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After delivering almost three tons of supplies and scientific experiments to the crew of the International Space Station, Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus cargo spacecraft, the SS Janice Voss, left the station on Friday, Aug. 15. Ground controllers in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston detached Cygnus from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module and maneuver it into release position. With the assistance of NASA Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman, Expedition 40 Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency then used the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm, operated from the station’s cupola robotics workstation, to release Cygnus. Once the spacecraft was a safe distance from the station, its engines fired twice Sunday, Aug. 17, pushing it into Earth's atmosphere where it burned up over the Pacific Ocean. Station crew members had an opportunity to photograph Cygnus' fiery reentry back to Earth, gathering engineering data that could be applied to the entry path of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship in January 2015. Credit: NASA #nasa #cygnus #orbitalsciences #iss #space #spacestation; -
Building Planets Through Collisions Planets, including those like our own Earth, form from epic collisions between asteroids and even bigger bodies, called proto-planets. Sometimes the colliding bodies are ground to dust, and sometimes they stick together to ultimately form larger, mature planets. This artist's concept shows one such smash-up, the evidence for which was collected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer's infrared vision detected a huge eruption around the star NGC 2547-ID8 between August 2012 and 2013. Scientists think the dust was kicked up by a massive collision between two large asteroids. They say the smashup took place in the star's "terrestrial zone," the region around stars where rocky planets like Earth take shape. NGC 2547-ID8 is a sun-like star located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela. It is about 35 million years old, the same age our young sun was when its rocky planets were finally assembled via massive collisions -- including the giant impact on proto-Earth that led to the formation of the moon. The recent impact witnessed by Spitzer may be a sign of similar terrestrial planet building. Near-real-time studies like these help astronomers understand how the chaotic process works. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #asteroids #planets #rockyworlds #nasa #space #spitzer; -
Colorful Auroras! Astronaut Reid Wiseman on the International Space Station snapped with image of auroras over Earth and stated, "the #aurora got even better as we flew into #sunrise." He also commented that "we can’t stop looking outside" and that the space station was "flying through huge loops of light." The dancing lights of the aurora provide spectacular views on the ground and from the space station, but also capture the imagination of scientists who study incoming energy and particles from the sun. Aurora are one effect of such energetic particles, which can speed out from the sun both in a steady stream called the solar wind and due to giant eruptions known as coronal mass ejections. Image Credit: NASA #iss #aurora #exp40 #spacestation #space #nasa; -
Astronomers have for the first time caught a glimpse of the earliest stages of massive galaxy construction. The building site, dubbed “Sparky,” is a dense galactic core blazing with the light of millions of newborn stars that are forming at a ferocious rate. The discovery was made possible through combined observations from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the W.M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory, in which NASA plays an important role. A fully developed elliptical galaxy is a gas-deficient gathering of ancient stars theorized to develop from the inside out, with a compact core marking its beginnings. Because the galactic core is so far away, the light of the forming galaxy that is observable from Earth was actually created 11 billion years ago, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Although only a fraction of the size of the Milky Way, the tiny powerhouse galactic core already contains about twice as many stars as our own galaxy, all crammed into a region only 6,000 light-years across. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across. Image Credit: NASA, Z. Levay, G. Bacon (STScI) #nasa #hubble #spitzer #space #stars #science; -
The Eta Carinae star system does not lack for superlatives. Not only does it contain one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy, weighing at least 90 times the mass of the Sun, it is also extremely volatile and is expected to have at least one supernova explosion in the future. As one of the first objects observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory after its launch some 15 years ago, this double star system continues to reveal new clues about its nature through the X-rays it generates. Astronomers reported extremely volatile behavior from Eta Carinae in the 19th century, when it became very bright for two decades, outshining nearly every star in the entire sky. This event became known as the "Great Eruption." Data from modern telescopes reveal that Eta Carinae threw off about ten times the Sun's mass during that time. Surprisingly, the star survived this tumultuous expulsion of material, adding "extremely hardy" to its list of attributes. Today, astronomers are trying to learn more about the two stars in the Eta Carinae system and how they interact with each other. The heavier of the two stars is quickly losing mass through wind streaming away from its surface at over a million miles per hour. While not the giant purge of the Great Eruption, this star is still losing mass at a very high rate that will add up to the Sun's mass in about a millennium. Image credit: NASA/CXC/GSFC/K.Hamaguchi, et al. #chandra #nasa #space #stars #universe #astronomy #xrays #etacarinae;
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Here's another look at the summer sun and solar flare on Aug. 24, 2014. The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:16 a.m. EDT on Aug. 24. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the flare, which erupted on the left side of the sun. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This flare is classified as an M5 flare. M-class flares are ten times less powerful than the most intense flares, called X-class flares. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #solarflare #solar #sdo #solardynamics #space; -
On Aug. 24, 2014, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:16 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the flare, which erupted on the left side of the sun. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This flare is classified as an M5 flare. M-class flares are ten times less powerful than the most intense flares, called X-class flares. Pictured here is a close-up of a moderate flare on Aug. 24, 2014, shows light in the 131 and 171 Angstrom wavelengths. The former wavelength, usually colorized in teal, highlights the extremely hot material of a flare. The latter, usually colorized in gold, highlights magnet loops in the sun's atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #solarflare #sdo #solardynamics #space; -
25 Years Ago, Voyager 2 Captures Images of Neptune NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft gave humanity its first glimpse of Neptune and its moon Triton in the summer of 1989. This picture of Neptune was produced from the last whole planet images taken through the green and orange filters on the Voyager 2 narrow angle camera. The images were taken on Aug. 20, 1989, at a range of 4.4 million miles from the planet, 4 days and 20 hours before closest approach on Aug. 25. The picture shows the Great Dark Spot and its companion bright smudge; on the west limb the fast moving bright feature called "Scooter" and the little dark spot are visible. These clouds were seen to persist for as long as Voyager's cameras could resolve them. North of these, a bright cloud band similar to the south polar streak may be seen. In the summer of 2015, another NASA mission to the farthest zone of the solar system, New Horizons, will make a historic first close-up study of Pluto. Although a fast flyby, New Horizons' Pluto encounter on July 14, 2015, will not be a replay of Voyager but more of a sequel and a reboot, with a new and more technologically advanced spacecraft and, more importantly, a new cast of characters. Those characters are Pluto and its family of five known moons, all of which will be seen up close for the first time next summer. Image Credit: NASA #nasavoyager #neptune #solarsystem #nasa #space #voyager #newhorizons; -
The six-person Expedition 40 crew of the International Space Station wrapped up the week Friday with more biomedical research, computer upgrades and some final closeout activities following Monday’s Russian spacewalk. In the U.S. segment of the station, the astronauts conducted biomedical studies designed to track the effects of weightlessness on the human body and develop countermeasures to keep the crew healthy. On the Russian side of the complex, Skvortsov and Artemyev returned Pirs to its normal configuration in the wake of Monday’s five-hour, 11-minute spacewalk from the Pirs airlock. During that excursion, Skvortsov and Artemyev manually deployed a Peruvian nanosatellite and installed and retrieved science packages on the station’s exterior. Skvortsov and Artemyev also took some time in the morning to conduct a study of the veins in their lower legs. Seen here are unoccupied Russian Orlan spacesuits for Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev (blue stripes) and Alexander Skvortsov (red stripes), both Expedition 40 flight engineers, in the Pirs Docking Compartment of the International Space Station on the eve of the spacewalk that occurred on Aug. 18, 2014. Image credit: NASA #nasa #iss #spacesuits #spacewalk #eva #spacestation; -
Hubble Sees a Silver Needle in the Sky: This stunning new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows part of the sky in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Although this region of the sky is not home to any stellar heavyweights, being mostly filled with stars of average brightness, it does contain five Messier objects and numerous intriguing galaxies - including NGC 5195, a small barred spiral galaxy considered to be one of the most beautiful galaxies visible, and its nearby interacting partner the Whirlpool Galaxy (heic0506a). The quirky Sunflower Galaxy is another notable galaxy in this constellation, and is one of the largest and brightest edge-on galaxies in our skies. Credit: NASA & ESA, Acknowledgement: Roelof de Jon #nasa #esa #hubble #hst #space #astronomy #galaxy #science;
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Taking a walk in space: The six-person Expedition 40 crew of the International Space Station wrapped up the week Friday with more biomedical research, computer upgrades and some final closeout activities following Monday’s Russian spacewalk. In this image, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev (blue stripes) and Alexander Skvortsov (red stripes, partially obscured), attired in Russian Orlan spacesuits, participate in an Aug. 18 spacewalk outside the space station. Image Credit: NASA #iss #nasa #spacestation #space #spacewalk #roscosmos #exp40; -
Supernova Seen In Two Lights: The destructive results of a mighty supernova explosion reveal themselves in a delicate blend of infrared and X-ray light, as seen in this image from our Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton. The bubbly cloud is an irregular shock wave, generated by a supernova that would have been witnessed on Earth 3,700 years ago. The remnant itself, called Puppis A, is around 7,000 light-years away, and the shock wave is about 10 light-years across. The pastel hues in this image reveal that the infrared and X-ray structures trace each other closely. Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/IAFE #nasa #supernova #space #spitzer #chandra #xray #astronomy #science; -
Of all the planets we've explored, none have matched the dynamic complexity of our own. Earth is constantly changing, and we're working constantly to explore and understand the planet on scales from local to global. The time-lapse video shows the VIIRS composite for the eastern hemisphere from January 18 to July 25, 2014. Subtle changes in the snow and vegetation cover of the land vie for attention with a dynamic, swirling layer of clouds that are constantly present and constantly moving. Credit: NASA #earth #earthrightnow #nasa #space #science; -
While not photon torpedoes, Astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this video of two small satellites being deployed from the International Space Station. The pair of Planet Labs Dove satellites were deployed Tuesday, August 19, 2014 in the first of the latest series of NanoRacks CubeSat deployments from the station. By next Monday, 16 CubeSats out of the 28 on tap for this series are expected to be deployed from the station. The CubeSats were among the nearly 3,300 pounds of science and supplies delivered to the station in July by Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo vehicle. Image Credit: NASA; -
Retreating Glacier: Located in the Brabazon Range of southeastern Alaska, Yakutat Glacier is one of the fastest retreating glaciers in the world. It is the primary outlet for the 810-square kilometer (310-square mile) Yakutat ice field, which drains into Harlequin Lake and, ultimately, the Gulf of Alaska. The Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of the glacier and lake on Aug. 13, 2013. Snow and ice appear white and forests are green. The brown streaks on the glaciers are lateral and medial moraines. Over the past 26 years, the glacier’s terminus has retreated more than 5 kilometers (3 miles). What is causing the rapid retreat? University of Alaska glaciologist Martin Truffer and colleagues pointed to a number of factors in their 2013 study published in the Journal of Glaciology. The chief cause is the long-term contraction of the Yakutat Ice Field, which has been shrinking since the height of the Little Ice Age. Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Robert Simmon, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey #earth #earthrightnow #climatechange #ice #glacier #nasa #science;
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