Scientists have been hunting for evidence of water on Mars ever since we started looking at the Red Planet through telescopes. But Mars does have water, and lots of it; solid water in the form of ice locked up in its polar caps and buried under its surface. And, if observations made by ESA’s Mars Express…
Tag: space
Hinode Watches the Sun Weave Its Magnetic Web
Many of the features seen on the Sun might look like tongues of flame or fiery eruptions, but there’s no fire or lava on the Sun – its energetic outbursts are driven by powerful magnetic fields that rise up from its internal regions and twist, loop, and coil far out into space. In addition to these…
Hello, Ceres! Dwarf Planet’s Features Come Into Focus
Won’t you look at that! Here’s a view of Ceres captured by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 km). No longer just a grey sphere with some vague bright spots, actual features can now be resolved – craters, mountains, and scarps that quite literally no one has ever…
Despeckled Radar Images Give a Clearer View of Titan’s Shores
At 1,600 miles (2,576 km) across Titan is by far Saturn’s largest moon – in fact it’s the second-largest satellite in the solar system. It’s also the only world besides Earth where liquids have been found in large amounts on the surface, in the form of lakes and streams of frigid methane and ethane. This makes Titan…
The Force is Strong With This ISS Crew!
The Expedition 45 crew has gone full Jedi for their team poster! (The mission patch is kinda shaped like a Star Destroyer…) Entitled “International Space Station Expedition XLV: The Science Continues,” the poster features Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko (first and second on the right), NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren (left, front), Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg…
SpaceX Sends NOAA’s DSCOVR On a Million-Mile Journey
Third time was definitely a charm today for SpaceX, NASA, and NOAA as the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket after two scrubbed attempts. Liftoff occurred at 6:03 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Feb. 11 into a clear sky as the Sun was setting – a truly picturesque backdrop for…
Happy 5th Launchiversary SDO!
Five years ago today, at 10:23 a.m. EST on Feb, 11, 2010, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, sending the most advanced solar observatory satellite into orbit and giving us an amazing new look at our home star. Since then SDO has been monitoring the…
Comet 67P Fires Up Its Jets
And the show is on! The dramatic images above show the actively jetting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Jan. 31 and Feb. 3, imaged by Rosetta’s NavCam from a distance of about 28 km (17 miles). Each is a mosaic of four separate NavCam acquisitions, and I adjusted and tinted them in Photoshop to further enhance the jets’ visibility….
AKATSUKI to Get a Second Chance at Venus in December
If any of you remember this, back in Dec. 2010 Japan’s Venus Climate Orbiter spacecraft AKATSUKI (or Planet-C), after a five and a half month journey through space, failed to enter orbit around Venus due to a faulty thruster nozzle. It sailed right past the cloud-covered planet, going into orbit around the Sun. Fortunately, JAXA mission engineers…
The First Human Satellite: Flying Free With the MMU
31 years ago today, on Feb. 7, 1984, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II became the first “human satellite” when he tested the Manned Maneuvering Unit during STS-41B. Self-propelled via 24 small nitrogen-powered thrusters, the MMU allowed McCandless (who was instrumental in developing the Unit at Lockheed Martin) to travel tether-free through space. In the iconic photo…
Where Are All of Earth’s Impact Craters?
When you look up at the Moon through a telescope or pair of binoculars you see a world covered in craters of all sizes. It only stands to reason that Earth must also have craters like the Moon, if not many more because of its much larger size. So where are they all? As it…
New Horizons Grabs Its First On-Approach Images of Pluto
After more than nine years of rocketing outwards through the Solar System, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is now zeroing in on its targets: the dwarf planet Pluto and its family of frozen moons, orbiting the Sun over three billion miles away from Earth. The images above show Pluto and its largest moon Charon on January 25…
Lights in the Dark 