NASA News

2021-12-28 21:46:36 #BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Nevada Air Cadets to Hear from NASA Astronauts Aboard Space Station" Cadets from the Nevada Civil Air Patrol will have an opportunity soon to hear from NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. [December 28, 2021] Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nevada-air-cadets-to-hear-from-nasa-astronauts-aboard-space-station Open / Comment

2021-12-28 18:08:41 #NewReport from #ISS : "ISS Daily Summary Report – 12/27/2021" Payloads: Advanced Plant EXperiment-07 (APEX-07): Procedures for the APEX-07 Petri Plate insertions was reviewed.  APEX-07 examines how changes in gravity and other environmental factors associated with spaceflight affect plants at the level of gene expression.  Previous research shows that microgravity conditions during spaceflight affects which genes turn on or off, which proteins are present and Open / Comment

2021-12-28 08:16:22 #NewImage from #Nasa: "Sun Halo over Sweden " What's happened to the Sun? Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a giant lens. In the featured video, however, there are actually millions of tiny lenses: ice crystals. Water may freeze in the atmosphere into small, flat, six-sided, ice crystals. As these crystals flutter to the ground, much time is spent with their faces flat and parallel to the ground. An observer may find themselves in the same plane as many of the falling ice crystals near sunrise or sunset. During this alignment, each crystal can act like a miniature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating phenomena like parhelia, the technical term for sundogs. The featured video was taken in late 2017 on the side of a ski hill at the Vemdalen Ski Resort in central Sweden. Visible in the center is the most direct image of the Sun, while two bright sundogs glow prominently from both the left and the right. Also visible is the bright 22 degree halo -- as well as the rarer and much fainter 46 degree halo -- also created by sunlight refracting through atmospheric ice crystals. [December 28, 2021] https://img.youtube.com/vi/2SnbMTQwDKM/maxresdefault.jpg Open / Comment

2021-12-27 23:46:46 #BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA Invites Media to NOAA’s Weather Observing Satellite Launch" Media accreditation is now open for the upcoming launch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-T satellite, the Western Hemisphere’s most advanced weather observing and environmental monitoring system. [December 27, 2021] Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-invites-media-to-noaa-s-weather-observing-satellite-launch Open / Comment

2021-12-27 08:11:36 #NewImage from #Nasa: "Comet Leonard behind JWST Launch Plume " Which one of these two streaks is a comet? Although they both have comet-like features, the lower streak is the only real comet. This lower streak shows the coma and tail of Comet Leonard, a city-sized block of rocky ice that is passing through the inner Solar System as it continues its looping orbit around the Sun. Comet Leonard has recently passed its closest to both the Earth and Venus and will round the Sun next week. The comet, still visible to the unaided eye, has developed a long and changing tail in recent weeks. In contrast, the upper streak is the launch plume of the Ariane V rocket that lifted the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) off the Earth two days ago. The featured single-exposure image was taken from Thailand, and the foreground spire is atop a pagoda in Doi Inthanon National Park. JWST, NASA's largest and most powerful space telescope so far, will orbit the Sun near the Earth-Sun L2 point and is scheduled to start science observations in the summer of 2022. [December 27, 2021] https://apod.nasa.gov/image/2112/CometJwst_Matipon_1080.jpg Open / Comment

2021-12-26 08:11:47 #NewImage from #Nasa: "James Webb Space Telescope over Earth " There's a big new telescope in space. This one, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), not only has a mirror over five times larger than Hubble's in area, but can see better in infrared light. The featured picture shows JWST high above the Earth just after being released by the upper stage of an Ariane V rocket, launched yesterday from French Guiana. Over the next month, JWST will move out near the Sun-Earth L2 point where it will co-orbit the Sun with the Earth. During this time and for the next five months, JWST will unravel its segmented mirror and an array of sophisticated scientific instruments -- and test them. If all goes well, JWST will start examining galaxies across the universe and planets orbiting stars across our Milky Way Galaxy in the summer of 2022. [December 26, 2021] https://apod.nasa.gov/image/2112/JwstLaunch_Arianespace_1080.jpg Open / Comment

2021-12-25 16:21:19 #BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA's Webb Telescope Launches to See First Galaxies, Distant Worlds" NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope launched at 7:20 a.m. EST Saturday on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport. [December 25, 2021] Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-webb-telescope-launches-to-see-first-galaxies-distant-worlds Open / Comment

2021-12-25 08:11:18 #NewImage from #Nasa: "The Tail of a Christmas Comet" The tail of a comet streams across this three degree wide telescopic field of view captured under dark Namibian skies on December 21. In outburst only a few days ago and just reaching naked eye visibility Comet Leonard (C/2021 A1) is this year's brightest comet. Binoculars will make the diffuse comet easier to spot though, close to the western horizon after sunset. Details revealed in the sharp image show the comet's coma with a greenish tinge, and follow the interaction of the comet's ion tail with magnetic fields in the solar wind. After passing closest to Earth on December 12 and Venus on December 18, Comet Leonard is heading toward perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun on January 3rd. Appearing in late December's beautiful evening skies after sunset, Comet Leonard has also become known as 2021's Christmas Comet. [December 25, 2021] https://apod.nasa.gov/image/2112/C2021A1_211221_1024.jpg Open / Comment

2021-12-24 08:11:18 #NewImage from #Nasa: "M1: The Crab Nebula" The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, debris from the death explosion of a massive star, witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. This sharp, ground-based telescopic view combines broadband color data with narrowband data that tracks emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms to explore the tangled filaments within the still expanding cloud. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is visible as a bright spot near the nebula's center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is a mere 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. [December 24, 2021] https://apod.nasa.gov/image/2112/Sherick_M1_SHOLRGB_12-5-21a_1024.jpg Open / Comment

2021-12-23 22:06:08 #BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA Selects Four University Teams for Aviation Projects" NASA’s research focus on sustainable aviation will get some big help from teams of university faculty and students recently selected to participate in the agency’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI). [December 23, 2021] Read more here: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-four-university-teams-for-aviation-projects Open / Comment