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NASA Shares Spectacular Pic of Earthrise over Moon

A revisited version of the first color image of an Earthrise over moon, which was taken in 1968.

As of recently, NASA shared spectacular Earthrise over Moon after researchers had compiled several high-resolution images taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) a couple of months ago.

In the recently released photo, we can see a sunlit side of our planet in the background and a desolated moonscape in the foreground, and the contrast is simply breathtaking. Noah Petro, a researcher involved in the LRO mission, recently noted that the composite image is ‘simply stunning.’

Petro added that the image brings back old memories of the spectacular ‘Blue Marble’ photo snapped by Apollo 17 astronauts more than four decades ago. Both pictures show the African continent prominently in the image.

But the photo also resembles the ‘Earthrise’ pic taken by crew members during the Apollo 8 mission when they entered the lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968. Apollo 8 was the first human mission that managed to go beyond Earth’s orbit.

Former Vice President Al Gore said about about the 1968 picture that it inspired the modern-day conservationist movement worldwide. Gore explained that, after 18 months from the official release of the photograph, world celebrated the first Earth Day.

Additionally, the environmental awareness triggered by the breath-taking photo led to several pieces of legislation in the U.S. including the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

But that picture was not the first of its kind. Lunar Orbiter 1 had snapped the first ‘Earthrise’ a in 1966. Yet, that photo didn’t have a major impact since it was rendered in black and white.

NASA explained that the latest Earthrise photograph is the work of a team that managed to gather pictures from two of LRO’s optical instruments during its voyage around the moon. The photos were snapped over the course of a single day, on Oct. 12, from an 83-mile distance above the lunar soil. The orbiter was able to capture the Compton crater which is located on the natural satellite’s dark side which is never visible from Earth.

NASA researchers explained that we can never see the moon’s far side from ground because our planet and its moon are tidally locked. For the same reason, an astronaut that stands on the lunar surface could never experience and ‘Earthrise’ or an ‘Earthset.’ Astronauts that walked on the moon said that they could see the Earth, and continents moving on its surface, but it never changed its position on the sky.

The recent picture was posted on NASA’s official website on Dec. 18.
Image Source: Wikimedia

Curiosity Is Walking on Martian Sand

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Curiosity left its tracks in Martian sand

Right in this moment, Curiosity is walking on Martian sand. Maybe ‘walking’ is not the most correct term but that is just a technicality. NASA and space enthusiasts all over the world celebrate the Rover’s finding of real sand dunes on the surface of the Red Planet.

Not only that Curiosity is leaving its footprints in Martian sand right as we speak, but the curious Rover has also send photos of it to its team on Earth. It is for the first time when sand has been found by humans anywhere else in the Universe, but on Earth.

The sand dunes on which Curiosity is hiking are part of the ‘Bagnold Dunes’, situated on the north-western side of Mount Sharp, which is inside the Gale Crater.

The Rover will now filter the sand and sample it, before analyzing its structure in its onboard superlab. Besides the lab, Curiosity is also using its wheels to examine the dunes of sand.

Observing the dunes from the Red Planet’s orbit, scientists have already been able to determine that their edges are moving with up to three feet every year.

Mount Sharp, on which the dunes are formed, is almost 3 miles tall and its lower edges are exposing hundreds of rocky layers. These layers have been left behind by a huge lake and rivers that were once present on the Martian surface while also showing traces of wind action. With Curiosity’s help, the astronomers have been able to determine that in that place it used to be a huge long-lasting lake.

Actually, scientists believe that Gale Crater hosted more lakes, lasting about 10,000 years each, a long enough time for life to be supported.

Currently, the Rover is analyzing Murray formation – a 500 feet high section of the lowest layers of sediments.

NASA’s project called Mars Science Laboratory Projects operates Curiosity Rover in its mission to find out more about the changes experienced by the Red Planet over the last millions of years. One of the most important discoveries of Curiosity were traces of water on Mars. Now, scientists are hoping that the Rover will be able to find traces of ancient life on the Red Planet and potentially habitable environments.

MSLP is one of the projects developed by NASA to prepare the human mission on the Red Planet in 2030. Our future as a multi-planetary species depends on Curiosity’s findings.

Image source: JPL/NASA

NASA Unveils Out-of-This-World Image of Pluto

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With help from a color altering technique dubbed principal component analysis, NASA unveiled out-of-this-world image of Pluto. Although the image was rendered in false colors, its goal was to highlight the slight color variations on the dwarf planet’s surface.

Researchers used data gathered by New Horizon probe’s Ralph/MVIC camera from a distance of 22,000 miles during its historic flyby of the remote planet on July 14. The color image was unveiled on Nov. 9 at a gathering of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Md.

Other imagery revealed possible towering ice volcanoes at one of the planet’s poles. One of the volcanoes is 3.1 miles high while the other is 3.5 miles high. Astronomers believe that the gigantic mountains are volcanoes because of the deep gaps at their top. Data also suggests that the volcanoes were someday active.

NASA’s Jeff Moore explained that his team is not absolutely sure that the huge structures are indeed volcanoes, but their ‘suspicious’ look does point into that direction. NASA team explained that if the cryovolcano theory gets confirmed it may mean that the planet’s crust is coated in volatile ice.

Moreover, volatile ice may be an indication of a subsurface heat source. According to one hypothesis, the source may be decaying elements resulted from the planet’s birth. Oliver White of the New Horizons team said that the huge mountains have a large hole in their summit, so the only logical explanation is volcanism, if we take into account what we already know from our planet’s geomorphology.

The research team were also puzzled by the hummocky features on the mountain flanks which may suggest that lava flow reached the plains below. Yet the strange texture of the features has yet to be explained.

Although Pluto’s ice volcanoes resemble those on Earth, scientists believe that they might have spewed a different type of material such as a mix of water ice, methane, nitrogen or ammonia.

If the volcano theory is validated, scientists would be able to learn more about the planet’s geology and atmosphere formation. The recent imagery suggests that the dwarf planet’s surface features vary in age from ancient to young.

Scientists estimated the features’ age by counting their crater impacts. The more crater impacts an area has, the older it is, the team explained. Researchers said that some areas of the planet are as old as our solar system, while other areas such as its ‘heart’ are relatively young.
Image Source: NASA

Scott Kelly is the NASA Astronaut with Most Time Spent in Space

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With 387 days and counting abroad of the International Space Station, Scott Kelly is the NASA astronaut with the most time spent in space. Previous record belongs to U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke with 381 days, 15 hours and 11 minutes in zero gravity.

Kelly broke the record Oct. 16, and is expected to shatter another record on Oct. 29 when he would be nominated as the American with the longest spaceflight, beating Michael Lopez-Alegria’s who spent 215 consecutive days in space in 2007.

Seven days ago, Kelly marked his 200th consecutive day in space and is expected to end his mission abroad the ISS on the 342nd day. Kelly currently serves as commander of the ISS Expedition 45 crew.

Kelly is also the only NASA astronaut to stay in space nearly a year on a single mission. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who reached the ISS on the same day as Kelly, is aiming at a similar goal.

Both men are part in an experiment designed to see what effects microgravity has on the human body. NASA and other space agencies will use the data to prepare deep space missions such as the incoming Mars mission or plans to land humans on asteroids.

“Records are meant to be broken. Look forward to one of my colleagues surpassing [mine] on our Journey to Mars!”

Kelly tweeted Friday from the orbital station.

It is the first time, however, in more than a decade when an American astronaut holds both records. A similar feat was achieved by former NASA astronaut Carl Walz who had 196 consecutive days in a single space mission and a total of 230 days spent in space in 2002.

Although Scott Kelly is the NASA astronaut with the most time spent in space, his milestones are not shattering world records. The first man to spend a whole year in zero gravity was Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov who stayed on the Russian space station Mir from January 1994 to March 1995. Polyakov smashed all records with nearly 438 consecutive days spent in space.

Plus Scott Kelly’s recent record of most time spent in space pales in comparison with former Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka’ record of most total cumulative time spent in space. Padalka lived and worked 878 days abroad of both Mir and the International Space Station. Padalka now ended his mission but he arrived on the ISS with Kelly and Kornienko earlier this year.

The U.S. astronaut is slated to end his mission on March 3, when he would have spent 522 cumulative days in space.
Image Source: Wikimedia

NASA Unveiled three-Step Plan to Land Humans on Mars

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On Thursday, NASA unveiled three-step plan to land humans on Mars in the 2030s.

According to the space agency’s report called “Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration,” the spacecraft and instruments designed to get a crewed mission on the Red Planet and back would be tested in our planet’s low orbit and near the moon.

William Gerstenmaier of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations division explained that the plan is designed to reach ambitious goals while it would also provide resilience to budgetary cuts, shifts in ‘political priorities,’ technological breakthroughs and new partnerships.

NASA is currently working on the first phase of the three-step plan, gathering data on humans living abroad of the International Space Station (ISS). A series of experiments try to figure out what the effects of microgravity on the human body are. For this purpose, some astronauts agreed to take part in ISS missions that last up to one year.

Living on the ISS is not easy. Astronauts need to watch their body weight and prevent muscle and bone loss. If they do not constantly workout they can lose up to 10 percent of their muscle mass in less than six months which can have dire consequences for their health in space.

On the other hand, ISS crew members are not totally isolated from Earth. They communicate with ground operators on a daily basis and every several months there is a resupply mission that brings supplies on the orbital space laboratory.

Yet, on Mars there won’t be resupply missions and smooth communications. NASA plans these missions to last up to three years so astronauts need to accommodate on the remote planet. This is why in the second step of NASA’s Mars plan space explorers will gain deep-space experience from a series of moon missions in the 2020s.

One such mission is the Asteroid Redirect Mission. During this mission, a robotic lander would redirect a piece of an asteroid to the moon’s orbit. From there, astronauts will land on it.

While NASA unveiled three-step plan to land humans on Mars, the space agency also said that it planned to land the first humans on an asteroid in 2025. Humans will be carried to the space rock by NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System giant rocket, which are now being tested for a 2018 uncrewed test flight around the moon. Astronauts selected to reach Mars will be also tested in deep space habitation systems in cis-lunar space.

The third step of the plan is actually landing humans on the Red Planet, an effort that would require help and cooperation from more than 25 space agencies worldwide and precious data gathered by NASA’s robotic rovers that are now exploring the Martian landscape.
Image Source: Wikipedia

NASA Spacecraft Spots Possible Ice Cap On Pluto

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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which is bound for Pluto, has spotted some surface features on the icy world, among them a possible polar cap.

NASA revealed Wednesday that with 60 million miles left to go before its encounter, which is scheduled to happen on July 14, 2015, New Horizons has already made some surprising observations, revealing light and dark spots on the surface of Pluto, which is now more than 32 times farther away from Earth than the Sun.

“We are starting to see intriguing features, such as a bright region near Pluto’s visible pole,” NASA science chief John Grunsfeld said in a statement, in reference to what scientists believe could be a polar ice cap.

In the photographs, Pluto seems to be just a highly pixelated small blob, but scientists can already see there is something very strange about its surface.

“It’s rare to see any planet in the solar system, at this low resolution, displaying such strong surface markings. If you had similar images of Mercury, or images of even Mars, you would not see the same kinds of big surface units going by as you do here on Pluto. That’s very promising,” New Horizons lead scientist Alan Stern, with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in a press conference.

Like Uranus, Pluto is tipped onto its side, and New Horizons has a constant view on one of its polar zones, which is shown in the images to be more brighter than other areas. Astronomers suspect the polar region is covered by a highly reflective ice cap of frozen nitrogen.

New Horizons has already spent almost 10 years in its journey toward Pluto. In the meantime, Pluto, which was once believed to be the ninth and farthest planet in the solar system, was recently demoted to “dwarf planet” status after researchers came across other similar icy space objects in the solar system’s back yard.

Also observable in the photographs is Pluto’s moon Charon, which orbits around the dwarf planet every 6.4 days. The moon seems to be just a little dot, but that’s still an impressive achievement considering the spacecraft’s distance from it, but also Charon’s size, which is about the size of Texas.

New Horizons will continue to send images with improved quality and greater detail, as it will reach its closest point with Pluto, at approximately 7,800 miles, on July 14.

Image Source: Planets For Kids

NASA Messenger Spacecraft Will Crash On Mercury

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NASA’s Messenger spacecraft will spend its last hours as a planetary probe Thursday before it crashes into Mercury, the planet it’s been observing for the last four years. It’s a death fit for any spacecraft, while NASA has been publishing some of the best images and data that Messenger has collected from the first planet from the Sun.

The Messenger mission, whose name comes from MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, launched on August 2, 2004. It has been studying Venus and Mercury, but soon the Messenger spacecraft will be abandoning its orbit and crash on the surface of Mercury.

The first spacecraft to visit this planet was the Mariner 10 more than four decades ago. The Mariner 10 was designed to fly past Mercury and Venus and take pictures of their surfaces, but also carry out other experiments and to study the atmosphere and geology. Mariner 10 is no longer active but it is still orbiting the Sun.

The Messenger spacecraft is very light, but it is equipped with a heat resistant ceramic cloth that keeps it cool in the atmosphere of Mercury. The spacecraft was equipped with sixteen monopropellant thrusters, which contributed to its great maneuverability with small, simple orbit corrections. It also had a larger bipropellant which was able to correct larger trajectories, but also to eject the main craft into orbit. With a mass of over 2,400 pounds. From this weight, fifty-five percent are the propellants, as the Messenger originally had important quantities of fuel for maneuvering. The Messenger spacecraft orbited around Venus two times, once around Earth, and Mercury three times. On the third journey, it descended into orbit around the first planet and began scientific experiments.

This spacecraft has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011, taking photographs and measuring the planet surface, giving important information to scientists. The Messenger spacecraft has exhausted its fuel and will soon fall out of orbit. The spacecraft will be falling out of the sky on April 30. Mission Engineer, Dan O’Shaughnessy of NASA explained that the Messenger spacecraft’s impact will not be seen because the area of the crash will be blocked from view.

Messenger will hit Mercury at a speed of over 8,750 miles per hour and will create a crater of around fifty-two feet. Craters are common for Mercury, but the one the Messenger will make will surely be of scientific interest.

Image Source: IBT Times

NASA and IBM Plan To Solve Earth’s Problems

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NASA has requested scientists, developers, engineers and artists from all around the he world to design apps for some futuristic ideas. The challenge was launched during the space agency’s annual space apps hackathon, which will take place this weekend.

The event lasted three days and was organized in more than 135 locations around the world, while the global competition is hosted by New York City.

What started out as easy road for NASA to gather innovative ideas from the outside has become an important platform for the agency, but also for technology companies and academic institutions to scout global tech talent.

This year’s edition marks a collaboration between IBM and NASA to provide cloud services to all those participating at the hackathon, the company announced Tuesday.

Participants will be offered access to IBM’s Bluemix platform, but also to other signature tools developed by the company, like some of the features of supercomputer Watson which is used to crunch NASA data. IBM specialists will provide technical support during the event.

Google, Intel, Microsoft and other tech giants are among dozens of partners and associates on the competition.

“We want to provide developers access to the top technology trends to spur innovation,” said Sandy Carter, general manager of the IBM’s cloud division. The decision to team up with NASA is a three-fold strategy to raise awareness about Bluemix, encourage interest in technology careers, but also connect with the developer community and.

The company held a similar project at Washington’s Howard University in March, offering supercomputer Bluemix as a development platform to computer science and engineering students. Only last week. IBM announced it would invest around $3 billion in a new business unit called Internet of Things.

For the NASA hackathon, IBM wants to award $120,000 worth of Bluemix services to 30 winners who came up the most creative and innovative apps.

These awards are in addition to NASA’s own prizes, which will be offered by judges in five categories, among them “best use of data,” and “most inspiring.” The winners could have their apps used during NASA projects.

NASA’s robotics challenge, but also also the space exploration, human health and earth science areas are also represented at the event. The agency needs apps to track asteroids, print space food, improve crop growing practices, but also measure and improve astronaut health.

The event will be held April 10-12 and participants can register on the NASA Web site.

Image Source: Tech News Today

Astronauts Begin Yearlong Mission on Space Station

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Two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut entered the International Space Station on Saturday, starting what is to be a yearlong mission away from Earth for two of them.

Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly will spend 342 days aboard the spatial laboratory, twice as long as a regular mission on the station. Russia’s Gennady Padalka will stay on board for six-months.

The three astronauts entered the Space Station eight hours after launching from Russia’s space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. They were welcomed by American Terry Virts and Russia’s Anton Shkaplerov who has been aboard since November, along with Italian Samantha Cristoforetti.

The mission is NASA’s first attempt at a one-year spaceflight. Four Russians have spent a year or more in space, but it happened years ago, on the Soviet-built Mir space station.

The objective is to measure the effects of a extended period of weightlessness on the human body. The stay is regarded as a step toward possible missions to Mars.

Kelly, 51, and Kornienko, 54, will stay on board until next March. During this time, they will go through extensive medical experiments, while preparing the station for the arrival of new U.S. commercial crew capsules, which are due in 2017. Kelly will go on a few spacewalks, something she hasn’t done before.

The two men will supervise the arrival and departure of numerous cargo ships, as well as other Russian-launched space crews. They will also host singer Sarah Brightman, who will be on a “space tourist” trip in September.

Doctors are longing to learn what happens to Kelly and Kornienko once they surpass the regular six-month stay for space station tenants.

Bones, muscles and the immune system are weakened by weightlessness. Body fluids also shift towards the head in zero gravity, pressuring the brain and the eyes, but also impairing vision for some astronauts.

The yearlong stay will allow medics to evaluate whether such conditions are worsened by a long spell in space or whether they reach a point of equilibrium or even taper off.

As space experts look to longer missions, the International Space Station’s future seems to be ensured until at least 2024.

Last year, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin had said that Russia aimed to exit the project in 2020, after tensions between Moscow and Washington erupted over Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine war.

Russian space agency director Igor Komarov said in a news conference in Baikonur that his agency and NASA have convened to continue using the station until 2024.

Image Source: Wikipedia

Ceres, The Dwarf Planet and Its Active Volcano

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The Dawn probe, which is studying dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, had offered some answers to what does Ceres’ famous bright spots may mean.

The data could bring light to a puzzle that has been baffling experts since their discovery, a few years ago.

The scientists analyzed the data collected by Dawn and determined that the spots grow brighter as the light shines on them. Scientists believe that sunlight heats up the ice from beneath the surface and this causes massive blasts, like a volcano.

New photographs from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reveal the spots from different angles, as the large asteroid rotates around the sunlight. The pictures show the spots in all positions of Ceres, even when they are at the margin of the dwarf planet. So, the scientists were able to observe that the spots are relatively high above the surface.

Andreas Nathues, a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany was taken by surprise by this: “What is amazing is that you can see the feature while the rim is still in the line of sight.”

The scientist in sin charge of the team for one of the Dawn cameras. The images were shown recently at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

Ceres is thought to be more than a quarter made of ice, a disproportionate amount compared to most asteroids. Dawn’s objective is to find out where that ice is and what is its role in shaping the surface of the asteroid. One theory is that the ice is covered by a thin layer of soil. The ice may occasionally get to the surface buy ‘cryovolcanoes’, very much like magma does on Earh, pushed up by the internal pressures within.

The Dawn probe is currently orbiting Ceres, after it was caught by its gravity field on March 6. The spacecraft needs to gets closer to the asteroid in order to begin taking more detailed pictures of the asteroid’s surface.

Dawn’s principal investigator, Christopher Russell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, believes that by the end of the Dawn mission, the images captured by the spacecraft will solve the mystery.

Image Source: Sci News

Astronauts Return To Earth After 6 Months in Space

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A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed safely in Kazakhstan on Thursday. They were on a 167-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA station commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Russian flight engineers Elena Serova and Alexander Samokutyaev returned to Earth in a capsule, which landed in a vertical upright position at 0807 (0207 GMT). The drop-off point was 92 miles southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan.

“Expedition 42 is back on Earth”, said a NASA commentator, adding that the landing procedure was done by the book. The capsule was charred on re-entry, but the first medical checks found nothing wrong with the three astronauts. They were imediately covered with blankets, to protect the trio from the steppe cold.

Serova, who was ending her first space mission and became the first Russian woman to serve on the International Space Station, was smiling as a doctor measured her pulse and blood pressure. The other two astronauts, Wilmore and Samokutyaev, were on their second space flight to the ISS, the $100 billion project which flies about 260 miles above Earth.

“Everything is fine. I am drinking real tea with lemon,” Samokutyaev said, while Wilmore added in Russian that he is glad to be back on Earth. The three astronauts were evacuated from the landing area with individual helicopters.

NASA astronaut Terry Virts is in command of the ISS. Along with him in the International Space Station are cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. They are scheduled to return home in mid-May.

Wilmore and Vrits have done three spacewalks in order to prepare parking spots for two commercial space taxis hired by NASA, which will begin to bring in astronauts to and from the station in 2017. According to NASA, the building operations will require three more spacewalks before the end of the year, in order to install docking ports for the new spaceships.

NASA and Russia will be doubling the mission time, trying to learn more about how the human body reacts to longer stays in space.

NASA astronaut Mark Kelly and Russia’s Mikhail Kornienko are due to spend a year aboard the station. They are scheduled to launch, along with cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, on March 27 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Image Source: NASA

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