Hostile And Closed Environments, Hazards At Close Quarters

When will we start seeing images from the James Webb telescope??

We're using our unique vantage point in space to provide observations and data of Hurricane Irma and other tropical storms. Hurricanes Irma and Jose are seen here in a 12-hour long infrared loop. Scientists monitor storms in infrared to closely monitor clouds and storm intensity. We continue to provide satellite imagery for these storms, tracking its trajectory, force and precipitation to inform forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.

As these storms continue their westward drive in the coming days, they will be passing over waters that are warmer than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit)—hot enough to sustain a category 5 storm. Warm oceans, along with low wind shear, are two key ingredients that fuel and sustain hurricanes. Get the latest imagery and data from us at www.nasa.gov/hurricane For information on making preparations for Hurricanes, visit the FEMA website at: ready.gov/hurricanes. Credit: NASA-SPoRT/NOAA 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

The Opportunity to Rove on Mars! 🔴

Today, we’re expressing gratitude for the opportunity to rove on Mars (#ThanksOppy) as we mark the completion of a successful mission that exceeded our expectations.  

Our Opportunity Rover’s last communication with Earth was received on June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover's location on the western rim of Perseverance Valley, eventually blocking out so much sunlight that the rover could no longer charge its batteries. Although the skies over Perseverance cleared, the rover did not respond to a final communication attempt on Feb. 12, 2019.

As the rover’s mission comes to an end, here are a few things to know about its opportunity to explore the Red Planet.

90 days turned into 15 years!

Opportunity launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004 for a planned mission of 90 Martian days, which is equivalent to 92.4 Earth days. While we did not expect the golf-cart-sized rover to survive through a Martian winter, Opportunity defied all odds as a 90-day mission turned into 15 years!

The Opportunity caught its own silhouette in this late-afternoon image taken in March 2014 by the rover's rear hazard avoidance camera. This camera is mounted low on the rover and has a wide-angle lens.

Opportunity Set  Out-Of-This-World Records

Opportunity's achievements, including confirmation water once flowed on Mars. Opportunity was, by far, the longest-lasting lander on Mars. Besides endurance, the six-wheeled rover set a roaming record of 28 miles.

This chart illustrates comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth's moon and Mars. Opportunity holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers) of driving on Mars.

It’s Just Like Having a Geologist on Mars

Opportunity was created to be the mechanical equivalent of a geologist walking from place to place on the Red Planet. Its mast-mounted cameras are 5 feet high and provided 360-degree two-eyed, human-like views of the terrain. The robotic arm moved like a human arm with an elbow and wrist, and can place instruments directly up against rock and soil targets of interest. The mechanical "hand" of the arm holds a microscopic camera that served the same purpose as a geologist's handheld magnifying lens.

There’s Lots to See on Mars

After an airbag-protected landing craft settled onto the Red Planet’s surface and opened, Opportunity rolled out to take panoramic images. These images gave scientists the information they need to select promising geological targets that tell part of the story of water in Mars' past. Since landing in 2004, Opportunity has captured more than 200,000 images. Take a look in this photo gallery.

From its perch high on a ridge, the Opportunity rover recorded this image on March 31, 2016 of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. The view looks back at the rover's tracks leading up the north-facing slope of "Knudsen Ridge," which forms part of the southern edge of "Marathon Valley

There Was Once Water on Mars?!

Among the mission's scientific goals was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils for clues to past water activity on Mars. In its time on the Red Planet, Opportunity discovered small spheres of the mineral hematite, which typically forms in water. In addition to these spheres that a scientist nicknamed “blueberries,” the rover also found signs of liquid water flowing across the surface in the past: brightly colored veins of the mineral gypsum in rocks, for instance, which indicated water flowing through underground fractures.

The small spheres on the Martian surface in this close-up image are near Fram Crater, visited by the Opportunity rover in April 2004.

For more about Opportunity's adventures and discoveries, see: https://go.nasa.gov/ThanksOppy.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Commander Callie Continues Moon Mission in NASA’s Second Graphic Novel

You followed fictional astronaut, Callie Rodriguez, on her journey to the Moon in our First Woman graphic novel, “Issue No. 1: From Dream to Reality.”

In the brand new “Issue No. 2: Expanding our Universe,” find out how Callie and her robotic sidekick RT escape the lunar lava tunnel and what challenges await them on the lunar surface.

See Callie and her new crewmates work together as a team and navigate the unexpected as they take on a challenging mission to deploy a next-generation telescope on the far side of the Moon. Now available digitally in English at nasa.gov/CallieFirst and in Spanish at nasa.gov/PrimeraMujer!

Along with the new chapter, the First Woman app – available in the Apple and Google Play stores – has been updated with new immersive, extended reality content. Explore the lunar surface and learn about the real technologies we’re building to make living and working on the Moon – and eventually, Mars – possible.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Around the World 100,000 Times

The International Space Station is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of five miles per second (or 17,500 miles per hour), orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.

Monday, May 16, marks the International Space Station’s 100,000th orbit!

That’s more than 2,643,342,240 miles traveled! Which is also like 10 round trips to Mars, OR nearly the distance to Neptune!

The space station has been in orbit for over 17 years, and during that time, over 1,922 research investigations have been performed. More than 1,200 scientific results publications have been produced as a result. 

Important studies like the VEGGIE experiment, which is working to grow plants in microgravity, and the Twin’s Study, which is studying the impacts of microgravity on the human body, are helping us on our journey to Mars. Using this unique orbiting laboratory as a place to conduct research is helping us learn important things for future deep space missions. 

There have even been 222 different people that have visited the space station. This includes the current crew that is working and living on orbit. 

Did you know that the space station is the third brightest object in the sky? If you know when and where to look up, you can spot it on your own! Find out when and where to look up HERE. 

On Snapchat? Watch today’s Live Story to discover more about the orbiting laboratory and get a tour of the station! You can also add ‘nasa’ on Snapchat to get a regular dose of space. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

What’s Up for April 2017

Jupiter, the king of the planets, is visible all night long, and the Lyrids meteor shower peaks on April 22.

On April 7, Jupiter--the king of planets--reaches opposition, when it shines brightest and appears largest. 

Jupiter will be almost directly overhead at midnight.

This is also a great time to observe the planet’s Galilean moons--Io, Ganymeade, Europa and Callisto. They can be easily seen through binoculars.

With binoculars, you can even see the Great Red Spot as the storm transits the planet every ten hours.

Looking east on April 22, look to the skies for the Summer Triangle, consisting of Deneb, in Cygnus, the Swan; Altair in Aquila, the Eagle; and Vega, in Lyre(the Harp).

Get ready for the Lyrids, the year’s second major meteor shower, as it pierces the Summer Triangle in the early morning hours of April 22. Since the shower begins close to the new moon, expect excellent almost moonless viewing conditions.  

You can catch up on solar system and all of our missions at www.nasa.gov

Watch the full “What’s Up for April 2017″ video: 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Boo! Did we get you? 🎃

This solar jack-o-lantern, captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in October 2014, gets its ghoulish grin from active regions on the Sun, which emit more light and energy than the surrounding dark areas. Active regions are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere.

The SDO has kept an unblinking eye on the Sun since 2010, recording phenomena like solar flares and coronal loops. It measures the Sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output, helping us understand our nearest star.

Grab the high-resolution version here.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Why Bennu? 10 Reasons

After traveling for two years and billions of kilometers from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx probe is only a few months away from its destination: the intriguing asteroid Bennu. When it arrives in December, OSIRIS-REx will embark on a nearly two-year investigation of this clump of rock, mapping its terrain and finding a safe and fruitful site from which to collect a sample.

The spacecraft will briefly touch Bennu’s surface around July 2020 to collect at least 60 grams (equal to about 30 sugar packets) of dirt and rocks. It might collect as much as 2,000 grams, which would be the largest sample by far gathered from a space object since the Apollo Moon landings. The spacecraft will then pack the sample into a capsule and travel back to Earth, dropping the capsule into Utah's west desert in 2023, where scientists will be waiting to collect it.

This years-long quest for knowledge thrusts Bennu into the center of one of the most ambitious space missions ever attempted. But the humble rock is but one of about 780,000 known asteroids in our solar system. So why did scientists pick Bennu for this momentous investigation? Here are 10 reasons:

1. It's close to Earth

Unlike most other asteroids that circle the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Bennu’s orbit is close in proximity to Earth's, even crossing it. The asteroid makes its closest approach to Earth every 6 years. It also circles the Sun nearly in the same plane as Earth, which made it somewhat easier to achieve the high-energy task of launching the spacecraft out of Earth's plane and into Bennu's. Still, the launch required considerable power, so OSIRIS-REx used Earth’s gravity to boost itself into Bennu’s orbital plane when it passed our planet in September 2017.

2. It's the right size

Asteroids spin on their axes just like Earth does. Small ones, with diameters of 200 meters or less, often spin very fast, up to a few revolutions per minute. This rapid spinning makes it difficult for a spacecraft to match an asteroid's velocity in order to touch down and collect samples. Even worse, the quick spinning has flung loose rocks and soil, material known as "regolith" — the stuff OSIRIS-REx is looking to collect — off the surfaces of small asteroids. Bennu’s size, in contrast, makes it approachable and rich in regolith. It has a diameter of 492 meters, which is a bit larger than the height of the Empire State Building in New York City, and rotating once every 4.3 hours.

3. It's really old

Bennu is a leftover fragment from the tumultuous formation of the solar system. Some of the mineral fragments inside Bennu could be older than the solar system. These microscopic grains of dust could be the same ones that spewed from dying stars and eventually coalesced to make the Sun and its planets nearly 4.6 billion years ago. But pieces of asteroids, called meteorites, have been falling to Earth's surface since the planet formed. So why don't scientists just study those old space rocks? Because astronomers can't tell (with very few exceptions) what kind of objects these meteorites came from, which is important context. Furthermore, these stones, that survive the violent, fiery decent to our planet's surface, get contaminated when they land in the dirt, sand, or snow. Some even get hammered by the elements, like rain and snow, for hundreds or thousands of years. Such events change the chemistry of meteorites, obscuring their ancient records.

4. It's well preserved

Bennu, on the other hand, is a time capsule from the early solar system, having been preserved in the vacuum of space. Although scientists think it broke off a larger asteroid in the asteroid belt in a catastrophic collision between about 1 and 2 billion years ago, and hurtled through space until it got locked into an orbit near Earth's, they don’t expect that these events significantly altered it.

5. It might contain clues to the origin of life

Analyzing a sample from Bennu will help planetary scientists better understand the role asteroids may have played in delivering life-forming compounds to Earth. We know from having studied Bennu through Earth- and space-based telescopes that it is a carbonaceous, or carbon-rich, asteroid. Carbon is the hinge upon which organic molecules hang. Bennu is likely rich in organic molecules, which are made of chains of carbon bonded with atoms of oxygen, hydrogen, and other elements in a chemical recipe that makes all known living things. Besides carbon, Bennu also might have another component important to life: water, which is trapped in the minerals that make up the asteroid.

6. It contains valuable materials

Besides teaching us about our cosmic past, exploring Bennu close-up will help humans plan for the future. Asteroids are rich in natural resources, such as iron and aluminum, and precious metals, such as platinum. For this reason, some companies, and even countries, are building technologies that will one day allow us to extract those materials. More importantly, asteroids like Bennu are key to future, deep-space travel. If humans can learn how to extract the abundant hydrogen and oxygen from the water locked up in an asteroid’s minerals, they could make rocket fuel. Thus, asteroids could one day serve as fuel stations for robotic or human missions to Mars and beyond. Learning how to maneuver around an object like Bennu, and about its chemical and physical properties, will help future prospectors.

7. It will help us better understand other asteroids

Astronomers have studied Bennu from Earth since it was discovered in 1999. As a result, they think they know a lot about the asteroid's physical and chemical properties. Their knowledge is based not only on looking at the asteroid, but also studying meteorites found on Earth, and filling in gaps in observable knowledge with predictions derived from theoretical models. Thanks to the detailed information that will be gleaned from OSIRIS-REx, scientists now will be able to check whether their predictions about Bennu are correct. This work will help verify or refine telescopic observations and models that attempt to reveal the nature of other asteroids in our solar system.

8. It will help us better understand a quirky solar force ...

Astronomers have calculated that Bennu’s orbit has drifted about 280 meters (0.18 miles) per year toward the Sun since it was discovered. This could be because of a phenomenon called the Yarkovsky effect, a process whereby sunlight warms one side of a small, dark asteroid and then radiates as heat off the asteroid as it rotates. The heat energy thrusts an asteroid either away from the Sun, if it has a prograde spin like Earth, which means it spins in the same direction as its orbit, or toward the Sun in the case of Bennu, which spins in the opposite direction of its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will measure the Yarkovsky effect from close-up to help scientists predict the movement of Bennu and other asteroids. Already, measurements of how this force impacted Bennu over time have revealed that it likely pushed it to our corner of the solar system from the asteroid belt.

9. ... and to keep asteroids at bay

One reason scientists are eager to predict the directions asteroids are drifting is to know when they're coming too-close-for-comfort to Earth. By taking the Yarkovsky effect into account, they’ve estimated that Bennu could pass closer to Earth than the Moon is in 2135, and possibly even closer between 2175 and 2195. Although Bennu is unlikely to hit Earth at that time, our descendants can use the data from OSIRIS-REx to determine how best to deflect any threatening asteroids that are found, perhaps even by using the Yarkovsky effect to their advantage.

10. It's a gift that will keep on giving

Samples of Bennu will return to Earth on September 24, 2023. OSIRIS-REx scientists will study a quarter of the regolith. The rest will be made available to scientists around the globe, and also saved for those not yet born, using techniques not yet invented, to answer questions not yet asked.

Read the web version of this week’s “Solar System: 10 Things to Know” article HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

What is your advice to someone who wants to follow the same steps you take?

Sea Level Rise

For thousands of years, sea level has remained relatively stable. But now, Earth’s seas are rising. Since the beginning of the 20th century, they have risen about eight inches, and more than two inches in the last 20 years alone!

As water warms, it expands and takes up more space. That means that when oceans warm, the sea level rises. This summer, we’ve been researching exactly how global warming has impacted Greenland’s ice sheet. Our ICESat-2 mission will use a laser to measure the height of the planet’s surface. Over time, we will be able to provide a record of elevation change, and estimate how much water has melted into the ocean from land ice change.

So how much ice are we actually losing? Great question, but the answer might shock you. In Greenland alone, 303 gigatons of ice was lost in 2014!

Since we know that ice is melting, we’re working to gain a better understanding of how much and how fast. We’re using everything from planes, probes and boats, to satellites and lasers to determine the impact of global warming on the Earth’s ice.

Follow along for updates and information: http://climate.nasa.gov/