#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA Announces Winners of Power to Explore Challenge" NASA announced the winners on Wednesday of the third annual Power to Explore Challenge, a national writing competition designed to teach K-12 students about the power of radioisotopes for space exploration. The competition asked students to learn about NASA’s Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS), “nuclear batteries” the agency uses to explore some of the most extreme [

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA to Hoist Its Sail: Solar Sail Mission Gets Ready for Launch" A NASA mission testing a new way of navigating our solar system is ready to hoist its sail into space – not to catch the wind, but the propulsive power of sunlight. The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA Photographer Honored for Thrilling Inverted In-Flight Image" Riding in the back seat of a car can be boring. Riding in the back of a NASA aircraft is exhilarating, especially for photographers capturing NASA’s story. Jim Ross, photo lead at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, was awarded first place for an image he took while flying upside down in a [

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA’s Near Space Network Enables PACE Climate Mission to ‘Phone Home’" The PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission has delivered its first operational data back to researchers, a feat made possible in part by innovative, data-storing technology from NASA’s Near Space Network, which introduced two key enhancements for PACE and other upcoming science missions. As a satellite orbits in space, its systems generate critical data [

#NewPhoto from #Nasa: "Sometimes Getting the Perfect Picture Really Is Rocket Science" NASA Engineer Cindy Fuentes Rosal waves goodbye to a Black Brant IX sounding rocket launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The rocket was part of a series of three launches for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study the disturbances in the electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere known as the ionosphere created when the Moon eclipses the Sun. The rockets launched before, during, and after peak local eclipse time on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. [April 17, 2024] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240408-wallopsapepmission-cpirner-1x1-1.jpg

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "The Marshall Star for April 17, 2024" The Full Experience: NASA, Marshall, and Arkansas Celebrate Total Solar Eclipse By Celine Smith More than 100,000 people from across the world gathered April 8 in Russellville, Arkansas, to witness an astronomical syzygy – the alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth – creating a solar eclipse with totality lasting 4 minutes and 12 seconds. [

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Space memory: Voyager gift for Pres. George H.W. Bush" Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone and other mission team members gave a framed copy of an iconic Voyager 1 solar system image that includes Earth as a “Pale Blue Dot” to President George H.W. Bush on June 7, 1990. The presentation was made at the White House in the Oval Office. White House [April 17, 2024] Read more here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/space-memory-voyager-gift-for-pres-george-h-w-bush/

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA’s TESS Returns to Science Operations" NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has returned to work after science observations were suspended on April 8, when the spacecraft entered into safe mode. All instruments are powered on and, following the successful download of previously collected science data stored in the mission’s recorder, are now making new science observations. Analysis of what triggered […] [April 17, 2024] Read more here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/tess/nasas-tess-temporarily-pauses-science-observations/

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "OSDR hosts Blue Origin Erika Wagner" Open Science Data Repository Team Hosts Blue Origin’s Dr Erika Wagner at the Meet the Expert Seminar Series Focused on Flight Integrators Friday, March 29, 2024—The Open Science Data Repository hosted the sixth presentation showcasing flight integrators in the “Meet the Expert” series. This series is targeted for the Open Science Analysis Working Group (AWG) [

#NewImage from #Nasa: "Facing NGC 1232" From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 1232 face-on. Nearly 200,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located some 47 million light-years away in the flowing southern constellation of Eridanus. This sharp, multi-color, telescopic image of NGC 1232 includes remarkable details of the distant island universe. From the core outward, the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the grand, sweeping spiral arms. NGC 1232's apparent, small, barred-spiral companion galaxy is cataloged as NGC 1232A. Distance estimates place it much farther though, around 300 million light-years away, and unlikely to be interacting with NGC 1232. Of course, the prominent bright star with the spiky appearance is much closer than NGC 1232 and lies well within our own Milky Way. [April 18, 2024] https://apod.nasa.gov/image/2404/NGC1232_Eye_of_God_Galaxy_fullsize_2024-03-28_1024.jpg

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Hubble Goes Hunting for Small Main Belt Asteroids" Like boulders, rocks, and pebbles scattered across a landscape, asteroids come in a wide range of sizes. Cataloging asteroids in space is tricky because they are faint and they don’t stop to be photographed as they zip along their orbits around the Sun. Astronomers recently used a trove of archived images taken by NASA’s Hubble […] [April 18, 2024] Read more here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-goes-hunting-for-small-main-belt-asteroids/

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Climate Change Research" Science in Space: April 2024 Everyone on Earth is touched by the effects of climate change, such as hotter temperatures, shifts in rain patterns, and sea level rise. Collecting climate data helps communities better plan for these changes and build more resilience to them. The International Space Station, one of dozens of NASA missions contributing [

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Two NASA Sounding Rockets Launch from Alaska During Solar Flare" Two Black Brant IX sounding rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, April 17, 2024, during an M-class solar flare for NASA

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "55 Years Ago: Three Months Until the Moon Landing" The rapid pace of preparations for the first Moon landing continued in April 1969. The successful Apollo 9 mission in March cleared the way for Apollo 10 to test all three components of the spacecraft in lunar orbit in May, in a dress rehearsal for the landing itself. Apollo 10 astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John [

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "NASA’s Juno Gives Aerial Views of Mountain, Lava Lake on Io" Imagery from the solar-powered spacecraft provides close-ups of intriguing features on the hellish Jovian moon. Scientists on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have transformed data collected during two recent flybys of Io into animations that highlight two of the Jovian moon’s most dramatic features: a mountain and an almost glass-smooth lake of cooling lava. Other [

#NewReport from #ISS : "ISS Daily Summary Report – 4/17/2024" Payloads: ADvanced Space Experiment Processor In-Space Production Application – Pharmaceutical In-space Laboratory – 02(ADSEP PIL 02): The sample cassette (S/N 26275) was removed and a new cassette (S/N 26293) was installed. More information on this experiment (ADSEP-PIL-02)can be found here. Integrated System for Autonomous and Adaptive Caretaking (ISAAC): The crew setup the Astrobee flyers and

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Water Touches Everything" Real satellite imagery from NASA

#NewPhoto from #Nasa: "Water Touches Everything" The ocean holds about 97 percent of Earth's water and covers 70 percent of our planet's surface. According to the United Nations, the ocean may be home to 50 to 80 percent of all life on Earth. Even if you live hundreds of miles from a coast, what happens in the ocean is fundamental to your life. [April 18, 2024] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-earthday-desktop-white-4k.jpg

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "Sols 4159-4160: A Fully Loaded First Sol" Earth planning date: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 Curiosity continues to make progress along the margin of upper Gediz Vallis ridge, investigating the broken bedrock in our workspace and acquiring images of the ridge deposit as the rover drives south. Today’s 2-sol plan focused on a DRT, contact science, and drive on the first sol, followed […] [April 18, 2024] Read more here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/sols-4159-4160-a-fully-loaded-first-sol/

#BreakingNews from #Nasa: "AI for Earth: How NASA’s Artificial Intelligence and Open Science Efforts Combat Climate Change" As extreme weather events increase around the world due to climate change, the need for further research into our warming planet has increased as well. For NASA, climate research involves not only conducting studies of these events, but also empowering outside researchers to do the same. The artificial intelligence (AI) efforts spearheaded by the agency […] [April 18, 2024] Read more here: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/ai-open-science-climate-change/