[The App’s images] cover all corners of the globe, from the craggy outlines of the Susitna Glacier in Alaska to the Bogda Mountains in China, the latter of which showcase “purple mountain majesty” in a very literal sense. Alas, in the introduction to the collection, NASA notes that the image sensors on these satellite cams can “measure light outside the visible range, so the images show more than what is visible to the naked eye.” The images, we are reminded, “are intended for viewing enjoyment rather than scientific interpretation.”
These have got to be some of the more beautiful forms I’ve ever seen. Check out the video here to see the creation of these wondrous colors and shapes.
Millefiori by Fabian Oefner:
The shapes, you see in these image are about the size of a thumbnail. They are created by mixing ferrofluid with water color and putting it into a magnetic field. Ferrofluid is a magnetic solution with a viscosity similar to motor oil. When put under a magnetic field, the iron particles in the solution start to rearrange, forming the black channels and separating the water colors from the ferrofluid. The result are these peculiar looking structures.
On itsnicethat.com, you can find out more about the project.
Over the past two months NASA has been releasing a number of wonderful long exposure photographs taken by astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station. While there are many photos like these taken from the perspective of the Earth’s surface, Pettit’s images are unique in that they incorporate the passing blur of entire illuminated cities, aurora, and the sporadic flashes of lightening from thunderstorms. Check out many more photos from the series here. (via petapixel)
Transits happen when a planet crosses between Earth and the sun. Only Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the sun than our planet, can undergo this unusual alignment.
With its relatively tight orbit, Mercury circles the sun fast enough that we see the innermost planet transit every 13 to 14 years. But transits of Venus are exceedingly rare, due to that world’s tilted orbit: After the 2012 Venus transit, we won’t see another until 2117.
Luckily, we have a huge number of amateur and professional astronomers and photographers who were there to catch the event. Here are a smattering of images of Venus passing in front of the sun, from NASA’s Flickr pool. It’s fantastic to see some planetary scale from our sister planet. Hope nobody blinded themselves in the process. Pretty amazing!
The moon may seem barren and boring, but each of those craters has a story, the story of an awesome space collision. Over its 4.5 billion year life, the moon has had an awful lot of those, turning it into the pockmarked celestial body we know and love today. Fortunately for you NASA’s Goddard Multimedia team has comprised this lovely little video that gives you the quick version. At a quick but impressive 2:42, it’s definitely worth a watch and sure beats staring at the sky, slack-jawed, for 4.5 billion years.
It’s well known I’m a space geek, and these latest images from the ESA’s Mars Express blew me away. Taken by the 9 year old Mars satellite, the images provide amazing detail of our planetary cousin. Click the photos to see them large.
New images from ESA’s Mars Express show the Syrtis Major region on Mars. Once thought to be a sea of water, the region is now known to be a volcanic province dating back billions of years.
Syrtis Major can be spotted from Earth even with relatively small telescopes – the near-circular dark area on the planet stretches over 1300 x 1500 km.
Image showing elevation
If you have a pair of 3D glasses (I do!), put them on. Wow.
I’ve posted about the Voyager spacecraft before, but a recent NPR segment re-captured my interest. Indeed one of the most amazing achievements of mankind, the Voyager probes were launched in the 70s, and Voyager I is speeding toward the very edge of our solar system’s heliosphere. Beyond that, the spacecraft will enter interstellar space, a vast place that is no longer influenced by our own star, the sun.
Powered by a 45+ year nuclear ‘battery’, Voyager has survived decades in the quiet expanse of space, cruising past our closest planetary cousins, communicating with Earth all the way. Undoubtedly one of NASA’s greatest successes, it’s a project that inspires us.
Via NPR:
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is 11 billion miles from the sun. And every minute, it gets 636 miles closer to its destination: the frontier of interstellar space.
The craft is currently in what NASA calls, not undramatically, “the boundary between the solar wind from the Sun and the interstellar wind from death-explosions of other stars,” an area that astrophysicists also call, less dramatically, a stagnation layer.
When Voyager 1 crosses that threshold, it’ll become the first man-made object to do so. That feat, along with the recent discovery of Kepler-22b, a potentially inhabitable planet, means that it’s an exciting time to be an astrophysicist. Now, NASA and its two Voyager craft are heading into the great beyond.
Once they’ve reached interstellar space, the Voyager spacecraft will also have a chance to deliver their golden cargo — the data records that include 116 pictures, along with sounds from Earth. Those include songs from Louis Armstrong, Beethoven, and a Navajo tribe.
And in Amoy, a language from eastern China, the records carry this message: “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.”
It may seem risky to send an open invitation to the universe that tells alien races to stop by for a bite. But it’s not as if Earth can send many invitations. That’s because of the unique way our solar system’s planets were aligned in 1977, when the Voyager craft were launched.
Each Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from people (e.g. the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States, and the children of the Planet Earth) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a collection of Earth music, including works by Mozart and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode".
“That was an opportunity that happens every 176 years,” Stone says, “to send a spacecraft past all four of the giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.”
Toward the end of the interview, Stone said that in the Voyager mission, every day seems to bring a new revelation about our solar system. In doing so, he voiced an opinion that wouldn’t be out of place on the space probes’ gold records.
“No matter what you think you know,” he said, “what there is to learn is even more interesting.”
Even through NASA’s budget cuts and scalebacks, the Mars Science Laboratory has been a work in progress for years, culminating in a launch Saturday out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. After a 354 million mile cruise through space, the MSL will land on Mars, and begin to explore the possibility of life having existed on Mars, and whether it could still exist today.
NASA’s six-wheeled, one-armed wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine and other devices to search for evidence that Earth’s next-door neighbor might once have been home to the teeniest forms of life.
More than 13,000 invited guests jammed the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday morning to witness NASA’s first launch to Mars in four years, and the first flight of a Martian rover in eight years.
Mars fever gripped the crowd.
NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, wore a bright blue, short-sleeve blouse emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words, “Next stop Mars!” She jumped, cheered and snapped pictures as the Atlas V rocket blasted off. So did Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist in charge of Curiosity’s laser blaster, called ChemCam.
Surrounded by 50 U.S. and French members of his team, Wiens shouted “Go, Go, Go!” as the rocket soared into a cloudy sky. “It was beautiful,” he later observed, just as NASA declared the launch a full success.
Launched Saturday, Curiosity will fly for 8 months, at thousands of miles an hour.
Mars Science Laboratories successful launch.
The 1-ton Curiosity – 10 feet tall, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its mast – is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and with unprecedented skill, analyze them right on the spot.
It’s as big as a car. But NASA’s Mars exploration program director calls it “the monster truck of Mars.”
Wheels from past vehicle Sojourner, Spirit/Opportunity, and the much larger Curiosity.
“It’s an enormous mission. It’s equivalent of three missions, frankly, and quite an undertaking,” said the ecstatic program director, Doug McCuistion. “Science fiction is now science fact. We’re flying to Mars. We’ll get it on the ground and see what we find.”
Workers applying MSL decals on the rocket.
The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time – or might even still be conducive to life now. No actual life detectors are on board; rather, the instruments will hunt for organic compounds.
Curiosity’s 7-foot arm has a jackhammer on the end to drill into the Martian red rock, and the 7-foot mast on the rover is topped with high-definition and laser cameras.
With Mars the ultimate goal for astronauts, NASA will use Curiosity to measure radiation at the red planet. The rover also has a weather station on board that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer software app with daily weather updates is planned.
No previous Martian rover has been so sophisticated.
The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, which is more like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half those quests have succeeded.
Just two weeks ago, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in orbit around Earth, rather than en route to the Martian moon Phobos.
“Mars really is the Bermuda Triangle of the solar system,” said NASA’s Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science. “It’s the death planet, and the United States of America is the only nation in the world that has ever landed and driven robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, and now we’re set to do it again.”
Curiosity’s arrival next August will be particularly hair-raising.
In a spacecraft first, the rover will be lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and tether system similar to the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.
Too heavy for a conventional landing, Curiosity must be lowered from its rocket-powered friend.
Curiosity is too heavy to use air bags like its much smaller predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, did in 2004. Besides, this new way should provide for a more accurate landing.
Never-before-tried sky crane landing for Curiosity.
Astronauts will need to make similarly precise landings on Mars one day.
Curiosity will spend a minimum of two years roaming around Gale Crater, chosen from among more than 50 potential landing sites because it’s so rich in minerals. Scientists said if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, it may well be there.
Hopeful landing place for Curiosity in Mars' Gale Crater
The rover should go farther and work harder than any previous Mars explorer because of its power source: 10.6 pounds of radioactive plutonium. The nuclear generator was encased in several protective layers in case of a launch accident. The “Plutonium battery” is supposed to work for a minimum of 14 years, possibly up to 18 or 20.
NASA expects to put at least 12 miles on the odometer, once the rover sets down on the Martian surface.
Rendering of Curiosity exploring Mars.
McCuistion anticipates being blown away by the never-before-seen vistas. “Those first images are going to just be stunning, I believe. It will be like sitting in the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” he said at a post-launch news conference.
This is the third astronomical mission to be launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA since the retirement of the venerable space shuttle fleet this summer. The Juno probe is en route to Jupiter, and twin spacecraft named Grail will arrive at Earth’s moon on New Year’s Eve and Day.
Tracks from Spirit, in 2004. On. Another. Planet. (!!)
Unlike Juno and Grail, Curiosity suffered development programs and came in two years late and nearly $1 billion over budget. Scientists involved in the project noted Saturday that the money is being spent on Earth, not Mars, and the mission is costing every American about the price of a movie.
“I’ll leave you to judge for yourself whether or not that’s a movie you’d like to see,” said California Institute of Technology’s John Grotzinger, the project scientist. “I know that’s one I would.”
What’s cooler than a vacation to Europe? A probe sent to Europa, one of Jupiter’s 60+ moons, and possibly a celestial body in our solar system that could harbor life.
Scientists have for years wondered about the strange, complex surface textures of this moon.
Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and streaks, while craters are relatively infrequent. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life.This hypothesis proposes that heat energy from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives geological activity similar to plate tectonics.
Just in the last few months, have determined that, indeed, the surface is made up of ice that shows relatively recent activity from underneath. The idea from many in the space community is to send an advanced probe to this moon, and either drill or melt through the 3-kilometer-thick surface to the water oceans below.
The task is going to be monumental to complete, and in the age of budget-slashing, NASA may not get the funding it needs to get this off the drawing board. Who knows what a probe would discover, if it could ever complete its mission. We do know that strange, primitive life exists at the bottom of our own oceans, where no sunlight ever reaches. Thermal vents near the earth’s mantle pump out heat that make this life possible.
In 2006, Robert T. Pappalardo, an assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder said,
We’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to understand if Mars was once a habitable environment. Europa today, probably, is a habitable environment. We need to confirm this … but Europa, potentially, has all the ingredients for life … and not just four billion years ago … but today.
We can be sure that if a scientific probe beamed back images of strange alien life swimming under the icy shell of Europa, our existence would never be the same. Let’s go!
Al Gore made headlines today for publicly lambasting President Obama for his lackluster performance when it comes to climate change legislation. I think it’s about time, and I applaud him for calling our president out for being weak, non-commital and frankly, irresponsible for not doing more when it comes to our environmental protection. Don’t get me wrong- Republicans have done everything in their power to halt, stop, weaken and knock down legislation. And tragically, they’ve been extremely effective at blocking positive change. Regardless, we voted for a leader. Someone to show us a course where we need one. And by god do we need one.
The last three years have been extremely hard on a lot of people. A global recession that left millions out of work, and many of us underemployed or feeling dejected by the state of affairs, at least economically. In this time of despair, a nationwide coming-together could have been built around the issue of climate change. R&D, investment in clean tech, construction jobs, and even an Apollo-like quest for the next great revolution in energy. All of these things were talked about, and people like me were optimistic. Hugely grateful that people were awakening to the idea that the climate was in trouble, and that a combined effort could not only help thwart the problem, but bring our society together.
Instead, we had three years of scare tactics by oil companies, stagnation and downright inaction by industry, and a complete belly flop by the public, too swept up by menial crap like sex scandals and reality TV to give a damn about saving the one planet we have. I have raised blood pressure and a deep-seated cynicism that arose out of the last few years. I don’t trust nor put much faith into people anymore, understanding that until the floods, tornadoes, forest fires and droughts reach everyone’s front door, nothing will advance. I recommend you read Mr. Gore’s thoughtful, stirring essay, as he is surely more patient and optimistic than I.
Click here to read Al Gore's in-depth, thoughtful essay.
The President has reality on his side. The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act. – Al Gore.
