A United States flag is flown at half-staff just outside the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A with the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia. President Obama directed Monday that flags be lowered to half-staff to pay tribute to the victims of "the senseless acts of violence" perpetrated at the Washington Navy Yard. NASA's commercial space partner, Orbital Sciences Corporation, is targeting a Sept. 18 launch for its demonstration cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station between 10:50 and 11:05 a.m. EDT. The demonstration flight to the International Space Station will deliver about 1,300 pounds of cargo, including food and clothing, to the Expedition 37 crew. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls #flag #usflag #rocketlaunch #rocket #nasa #antares #wallops #orbitalsciences #iss #space Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket, with its Cygnus cargo spacecraft aboard, is seen during sunrise on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013 in Virginia. NASA's commercial space partner, Orbital Sciences Corporation, is targeting a Sept. 18 launch for its demonstration cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station between 10:50 and 11:05 a.m. EDT. The demonstration flight to the International Space Station will deliver about 1,300 pounds of cargo, including food and clothing, to the Expedition 37 crew. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #antares #launch #rocketlaunch #orbitalsciences #iss #space #nasa #nofilter Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Signs posted outside launch Pad-OA are seen as the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, with its Cygnus cargo spacecraft aboard, is visible on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Monday, Sept. 16, 2013 in Virginia. NASA's commercial space partner, Orbital Sciences Corporation, is targeting a Sept. 18 launch for its demonstration cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station between 10:50 and 11:05 a.m. EDT. The demonstration flight to the International Space Station will deliver about 1,300 pounds of cargo, including food and clothing, to the Expedition 37 crew. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #antares #launch #rocketlaunch #orbitalsciences #iss #space #nasa Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Tropical Storm Man-yi covered two-thirds of the big island of Japan when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and captured a visible image on Sept. 16 at 0140 UTC/Sept. 15 at 9:40 p.m. EDT. Man-yi took just a day to cross over Japan before exiting into the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast track on Sept. 16 takes Man-yi into the Sea of Okhotsk by Sept. 17. Man-yi strengthened to a typhoon just before making landfall. It dropped heavy rainfall totals, created flooding in Kyoto, damaged homes and killed two people, according to the Associated Press. The Shiga and Fukui Prefectures reported mudslides. When Man-yi made landfall, it had maximum sustained winds near 100 mph (162 kph). According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, Man-yi was dropping as much as 3 inches/76 mm of rain per hour. Image Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team #nasa #space #hurricanes #earth #nasaterra #nasaaqua #typhoon #tropicalstorm #satellite #weather #planet #tropicalweather #storms Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

This image of the Earth shows us that we live on a dynamic, restless planet. On any given day, there is usually a cyclone, tropical depression, or extra-tropical storm brewing somewhere on the Earth. But for a brief moment this week, the skies over all of the oceans were relatively calm. This image is a composite of fourteen polar satellite passes, or swaths, stitched together from September 8, 2013. The natural-color images were acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. At the time of those near-midday passes, there were no hurricanes, cyclones, or tropical storms in the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Ocean basins—a relatively rare occurrence at the height of the hurricane/cyclone season in the northern hemisphere. There was plenty of cloud cover, of course, and smaller storm systems. In the eastern Pacific, remnants of tropical storm Lorena were breaking up near the Baja Peninsula. In the eastern Atlantic, the pieces of tropical depression #9 were starting to gather near the islands of Cape Verde; by the next day, tropical storm Humberto would form. Image credit: NASA/NOAA/Suomi NPP/VIIRS #earth #hurricanes #cyclones #viirs #npp #planet #weather #tropicalweather #storms Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Four RS-25 engines, like the one pictured here undergoing a hot-fire test, will power the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) -- NASA's new heavy-lift launch vehicle. Towering more than 200 feet tall with a diameter of 27.6 feet, the core stage will store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will feed the vehicle’s RS-25 engines. SLS will be the most powerful rocket in the world with the greatest capacity of any launch system ever built to support any destination, any payload and any mission, including NASA's plans to send humans to a captured and relocated asteroid. The 70-metric-ton (77-ton) configuration will stand at 321 feet -- taller than the Statue of Liberty. Image Credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne #rs25 #sls #nasa #space #spacelaunch #launch #rocket #rocketengine Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Orbital Sciences rolled out its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday morning, Sept. 13, 2013. The Antares is scheduled to launch Cygnus at 11:16 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 17 on a demonstration cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. Cygnus will deliver about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food and clothing, to the Expedition 37 crew aboard the space station, who will capture and install the spacecraft on Sept. 22 using the station's robotic arm. Orbital is building and testing its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Following a successful demonstration mission, Orbital is poised to begin eight cargo flights contracted by NASA to resupply the station. Future flights of Cygnus will significantly increase NASA's ability to deliver new science investigations to the nation's only laboratory in microgravity. Image Credit: NASA/Brea Reeves #orbitalsciences #iss #spacestation #antares #cygnus #rocket #rocketlaunch #wallops #launch #nasa #space Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Saturn's rings appear to form a majestic arc over the planet in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 15, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 705 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 657,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 2 degrees. Image scale is 37 miles (60 kilometers) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #saturn #planets #solarsystem #cassini #telescope #saturnrings #planet #nasa #space Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

The 'Pale Blue Dot' seen in this narrow-angle color image of the Earth is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth at the time this image was taken in 1990. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth is the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification. Today, NASA announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is officially the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion km) from our sun. New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL #carlsagan #sagan #nasa #palebluedot #earth #space #solarsystem #voyager Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion km) from our sun. New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. This artist's concept depicts NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft entering interstellar space, or the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago. The environment inside our solar bubble is dominated by the plasma exhausted by our sun, known as the solar wind. The interstellar plasma is shown with an orange glow similar to the color seen in visible-light images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope that show stars in the Orion nebula traveling through interstellar space. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #voyager #space #nasa #nasavoyager #probe #solarsystem #manmade #farout Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

A still camera on a sound trigger captured this intriguing photo of an airborne frog as NASA's LADEE spacecraft lifts off from Pad 0B at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The photo team confirms the frog is real and was captured in a single frame by one of the remote cameras used to photograph the launch. The condition of the frog, however, is uncertain. Wallops Island National Wildlife Refuge was created on July 10, 1975 and is comprised mainly of salt marsh and woodlands. The wildlife refuge contains habitat for a variety of species, including upland- and wetland-dependent migratory birds. Additionally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has an agreement with NASA to use the NASA-owned portion of Wallops Island for research and management of declining wildlife in special need of protection. The agreement with NASA covers approximately 3,000 acres of Wallops Island proper and is primarily salt marsh. But how is it possible for wildlife to peacefully coexist with space operations and what effects do rocket launches have on wildlife? NASA’s launch facilities, roads, and facilities take up a small percentage of the area. The rest of the area remains undeveloped and provides excellent habitat for wildlife. During launches, short term disturbance occurs in the immediate vicinity of the launch pads, but the disturbance is short-lived allowing space launches and a wildlife habitat to coexist. Credit: NASA Wallops Flight Facility/Chris Perry #frog #nasafrog #photobomb #launch #nasa #ladee #wallops Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Two NASA aircraft equipped with scientific instruments are flying over the Houston area throughout September 2013 as part of a multi-year airborne science mission to help scientists better understand how to measure and forecast air quality from space. The aircraft are part of NASA's five-year DISCOVER-AQ study, which stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality. This two-engine B200 King Air aircraft, shown on the tarmac at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., collects data for the DISCOVER-AQ study looking downward from an altitude of 26,000 feet. The plane's instruments look down at the Earth's surface, much like a satellite, and measure particulate and gaseous air pollution. Image Credit: NASA #discoveryaq #flying #flight #nasa #airquality #science #airbornescience #pollution #environment #smog Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

NASA Remembers September 11, 2001: Visible from space, a smoke plume rises from the Manhattan area after two planes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center. This photo was taken of metropolitan New York City (and other parts of New York as well as New Jersey) the morning of September 11, 2001. "Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there, and everywhere else," said Station Commander Frank Culbertson of Expedition 3, after the terrorists' attacks. Image credit: NASA #nasa #whereIwas #911 #sept11 #wtc #nyc #iss #september11 Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA is carried to the medical tent shortly after he and, Commander Pavel Vinogradov of Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos landed in their Soyuz TMA-08M capsule in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013. Vinogradov, Misurkin and Cassidy returned to Earth after five and a half months on the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #iss #space #nasa #spacestation #landing #soyuz #kazakhstan Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft with Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA aboard, is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013. Vinogradov, Misurkin and Cassidy returned to Earth after five and a half months on the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #iss #space #nasa #spacestation #landing #soyuz #kazakhstan Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

At 4:19 p.m. EDT, hatches closed between the International Space Station and Soyuz TMA-87M. Expedition 36 crew members Chris Cassidy, Soyuz Commander Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin, pictured here from left to right, are preparing to undock at 7:38 p.m. EDT. NASA Television will air live coverage of undocking beginning at 7:15 p.m. The deorbit burn is targeted for 10:05 p.m. and will lead to a landing at 10:58 p.m. southeast of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. NASA TV coverage of deorbit and landing begins at 9:45 p.m. Photo credit: Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center #iss #space #nasa #spacestation#landing #soyuz #outofthisworld #offplanet #leo Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

It's a busy day today in low Earth orbit! Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov, along with Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy and Alexander Misurkin, who all arrived at the International Space Station on March 28, will be headed home to Earth when Expedition 36 undocks from the station today at 7:35 p.m. EDT. Staying behind will be Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin, who took over command of the space station yesterday, along with Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano. The three have been orbiting Earth since May 28 and are scheduled for a return home in November. Scheduled to join Expedition 37 on Sept. 25 are Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy. In this photo, taken on June 8, 2013, we see Vinogradov and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg of NASA and Misurkin, in the bottom half of this photo from left to right. In the top half of the photo are, left to right, Flight Engineers Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, Cassidy, and Yurchikhin. Image Credit: NASA #iss #space #nasa #spacestation #landing #soyuz #outofthisworld #offplanet #leo Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

The International Space Station’s Expedition 36 crew returns to Earth today at 7:35 p.m. EDT. You can watch the activities unfold live on NASA TV and the NASA App for #iOS and #Android. In this image, Russian search and rescue helicopters are seen as they fly over Kazakhstan, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013, from the city of Karaganda to Zhezkazgan a day ahead of the scheduled landing of the Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft with Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and NASA Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy. Vinogradov, Misurkin and Cassidy are returning to Earth after five and a half months on the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #nasa #space #zhezkazgan #kazakhstan #iss #exp36 #soyuz #landing #nasaapp #spacestation #helicopter #searchandrescue Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

The latest image of sea surface heights in the Pacific Ocean from NASA's Jason-2 satellite shows that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is now in its 16th month of being locked in what some call a neutral, or "La Nada" state. "La Nadas" make long-range climate forecasting more difficult due to their greater unpredictability. Yellows and reds indicate areas where waters are relatively warmer and have expanded above normal sea level, while blues and purple areas show where waters are relatively colder and sea level is lower than normal. The near-normal conditions are shown as areas shaded in green, based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Aug. 27, 2013. The height of the sea water relates, in part, to its temperature, and thus is an indicator of the amount of heat stored in the ocean below. As the ocean warms, its level rises; as it cools, its level falls. Above-normal height variations along the equatorial Pacific indicate El Niño conditions, while below-normal height variations indicate La Niña conditions. The temperature of the upper ocean can have a significant influence on weather patterns and climate. For the past several decades, about half of all years have experienced La Nada conditions, compared to about 20 percent for El Niño and 30 percent for La Niña. NASA scientists will continue to monitor this persistent La Nada event to see what the Pacific Ocean has in store next for the world's climate. Image Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech/Ocean Surface Topography Team #earth #space #nasa #nasajpl #jpl #lanada #elnino #lanina #climate #seasurface #sea #ocean #weather Instagram ดารา @nasa 0

The extreme floods that have been threatening northeastern China and the Russian Far East are slowly moving north along the length of the Amur River. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired the left false-color image of the swollen Amur River on September 8, 2013. The right image, also from Aqua MODIS, shows the river on August 17, 2012, providing a view of normal water levels during the late summer. The false-color images were made with short-wave and near-infrared light. Water is black; plant-covered land is green; clouds are pale blue and white; and burned land is red. The city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur is pale brown. The winding river channels and sponge-like appearance of the land around the river in the 2012 image indicates the presence of wetlands. Image credit: NASA - LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team #earth #flooding #modis #nasa #naturaldisaster Instagram ดารา @nasa 0