Home Sweet Home: Back on Earth after a spending a #YearInSpace, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly rests in a chair outside of the spacecraft just minutes after he and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos landed in a remote area in Kazakhstan Tuesday at 11:25 p.m EST (10:26 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time). Kelly and Kornienko completed an International Space Station record year-long mission to collect valuable data on the effect of long duration weightlessness on the human body that will be used to formulate a human mission to Mars. Volkov returned after spending six months on the station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #nasa #space #science #iss #spacestation #astronauts Instagram ดารา @nasa 63,623
Today is the day! Astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) returns to Earth from his #YearInSpace mission aboard the space station (@ISS). He posted this image and wrote, "#Earth. I'm coming for you." Kelly launched to the space station March 27, 2015, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is set to land in Kazakhstan at 11:27 p.m. EST with his one-year crewmate, cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, also of Roscosmos. Kelly will return to Houston's Ellington Field on Wednesday, March 2. After landing, Kelly will hold the record among U.S. astronauts for cumulative time in space, with 520 days. During their record-setting mission, Kelly and Kornienko participated in a number of studies to provide new insights into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight, which will include the #JourneytoMars. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss #spacestation #science 6226FAB6-BE0B-4A4C-9676-2A5D0295A097 Instagram ดารา @nasa 72,696
It's #Oscars night and while #TheMartian is up for awards, we're going to explore the Red Planet. Seen here is Mars with the Valles Marineris showing. It's the largest canyon in the Solar System and it cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. By comparison, the Earth's Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep. The origin of the Valles Marineris remains unknown, although a leading hypothesis holds that it started as a crack billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Recently, several geologic processes have been identified in the canyon. The above mosaic was created from over 100 images of Mars taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1970s. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #mars #planet #solarsystem #oscars2016 #space Instagram ดารา @nasa 76,513
Eclipse Season: Due to the geometry of our Solar Dynamic Observatory's orbit, there are periods when the spacecraft's view of the sun is blocked by the Earth and sometimes the moon. Starting this earlier this week (video taken on Feb. 22) and for the next few weeks, the Earth will continue to get in the way once a day around 7:00 UT. This eclipse season occurs twice a year, near the equinoxes. The sun was blocked for close to an hour. Such is life in space 22,000 miles above Earth. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA #nasa #sun #solar #heliophysics #astronomy #space #sdo #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 69,820
Blue Bubble: Sparkling at the center of this beautiful Hubble Space Telescope image is a Wolf-Rayet star known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away. The distinctive blue bubble appearing to encircle WR 31a is a Wolf-Rayet nebula - an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases. Created when speedy stellar winds interact with the outer layers of hydrogen ejected by Wolf-Rayet stars, these nebulae are frequently ring-shaped or spherical. The bubble - estimated to have formed around 20,000 years ago - is expanding at a rate of around 220,000 kilometers (136,700 miles) per hour! Unfortunately, the lifecycle of a Wolf-Rayet star is only a few hundred thousand years - the blink of an eye in cosmic terms. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt #nasa #hubble #hst #nebula #planets #stars #nasabeyond #astronomy #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 81,496
Frozen Canyons of Pluto's North Pole: This ethereal scene captured by our New Horizons spacecraft tells yet another story of Pluto's diversity of geological and compositional features-this time in an enhanced color image of the north polar area. Long canyons run vertically across the polar area. The widest of the canyons is about 45 miles (75 kilometers) wide and runs close to the north pole. The degraded walls of these canyons appear to be much older than the more sharply defined canyon systems elsewhere on Pluto, perhaps because the polar canyons are older and made of weaker material. These canyons also appear to represent evidence for an ancient period of tectonics. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI #nasa #space #pluto #plutoflyby #solarsystem #astronomy #nasabeyond #geology #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 70,389
Flying Through the Aurora's Green Fog: Astronaut Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) of the European Space Agency (ESA) shared a stunning image of a glowing aurora taken on Feb. 23 from the International Space Station. Peake wrote, "The @ISS just passed straight through a thick green fog of #aurora...eerie but very beautiful. #Principia" The dancing lights of the aurora provide spectacular views on the ground, 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 or CMEs. Image Credit: ESA/NASA #nasa #esa #space #spacestation #iss #earth Instagram ดารา @nasa 50,869
The Ice Fields of Patagonia: This image shows the glaciers of Sierra de Sangra, an icy stratovolcano spanning the border of Chile and Argentina. Snow and ice are blue in these false-color images, which use different wavelengths to better differentiate areas of ice, rock, and vegetation. Since the end of the Little Ice Age, the ice fields of Patagonia and other parts of South America have been shrinking as global temperatures have increased. A number of studies have investigated these changes, which can affect the communities downstream that rely on the glaciers for a steady water supply. Image from taken Jan. 14, 2015, acquired by the Landsat 8 satellite. Image Credit: NASA/Landsat 8 #nasa #patagonia #space #satellite #earth #earthrightnow #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 18,844
Three Times the Fun: Three of Saturn's moons -- Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas -- are captured in this group photo from our Cassini spacecraft. Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across) appears above the rings, while Enceladus (313 miles or 504 kilometers across) sits just below center. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across) hangs below and to the left of Enceladus. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #nasa #space #saturn #cassini #tehthys #exceladus #mimas #nasabeyond #astronomy #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 41,600
"A sky full of #stars and Earth aglow below," wrote NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) when posting this image. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (@ISS) capture photographs and video of the routinely. Kelly shared this stunning image on Thursday, Feb, 11. The station is a unique place - a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss #spacestation #yearinspace #earth Instagram ดารา @nasa 12,852
Diamond in the Dust: Surrounded by an envelope of dust, the subject of this Hubble Space Telescope image is a young forming star known as HBC 1. The star is in an immature and adolescent phase of life, while most of a sun-like star's life is spent in a stable stage comparable to human adulthood. In this view, HBC 1 illuminates a wispy reflection nebula. Formed from clouds of interstellar dust, reflection nebulae do not emit any visible light of their own. Instead, like fog encompassing a lamppost, they shine via the light reflected off the dust from the stars embedded within. Though nearby stars cannot ionize the nebula's dust, as they can for gas within brighter emission nebulae, scattered starlight can make the dust visible in a reflection nebula. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt #nasa #astronomy #hubble #hst# esa #nebula #stars #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 57,466
Our Mars orbiter sees the western side of an elongated pit depression in the eastern Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars. Along the pit's upper wall is a light-toned layered deposit. Noctis Labyrinthus is a huge region of tectonically controlled valleys located at the western end of the Valles Marineris canyon system. Spectra extracted from the light-toned deposit are consistent with the mineral jarosite, which is a potassium and iron hydrous sulfate. On Earth, jarosite can form in ore deposits or from alteration near volcanic vents, and indicates an oxidizing and acidic environment. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona #nasa #space #mars #mro #nasabeyond @NASAJPL #science #geology Instagram ดารา @nasa 7,148
[Artist Concept] Meet our new space telescope! With a view 100 times bigger than that of our Hubble Space Telescope, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will help unlock secrets of the universe, discover new worlds and advance the search of planets suitable for life. This spacecraft is slated to launch in the mid-2020s. Credits: NASA/GSFC/Conceptual Image Lab #nasa #wfirst #nasabeyond #space #astronomy #telescope #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 1,312
Unraveling Solar Prominence: An elongated solar prominence rose up above the sun's surface and slowly unraveled on Feb. 3, 2016, as seen in this video by our Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. Prominences, also known as filaments when seen over the sun's limb, are clouds of solar material suspended above the sun's surface by the solar magnetic field - the same complex magnetism that drives solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections. The solar material in the prominence streams along the sun's magnetic field lines before it thins out and gradually breaks away from the solar surface. These images were taken in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of 304 angstroms, a type of light that is invisible to our eyes but is colorized here in red. Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #sdo #space #solar #solarflare #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,321
Saturn's moon Dione appears cut in two by Saturn's razor-thin rings, seen nearly edge-on in a view from our Cassini spacecraft. The bright streaks of Dione's wispy terrain are seen near the moon's limb at right. The medium-sized crater Turnus (63 miles, 101 kilometers, wide) is visible along Dione's terminator. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115 degrees. Image scale is 8.6 miles (13.8 kilometers) per pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #nasa #cassini #saturn #dione #solarsystem #astronomy #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 34,085
"Beautiful #Earth. Beautiful #Africa," wrote NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) when posting this image. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (@ISS) capture photographs and video of the routinely. Kelly shared this stunning image on Thursday, Feb, 11. The station is a unique place - a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss #spacestation #yearinspace #earth Instagram ดารา @nasa 83,074
Forget the florist. Give your special someone a 'rose' made of galaxies! The larger of the spiral galaxies has a disk that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it. A swath of blue jewels across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light. The smaller, nearly edge-on companion shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) #nasa #hubble #space #hst #galaxy #valentinesday #happyvalentinesday #valentines #nasaebyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 5,520
Celestial Valentine! Generations of stars can be seen in this infrared portrait from our Spitzer Space Telescope. In this wispy star-forming region, called W5, the oldest stars can be seen as blue dots in the centers of the two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars not associated with the region). Younger stars line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen as pink dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The white knotty areas are where the youngest stars are forming. Red shows heated dust that pervades the region's cavities, while green highlights dense clouds. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian #nasa #space #happyvalentinesday #whpthisislove #nasabeyond #astronomy #science #valentines Instagram ดารา @nasa 92,747
Icy Blue Wings of Hen 2-437: In this cosmic snapshot, the spectacularly symmetrical wings of Hen 2-437 show up in a magnificent icy blue hue. Hen 2-437 is a planetary nebula, one of around 3,000 such objects known to reside within the Milky Way. Planetary nebulae such as Hen 2-437 form when an aging low-mass star - such as the sun - reaches the final stages of life. The star swells to become a red giant, before casting off its gaseous outer layers into space. The star itself then slowly shrinks to form a white dwarf, while the expelled gas is slowly compressed and pushed outwards by stellar winds. As shown by its remarkably beautiful appearance, Hen 2-437 is a bipolar nebula - the material ejected by the dying star has streamed out into space to create the two icy blue lobes pictured here. Image credit: ESA (European Space Agency)/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt #nasa #space #astronomy #hubble #hst #telescope #nebula #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 61,402
The sun is always changing and our Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. SDO's sixth year in orbit was no exception. This video shows a clip of the sixth year, as one time-lapse sequence. Each frame represents 2 hours. Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too: Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space. Moreover, studying our closest star is one way of learning about other stars in the galaxy. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Wiessinger Music: "Tides," a track available from Killer Tracks #nasa #sun #sdo #astronomy #solarflare #space #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 51,696
