Communicating Astronomy with the Public: Rosetta special

We're delighted to announce a special issue of the "Communicating Astronomy with the Public" journal, which provides exclusive behind-the-scenes insights into the outreach surrounding the Rosetta Mission. Including articles written by ESA's communication team behind the competitions, cartoons, and social media campaigns, and reviews from external journalists and documentary film-makers following this iconic mission. The table of contents is listed below. Read the full journal, free online here. Explained in 60 Seconds: Why Visit a Comet? (Emily Baldwin) The Strategy and Implementation of the Rosetta Communication Campaign (Markus Bauer, Mark McCaughrean, Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin) How a Cartoon Series Helped the Public Care about Rosetta and Philae (Claudia Mignone, Emily Baldwin, Karen S. O’Flaherty, Anne-Mareike Homfeld, Markus Bauer, Mark McCaughrean, Sebastian Marcu, Carlo Palazzari) Behind the Scenes of the Discovery Channel’s Rosetta Mission Documentary Special (Shelley Ayres) Ambition: A Risky Adventure in Science Communication (Mark McCaughrean) “Hello, World!” Harnessing Social Media for the Rosetta Mission (Emily Baldwin, Claudia Mignone, Daniel Scuka, Anne-Mareike Homfeld, Karin Ranero Celius, Erica Rolfe, Maria Bennett, Andreas Schepers, Karen S. O’Flaherty, Markus Bauer, Mark McCaughrean) Using Competitions to Engage the Public: Lessons Learnt from Rosetta (Karen S. O’Flaherty, Emily Baldwin, Claudia Mignone, Anne-Mareike Homfeld, Daniel Scuka, Andreas Schepers, Manuela Braun, Fulvia Croci, Livia Giacomini, Nathalie Journo, Markus Bauer, Mark McCaughrean) Live Blogging Science News: The Rosetta Mission (Stuart Clark) An Historic Encounter: Reviewing the Outreach around ESA’s Rosetta Mission (Dirk Lorenzen)  

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NASA’s Spitzer Maps Climate Patterns on a Super-Earth

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have led to the first temperature map of a super-Earth planet -- a rocky planet nearly two times as big as ours. The map reveals extreme temperature swings from one side of the planet to the other, and hints that a possible reason for this is the presence of lava flows.

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NASA's 'Spaceport of the Future' Reaches Another Milestone

NASA has completed a major milestone on its journey to Mars and is ready to begin another phase of work on its spaceport of the future, where the next generation of astronauts will launch to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

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NASA’s ‘Spaceport of the Future’ Reaches Another Milestone

NASA has completed a major milestone on its journey to Mars and is ready to begin another phase of work on its spaceport of the future, where the next generation of astronauts will launch to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

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NASA Awards Contract for Atmospheric Science Research

NASA has awarded a contract to Science Systems and Applications, Inc. of Lanham, Maryland, to conduct atmospheric sciences support services for the Science Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, as well as for the broader Earth science community.

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NASA Selects Instrument Team to Build Next-Gen Planet Hunter

NASA has selected a team to build a new, cutting-edge instrument that will detect planets outside our solar system by measuring the miniscule “wobbling” of stars. The instrument will be the centerpiece of a new partnership with the National Science Foundation called the NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research program.

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NASA Awards Information Technology Services Contract

NASA has awarded an Information Technology Services (ITS) contract to SaiTech, Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland, for provision of a wide range of IT services to be performed at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

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Media Invited to See NASA's Green Propulsion Spacecraft

Media are invited to see a NASA spacecraft that is safer on the ground and more efficient in space during a tour March 31 at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, showcasing NASA's Green Propulsion Infusion Mission (GPIM).

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Russian Space Station Cargo Ship Launch, Docking to Air on NASA TV

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the launch and docking of an unpiloted Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress 63P, to resupply the International Space Station.

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NASA Highlights Array of Experiments Launching on Next SpaceX Cargo Mission

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, March 28, to discuss cutting edge science investigations launching aboard the upcoming SpaceX commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station.

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CometWatch 19 March

This week’s CometWatch entry from Rosetta’s NAVCAM was taken on 19 March from a distance of just 12 km. It captures a beautiful oblique view across the plains of Imhotep, taking in the cluster of boulders to the right of the image that includes 25m high Cheops. The rugged, fractured terrain and debris slopes in the background, where Imhotep meets Khepry, makes for a spectacular horizon. This region can also be seen, albeit from a much different orientation but which shows the wider context of the region, in the OSIRIS wide-angle camera image below captured on 16 March. Following the brief encounter at these close distances, Rosetta is now heading out on an anti-sunward excursion to around 1000 km to investigate the comet’s wider coma, tail and plasma environment. Today, 24 March, Rosetta is already over 200 km away from the comet. The current plan is for Rosetta to make a 30 km zero phase flyby around 9 April, before entering back into closer bound orbits by 21 April. Follow the spacecraft’s trajectory in the coming weeks with the Rosetta NOW tool. The original 1024 x 1024 pixel NAVCAM image is provided below:

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NASA Gets Down to Earth This Year With Globe-Spanning Expeditions

NASA is sending scientists around the world in 2016 – from the edge of the Greenland ice sheet to the coral reefs of the South Pacific – to delve into challenging questions about how our planet is changing and what impacts humans are having on it.

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NASA Announces Dates for One of World’s Largest Hackathons

NASA’s open innovation incubator, the International Space Apps Challenge, will take place April 22-24. The global main stage for this year’s event will be in Pasadena, California, with local events taking place simultaneously in 193 locations spanning 72 countries.

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NASA Sends Fire, Meteor Experiments to International Space Station on Commercial Cargo Spacecraft

Scientific investigations of fire in microgravity and grippers inspired by geckos are among the nearly 7,500 pounds of cargo headed to the International Space Station aboard an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft, along with equipment to support some 250 other experiments and studies aboard the world’s only orbital laboratory.ry.

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Comet’s dust trail stretches over 10 million km

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Geraimenko’s dust trail has been observed to stretch at least 10 million kilometres in the latest images taken by professional astronomers working on the ground-based observing campaign. The image mosaic shown here is composed of four images taken using the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma on the night of 12 March. The image shows reflected light from dust grains and highlights the comet’s various tail structures. Similar images were obtained by amateur astronomers a few months ago when the comet was closer to the Sun and much brighter. Most striking is the long trail, stretching over two degrees from the comet – equivalent to the apparent size of four full Moons on the sky as seen from Earth (see graphic below for scale) – or greater than 10 million kilometres at the comet's distance. By comparison, Rosetta is flying beside the comet nucleus as close as just 10 km. The long trail is made up of larger grains left behind in the orbit of the comet, probably from several previous passages of the comet around the Sun. When the Earth passes through similar dust trails from other comets it gives rise to meteor showers. Unfortunately this won’t happen with 67P/C-G, as the orbit does not approach our planet. The shorter dust tail just below the trail is a 'neck-line' structure, made from dust grains ejected by the comet during this current orbit. Any anti-solar tail of the comet would be to the south but not so readily seen; in any case it would be very foreshortened in this geometry as the comet was at opposition, and at about 3 degrees phase angle, so the tail is mostly 'behind' the coma from our point of view. See our previous blog post “Twin tails” for more about the […]

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CometWatch 15 March

This week's CometWatch is an image taken by Rosetta's NAVCAM on 15 March, when the spacecraft was about 13 km from the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image shows a portion of the small comet lobe, centred on the large depression in the Hatmehit region. The basin and the declining slopes adjacent to it appear to be covered in smooth material, as well as a multitude of boulders of various sizes. Parts of the neighbouring regions are also visible in this view: the rough terrains of Maftet to the top left; the smoother Ma'at, blanketed in dust, just above and to the right of Hatmehit in this view; and a hint of the Nut region, heavily covered with boulders, on the top edge. A close-up view on the Hatmehit region, taken with Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 5 March, was also released last week via the OSIRIS image of the day website. Snapped from a different perspective, the OSIRIS view reveals the other side of the cliff that is featured in the lower part of the NAVCAM image. Another narrow-angle OSIRIS image, taken on 12 March and released yesterday, offers a beautiful view on more of the comet's boulders, this time in the Hapi region, on the neck of 67P/C-G. In this orientation, the comet small lobe is in the foreground, occupying the central and right parts of the image, while hints of the large lobe and neck can be seen on the left. On the small lobe, it is possible to see parts of the smooth, dust-covered terrains of Ma'at, with a cluster of boulders close to the edge. The lower left part of the image displays the smooth dust and large boulders sprinkled over the Hapi region, and a small portion of Babi can be seen in the […]

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NASA Targets Early April for Eighth SpaceX Cargo Launch

Media accreditation now is open for the April launch of a cargo resupply service mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft is targeted for launch at 4:43 p.m. EDT Friday, April 8.

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NASA TV Coverage Set for Fifth Orbital ATK Resupply Mission to Space Station

NASA commercial provider Orbital ATK is scheduled to launch its fifth mission to the International Space Station Tuesday, March 22 under the agency’s Commercial Resupply Services contract. Live launch coverage will begin at 10 p.m. EDT on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

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Planetary Conference to Feature Ceres, Mars, Pluto Science Results

Researchers from NASA and other institutions will present science results from the agency’s Mars missions, New Horizons flyby of Pluto, and Dawn mission observations of the dwarf planet Ceres during the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference March 21-25 near Houston.

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NASA Selects American Small Business, Research Institution Projects for Continued Development

NASA has selected 137 research and technology proposals from 117 American small businesses and research institutions that will enable NASA's future missions into deep space, while also benefiting the U.S. economy right here on Earth.

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NASA Television to Air Women’s History Month STEM Event at Goddard

In partnership with the White House Council on Women and Girls, NASA will host a Women’s History Month event Wednesday, March 16 that examines the role of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), featuring some of NASA’s top leaders – women in STEM. The event at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,

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NASA Selects Proposals to Build Better Solar Technologies for Deep Space Missions

NASA’s Game Changing Development (GCD) program has selected four proposals to develop solar array technologies that will aid spacecraft in exploring destinations well beyond low-Earth orbit, including Mars.

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Kavandi to Succeed Free as Glenn Research Center Director, Free Joins NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named former astronaut Janet Kavandi director of the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Kavandi has been serving as Glenn’s deputy director since February 2015. She succeeds Jim Free, who was named deputy associate administrator for technical in the agency’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Di

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NASA Administrator Pays Tribute to Astronaut Scott Kelly

Statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the retirement of astronaut Scott Kelly.

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Astronaut Scott Kelly to Retire from NASA in April

NASA astronaut and one-year crew member Scott Kelly will retire from the agency, effective April 1. Kelly joined the astronaut corps in 1996 and currently holds the American record for most time spent in space.

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Rosetta finds magnetic field-free bubble at comet

This article is mirrored from the main ESA web portal.  ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has revealed a surprisingly large region around its host comet devoid of any magnetic field. When ESA’s Giotto flew past Comet Halley three decades ago, it found a vast magnetic-free region extending more than 4000 km from the nucleus. This was the first observation of something that scientists had until then only thought about but had never seen. Interplanetary space is pervaded by the solar wind, a flow of electrically charged particles streaming from the Sun and carrying its magnetic field across the Solar System. But a comet pouring lots of gas into space obstructs the solar wind. At the interface between the solar wind and the coma of gas around the active comet, particle collisions as well as sunlight can knock out electrons from the molecules in the coma, which are ionised and picked up by the solar wind. This process slows the solar wind, diverting its flow around the comet and preventing it from directly impacting the nucleus. Along with the solar wind, its magnetic field is unable to penetrate the environment around the comet, creating a region devoid of magnetic field called a diamagnetic cavity. Prior to Rosetta arriving at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, scientists had hoped to observe such a magnetic field-free region in the environment of this comet. The spacecraft carries a magnetometer as part of the Rosetta Plasma Consortium suite of sensors (RPC-MAG), whose measurements were already used to demonstrate that the comet nucleus is not magnetised. However, since Rosetta’s comet is much less active than Comet Halley, the scientists predicted that a diamagnetic cavity could form only in the months around perihelion – the closest point to the Sun on the comet’s orbit – but that it would extend only 50–100 km from […]

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NASA Television to Air Launch of Next Record-Breaking U.S. Astronaut

On a second American record-breaking mission for 2016, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station at 5:26 p.m. EDT Friday, March 18, with cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka of the Russian space agency Roscosmos from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. NASA Television launch coverage will be

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NASA Selects Instruments to Study Air Pollution, Tropical Cyclones

NASA has selected two proposals for new Earth science investigations that will put new instruments in low-Earth orbit to track harmful particulate air pollutants and study the development of tropical cyclones.

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NASA Announces Winning Concepts to Further its Journey to Mars

NASA has announced the winners of two challenges to create new concepts for construction and human habitation on future space exploration missions, including the agency’s journey to Mars.

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NASA Targets May 2018 Launch of Mars InSight Mission

NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission to study the deep interior of Mars is targeting a new launch window that begins May 5, 2018, with a Mars landing scheduled for Nov. 26, 2018.

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NASA Recognizes Outstanding Small Businesses with Industry Awards

The winners of the Fiscal Year 2015 agency-level Small Business Industry Awards (SBIA) were announced Tuesday during the spring 2016 NASA Industry Forum meeting hosted by the agency’s Office of Small Business Programs at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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NASA to Discuss Science Launching on Next Commercial Resupply Space Station Flight

NASA is hosting a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, March 15, to discuss several science investigations launching on the next Orbital ATK commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station.

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NASA Awards Contract for Test Evaluation, Support

NASA has awarded a contract to Jacobs Technology Inc. of Tullahoma, Tennessee, for continued test and operations support at the agency’s White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

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NASA, Honeywell Bring Hip-Hop Education Show to West Coast

NASA and Honeywell are visiting the West Coast with the FMA Live! Forces in Motion show for a spring 2016 tour designed to ignite students' interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

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NASA Deputy Administrator Visits Home State for Aviation, STEM Talks; Available for Media Interviews

NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman will return to her hometown of Helena, Montana March 5-12 to discuss next-generation aviation, meet with students at her alma mater high school and tour a local science museum.

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CometWatch 1 March

This week, CometWatch features an image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by Rosetta's NAVCAM on 1 March 2016, when the spacecraft was 26.7 km from the comet nucleus. With Rosetta back at close distances from the comet, NAVCAM images no longer cover the whole nucleus but only parts of it, displaying a variety of interesting details on the surface. This image shows a portion of the large comet lobe, where the Imhotep region slopes down towards Bes, on the southern hemisphere. A jet of activity is clearly seen emanating from the lower left edge, even in the original image (at the end of the post), while portions of the Khonsu region are visible towards the right. Imhotep and Bes are also featured in a image taken with Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 10 February, and released last week via the OSIRIS image of the day website. Portions of Khepry can also be seen on the left side of this image. Another narrow-angle OSIRIS image, taken on 27 February and released this week, shows a different portion of the large lobe, focussing on the Ash region. This week, a new batch of 826 new NAVCAM images was also released, spanning the weeks between 21 October and 15 December 2015. You can browse through them via the NAVCAM Image Browser tool. The original NAVCAM image is provided below.

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NASA to Provide Live Coverage, Interviews, and Social Media for March 8 Solar Eclipse

NASA, in partnership with the Exploratorium Science Center in San Francisco, will host activities around the March 8 total solar eclipse, including opportunities to talk with solar scientists and live coverage of the eclipse originating from Woleai island in Micronesia.

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NASA Extends Media Credentials Deadlines for Commercial Cargo Mission

NASA has extended media accreditation deadlines for the next launch of a commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station, now targeted for Tuesday, March 22, during a 30-minute launch window that opens at approximately 11 p.m. EDT.

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Update on NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly’s Return to Houston

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly now is expected to return to Houston at about 12:55 a.m. EST Thursday (11:55 p.m. CST Wednesday, March 2), based on the current transportation plan. NASA Television will broadcast Kelly’s arrival back on U.S. soil after an agency record-setting stay in space aboard the International Space Station. Coverage begins at 12:40

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Profiling COSIMA’s dust grain family

Rosetta’s COSIMA instrument – the Cometary Secondary Ion Mass Analyser – has detected tens of thousands of dust grains since arriving at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The grains collected from 11 August 2014 – 3 April 2015 across nine 1 cm^2 targets, when the comet was moving towards the Sun along its orbit from about 3.5 to 2 AU, provide the focus for a detailed study outlined in a paper published this month in the journal Icarus. The paper, led by Yves Langevin of the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale at CNRS/University of Paris-Sud, France, describes the key characteristics of the different grain families imaged under the COSIMA microscope, the COSISCOPE. The images reveal the particles are extremely diverse at scales of just a few 10s of micrometers (μm) to several 100 μm. The grains were characterized according to factors such as the complexity of its appearance and its height above target – determined by analysing its shadow –, which in turn is related to strength of particle. In general, the dust families can be divided into compact particles or clusters, with the cluster group further subdivided into shattered clusters, glued clusters and rubble piles. The clusters are differentiated based on the different size distributions of the components, their spatial relationship on the collection plate, and the existence or not of any connecting matrix. The different grain families are described below, including reconstructed anaglyph images made by combining an image at the nominal position (red) and an image obtained by shifting the target by 4mm away from the LED (blue). The particles follow a naming convention based on COSIMA team members and other Rosetta mission team colleagues. (Note: the credit line for all images is: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for COSIMA Team MPS/CSNSM/UNIBW/TUORLA/IWF/IAS/ESA/BUW/MPE/LPC2E/LCM/FMI/UTU/LISA/UOFC/vH&S/ Langevin et al (2016)) Compact particles Compact particles are defined as those with well-defined boundaries, […]

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NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Returns Safely to Earth after One-Year Mission

NASA astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Tuesday after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. They landed in Kazakhstan at 11:25 p.m. EST (10:25 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time).

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NASA Technology Transfer Roadshow Stops in Texas, New Mexico

NASA’s Technology Transfer program will host events on March 9 and 10 in the El Paso, Texas, area and Las Cruces, New Mexico, to discuss how students and entrepreneurs can capitalize on NASA’s technology research and development.

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NASA Begins Work to Build a Quieter Supersonic Passenger Jet

The return of supersonic passenger air travel is one step closer to reality with NASA's award of a contract for the preliminary design of a “low boom” flight demonstration aircraft. This is the first in a series of ‘X-planes’ in NASA's New Aviation Horizons initiative, introduced in the agency’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget.

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