View allAll Photos Tagged MarshallSpaceFlightCenter
Swirling in Jupiter's atmosphere for hundreds of years, the Great Red Spot is captured in this pair of close-up images from Juno's JunoCam camera. The giant storm churns through Jupiter's atmosphere, creating the turbulent flows to its west. On the west side of the Great Red Spot itself a sliver of red material is being pulled off the periphery. This is a recent, frequent, phenomenon first observed in ground-based data in 2017.
Two images have been mosaicked together by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill to create this enhanced color composite. When they were taken on Feb. 12, 2019 at 10:24 a.m. PDT (1:24 p.m. EDT) and 10:29 a.m. PDT (1:29 p.m. EDT), Juno was about 43,500 miles (70,000 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops. Features as small as 31 miles (50 kilometers) can be resolved in the images, allowing us to see structure in the interior of the Great Red Spot, as well as the fine texture of the white clouds in the South Tropical Zone below.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY
This week in 2011, space shuttle Atlantis, mission STS-135, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center to the International Space Station. STS-135 carried the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies, logistics, and spare parts to the orbiting lab. This was the final launch of the Space Shuttle Program. Today, the Payload Operations Integration Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center serves as "science central" for the space station, working 24/7, 365 days a year in support of the orbiting laboratory's science experiments. After 20 years of continuous human presence, the space station remains the sole space-based proving ground and stepping stone toward achieving the goals of the Artemis program. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA's remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA's activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA's history, visit the Marshall History Program's webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #STS135 #SpaceShuttleAtlantis #Atlantis #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #spacestation #InternationalSpaceStation
When a star like the Sun runs out of fuel, it expands and its outer layers puff off, and then the core of the star shrinks. This phase is known as a "planetary nebula," and astronomers expect our Sun will experience this in about 5 billion years. This Helix Nebula images contains infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (green and red), optical light from Hubble (orange and blue), ultraviolet from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (cyan), and Chandra's X-rays (appearing as white) showing the white dwarf star that formed in the center of the nebula. The image is about four light years across.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC; Optical: NASA/STScI(M. Meixner)/ESA/NRAO(T.A. Rector); Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Su
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #chandraxrayobservatory #ChandraXRay #cxo #chandra #astronomy #space #astrophysics #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #solarsystemandbeyond #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #GSFC #Hubble #HST #HubbleSpaceTelescope #galaxy
This intriguing observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a gravitationally lensed galaxy with the long-winded identification SGAS J143845+145407. Gravitational lensing has resulted in a mirror image of the galaxy near the center of this image, creating a captivating centerpiece. A third distorted image of the galaxy appears as a bridge between them.
Gravitational lensing occurs when the mass of an enormous celestial body – such as a galaxy cluster – curves spacetime and causes the path of light from distant objects to visibly bend around it, as if by a lens. Appropriately, the body causing the light to curve is called a gravitational lens, and the distorted background object is referred to as being "lensed.” Gravitational lensing can result in multiple images of the original galaxy, as seen in this image, or in the background object appearing as a distorted arc or even a ring. Another important consequence of this lensing distortion is magnification, allowing astronomers to observe objects that would otherwise be too far away or be too faint to see.
Hubble has a special flair for detecting lensed galaxies. The telescope's sensitivity and crystal-clear vision let it see faint and distant gravitational lenses that ground-based telescopes cannot detect because of the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere. Hubble was the first telescope to resolve details within lensed images of galaxies and is capable of imaging both their shape and internal structure.
This particular lensed galaxy is from a set of Hubble observations that take advantage of gravitational lensing to peer inside galaxies in the early universe. The lensing reveals details that allow astronomers to better understand star formation in early galaxies, which gives scientists insight into how the overall evolution of galaxies unfolded.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Rigby
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #NASAGoddard #gsfc #Gravitationallensing #galaxy
NASA conducted its second RS-25 engine hot fire test of the new year Feb. 8 on the Fred Haise Test Stand at Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The test was the third hot fire in the latest test series that began in mid-December. NASA is testing RS-25 engines to help power the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on future deep-space missions. Four RS-25 engines will generate a combined 2 million pounds of thrust to power SLS’s ascent.
Image Credit: NASA
#MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #nasasls #artemis #NASA
The Earth is seen setting from the far side of the Moon just beyond the Orion spacecraft in this video taken on the sixth day of the Artemis I mission by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The spacecraft was preparing for the Outbound Powered Flyby maneuver which would bring it within 80 miles of the lunar surface, the closest approach of the uncrewed Artemis I mission, before moving into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. The spacecraft entered the lunar sphere of influence Sunday, Nov. 20, making the Moon, instead of Earth, the main gravitational force acting on the spacecraft.
Image credit: NASA
#NASA #NASAMarshall #ArtemisI #Orion #sls #spacelaunchsystem #nasasls #exploration #rocket #artemis #ArtemisI
Galaxies are not scattered randomly across the universe. They gather together not only into clusters, but into vast interconnected filamentary structures with gigantic barren voids in between. This “cosmic web” started out tenuous and became more distinct over time as gravity drew matter together.
Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a thread-like arrangement of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year-long structure is anchored by a luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies, much like the well-known Coma Cluster in the nearby universe.
This deep galaxy field from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows an arrangement of 10 distant galaxies marked by eight white circles in a diagonal, thread-like line. (Two of the circles contain more than one galaxy.) This 3 million light-year-long filament is anchored by a very distant and luminous quasar – a galaxy with an active, supermassive black hole at its core. The quasar, called J0305-3150, appears in the middle of the cluster of three circles on the right side of the image. Its brightness outshines its host galaxy. The 10 marked galaxies existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The team believes the filament will eventually evolve into a massive cluster of galaxies.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Feige Wang (University of Arizona), and Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
#NASA #STScI #jwst #jameswebbspacetelescope #NASAGoddard #NASAMarshall #galaxy #quasar #supermassiveblackhole
When NASA astronauts blast off for their voyage to the Moon on the Orion spacecraft during Artemis missions, they’ll have protection in the form of the launch abort system (LAS). The LAS is designed to carry crew to safety in the event of an emergency during launch or ascent atop the agency’s Space Launch System rocket.
On Feb. 25, NASA successfully tested the attitude control motor (ACM), which is built by Northrop Grumman and provides steering for Orion’s LAS during an abort, at the company’s facility in Elkton, Maryland. The 30-second hot fire was the third and final test to qualify the motor for human missions, beginning with Artemis II.
Image credit: NASA
On July 29, 2011, Cassini captured five of Saturn's moons in a single frame with its narrow-angle camera. This is a full-color look at a view that was originally published in September 2011 (see PIA14573).
Moons visible in this view: Janus (111 miles, or 179 kilometers across) is on the far left; Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) orbits just beyond the thin F ring near the center of the image; brightly reflective Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers across) appears above center; Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea (949 miles, or 1,528 kilometers across), is bisected by the right edge of the image; and the smaller moon Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across) is seen just to the left of Rhea.
This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 684,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Enceladus.
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
This image shows the globular cluster NGC 6380, which lies around 35,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpio (the Scorpion). Globular clusters are spherical groups of stars held together by gravity; they often contain some of the oldest stars in their galaxies. The very bright star at the top of the image is HD 159073, which is only around 4,000 light-years from Earth, making it a much nearer neighbor than NGC 6380. This image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which, as its name suggests, has a wide field of view, meaning that it can image relatively large areas of the sky in enormous detail.
NGC 6380 is not a particularly exciting name, but it indicates that this cluster is catalogued in the New General Catalogue, which was originally compiled in 1888. This cluster has, however, been known by many other names. It was originally discovered by James Dunlop in 1826, and he rather immodestly named it Dun 538. Eight years later, in 1834, it was independently rediscovered by John Herschel and he (similarly immodestly) went on to name it H 3688. The cluster was re-rediscovered in 1959 by Paris Pismis, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 – and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pismis 25. In addition to its colorful history of rediscovery, up until the 1950s NGC 6380 was thought to be an open cluster. It was A. D. Thackeray who realized that it was in fact a globular cluster. Nowadays, this cluster is reliably recognized in widely available catalogues as a globular cluster, and referred to simply as NGC 6380.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #starcluster #globularcluster
This stunning 2005 picture of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a composite of images taken by three of NASA's Great Observatories. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red; optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope are yellow; and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are green and blue.
Cas A is the 300-year-old remnant created by the supernova explosion of a massive star. Each Great Observatory image highlights different characteristics of the remnant. Spitzer reveals warm dust in the outer shell with temperatures of about 10 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit), and Hubble sees the delicate filamentary structures of warmer gases about 10,000 degrees Celsius. Chandra shows hot gases at about 10 million degrees Celsius. This hot gas was created when ejected material from the supernova smashed into surrounding gas and dust at speeds of about ten million miles per hour.
A comparison of the infrared and X-ray images of Cas A should enable astronomers to better understand how relatively cool dust grains can coexist in the superhot gas that produces the X-rays. It should also help to determine whether most of the dust in the supernova remnant came from the massive star before it exploded, or from the rapidly expanding supernova ejecta.
The turquoise dot at the center of the shell may be a neutron star created during the supernova. Blue Chandra data were acquired using broadband X-rays (low through high energies); green Chandra data correspond only to intermediate energy X-rays; yellow Hubble data were taken using a 900 nanometer-wavelength filter, and red Spitzer data are from the telescope's 24-micron detector.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Steward/O.Krause et al.
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ChandraXrayObservatory #cxo #supernova #supernovaremnant
The Orion spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis I mission, fully assembled with its launch abort system, is lifted above the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The stacking of Orion on top of the SLS completes assembly for the Artemis I flight test. Teams will begin conducting a series of verification tests ahead of rolling out to Launch Complex 39B for the Wet Dress Rehearsal. Artemis I will be an uncrewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket as an integrated system ahead of crewed flights to the Moon. Under Artemis, NASA aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon and establish sustainable lunar exploration.
Image Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux
#NASA #space #moon #Mars #Moon2Mars #MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #msfc #sls #spacelaunchsystem #nasasls #rockets #exploration #engineering #explore #rocketscience #artemis #Orion #KSC #KennedySpaceCenter
This week in 1997, the Fastrac engine was duration tested in Test Stand 116 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The overall purpose of this test was to gauge the length of time between contact of triethylaluminum and liquid oxygen as an ignitor for the engine. Initially developed for use with the first powered flight of NASA’s X-34 technology demonstrator, the Fastrac engine was capable of producing 60,000 pounds of thrust. Today, Marshall is playing a vital role in the Artemis program by developing the Space Launch System, the backbone of NASA’s exploration plans and the only rocket capable of sending humans to the Moon and Mars. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #rocketengine #fastrac
This week in 1998, space shuttle Discovery, mission STS-91, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on the ninth and final docking of a shuttle and Russia’s Mir space station. The successful nine-day mission featured the first in-orbit test of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and the first use of the space shuttle super lightweight external tank. Today, the Payload Operations Integration Center at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center serves as “science central” for the International Space Station, working 24/7, 365 days a year in support of the orbiting laboratory’s science experiments. After 20 years of continuous human presence, the space station remains the sole space-based proving ground and stepping stone toward achieving the goals of the Artemis program. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
This week in 1997, space shuttle Discovery, mission STS-82, landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center following a successful nine-day mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Here, astronaut Gregory J. Harbaugh floats while Hubble is docked in the orbiter’s cargo bay. This was the second Hubble servicing mission. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #KSC #KennedySpaceCenter #STS82 #SpaceShuttleDiscovery #Discovery #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter
Captured on Oct. 20, 2020 during the OSIRIS-REx mission’s Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event, this series of images shows the SamCam imager’s field of view as the NASA spacecraft approaches and touches down on asteroid Bennu’s surface, over 200 million miles (321 million km) away from Earth. The sampling event brought the spacecraft all the way down to sample site Nightingale, touching down within three feet (one meter) of the targeted location. The team on Earth received confirmation at 6:08 p.m. EDT that successful touchdown occurred. Preliminary data show the one-foot-wide (0.3-meter-wide) sampling head touched Bennu’s surface for approximately 6 seconds, after which the spacecraft performed a back-away burn.
Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #NASAMarshall #Marshall #MSFC #GSFC #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #OSIRISRex #OriginsSpectralInterpretationResourceIdentificationSecurityRegolithExplorer #asteroid #newfrontiers #bennu #ToBennuAndBack
As the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pans over large swaths of Mars' surface, it occasionally discovers surprises like this towering dust devil, which was captured from 185 miles (297 kilometers) above the ground. The length of this whirlwind's shadow indicates that it was more than half a mile (800 meters) high – about the size of the United Arab Emirate's Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on Earth.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
NASA's Lucy spacecraft captured this image of the Moon on Oct. 16, 2022, from a distance of 150,000 miles (240,000 km). This view of the last quarter Moon is familiar to observers from Earth as the spacecraft took this image while it was in between the Earth and the Moon during its first Earth gravity assist.
The image was taken with Lucy’s Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system, a pair of identical cameras that are responsible for tracking the asteroids during Lucy’s high-speed encounters. The T2CAM system was designed, built, and tested by Malin Space Science Systems; Lockheed Martin Integrated the T2CAMs onto the Lucy spacecraft and operates them.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI
#nasa #msfc #marshallspaceflightcenter #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #Goddard #GSFC #lucypacecraft #trojans #trojanasteroids #Moon
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, DART – built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland – will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
DART will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it – a method of deflection called kinetic impact. The test will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered. LICIACube, a CubeSat riding with DART and provided by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), will be released prior to DART’s impact to capture images of the impact and the resulting cloud of ejected matter. Roughly four years after DART’s impact, ESA’s (European Space Agency) Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both asteroids, with particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise determination of Dimorphos’ mass.
Image credit: NASA
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #DART #DoubleAsteroidRedirectionTest #asteroid #DARTMission #PlanetaryDefenders #PlanetaryDefense
Earth's Moon is seen rising behind NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard atop a mobile launcher as it rolls out to Launch Complex 39B for the first time, Thursday, March 17, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Ahead of the Artemis I flight test, the fully stacked and integrated SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft will undergo a wet dress rehearsal to verify systems and practice countdown procedures for the first launch.
Image Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
#MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #nasasls #artemis #NASA
This week in 1978, the space shuttle Enterprise arrived at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center for mated vertical ground vibration testing, which marked the first time the entire shuttle compliment – orbiter, external tank, and solid rocket boosters – were mated vertically. Here, Enterprise is offloaded at Redstone Arsenal Airfield before being moved to Marshall’s Dynamic Test Stand. Today, Marshall is playing a vital role in the Artemis program by developing the Space Launch System, the backbone of NASA’s exploration plans and the only rocket capable of sending humans to the Moon and Mars. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#FBF #TBT #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #STS109 #SpaceShuttleEnterprise #Enterprise #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter
NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What’s more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before – a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet.
Scientists determined the quake resulted from a meteoroid impact when they looked at before-and-after images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and spotted a new, yawning crater. Offering a rare opportunity to see how a large impact shook the ground on Mars, the event and its effects are detailed in two papers published Thursday, Oct. 27, in the journal Science.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
#NASA #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #mars #moontomars #planet #space #MarsReconnaissanceOrbiter #MRO #InSightLander
More about the InSight Mars Lander
Jupiter’s volcanically active moon Io casts its shadow on the planet in this dramatic image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. As with solar eclipses on the Earth, within the dark circle racing across Jupiter’s cloud tops one would witness a full solar eclipse as Io passes in front of the Sun.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
After revealing a trove of details about the moons Ganymede and Europa, the mission to Jupiter is setting its sights on sister moon Io.
NASA’s Juno mission is scheduled to obtain images of the Jovian moon Io on Dec. 15 as part of its continuing exploration of Jupiter’s inner moons. Now in the second year of its extended mission to investigate the interior of Jupiter, the solar-powered spacecraft performed a close flyby of Ganymede in 2021 and of Europa earlier this year.
In this image, the volcano-laced surface of Jupiter’s moon Io was captured in infrared by the Juno spacecraft’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) imager as it flew by at a distance of was about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) on July 5, 2022. Brighter spots indicate higher temperatures in this image.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #nasamarshall #juno #nasajuno #Io
NASA’s Juno spacecraft observed the complex colors and structure of Jupiter’s clouds as it completed its 43rd close flyby of the giant planet on July 5, 2022.
Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created these two images using raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the spacecraft. At the time the raw image was taken, Juno was about 3,300 miles (5,300 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 50 degrees. North is up. At that moment, the spacecraft was traveling at about 130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.
The first image (left) was processed to portray the approximate colors that the human eye would see from Juno’s vantage point. The second image (right) comes from the same raw data, but in this case Jónsson digitally processed it to increase both the color saturation and contrast to sharpen small-scale features and to reduce compression artifacts and noise that typically appear in raw images. This clearly reveals some of the most intriguing aspects of Jupiter’s atmosphere, including color variation that results from differing chemical composition, the three-dimensional nature of Jupiter’s swirling vortices, and the small, bright “pop-up” clouds that form in the higher parts of the atmosphere.
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Björn Jónsson © CC NC SA
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #nasamarshall #juno #nasajuno
NASA's CubeSat designed to test a unique lunar orbit is safely in space and on the first leg of its journey to the Moon. The spacecraft is heading toward an orbit intended in the future for Gateway, a lunar space station built by the agency and its commercial and international partners that will support NASA's Artemis program, including astronaut missions.
The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, mission launched at 5:55 a.m. EDT (09:55 UTC) on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand Tuesday.
Image credit: Rocket Lab
#NASA #NASAMarshall #MSFC #ARC #AmesResearchCenter #CAPSTONE #Moon #Gateway
The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago. Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, which makes it a unique opportunity to learn more about how such supernovae occur.
Cassiopeia A is a prototypical supernova remnant that has been widely studied by a number of ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The multi-wavelength observations can be combined to provide scientists with a more comprehensive understanding of the remnant.
The striking colors of the new Cas A image, in which infrared light is translated into visible-light wavelengths, hold a wealth of scientific information the team is just beginning to tease out. On the bubble’s exterior, particularly at the top and left, lie curtains of material appearing orange and red due to emission from warm dust. This marks where ejected material from the exploded star is ramming into surrounding circumstellar gas and dust.
Interior to this outer shell lie mottled filaments of bright pink studded with clumps and knots. This represents material from the star itself, which is shining due to a mix of various heavy elements, such as oxygen, argon, and neon, as well as dust emission.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
#NASA #STScI #jwst #jameswebbspacetelescope #NASAGoddard #NASAMarshall #supernova
NASA’s newly redesigned RS-25 engine for future flights of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket underwent its first hot fire test of the year on Feb. 8 at the agency’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. NASA continued testing with a second test Feb. 22.
The series of testing supports production of new RS-25 engines by lead SLS engine contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne. The new engines will help power future Artemis missions to the Moon beginning with Artemis V as NASA explores the universe for the benefit of all.
In this image, a remote camera offers a close-up view of the Feb. 8 RS-25 hot fire on the Fred Haise Test Stand.
Image credit: NASA
#NASA #NASAMarshall #ArtemisI #sls #spacelaunchsystem #nasasls #exploration #rocket #artemis #SSC #StennisSpaceCenter
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope watched a mysterious dark vortex on Neptune abruptly steer away from a likely death on the giant blue planet.
This Hubble Space Telescope snapshot of the dynamic blue-green planet Neptune reveals a monstrous dark storm (top center) and the emergence of a smaller dark spot nearby (top right). The giant vortex, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was traveling south toward certain doom by atmospheric forces at the equator when it suddenly made a U-turn and began drifting back northward.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and L.A. Sromovsky and P.M. Fry (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #Neptune #planet
Named for the Greek god of fear, Phobos is one of Mars' two moons (Deimos, named for the god of terror, is the other), and it's only about 13 miles (21 kilometers) across. Stickney Crater, the indentation on the moon's lower right, is about 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) wide in this image from the HiRISE aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its small size, Phobos is of great interest to scientists: Is it a captured asteroid, or a chunk of Mars that broke off after a massive impact? A Japanese mission is scheduled to launch to Phobos in the near future, and the moon has been proposed as a staging ground for astronauts before they go to Mars.
Image credit: NASNA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
#NASA #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #mars #moontomars #planet #space #MarsReconnaissanceOrbiter #MRO #Phobos
The Blue Ring Nebula, which perplexed scientists for over a decade, appears to be the youngest known example of two stars merged into one.
In 2004, scientists with NASA's space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spotted an object unlike any they'd seen before in our Milky Way galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas with a star at its center. In the GALEX images, the blob appeared blue – though it doesn't actually emit light visible to the human eye – and subsequent observations revealed a thick ring structure within it. So the team nicknamed it the Blue Ring Nebula. Over the next 16 years, they studied it with multiple Earth- and space-based telescopes, but the more they learned, the more mysterious it seemed.
A new study published online on Nov. 18 in the journal Nature may have cracked the case. By applying cutting-edge theoretical models to the slew of data that has been collected on this object, the authors posit the nebula – a cloud of gas in space – is likely composed of debris from two stars that collided and merged into a single star.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Seibert (Carnegie Institution for Science)/K. Hoadley (Caltech)/GALEX Team
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #GalaxyEvolutionExplorer #BlueRingNebula #nebula
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this impressive image revealing a band of swirling clouds in Jupiter's northern latitudes during Juno’s close flyby on Nov. 3, 2019. Small pop-up storms can also be seen rising above the lighter areas of the clouds, most noticeably on the right side of the image.
This view provides scientists with high-resolution details — the spacecraft skimmed approximately 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops at the time it was taken.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
This 2017 enhanced-color image from the fifth Juno flyby of Jupiter shows a mysterious dark spot which seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #nasamarshall #MSFC #solarsystem #juno #jupiter #space #astronomy #nasajuno #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #GreatRedSpot #junocam
Galaxies and dark matter go together like peanut butter and jelly. Rarely is one without the other, but a recently discovered galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2 is nearly entirely lacking in dark matter.
In November 2019, researchers were astonished when they viewed its image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Dark matter is an invisible substance that astronomers believe plays an important role in the formation of galaxies and is thought to comprise 85 percent of the universe’s mass. This discovery not only challenges the ideas of how galaxies form, but also provides evidence that dark matter is real. It shows that dark matter is not always coupled with regular matter in galaxies and that it has its own separate existence. In addition to lacking dark matter, galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 is an anomaly because you can see straight through it. This is called an ultra-diffuse galaxy because it has an extremely low density. As a result of these findings, a team of researchers are hunting for more dark-matter deficient galaxies to better understand the nature of dark matter and the formation of galaxies.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. van Dokkum (Yale University)
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy #darkmatter
Scientists tap into an array of imagers aboard the six-wheeled explorer to get a big picture of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been exploring Jezero Crater for more than 217 Earth days (211 Martian days, or sols), and the dusty rocks there are beginning to tell their story – about a volatile young Mars flowing with lava and water.
That story, stretching billions of years into the past, is unfolding thanks in large part to the seven powerful science cameras aboard Perseverance. Able to home in on small features from great distances, take in vast sweeps of Martian landscape, and magnify tiny rock granules, these specialized cameras also help the rover team determine which rock samples offer the best chance to learn whether microscopic life ever existed on the Red Planet.
Altogether, some 800 scientists and engineers around the world make up the larger Perseverance team. That includes smaller teams, from a few dozen to as many as 100, for each of the rover’s cameras and instruments. And the teams behind the cameras must coordinate each decision about what to image.
Here, using its WATSON camera, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie over a rock nicknamed “Rochette,” on Sept.10, 2021, the 198th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Two holes can be seen where the rover used its robotic arm to drill rock core samples.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #rocket space #KSC #KennedySpaceCenter #Perserverance #Mars2020Rover #Mars #planet
This week in 1984, space shuttle Challenger, mission STS-41C, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on the first direct ascent trajectory for a space shuttle. Here, the Solar Maximum Mission Satellite is housed in the orbiter's cargo bay, demonstrating the capability of the shuttle to rendezvous, service, checkout, and deploy an in-orbit satellite. This was the first in-orbit spacecraft repair. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA's remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA's activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA's history, visit the Marshall History Program's webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #KSC #KennedySpaceCenter #STS41C #SpaceShuttleChallenger #Challenger #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter
This week in 1994, space shuttle Endeavour, mission STS-68, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Endeavour carried the Space Radar Laboratory on the lab’s second flight. Flying SRL, part of NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth, during different seasons allowed comparison of environmental changes between first and second flights. Here, the SRL-2 is seen in Endeavour’s cargo bay. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #Endeavour #SpaceShuttleEndeavour #STS68 #SRL #SpaceRadarLaboratory
This week in 1995, the ASTRO-2 Spacelab was launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, mission STS-67, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. ASTRO-2 mission included observation and remote exploration of the universe in the ultraviolet wavelengths of light. Here, the Instrument Pointing System, Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, Star Tracker, Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment, and Integrated Radiator System are visible on the Spacelab pallet. The Igloo, which supported the package of experiments, can be seen in the center foreground. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center supervised development of the Astro observatory and managed Astro missions. Today, the Payload Operations Integration Center at Marshall serves as “science central” for the International Space Station, working 24/7, 365 days a year in support of the orbiting laboratory’s science experiments. After 20 years of continuous human presence, the space station remains the sole space-based proving ground and stepping stone toward achieving the goals of the Artemis program. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #KSC #KennedySpaceCenter #STS67 #SpaceShuttleEndeavour #Endeavour #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #ASTRO-2
The first flight test of Orion, NASA’s next-generation spacecraft capable of sending astronauts on future missions to an asteroid and the journey to Mars, now is scheduled to launch Friday, Dec. 5 at 7:05 a.m. EST, atop a ULA Delta IV Heavy from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA TV coverage begins at 6 a.m. There is a two-hour, 39-minute launch window. A Thursday attempt was scrubbed due to valve issues that could not be remedied before the launch window closed.
During the flight test, the un-crewed Orion will orbit Earth twice and travel to a distance of 3,600 miles into space before splashing down in the Pacific.
Snow-covered mountains along the Kazakhstan-China border, including Sayram Lake at top, are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 263 miles above the Asian nations.
Image Credit: NASA
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #ISS #InternationalSpaceStation
In this 2007 Chandra X-ray image of the Andromeda Galaxy, hot, X-ray bright gas is seen to envelop the middle of Andromeda. Point sources are also prominent, which mostly reveal pairs of stars that are interacting with each other. Many of these double stars are thought to include white dwarfs pulling large amounts of material away from a companion star. When the amount of gas being dumped onto the white dwarf gets too high a thermonuclear explosion occurs on the surface of the white dwarf, emitting bright X-rays.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MPE/W.Pietsch et al; Optical: NOAO/AURA/NSF/T.Rector & B.A.Wolpa
#NASAMarshall #Chandra #Hubble #HST #blackhole #BlackHoleFriday #NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #ChandraXrayObservatory #astrophysics #galaxy
Images of knobbly rocks and rounded hills are delighting scientists as NASA’s Curiosity rover climbs Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Mars’ Gale Crater. The rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, highlights those features in a panorama captured on July 3, 2021 (the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission).
This location is particularly exciting: Spacecraft orbiting Mars show that Curiosity is now somewhere between a region enriched with clay minerals and one dominated by salty minerals called sulfates. The mountain’s layers in this area may reveal how the ancient environment within Gale Crater dried up over time. Similar changes are seen across the planet, and studying this region up close has been a major long-term goal for the mission.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
#NASA #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #mars #moontomars #planet #space #curiosity #MarsScienceLaboratory #MarsCuriosityRover #curiosityrover
This week in 1985, space shuttle Atlantis, mission STS-51J, launched on its maiden voyage from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. This was the second shuttle mission dedicated to the Department of Defense. The five-member crew safely landed at Edwards Air Force Base following their four-day mission. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
T-38 planes are a fixture of astronaut training, assisting pilots and mission specialists to think quickly in changing situations. Here, our T-38s fly in formation above the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on Launch Pad 39B. The SLS and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission will launch no earlier than Aug. 29, 2022.
Astronaut Andrew Morgan posted this and two other photos on Twitter on Aug. 25, 2022, saying “This week we flew over @NASAArtemis, thanking the @nasa centers across the country that put this Moon rocket on @NASAKennedy’s pad and celebrating the upcoming test flight!”
Image credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel
#MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #nasasls #artemis #NASA #NASAMarshall #MSFC #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #SpaceLaunchSystem #ArtemisI #KSC #NASAKennedy
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 7:14 p.m. ET on July 2, 2023. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts.
This flare is classified as an X1.0 flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.
To see how such space weather may affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center spaceweather.gov/, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and alerts. NASA works as a research arm of the nation's space weather effort. NASA observes the Sun and our space environment constantly with a fleet of spacecraft that study everything from the Sun's activity to the solar atmosphere, and to the particles and magnetic fields in the space surrounding Earth.
Image Credit: NASA/SDO
#NASA #space #NASAMarshall #msfc #sun #heliophysics #NASAGoddard #SolarDynamicObservatory #SDO
The spacecraft used its infrared instrument during recent flybys of Jupiter’s mammoth moon to create this latest map, which comes out a decade after Juno’s launch.
The science team for NASA’s Juno spacecraft has produced a new infrared map of the mammoth Jovian moon Ganymede, combining data from three flybys, including its latest approach on July 20. These observations by the spacecraft’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, which “sees” in infrared light not visible to the human eye, provide new information on Ganymede’s icy shell and the composition of the ocean of liquid water beneath.
JIRAM was designed to capture the infrared light emerging from deep inside Jupiter, probing the weather layer down to 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below Jupiter’s cloud tops. But the instrument can also be used to study the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (known collectively as the Galilean moons in honor of their discoverer, Galileo).
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #nasamarshall #MSFC #solarsystem #juno #jupiter #space #astronomy #nasajuno #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #GreatRedSpot #junocam #Ganymede
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, Jessica Watkins, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti onboard, Wednesday, April 27, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission is the fourth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Lindgren, Hines, Watkins, and Cristoforetti launched at 3:52 a.m. ET from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center to begin a six month mission onboard the orbital outpost.
Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
#MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #ISS #InternationalSpaceStation
This week in 1971, Apollo 14 launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center carrying astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa. The primary mission objectives to the Fra Mauro region of the Moon centered on deployment of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, lunar field geology investigations; collection of surface material samples for return to Earth; and deployment of scientific instruments not part of the experiments package. Following their successful nine-day mission, the crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 9, 1971. In a series of special events beginning in July 2019, NASA began marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program -- the historic effort that sent the first U.S. astronauts into orbit around the Moon in 1968, and landed a dozen astronauts on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage.
Image credit: NASA
#tbt #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #marshall #space #history #marshallhistory #nasamarshall #nasahistory #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #apollo #saturn #apollo14
This image shows a flame from acrylic burning in microgravity for the first test of SoFIE-GEL on Jan. 13, 2023, which looked at how fuel temperature affects material flammability.
Image Credit: NASA
#NASA #NASAMarshall #ISS #InternationalSpaceStation #Earth #Venus #Moon #planet
With wildflowers surrounding the view, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Moon rocket – carried atop the Crawler-Transporter 2 – arrives at Launch Pad 39B at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 6, 2022.
The first in an increasingly complex series of missions, Artemis I will test the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft as an integrated system prior to crewed flights to the Moon. Through Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and using the Moon as a steppingstone before venturing to Mars.
Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
#MoontoMars #NASAMarshall #nasasls #artemis #NASA #NASAMarshall #MSFC #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #SpaceLaunchSystem #NASAKennedy #KennedySpaceCenter