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This is the first high-resolution, color image to be sent back by the Hazard Cameras on the underside of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover after its landing on Feb. 18, 2021.
Video from landing chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing on the Red Planet, as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.
From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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“This photograph of the southern hemisphere of Jupiter was obtained by Voyager 2 on June 25, 1979, at a distance of 12 million kilometers (8 million miles). The Voyager spacecraft is rapidly nearing the giant planet, with closest approach to occur at 4:23 pm PDT on July 9. Seen in front of the turbulent clouds of the planet is Io, the innermost of the large Galilean satellites of Jupiter. Io is the size of our moon. Voyager discovered in early March that Io is the most volcanically active planetary body known in the solar system, with continuous eruptions much larger than any that take place on the Earth. The red, orange, and yellow colors of Io are thought to be deposits of sulfur and sulfur compounds produced in these eruptions. The smallest features in either Jupiter or Io that can be distinguished in this picture are about 200 kilometers (125 miles) across; this resolution, it is not yet possible to identify individual volcanic eruptions. Monitoring of the erupture activity of Io by Voyager 2 will begin about July 5 and will extend past the encounter July 9. The Voyager Project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”
Impeccable provenance, the estate of Eric Burgess.
Above, and color version at:
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00371
Credit: JPL Photojournal website
New findings from NASA’s Juno probe orbiting Jupiter provide a fuller picture of how the planet’s distinctive and colorful atmospheric features offer clues about the unseen processes below its clouds. The results highlight the inner workings of the belts and zones of clouds encircling Jupiter, as well as its polar cyclones and even the Great Red Spot.
Jupiter's banded appearance is created by the cloud-forming weather layer. This composite image shows views of Jupiter in infrared and visible light taken by the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Credits: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/NASA/ESA, M.H. Wong and I. de Pater (UC Berkeley) et al.
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NASA’s Juno mission captured these elaborate atmospheric jets in Jupiter's northern mid-latitude region. This detailed, color-enhanced image reveals a complex topography in Jupiter’s cloud tops. If you look closely, relatively small, bright, “pop-up” clouds — which rise above the surrounding features — stand out at the tops and edges of the swirling patterns, while the darker areas nearby reveal greater depth.
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this JunoCam image, which was taken on April 10, 2020, at 6:37 a.m. PDT (9:37 a.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its 26th close flyby of the planet. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 5,375 miles (8,650 kilometers) from Jupiter’s cloud tops at a latitude of about 50 degrees North. The spacecraft was traveling about 127,000 mph (204,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet at that time.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used two different cameras to create this selfie in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall. The panorama is made up of 60 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover’s robotic arm on March 26, 2021, the 3,070th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or “head,” of the rover on March 16, 2021, the 3,060th Martian day of the mission.
The hole visible to the left of the rover is where its robotic drill sampled a rock nicknamed “Nontron.” The Curiosity team is nicknaming features in this part of Mars using names from the region around the village of Nontron in southwestern France.
Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA. JPL manages Curiosity's mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Lighting from two times of day was combined for a stunning view of terrain that the rover is leaving behind.
After completing a major software update in April, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took a last look at “Marker Band Valley” before leaving it behind, capturing a “postcard” of the scene.
The postcard is an artistic interpretation of the landscape, with color added over two black-and-white panoramas captured by Curiosity’s navigation cameras. The views were taken on April 8 at 9:20 a.m. and 3:40 p.m. local Mars time, providing dramatically different lighting that, when combined, makes details in the scene stand out. Blue was added to parts of the postcard captured in the morning and yellow to parts taken in the afternoon, just as with a similar postcard taken by Curiosity in November 2021.
The resulting image is striking. Curiosity is in the foothills of Mount Sharp, which stands 3 miles (5 kilometers) high within Gale Crater, where the rover has been exploring since landing in 2012. In the distance beyond its tracks is Marker Band Valley, a winding area in the “sulfate-bearing region” within which the rover discovered unexpected signs of an ancient lake. Farther below (at center and just to the right) are two hills – “Bolívar” and “Deepdale” – that Curiosity drove between while exploring “Paraitepuy Pass.”
Image Credit: NASA
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This enhanced-color image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft captures the striking cloud bands of Jupiter’s southern latitudes. Jupiter is not only the largest planet in the solar system, it also rotates at the fastest rate, completing a full day in just 10 hours. This rapid spinning creates strong jet streams, separating Jupiter’s clouds into bright zones and dark belts that wrap around the planet.
Citizen scientist David Marriott created this image with data from the JunoCam instrument. The original image was taken on April 10, 2020, at 7:35 a.m. PDT (10:35 a.m. EDT) as the Juno spacecraft performed its 26th close flyby of the planet. At the time the image was taken, Juno was about 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops at a latitude of about 58 degrees south.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by David Marriott
During its 40th close pass by Jupiter, our Juno spacecraft saw Ganymede cast a large, dark spot on the planet on Feb. 25, 2022.
JunoCam captured this image from very close to Jupiter, making Ganymede’s shadow appear especially large. At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 44,000 miles (71,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops and 15 times closer to the planet than Ganymede.
An observer at Jupiter’s cloud tops within the oval shadow would experience a total eclipse of the Sun. Total eclipses are more common on Jupiter than Earth for several reasons: Jupiter has four major moons (Ganymede, Io, Callisto, and Europa) that often pass between Jupiter and the Sun, and since Jupiter’s moons orbit in a plane close to Jupiter’s orbital plane, the moon shadows are often cast upon the planet.
Image Credit: Data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing: Thomas Thomopoulos © CC BY
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This high-resolution still image is part of a video taken by several cameras as NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. A camera aboard the descent stage captured this shot. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (the European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The first of two solar arrays for NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has been extended inside the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 20, 2023.
This week, NASA invited media to view the Psyche spacecraft at 9 a.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 11, at the Astrotech Space Operations payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida.
The Psyche mission is a journey to a metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. What makes the asteroid Psyche unique is that it appears to be exposed nickel-iron core material of an early planetesimal, one of the building blocks of our solar system.
Deep within rocky, terrestrial planets – including Earth – scientists infer the presence of metallic cores, but these lie unreachably far below the planets' rocky mantles and crusts. Because we cannot see or measure Earth's core directly, Psyche offers a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created the terrestrial planets.
DSOC will be NASA’s furthest-ever test of high-bandwidth optical communications. DSOC will send and receive test data from Earth using an invisible near-infrared laser, which can transmit data at 10 to 100 times the bandwidth of conventional radio wave systems used on spacecraft today. As the first demonstration of deep-space laser communications, DSOC is not relaying mission data from Psyche. Although, what the team learns from DSOC could support future agency missions, including humanity's next giant leap: When NASA sends astronauts to Mars.
Image Credit: NASA/Isaac Watson
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NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.
In this image, NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
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This image shows two of Jupiter's large rotating storms, captured by Juno’s visible-light imager, JunoCam, on Juno’s 38th perijove pass, on Nov. 29, 2021.
This image was acquired at 50 degrees 5 minutes north latitude, at an altitude of 3,815 miles (6,140 kilometers). Atmospheric details as small as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) can be discerned in the image. Bright “pop-up” clouds are visible above the lower storm, casting shadows on the cloud bank below. Although the pop-up clouds appear small in comparison to the large storm below, such clouds are typically 31 miles (50 kilometers) across.
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed the image to enhance the color and contrast, using raw JunoCam data
JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY--
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From all of us here at Marshall Space Flight Center, we wish you a healthy and happy holiday season!
Celebrate with a stellar snowflake that sits within the cosmic Christmas Tree Cluster!
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA
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More about NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of Jupiter during the mission’s 40th close pass by the giant planet on Feb. 25, 2022. The large, dark shadow on the left side of the image was cast by Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
Citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this enhanced-color image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument (Figure A). At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 44,000 miles (71,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 55 degrees south, and 15 times closer than Ganymede, which orbits about 666,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) away from Jupiter.
An observer at Jupiter’s cloud tops within the oval shadow would experience a total eclipse of the Sun. Total eclipses are more common on Jupiter than Earth for several reasons. Jupiter has four major moons (Galilean satellites) that often pass between Jupiter and the Sun: in seven days, Ganymede transits once; Europa, twice; and Io, four times. And since Jupiter’s moons orbit in a plane close to Jupiter’s orbital plane, the moon shadows are often cast upon the planet.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Thomas Thomopoulos © CC BY--
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Spring doesn't just hapen on Earth. Spring also happens on some of our neighboring planets in the solar system.
Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of the solar system, this one, captured here in a mosaic of light and dark, is the first witnessed up close by an emissary from Earth … none other than our faithful robotic explorer, Cassini in this image from 2009.
Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator.
At equinox, the shadows of the planet's expansive rings are compressed into a single, narrow band cast onto the planet as seen in this mosaic. At this time so close to equinox, illumination of the rings by sunlight reflected off the planet vastly dominates any meager sunlight falling on the rings. Hence, the half of the rings on the left illuminated by planetshine is, before processing, much brighter than the half of the rings on the right. On the right, it is only the vertically extended parts of the rings that catch any substantial sunlight.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Cyclones at the north pole of Jupiter appear as swirls of striking colors in this extreme false color rendering of an image from NASA’s Juno mission. The huge, persistent cyclone found at Jupiter’s north pole is visible at the center of the image, encircled by smaller cyclones that range in size from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers). Together, this pattern of storms covers an area that would dwarf the Earth.
The color choices in this image reveal both the beauty of Jupiter and the subtle details present in Jupiter’s dynamic cloud structure. Each new observation that Juno provides of Jupiter’s atmosphere complements computer simulations and helps further refine our understanding of how the storms evolve over time.
The Juno mission provided the first clear views of Jupiter’s polar regions. Juno’s Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument has also mapped this area, as well as a similar pattern of storms at the planet’s south pole.
Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt made this composite image using data obtained by the JunoCam instrument during four of the Juno spacecraft’s close passes by Jupiter, which took place between Feb. 17, 2020, and July 25, 2020. The greatly exaggerated color is partially a result of combining many individual images to create this view.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Gerald Eichstädt
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What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named W40, the butterfly is a nebula – a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form. The butterfly's "wings" are giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region.
The material that forms W40's wings was ejected from a dense cluster of stars that lies between the wings in the image. The hottest, most massive of these stars, W40 IRS 1a, lies near the center of the star cluster.
W40 is about 1,400 light-years from the Sun, about the same distance as the well-known Orion nebula, although the two are almost 180 degrees apart in the sky.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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During its 36th low pass over Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of striking cloud bands and swirls in the giant planet’s mid-southern latitudes. The dark, circular vortex near the center of the image is a cyclone that spans roughly 250 miles (about 400 kilometers). The color at its center is likely to be the result of descending winds that cleared out upper-level clouds, revealing darker material below.
Citizen scientist Brian Swift used a raw JunoCam image digitally projected onto a sphere to create this view. It has been rotated so that north is up. The original image was taken on Sept. 2, 2021, at 4:09 p.m. PDT (7:09 p.m. EDT). At the time, the spacecraft was about 16,800 miles (about 27,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 31 degrees south.
JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found a science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at www.nasa.gov/juno and missionjuno.swri.edu/. For more about this finding and other science results, see www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings/.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Brian Swift © CC BY--
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2006 images from three of NASA's Great Observatories were combined to create this spectacular, multiwavelength view of the starburst galaxy M82. Optical light from stars (yellow-green/Hubble Space Telescope) shows the disk of a modest-sized, apparently normal galaxy.
Another Hubble observation designed to image 10,000 degree Celsius hydrogen gas (orange) reveals a startlingly different picture of matter blasting out of the galaxy. The Spitzer Space Telescope infrared image (red) shows that cool gas and dust are also being ejected. Chandra's X-ray image (blue) reveals gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by the violent outflow. The eruption can be traced back to the central regions of the galaxy where stars are forming at a furious rate, some 10 times faster than in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Many of these newly formed stars are very massive and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas. Vigorous mass loss from these stars before they explode, and the heat generated by the supernovas drive the gas out of the galaxy at millions of miles per hour. It is thought that the expulsion of matter from a galaxy during bursts of star formation is one of the main ways of spreading elements like carbon and oxygen throughout the universe.
The burst of star formation in M82 is thought to have been initiated by shock waves generated in a close encounter with a large nearby galaxy, M81, about 100 million years ago. These shock waves triggered the collapse of giant clouds of dust and gas in M82. In another 100 million years or so, most of the gas and dust will have been used to form stars, or blown out of the galaxy, so the starburst will subside.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/JHU/D.Strickland; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA/The Hubble Heritage Team; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of AZ/C. Engelbracht
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The gas giant orbiter has flown over 510 million miles and also documented close encounters with three of Jupiter’s four largest moons.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft will fly past Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io on Tuesday, May 16, and then the gas giant itself soon after. The flyby of the Jovian moon will be the closest to date, at an altitude of about 22,060 miles (35,500 kilometers). Now in the third year of its extended mission to investigate the interior of Jupiter, the solar-powered spacecraft will also explore the ring system where some of the gas giant’s inner moons reside.
To date, Juno has performed 50 flybys of Jupiter and also collected data during close encounters with three of the four Galilean moons – the icy worlds Europa and Ganymede, and fiery Io.
This JunoCam image of the Jovian moon Io was collected during Juno’s flyby of the moon on March 1, 2023. At the time of closest approach, Juno was about 32,000 miles (51,500 kilometers) away from Io.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill (CC BY)
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As NASA’s Juno mission completed its 43rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 5, 2022, its JunoCam instrument captured this striking view of vortices — hurricane-like spiral wind patterns — near the planet’s north pole.
These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across. Figuring out how they form is key to understanding Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create the planet’s other atmospheric features. Scientists are particularly interested in the vortices’ varying shapes, sizes, and colors. For example, cyclones, which spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, and anti-cyclones, which rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, exhibit very different colors and shapes.
A NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks help from volunteer members of the public to spot and help categorize vortices and other atmospheric phenomena visible in JunoCam photos of Jupiter. This process does not require specialized training or software, and can be done by anyone, anywhere, with a cellphone or laptop. As of July 2022, 2,404 volunteers had made 376,725 classifications using the Jovian Vortex Hunter project web site at www.zooniverse.org/projects/ramanakumars/jovian-vortex-hu....
Another citizen scientist, Brian Swift, created this enhanced color and contrast view of vortices using raw JunoCam image data. At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 15,600 miles (25,100 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 84 degrees.
JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at www.nasa.gov/juno and missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Brian Swift © CC BY
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JunoCam took this image of Jupiter’s northernmost cyclone (visible to the right along the bottom edge of image) on Sept. 29, 2022.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Navaneeth Krishnan S CC BY 3.0
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The first picture NASA's Juno spacecraft took as it flew by Jupiter's ice-encrusted moon Europa has arrived on Earth. Revealing surface features in a region near the moon's equator called Annwn Regio, the image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft's closest approach, on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), at a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers).
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS
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What are those dots between Saturn's rings? Our Earth and Moon. Just over three years ago, because the Sun was temporarily blocked by the body of Saturn, the robotic Cassini spacecraft was able to look toward the inner Solar System. There, it spotted our Earth and Moon -- just pin-pricks of light lying about 1.4 billion kilometers distant. Toward the right of the featured image is Saturn's A ring, with the broad Encke Gap on the far right and the narrower Keeler Gap toward the center. On the far left is Saturn's continually changing F Ring. From this perspective, the light seen from Saturn's rings was scattered mostly forward , and so appeared backlit. After more than a decade of exploration and discovery, the Cassini spacecraft ran low on fuel in 2017 and was directed to enter Saturn's atmosphere, where it surely melted.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL-Caltech, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team; Processing & License: Kevin M. Gill
Phosphorus, a key chemical element for many biological processes, has been found in icy grains emitted by the small moon and is likely abundant in its subsurface ocean.
Using data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission, an international team of scientists has discovered phosphorus – an essential chemical element for life – locked inside salt-rich ice grains ejected into space from Enceladus.
The small moon is known to possess a subsurface ocean, and water from that ocean erupts through cracks in Enceladus' icy crust as geysers at its south pole, creating a plume. The plume then feeds Saturn's E ring (a faint ring outside of the brighter main rings) with icy particles.
During its mission at the gas giant from 2004 to 2017, Cassini flew through the plume and E ring numerous times. Scientists found that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich array of minerals and organic compounds – including the ingredients for amino acids – associated with life as we know it.
In this image, seen as a bright arc in this 2006 observation by Cassini, Saturn’s E ring is fed with icy particles from Enceladus’ plume, creating wispy fingers of bright material that is backlit by the Sun. The shadowed hemisphere of the moon can be seen as a dark dot inside the ring.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
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This 2016 image of haze layers above Pluto’s limb was taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. About 20 haze layers are seen; the layers have been found to typically extend horizontally over hundreds of kilometers, but are not strictly parallel to the surface. For example, scientists note a haze layer about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the surface (lower left area of the image), which descends to the surface at the right.
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
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A sea of dark dunes, sculpted by the wind into long lines, surrounds Mars' northern polar cap and covers an area as big as Texas. In this false-color image, areas with cooler temperatures are recorded in bluer tints, while warmer features are depicted in yellows and oranges. Thus, the dark, sun-warmed dunes glow with a golden color. This image covers an area 19 miles (30 kilometers) wide.
This scene combines images taken during the period from December 2002 to November 2004 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. It is part of a special set of images marking the 20th anniversary of Odyssey, the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history. The pictured location on Mars is 80.3 degrees north latitude, 172.1 degrees east longitude.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
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Though Mars is the Red Planet, false-color images can help us learn about its weather and geology. This image shows a variety of wind-related features on the Red Planet near the center of Gamboa Crater. Larger sand dunes form sinuous crests and individual domes.
There are tiny ripples on the tops of the dunes, only several feet from crest-to-crest. These merge into larger mega-ripples about 30 feet apart that radiate outward from the dunes. The larger, brighter formations that are roughly parallel are called "Transverse Aeolian Ridges" (TAR). These TAR are covered with very coarse sand.
The mega-ripples appear blue-green on one side of an enhanced color cutout while the TAR appear brighter blue on the other. This could be because the TAR are actively moving under the force of the wind, clearing away darker dust and making them brighter. All of these different features can indicate which way the wind was blowing when they formed. Being able to study such variety so close together allows us to see their relationships and compare and contrast features to examine what they are made of and how they formed.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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This image from NASA’s Juno mission captures the northern hemisphere of Jupiter around the region known as Jet N7. The planet’s strong winds create the many swirling storms visible near the top of its atmosphere. Data from Juno helped scientists discover another, less visible effect of those winds: Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field changes over time. The winds extend more than 1800 miles (3000 kilometers) deep, where the material lower in Jupiter’s atmosphere is highly conductive, electrically. Scientists determined that the wind shears this conductive material apart and carries it around the planet, which changes the shape of the magnetic field.
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this false-color image using data from the JunoCam camera. The original image was taken on February 21, 2021 as the Juno spacecraft performed its 32nd close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, the spacecraft was about 10,200 miles (16,400 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds at a latitude of about 66 degrees north.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY
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A multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Appearing in the scene are several bright-white "pop-up" clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval.
This color-enhanced image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on Oct. 29, 2018 as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles from the planet's cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager
Image Credit: Enhanced Image by Gerald Eichstädt and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA)/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
This Jan. 10, 2013, composite image of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and infrared data acquired by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. NGC 6872 is 522,000 light-years across, making it more than five times the size of the Milky Way galaxy. In 2013, astronomers from the United States, Chile, and Brazil found it to be the largest-known spiral galaxy, based on archival data from GALEX.
Image Credit: NASA/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS
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NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars March 4, covering 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across the Martian landscape. The drive served as a mobility test that marks just one of many milestones as team members check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance. Once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, regular commutes extending 656 feet (200 meters) or more are expected.
This image was captured while NASA’s Perseverance rover drove on Mars for the first time on March 4, 2021. One of Perseverance’s Hazard Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) captured this image as the rover completed a short traverse and turn from its landing site in Jezero Crater.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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On March 1, 2023, NASA's Juno mission completed its 49th close flyby of Jupiter. As the spacecraft flew low over the giant planet's cloud tops, its JunoCam instrument captured this look at bands of high-altitude haze forming above cyclones in an area known at Jet N7.
Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson processed a raw image from the JunoCam instrument, enhancing the contrast and sharpness. At the time the image was taken, Juno was about 5,095 miles (8,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops, at a latitude of about 66 degrees.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Björn Jónsson © CC NC SA
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Research reveals a new explanation for how the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa rotates at a different rate than its interior. NASA’s Europa Clipper will take a closer look. NASA scientists have strong evidence that Jupiter’s moon Europa has an internal ocean under its icy outer shell – an enormous body of salty water swirling around the moon’s rocky interior. New computer modeling suggests the water may actually be pushing the ice shell along, possibly speeding up and slowing down the rotation of the moon’s icy shell over time.
This view of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. The agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will explore the moon when it reaches orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
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Since its arrival on April 29, the Psyche spacecraft has moved into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians removed it from its protective shipping container, rotated it to vertical, and have begun the final steps to prepare the spacecraft for launch. In the coming months, crews will perform a range of work including re-installing solar arrays, re-integrating a radio, testing the telecommunications system, loading propellants, and encapsulating the spacecraft inside payload fairings before it leaves the facility and moves to the launch pad.
The Psyche spacecraft will explore a metal-rich asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, made largely of nickel-iron metal. The mission is targeting an Aug. 1 launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy. After arriving in 2026, the spacecraft will spend 21 months orbiting its namesake asteroid, mapping and gathering data, potentially providing insights on how planets with a metal core, including Earth, formed.
Image Credit: NASA/Isaac Watson
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The spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s largest moon than any other in more than two decades, offering dramatic glimpses of the icy orb.
The first two images from NASA Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of Jupiter’s giant moon Ganymede have been received on Earth. The photos – one from the Jupiter orbiter’s JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera – show the surface in remarkable detail, including craters, clearly distinct dark and bright terrain, and long structural features possibly linked to tectonic faults.
This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
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This stunning compilation image of Jupiter’s stormy northern hemisphere was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed a close pass of the gas giant planet. Some bright-white clouds can be seen popping up to high altitudes on the right side of Jupiter’s disk. (The Juno team frequently refers to clouds like these as “pop-up” clouds in image captions.)
Juno took the four images used to produce this color-enhanced view on May 29, 2019, between 12:52 a.m. PDT (3:52 a.m. EDT) and 1:03 a.m. PDT (4:03 a.m. EDT), as the spacecraft performed its 20th science pass of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between 11,600 miles (18,600 kilometers) and 5,400 miles (8,600 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops, above a northern latitude spanning from about 59 to 34 degrees.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
NASA’s Juno mission captured this view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere during the spacecraft’s 39th close flyby of the planet on Jan. 12, 2022. Zooming in on the right portion of the image reveals two more worlds in the same frame: Jupiter’s intriguing moons Io (left) and Europa (right).
Io is the solar system’s most volcanic body, while Europa’s icy surface hides a global ocean of liquid water beneath. Juno will have an opportunity to capture much more detailed observations of Europa – using several scientific instruments – in September 2022, when the spacecraft makes the closest fly-by of the enigmatic moon in decades. The mission will also make close approaches to Io in late 2023 and early 2024.
At the time this image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) from Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 52 degrees south. Citizen scientist Andrea Luck created the image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by AndreaLuck © CC BY
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To avoid patches of knife-edged rocks, the mission has taken an alternative path up Mount Sharp.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover spent most of March climbing the “Greenheugh Pediment” – a gentle slope capped by rubbly sandstone. The rover briefly summited this feature’s north face two years ago; now on the pediment’s southern side, Curiosity has navigated back onto the pediment to explore it more fully.
But on March 18, the mission team saw an unexpected terrain change ahead and realized they would have to turn around: The path before Curiosity was carpeted with more wind-sharpened rocks, or ventifacts, than they have ever seen in the rover’s nearly 10 years on the Red Planet.
Ventifacts chewed up Curiosity’s wheels earlier in the mission. Since then, rover engineers have found ways to slow wheel wear, including a traction control algorithm, to reduce how frequently they need to assess the wheels. And they also plan rover routes that avoid driving over such rocks, including these latest ventifacts, which are made of sandstone – the hardest type of rock Curiosity has encountered on Mars.
The team nicknamed their scalelike appearance “gator-back” terrain. Although the mission had scouted the area using orbital imagery, it took seeing these rocks close-up to reveal the ventifacts.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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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.
Such events occur frequently on Jupiter because it is a large planet with many moons. In addition, unlike most other planets in our solar system, Jupiter's axis is not highly tilted relative to its orbit, so the Sun never strays far from Jupiter's equatorial plane (+/- 3 degrees). This means Jupiter's moons regularly cast their shadows on the planet throughout its year.
Juno's close proximity to Jupiter provides an exceptional fish-eye view, showing a small fraction near the planet's equator. The shadow is about 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) wide, approximately the same width as Io, but appears much larger relative to Jupiter.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY)
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Just as our own Moon floats away from Earth a tiny bit more each year, other moons are doing the same with their host planets. As a moon orbits, its gravity pulls on the planet, causing a temporary bulge in the planet as it passes.
Over time, the energy created by the bulging and subsiding transfers from the planet to the moon, nudging it farther and farther out. Our Moon drifts 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) from Earth each year.
Scientists thought they knew the rate at which the giant moon Titan is moving away from Saturn, but they recently made a surprising discovery: Using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, they found Titan drifting a hundred times faster than previously understood -- about 4 inches (11 centimeters) per year.
The findings may help address an age-old question. While scientists know that Saturn formed 4.6 billion years ago in the early days of the solar system, there's more uncertainty about when the planet's rings and its system of more than 80 moons formed. Titan is currently 759,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. The revised rate of its drift suggests that the moon started out much closer to Saturn, which would mean the whole system expanded more quickly than previously believed.
Larger than the planet Mercury, huge moon Titan is seen here as it orbits Saturn. Below Titan are the shadows cast by Saturn's rings. This natural color view was created by combining six images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on May 6, 2012.
Image Credit: Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
In a first, scientists have seen direct evidence of active volcanism on Earth’s twin, setting the stage for the NASA’s VERITAS mission to investigate.
Direct geological evidence of recent volcanic activity has been observed on the surface of Venus for the first time. Scientists made the discovery after poring over archival radar images of Venus taken more than 30 years ago, in the 1990s, by NASA’s Magellan mission. The images revealed a volcanic vent changing shape and increasing significantly in size in less than a year.
Scientists study active volcanoes to understand how a planet’s interior can shape its crust, drive its evolution, and affect its habitability. One of NASA’s new missions to Venus will do just that. Led by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, VERITAS – short for Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy – will launch within a decade. The orbiter will study Venus from surface to core to understand how a rocky planet about the same size as Earth took a very different path, developing into a world covered in volcanic plains and deformed terrain hidden beneath a thick, hot, toxic atmosphere.
This computer-generated 3D model of Venus’ surface shows the summit of Maat Mons, the volcano that is exhibiting signs of activity. A new study found one of Maat Mons’ vents became enlarged and changed shape over an eight-month period in 1991, indicating an eruptive event occurred.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Magnetic fields in NGC 1068, or M77, are shown as streamlines over a visible light and X-ray composite image of the galaxy from the Hubble Space Telescope, NuSTAR or the Nuclear Spectroscopic Array, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The magnetic fields align along the entire length of the massive spiral arms — 24,000 light years across (0.8 kiloparsecs) — implying that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy’s shape are also compressing the its magnetic field. This supports the leading theory of how the spiral arms are forced into their iconic shape known as “density wave theory.” SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, studied the galaxy using far-infrared light (89 microns) to reveal facets of its magnetic fields that previous observations using visible and radio telescopes could not detect.
Image Credit: NASA/SOFIA; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roma Tre Univ.
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The spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter's largest moon than any other in more than two decades, offering dramatic glimpses of the icy orb.
The first two images from NASA Juno's June 7, 2021, flyby of Jupiter's giant moon Ganymede have been received on Earth. The photos - one from the Jupiter orbiter's JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera - show the surface in remarkable detail, including craters, clearly distinct dark and bright terrain, and long structural features possibly linked to tectonic faults.
This image of the dark side of Ganymede was obtained by Juno's Stellar Reference Unit navigation camera during its June 7, 2021, flyby of the moon
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
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Gaseous swirls of hydrogen, sulfur, and hydrocarbons cradle a collection of infant stars in this composite image of the Orion Nebula, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space telescope. Together, the two telescopes expose carbon-rich molecules in the cosmic cloud of this star-formation factory located 1,500 light-years away.
Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light view reveal hydrogen and sulfur gas that have been heated and ionized by intense ultraviolet radiation from the massive stars, collectively known as the "Trapezium." Meanwhile, Spitzer's infrared view exposes carbon-rich molecules in the cloud. Together, the telescopes expose the stars in Orion as a rainbow of dots sprinkled throughout the image.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech STScI
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A new NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks your help spotting vortices – spiral wind patterns – and other phenomena in photos of the planet Jupiter.
Another NASA citizen science project, called Junocam, seeks help from members of the public processing images from NASA’s Juno Mission and choosing targets for the spacecraft. However, the new Jovian Vortex Hunter project provides images that have already been processed by the science team, making it quick and easy for anyone to lend a hand. Categorizing the images will help scientists understand the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry on Jupiter, which create dazzling features like bands, spots and “brown barges.”
In this image from 2019, citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. This stunningly detailed look at a cyclonic storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere was taken during its 23rd close flyby of the planet (also referred to as “perijove 23”). Juno observed this vortex in a region of Jupiter called the “north north north north temperate belt,” or NNNNTB, one of the gas giant planet’s many persistent cloud bands. These bands are formed by the prevailing winds at different latitudes. The vortex seen here is roughly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
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This look at the complex surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede came from NASA’s Juno mission during a close pass by the giant moon in June 2021. At closest approach, the spacecraft came within just 650 miles (1,046 kilometers) of Ganymede’s surface.
Most of Ganymede's craters have bright rays extending from the impact scar, but about 1 percent of the craters have dark rays. This image taken by JunoCam during the close Ganymede pass shows one of the dark-rayed craters. The crater, named Kittu, is about 9 miles (15 kilometers) across, surrounded by darker material ejected during the impact that formed the crater. Scientists believe that contamination from the impactor produced the dark rays. As time passes, the rays stay dark because they are a bit warmer than the surroundings, so ice is driven off to condense on nearby colder, brighter terrain.
Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, larger even than the planet Mercury. It’s the only moon known to have its own magnetic field, which causes auroras that circle the moon’s poles. Evidence also indicates Ganymede may hide a liquid water ocean beneath its icy surface.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Thomas Thomopoulos © CC BY
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