel Bosch and Alain Maury recovered the comet using (remotely) the Space Observatory in Chile, at a magnitude of 16.8. This detection kicked off the worldwide campaign to observe 67P/C-G in 2015. Q: How many members joined the campaign so far and where are they based? A: So far, about 250 amateur astronomers have signed up to join the campaign. They are based all over the world, from Europe to South America, from Australia to India, from South Africa to the Caribbean. However, as the comet is very low above the horizon at northern latitudes, it was predominantly observed with telescopes in the southern hemisphere until […]

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Cruise Over Ceres in New Video

Striking 3-D detail highlights a towering mountain, the brightest spots and other features on dwarf planet Ceres in a new video from NASA's Dawn mission.

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NASA, Space Station Partners Announce Crew Members for Missions in 2017

NASA and its International Space Station (ISS) partners have announced the crew members for missions to the orbiting laboratory in 2017. The selection includes first-time space flyers NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Jack Fischer.

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In Africa, More Smoke Leads to Less Rain, NASA Shows

Agricultural fires in North Africa reduce the region's rainfall during the dry season, according to a NASA study.

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Celebrating a year at the comet

This article is mirrored from the main ESA Web Portal ESA’s Rosetta mission today celebrates one year at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, with its closest approach to the Sun now just one week away. It’s been a long but exciting journey for Rosetta since its launch in 2004, featuring Earth, Mars and two asteroid flybys before arriving at its ultimate destination on 6 August 2014. Over the following months, the mission became the first ever to orbit a comet and the first to soft land a probe – Philae – on its surface. The mission teams have had to overcome many challenges in learning to fly in an unpredictable and sometimes inhospitable environment, and the spacecraft has returned a wealth of outstanding scientific data from this intriguing comet, spanning its interior, the dramatic surface and the surrounding cloud of dust, gas and plasma. “This mission is about scientific discovery and every day there is something new to wonder at and try to understand,” says Nicolas Altobelli, acting Rosetta project scientist. “A year of observations near to the comet has provided us with a wealth of information about it, and we’re looking forward to another year of exploration.” Highlights thus far have included the discovery that the comet’s water vapour has a different ‘flavour’ to Earth’s oceans, fuelling the debate on the possible role of comets and asteroids in delivering water to our planet in its early history. The first detection of molecular nitrogen in a comet provided important clues about the temperature environment in which the comet was ‘born’. Molecular nitrogen was common when the Solar System was forming, but required very low temperatures to become trapped in ice, so Rosetta’s measurements support the theory that comets originate from the cold and distant Kuiper Belt. Data collected by Rosetta and Philae during […]

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NASA Names New Manager of International Space Station Program

NASA’s springboard for discovery, innovation and deep space exploration has a new chief. The agency has named Kirk Shireman as the new manager of its International Space Station (ISS) Program, based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Shireman has served as deputy center director since 2013.

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New Online Exploring Tools Bring NASA Journey's to Mars to New Generation

On the three-year anniversary of the Mars landing of NASA's Curiosity rover, NASA is unveiling two new online tools, inviting the public to help with its journey to Mars.

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New Online Tools Bring NASA’s Journey to Mars to New Generation of Explorers

On the three-year anniversary of the Mars landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover, NASA is unveiling two new online tools that open the mysterious terrain of the Red Planet to a new generation of explorers, inviting the public to help with its journey to Mars.

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NASA Notifies Congress About Space Station Contract Modification with Russia

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress Wednesday informing members that, due to continued reductions in the president’s funding requests for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA was forced to extend its existing contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to transport American as

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Researchers Use 'Seafloor Gardens' to Switch on Light Bulb

How did the very first life forms on Earth get an electrical boost? New laboratory experiments offer clues.

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NASA Awards U.S Global Change Research Program Support Services Contract

NASA has awarded a contract for technical and programmatic support services for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) National Coordination Office in Washington to ICF Incorporated, LLC of Fairfax, Virginia.

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NASA Deputy Administrator to Tour Composites Technology Center at Marshall

NASA Deputy Administrator to Tour Composites Technology Center at Marshall

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NASA Invites Media to Orion Spacecraft Parachute Test in Arizona

NASA is inviting media to attend a test of the Orion spacecraft’s parachutes on Wednesday, Aug. 26 at the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. An engineering model of the spacecraft will drop from an airplane 35,000 feet up to evaluate how it fares when the parachute system does not perform as expected.

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CometWatch 30 July

Today’s spectacular CometWatch entry was taken by Rosetta’s NAVCAM on 30 July 2015 from a distance of 178 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image scale is 15.2 m/pixel and the image measures 15.6 km across. Although the activity is visible even in the original image (below), the contrast has been increased in the enhanced image above to better show off these details. It is clear from the prominent jets of dust and gas streaming from the nucleus and out to the edge of the camera’s field of view that activity is becoming more intense – the comet is now just over a week from perihelion on 13 August, its closest approach to the Sun along its orbit. But, while the increasing activity provides dramatic views, it can also lead to difficulties in navigation. Indeed, Rosetta’s star trackers have struggled to identify stars among the large amount of debris being ejected from the nucleus during the last week and is therefore currently moving to safer distances – it will be at about 300 km by Saturday. For more information about perihelion, see our background article and FAQ. Full details of our perihelion Google+ Hangout on 13 August are also coming very soon. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel image for today’s CometWatch entry is provided below:

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Tracking A Mysterious Group of Asteroid Outcasts

Astronomers may have found the source of a particularly hard-to-spot group of near-Earth asteroids, thanks to a once-dormant NASA space telescope.

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First release of Rosetta comet phase data from four orbiter instruments

ESA’s Rosetta downlink and archive teams are very happy to announce the release today of the first wave of Rosetta instrument data from the “comet pre-landing phase” via the Planetary Science Archive. Data from four instruments are included in this release: COSIMA, OSIRIS, ROSINA, and RPC-MAG. After Rosetta woke up from 31 months hibernation in January 2014, its scientific instruments were turned back on and checked out before being used to study Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during the approach, rendezvous, and escort phases. As agreed between ESA and the funding bodies responsible for Rosetta’s instruments, their data are initially made available to the corresponding scientific teams for first analysis, with a significant number of Rosetta papers published based on these data, as described in previous blog posts. After a nominal period of 6 months, the scientific data themselves are to be delivered to ESA to be placed in the public domain via the Planetary Science Archive (PSA) for use by all scientists and the wider public. In practice, it was agreed to deliver data to ESA for release in blocks, and the first of those blocks was defined as the ‘pre-landing phase’, i.e. covering the period from January 2014 to just after Philae’s landing on the comet in mid-November 2014. This led to a date of 19 May for the instrument teams to deliver the data from that phase to ESA, following which, a very significant effort had to be made by the ESA team to process the datasets of the many instruments involved and prepare them for release. What did this processing entail? Firstly, the data and the associated metadata had to be checked for completeness and for compliance with standard formats to ensure that they can be downloaded and analysed by other scientists in a transparent manner. This involved interactions […]

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