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It has been a decade since a robotic traveler from Earth first soared over rings of ice and fired its engine to fall forever into the embrace of Saturn. Today the Cassini mission celebrates 10 years of exploring the planet, its rings and moons. The Cassini spacecraft, carrying the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, arrived in the Saturn system on June 30, 2004, for a four-year primary mission. Since 2008, NASA has granted the mission three extensions, allowing scientists an unprecedented opportunity to observe seasonal changes as the planet and its retinue completed one-third of their nearly 30-year-long trek around the sun. After 10 years at Saturn, the stalwart spacecraft has beamed back to Earth hundreds of gigabytes of scientific data, enabling the publication of more than 3,000 scientific reports. While Cassini was originally approved for a four-year study of the Saturn system, the project's engineers and scientists had high hopes that the mission might carry on longer, and designed the system for endurance. The spacecraft has been remarkably trouble-free, and from an engineering standpoint, the main limiting factor for Cassini's lifetime now is how much propellant is left in its tanks. The mission owes a great deal of its longevity to skillful and efficient piloting by the mission's navigation and operations teams. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #Cassini10 #NASA #space #saturn #solarsystem #cassini; -
Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 Satellite at Launch Pad The upper levels of the launch gantry, surrounding the United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite onboard, are seen at Space Launch Complex 2, Sunday, June 29, 2014, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. OCO-2 will measure the global distribution of carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. OCO-2 is scheduled to launch on July 1 at 5:56 a.m. EDT, 2:56 a.m. PDT. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls #space #nasa #oco2 #earthscience #earth #carbon; -
First LDSD Test Flight a Success A high-altitude balloon launch occurred at 8:45 a.m. HST (11:45 a.m. PDT/2:45 p.m. EDT) on June 28, 2014 with the near-space test flight of the agency's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD). At 11:05 a.m. HST (2:05 p.m. PDT/5:05 p.m. EDT), the LDSD test vehicle dropped away from the balloon as planned and began powered flight. The balloon and test vehicle were about 120,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean at the time of the drop. The vehicle splashed down in the ocean at approximately 11:35 a.m. HST (2:35 p.m. PDT/5:35 p.m. EDT), after the engineering test flight concluded. The test vehicle hardware, black box data recorder and parachute were all recovered later in the day. This test was the first of three planned for the LDSD project, developed to evaluate new landing technologies for future Mars missions. While this initial test was designed to determine the flying ability of the vehicle, it also deployed two new landing technologies as a bonus. Those landing technologies will be officially tested in the next two flights, involving clones of the saucer-shaped vehicle. Seen here is the saucer-shaped test vehicle being lifted aboard the Kahana recovery vessel, hours after the June 28, 2014 test of NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator over the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #ldsd #nasa #space #saucer #flyingsaucer; -
This bright spiral galaxy is known as NGC 2441, located in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe). However, NGC 2441 is not the only subject of this new Hubble image; the galaxy contains an intriguing supernova named SN1995E, visible as a small dot at the approximate centre of this image. Supernova SN1995E, discovered in 1995 as its name suggests, is a type Ia supernova. This kind of supernova is found in binary systems, where one star — a white dwarf — drags matter from its orbiting companion until it becomes unstable and explodes violently. White dwarf stars all become unbalanced once they reach the same mass, meaning that they all form supernovae with the same intrinsic brightness. Because of this, they are used as standard candles to measure distances in the Universe. But SN1995E may be useful in another way. More recent observations of this supernova have suggested that it may display a phenomenon known as a light echo, where light is scattered and deflected by dust along our line of sight, making it appear to “echo” outwards from the source. In 2006, Hubble observed SN1995E to be fading in a way that suggested its light was being scattered by a surrounding spherical shell of dust. These echoes can be used to probe both the environments around cosmic objects like supernovae, and the characteristics of their progenitor stars. If SN1995E does indeed have a light echo, it would belong to a very elite club; only two other type Ia supernovae have been found to display light echoes (SN1991T and SN1998bu). Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Nick Rose #hubble #space #universe #galaxy #supernova; -
"Our world is beautiful," so tweeted astronaut Reid Wiseman from the International Space Station. Astronauts don't just take beautiful images from orbit. They conduct scientific research to prepare future astronauts to venture farther into the solar system than ever before and provide real benefits to life on Earth. Image Credit: NASA #ISS #spacestation #exp40 #astronauts #science #nasa #space #exp40;
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Ready for Tuesday's liftoff! The launch gantry, surrounding the United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite onboard, is seen in this black and white infrared view at Space Launch Complex 2, Friday, June 27, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. OCO-2 will measure the global distribution of carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. OCO-2 is set for a July 1 launch. Image Credit: NASA.Bill Ingalls #nasa #oco2 #earthrightnow #earth #launch #science; -
Puff the Magic Sun: A suite of our sun-gazing spacecraft have spotted an unusual series of eruptions in which a series of fast puffs forced the slow ejection of a massive burst of solar material from the sun's atmosphere. The eruptions took place over a period of three days, starting on Jan. 17, 2013. This combination of three wavelengths of light from our Solar Dynamics Observatory shows one of the multiple jets that led to a series of slow coronal puffs. The light has been colorized in red, green and blue. Image Credit: Alzate/SDO #nasa #sun #space #solarsystem #science; -
World Cup Bet in Space: On Thursday, June 26, the space station crew got a chance to catch up on the action at the 2014 World Cup games in Brazil as the U.S. team took on Germany. With Germany winning, U.S. astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman paid up on a friendly wager made with their German crewmate, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, to shave their heads. After the match, Gerst posted this photo to Twitter, saying "Mission accomplished" and thanking the German and U.S. soccer teams for a fun evening in space. Image Credit: NASA/ESA #nasa #spacestation #iss #germany #esa #space #worldcup #usmnt #usa #ger #usavsgermany; -
He actually did it! Yesterday's World Cup match of the U.S. vs Germany may just have been a friendly competition among U.S. and German astronauts on space station, but that didn't mean there weren't stakes involved. If the U.S. won, the America crew members was going to draw a little U.S. flag on Alexander Gerst's head. But Germany won, and now astronaut Reid Wiseman uphold his end of the bargain. Reid posted this image to Twitter and wrote, "Good game Germany! Thanks for the shave." Image Credit: NASA #nasa #worldcup #usavsgermany #usa #ger #iss #germany #usmnt; -
Look out the window: Here's an astronaut's view from the International Space Station. Back-dropped by a blue and white part of Earth and the blackness of space, solar array wings are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 40 crew member from a window in the Cupola of the space station. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #spacestation #iss #space #science #exp40;
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A test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft descends under its three main parachutes above the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Arizona on June 25, 2014, in the agency’s most difficult test of the parachutes system’s performance. NASA is preparing Orion for its first trip to space in December, a two-hour, four-orbit flight that will send an uncrewed spacecraft more than 3,600 miles into space before returning it to Earth to test the performance of many of the spacecraft’s critical systems needed to carry crew to deep space destinations in the future. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #orion #orionspacecraft #parachutes #freefall #parachute #techtest #321techoff; -
Friendly Rivalry Pits U.S. vs. German Astronauts on Space Station NASA's Reid Wiseman and Steve Swanson and the European Space Agency's Astronaut Alexander Gerst, who's from Germany, are cheering on their home countries' World Cup 2014 teams, but will the post-goal celebrations be as uplifting as those on Earth? In this video, the crew shows off their own World Cup moves in an "Out Of This World Cup" match. Zero-gravity offers a unique environment to explore new ways to enjoy and celebrate the world's most popular sport. Video Credit: NASA #worldcup #usmnt #worldcup2014 #usavsgermany #soccer #football; -
The six-person Expedition 40 crew of the International Space Station delved into a number of scientific experiments and health investigations today and trained for the robotic capture of a U.S. commercial cargo spacecraft. Astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this image today and wrote, "It's getting good up here!" Auroras provide spectacular views on the ground and from space. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #spacestation #iss #space #exp40 #science; -
Surrounding the sun is a vast atmosphere of solar particles, through which magnetic fields swarm, solar flares erupt, and gigantic columns of material rise, fall and jostle each other around. Now, using our Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, scientists have found that this atmosphere, called the corona, is even larger than thought, extending out some 5 million miles above the sun's surface -- the equivalent of 12 solar radii. This information has implications for our upcoming Solar Probe Plus mission, due to launch in 2018 and go closer to the sun than any man-made technology ever has before. This image is an observation of the outer limits of the sun's atmosphere (the bright light of the sun itself is blocked by the black circle at the middle) from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory on Aug. 5, 2007. Image Credit: NASA/STEREO #nasa #sun #stereo #science; -
A mysterious X-ray signal has been found in a detailed study of galaxy clusters using our Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton. One intriguing possibility is that the X-rays are produced by the decay of sterile neutrinos, a type of particle that has been proposed as a candidate for dark matter. This composite image of the Perseus Cluster combines data equivalent to more than 17 days of observation time over a decade. The Perseus Cluster is one of the most massive objects in the Universe, and contains thousands of galaxies immersed in an enormous cloud of superheated gas. Image Credit: X-ray: NASA, CXC, SAO, E.Bulbul, et al. #nasa #astronomy #space #chandra #xray #galaxies #darkmatter #science;
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