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Water Vapor Venting off Jovian Moon - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter's moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface. Previous scientific findings from other sources already point to the existence of an ocean located under Europa's icy crust. Researchers are not yet certain whether the detected water vapor is generated by water plumes erupting on the surface, but they are confident this is the most likely explanation. Should further observations support the finding, it would make Europa the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes. The findings were published in the Thursday, Dec. 12, online issue of Science Express, and reported at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. This is an artist's concept of a plume of water vapor thought to be ejected off the frigid, icy surface of the Jovian moon Europa, located about 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) from the sun. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI For more information, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1d9E9L4 #nasa #space #europa #jovian #jupiter #moon #hubble #hst #agu13 #water #ice #icycrust #solarsystem #planets; -
NASA's Orion Spacecraft Heads Cross Country - A test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft gears up to take a long road trip. Starting from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., the mockup will take a four-week journey across the nation to Naval Base San Diego in California. There, the test article will be used to support NASA’s Underway Recovery Test in February 2014. The test will simulate the recovery of Orion during its first mission, Exploration Flight Test – 1 (EFT-1), scheduled for September 2014. The uncrewed EFT-1 mission will take Orion to an altitude of approximately 3,600 miles above the Earth’s surface, reentering the atmosphere at a speed of over 20,000 miles per hour before landing in the Pacific Ocean. The Orion mockup will travel through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and then reach its final destination in California. If spotted, share your pictures using the hashtag #SpotOrion Image Credit: NASA/David C. Bowman #nasa #space #iss #orion #astronauts #earth #recoverytest; -
Clay Prints on Europa - This image, using data from NASA's Galileo mission, shows the first detection of clay-like minerals on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The clay-like minerals appear in blue in the false-color patch of data from Galileo's Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. Surfaces richer in water ice appear in red. The background image is a mosaic of images from Galileo's Solid State Imaging system in the colors that human eyes would see. Scientists think an asteroid or comet impact could have delivered the clay-type minerals to Europa because these minerals are commonly found in these primitive celestial bodies. These kinds of asteroids and comets also typically carry organic compounds. Many scientists believe Europa is the best location in our solar system to find existing life. It has a subsurface ocean in contact with rock, an icy surface that mixes with the ocean below, salts on the surface that create an energy gradient, and a source of heat (the flexing that occurs as it gets stretched and squeezed by Jupiter's gravity). Those conditions were likely in place shortly after Europa first coalesced in our solar system. For more information on Europa, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/18Dun4C Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI #nasa #space #planets #europa #galileo #water #mapping #minerals #solarsystem #rock #salt # icy #jupiter #science #ice #clay #asteroid #comet; -
Cloud Towers - In a view from high altitude, height can be a difficult thing to gauge. The highest of clouds can appear to sit on a flat plane, as if they were at the same elevation as the ocean or land surface. In this image, however, texture, shape and shadows lend definition to mushrooming thunderheads over the Indonesian island of Flores. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image on the afternoon of Dec. 2, 2013. During the day, sunlight heats the land more quickly than it heats the ocean. The warm air over land rises, creating an area of low pressure that pulls in cool air from the ocean. The result is a sea breeze. On this Indonesia island, the sea breeze from the Flores Sea on the north blows inland and clashes with the sea breeze blowing inland from the Savu Sea in the south. When the two breezes meet in the center of Flores, they push the air up. The rising air cools and condenses into a line of clouds. Sea breeze convection is not the only force at work here. On Flores, cloud formation has help from the shape of the land. A line of tall volcanoes runs down the spine of the island, and their steep slopes also force air to rise. So, moist ocean air blows inland, hits the mountains and volcanoes and rises with the slope. Above the mountains, the rising air meets the rising sea breeze from the other side, and the upward motion is reinforced. Image Credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC #nasa #space #earth #clouds #wind # breeze # modis #floressea #savusea #indonesia; -
Looking down on London & Paris at night. Astronaut Rick Mastracchio (@AstroRM) on Twitter posted this image on Dec. 9 and wrote, “We now have incredible night passes over Europe. City lights and stars make a beautiful show. Here is London & Paris.” On Nov. 6, 2013, Mastracchio launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station along with Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata. Their mission ends March 12, 2014. This expedition will include research projects focusing on technology demonstration, cellular and plant biology, human health management for long duration space travel and maturing critical systems that currently support the space station. #nasa #iss #astronauts #spacestation #photography #earth #paris #europe #london #space;
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Seasonal Changes in Dark Marks on an Equatorial Martian Slope - These images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the appearance of dark markings on Martian slope changes with the seasons. The marks, called recurrent slope linea, extend down slopes during warmer months and fade away during cooler months. This animation shows the same location at several times of year. The location is in a crater on the floor of Valles Marineris, near the Martian equator. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona #nasa #earth #mars #martian #weather #seasons #hirise #mro #nasamro #agu #agu13; -
Testing a prototype lander! The first free flight of a Morpheus prototype lander was conducted Tuesday at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility. The 54-second test began with the Morpheus lander launching from the ground over a flame trench and ascending approximately 50 feet, then hovering for about 15 seconds. The lander then flew forward and landed on its pad approximately 23 feet from the launch point. Project Morpheus integrates NASA's automated landing and hazard avoidance technology (ALHAT) with an engine that runs on liquid oxygen and methane, or "green" propellants, into a fully-operational lander that could deliver cargo to asteroids and other planetary surfaces. CREDIT: NASA #nasa #space #future #morpheus #lander #green #technology #fuel #asteroid #planets; -
There’s a storm a-brewing. This is the latest NASA GOES imagery of the winter storm moving up the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. GOES provides nearly continuous imaging and sounding, which allows forecasters to better measure changes in atmospheric temperature and moisture distributions, hence increasing the accuracy of their forecasts. GOES environmental information is used for a host of applications, including weather monitoring and prediction models. IMAGE CREDIT: NASA #nasa #space #weather #storm #goes #snow #winterstorm #winter; -
A Stellar Nursery - Illuminated by the light of nearby stars, the nebula M-78 exhibits a ghostly appearance in this 10-minute exposure taken with a 6" refractor at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Located in the constellation of Orion -- some1,600 light years from Earth -- this reflection nebula is known to contain more than 40 very young stars still in the process of formation. Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/MEO/Bill Cooke #nasa #space #stars #earth #nebula #observatory #astronomy #stellar; -
This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a series of sedimentary deposits in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater, from a perspective in Yellowknife Bay looking toward west-northwest. Curiosity's science team has estimated that the "Cumberland" rock that the rover drilled for a sample of the Sheepbed mudstone deposit (at lower left in this scene) has been exposed at the surface for only about 80 million years. The estimate is based on amounts of certain gases that accumulate in a rock when it is close enough to the surface to be bombarded by cosmic rays. An explanation for that unexpectedly young exposure age comes from improved understanding of how the layers are eroding to expose underlying layers. The explanation proposes that the mudstone is being exposed by abrasion by windblown sand, indicated by arrows. The role for wind is strongly suggested by the undercutting of the Sheepbed layer below the Gillespie Lake sandstone. The pattern here suggests that the Yellowknife Bay outcrop is being exposed by wind-driven scarp retreat -- the sideways erosion of a vertical face. The image has been white-balanced to show what the rocks would look like if they were on Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS #nasa #space #mars #agu #agu13 #marscuriosity #mastcam #solarsystem #planets;
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The region located between the surface of the sun and its atmosphere has been revealed as a more violent place than previously understood, according to images and data from NASA's newest solar observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS. The fine detail in images of prominences in the sun's atmosphere from IRIS – such as the red swirls shown in this image – are challenging the way scientists understand such events. Solar observatories look at the sun in layers. By capturing light emitted by atoms of different temperatures, they can focus in on different heights above the sun's surface extending well out into the solar atmosphere, the corona. On June 27, 2013, IRIS, was launched, to study what's known as the interface region – a layer between the sun's surface and corona that previously was not well observed. Over its first six months, IRIS has thrilled scientists with detailed images of the interface region, finding even more turbulence and complexity than expected. IRIS scientists presented the mission's early observations at a press conference at the Fall American Geophysical Union meeting on Dec. 9, 2013. Image Credit: NASA/LMSAL/IRIS #nasa #space #sun #iris #agu13 #agu #solarsystem #atoms #solar #imaging #observatory; -
Rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars - This scene shows the "Murray Ridge" portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars. The ridge is the NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's work area for the rover's sixth Martian winter. The ridge rises about 130 feet (40 meters) above the surrounding plain, between "Solander Point" at the north end of the ridge and "Cape Tribulation," beyond Murray Ridge to the south. This view does not show the entire ridge. The visible ridge line is about 10 meters (33 feet) above the rover's location when the component images were taken. The rover team chose to call this feature Murray Ridge in tribute to Bruce Murray (1931-2013), an influential advocate for planetary exploration who was a member of the science teams for NASA's earliest missions to Mars and later served as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena. This view is presented in approximately true color, merging exposures taken through three of the Pancam's color filters, centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU #nasa #space #planets #science #solarsystem #martian #curiosityrover #mars; -
On this date in history, Dec. 7, 1972, the Apollo 17 crew snap this iconic "blue marble" photograph of the Earth. This is the original caption: View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast. The mission was the final in a series of three J-type missions planned for the Apollo Program. These J-type missions can be distinguished from previous G- and H-series missions by extended hardware capability, larger scientific payload capacity and by the use of the battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV. CREDIT: NASA #nasa #space #apollo #apollo17 #anniversary #otd #moon #photography; -
Astronaut Rick Mastracchio (@AstroRM) tweeted this image on Dec. 4 from the #ISS and wrote, “A wider view of New Caledonia with the sun glint you can see the water ways and other features.” Rick is taking photos from the orbiting outpost some 240 miles up circling the Earth every 90 minutes. The International Space Station (ISS) continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. Operational since November 2000, the ISS is well suited for documenting Earth features and provides an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world. Images coming down from the International Space Station are processed on a daily basis and include over 1.2 million images through Nov. 1, 2013. Image credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss #astronauts #astropix #spacestation #earth #australia #terrain; -
Thinking Inside the Box, Launching into Space – This image is an artist concept of two tiny, cube-shaped research satellites that hitched a ride to Earth orbit to validate new hardware and software technologies for future NASA Earth-observing instruments. The cube satellites, or “CubeSats,” which typically have a volume of exactly 33.814 ounces (1 liter), were launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 11:14 p.m. PST, Dec. 5, from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base as part of the NROL-39 GEMSat mission. These two CubeSats will help enable near-real-time processing capabilities relevant to future climate science measurements. IPEX will demonstrate software that will enable future NASA missions to recognize science events such as flooding, volcanism and wildfires, and respond by sending alerts and autonomously acquiring follow-up imagery,” said Steve Chien of JPL, principal investigator for the IPEX mission. The other CubeSat launched is the Michigan Multipurpose Mini-satellite/CubeSat On-board processing Validation Experiment, or M-Cubed/COVE. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #nasa #cubesat #space #earth #science #climate #ula #atlas #satellite #ipex #mcube;
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