Sun - Blog Posts

What’s a Blood Moon? And Other Lunar Eclipse Questions.

Tonight, Australians, Africans, Europeans, Asians and South Americans will have the opportunity to see the longest lunar eclipse of the century. Sorry North America. 

Lunar eclipses occur about 2-4 times per year, when the Moon passes into the Earth’s shadow. In order to see a lunar eclipse, you must be on the night side of the Earth, facing the Moon, when the Earth passes in between the Moon and the Sun. Need help visualizing this? Here you go:

What’s the difference between a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse?

An easy way to remember the difference between a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse is that the word ‘eclipse’ refers to the object that is being obscured. During a solar eclipse, the Moon blocks the Sun from view. During a lunar eclipse, the Earth’s shadow obscures the Moon.

Why does the Moon turn red?  

You may have heard the term ‘Blood Moon’ for a lunar eclipse. When the Moon passes into the Earth’s shadow, it turns red. This happens for the exact same reason that our sunrises and sunsets here on Earth are brilliant shades of pinks and oranges. During a lunar eclipse, the only light reaching the Moon passes through the Earth’s atmosphere. The bluer, shorter wavelength light scatters and the longer wavelength red light passes through and makes it to the Moon.

What science can we learn from a lunar eclipse?

"During a lunar eclipse, the temperature swing is so dramatic that it’s as if the surface of the Moon goes from being in an oven to being in a freezer in just a few hours,” said Noah Petro, project scientist for our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The Diviner team from LRO measures temperature changes on the Moon through their instrument on the spacecraft as well as through a thermal camera on Earth. How quickly or slowly the lunar surface loses heat helps scientists determine characteristics of lunar material, including its composition and physical properties.

When is the next lunar eclipse?

North Americans, don’t worry. If skies are clear, you can see the next lunar eclipse on January 21, 2019. The eclipse will be visible to North Americans, South Americans, and most of Africa and Europe.

To keep an eye on the Moon with us check out nasa.gov/moon or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

The Sun is not silent. The low, pulsing hum of our star's heartbeat allows scientists to peer inside, revealing huge rivers of solar material flowing around before their eyes — er, ears.

Data from ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), sonified by the Stanford Experimental Physics Lab, captures the Sun’s natural vibrations and reveals what can’t be seen with the naked eye.

In this audiogram, our heliophysicist Alex Young explains how this simple sound connects us with the Sun and all the other stars in the universe.

This piece features low frequency sounds of the Sun. For the best listening experience, listen to this story with headphones. 🎧 

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2LMW42o

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Meet Parker Solar Probe, Our Mission to Touch the Sun

In just a few weeks, we're launching a spacecraft to get closer to the Sun than any human-made object has ever gone.

The mission, called Parker Solar Probe, is outfitted with a lineup of instruments to measure the Sun's particles, magnetic and electric fields, solar wind and more – all to help us better understand our star, and, by extension, stars everywhere in the universe.

Parker Solar Probe is about the size of a small car, and after launch – scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 6, 2018 – it will swing by Venus on its way to the Sun, using a maneuver called a gravity assist to draw its orbit closer to our star. Just three months after launch, Parker Solar Probe will make its first close approach to the Sun – the first of 24 throughout its seven-year mission.

Though Parker Solar Probe will get closer and closer to the Sun with each orbit, the first approach will already place the spacecraft as the closest-ever human-made object to the Sun, swinging by at 15 million miles from its surface. This distance places it well within the corona, a region of the Sun's outer atmosphere that scientists think holds clues to some of the Sun's fundamental physics.

For comparison, Mercury orbits at about 36 million miles from the Sun, and the previous record holder – Helios 2, in 1976 – came within 27 million miles of the solar surface. 

Humanity has studied the Sun for thousands of years, and our modern understanding of the Sun was revolutionized some 60 years ago with the start of the Space Age. We've come to understand that the Sun affects Earth in more ways than just providing heat and light – it's an active and dynamic star that releases solar storms that influence Earth and other worlds throughout the solar system. The Sun's activity can trigger the aurora, cause satellite and communications disruptions, and even – in extreme cases – lead to power outages.

Much of the Sun's influence on us is embedded in the solar wind, the Sun's constant outflow of magnetized material that can interact with Earth's magnetic field. One of the earliest papers theorizing the solar wind was written by Dr. Gene Parker, after whom the mission is named.

Though we understand the Sun better than we ever have before, there are still big questions left to be answered, and that's where scientists hope Parker Solar Probe will help.  

First, there's the coronal heating problem. This refers to the counterintuitive truth that the Sun's atmosphere – the corona – is much, much hotter than its surface, even though the surface is millions of miles closer to the Sun's energy source at its core. Scientists hope Parker Solar Probe's in situ and remote measurements will help uncover the mechanism that carries so much energy up into the upper atmosphere.

Second, scientists hope to better understand the solar wind. At some point on its journey from the Sun out into space, the solar wind is accelerated to supersonic speeds and heated to extraordinary temperatures. Right now, we measure solar wind primarily with a group of satellites clustered around Lagrange point 1, a spot in space between the Sun and Earth some 1 million miles from us. 

By the time the solar wind reaches these satellites, it has traveled about 92 million miles already, blending together the signatures that could shed light on the acceleration process. Parker Solar Probe, on the other hand, will make similar measurements less than 4 million miles from the solar surface – much closer to the solar wind's origin point and the regions of interest.

Scientists also hope that Parker Solar Probe will uncover the mechanisms at work behind the acceleration of solar energetic particles, which can reach speeds more than half as fast as the speed of light as they rocket away from the Sun! Such particles can interfere with satellite electronics, especially for satellites outside of Earth's magnetic field.

Parker Solar Probe will launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, adjacent to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Because of the enormous speed required to achieve its solar orbit, the spacecraft will launch on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets in the world.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks to learn more about Parker Solar Probe's science and follow along with its journey to launch. We'll be posting updates here on Tumblr, on Twitter and Facebook, and at nasa.gov/solarprobe.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Our Sun is More than Meets the Eye

The Sun may look unchanging to us here on Earth, but that’s not the whole story.

In visible light – the light our eyes can see – the Sun looks like an almost featureless orange disk, peppered with the occasional sunspot. (Important note: Never look at the Sun directly, and always use a proper filter for solar viewing – or tune in to our near-real time satellite feeds!)

But in other kinds of light, it’s a different picture. The Sun emits light across the electromagnetic spectrum, including the relatively narrow range of light we can see, as well as wavelengths that are invisible to our eyes. Different wavelengths convey information about different components of the Sun’s surface and atmosphere, so watching the Sun in multiple types of light helps us paint a fuller picture.

Watching the Sun in these wavelengths reveals how active it truly is. This image, captured in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light at 131 Angstroms, shows a solar flare. Solar flares are intense bursts of light radiation caused by magnetic events on the Sun, and often associated with sunspots. The light radiation from solar flares can disturb part of Earth’s atmosphere where radio signals travel, causing short-lived problems with communications systems and GPS.

Looking at the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light also reveals structures like coronal loops (magnetic loops traced out by charged particles spinning along magnetic field lines)…

…solar prominence eruptions…

…and coronal holes (magnetically open areas on the Sun from which solar wind rushes out into space).

Though extreme ultraviolet light shows the Sun's true colors, specialized instruments let us see some of the Sun's most significant activity in visible light.

A coronagraph is a camera that uses a solid disk to block out the Sun’s bright face, revealing the much fainter corona, a dynamic part of the Sun’s atmosphere. Coronagraphs also reveal coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which are explosions of billions of tons of solar material into space. Because this material is magnetized, it can interact with Earth’s magnetic field and trigger space weather effects like the aurora, satellite problems, and even – in extreme cases – power outages.

The Sun is also prone to bursts of energetic particles. These particles are blocked by Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere, but they could pose a threat to astronauts traveling in deep space, and they can interfere with our satellites. This clip shows an eruption of energetic particles impacting a Sun-observing satellite, creating the 'snow' in the image.

We keep watch on the Sun 24/7 with a fleet of satellites to monitor and better understand this activity. And this summer, we’re going one step closer with the launch of Parker Solar Probe, a mission to touch the Sun. Parker Solar Probe will get far closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft has ever gone – into the corona, within 4 million miles of the surface – and will send back unprecedented direct measurements from the regions thought to drive much of the Sun’s activity. More information about the fundamental processes there can help round out and improve models to predict the space weather that the Sun sends our way.

Keep up with the latest on the Sun at @NASASun on Twitter, and follow along with Parker Solar Probe’s last steps to launch at nasa.gov/solarprobe.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com. 

Happy 4th of July… From Space!

In Hollywood blockbusters, explosions and eruptions are often among the stars of the show. In space, explosions, eruptions and twinkling of actual stars are a focus for scientists who hope to better understand their births, lives, deaths and how they interact with their surroundings. Spend some of your Fourth of July taking a look at these celestial phenomenon:

Credit: NASA/Chandra X-ray Observatory

An Astral Exhibition

This object became a sensation in the astronomical community when a team of researchers pointed at it with our Chandra X-ray Observatory telescope in 1901, noting that it suddenly appeared as one of the brightest stars in the sky for a few days, before gradually fading away in brightness. Today, astronomers cite it as an example of a “classical nova,” an outburst produced by a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf star, the dense remnant of a Sun-like star.

Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

A Twinkling Tapestry

The brilliant tapestry of young stars flaring to life resemble a glittering fireworks display. The sparkling centerpiece is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2, named for Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund who discovered the grouping in the 1960s. The cluster resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina.

Credit: NASA/THEMIS/Sebastian Saarloos

An Illuminating Aurora

Sometimes during solar magnetic events, solar explosions hurl clouds of magnetized particles into space. Traveling more than a million miles per hour, these coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, made up of hot material called plasma take up to three days to reach Earth. Spacecraft and satellites in the path of CMEs can experience glitches as these plasma clouds pass by. In near-Earth space, magnetic reconnection incites explosions of energy driving charged solar particles to collide with atoms in Earth’s upper atmosphere. We see these collisions near Earth’s polar regions as the aurora. Three spacecraft from our Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission, observed these outbursts known as substorms.

Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope//ESA/STScI

A Shining Supermassive Merger

Every galaxy has a black hole at its center. Usually they are quiet, without gas accretions, like the one in our Milky Way. But if a star creeps too close to the black hole, the gravitational tides can rip away the star’s gaseous matter. Like water spinning around a drain, the gas swirls into a disk around the black hole at such speeds that it heats to millions of degrees. As an inner ring of gas spins into the black hole, gas particles shoot outward from the black hole’s polar regions. Like bullets shot from a rifle, they zoom through the jets at velocities close to the speed of light. Astronomers using our Hubble Space Telescope observed correlations between supermassive black holes and an event similar to tidal disruption, pictured above in the Centaurus A galaxy. 

Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope/ESA

A Stellar Explosion

Supernovae can occur one of two ways. The first occurs when a white dwarf—the remains of a dead star—passes so close to a living star that its matter leaks into the white dwarf. This causes a catastrophic explosion. However most people understand supernovae as the death of a massive star. When the star runs out of fuel toward the end of its life, the gravity at its heart sucks the surrounding mass into its center. At the turn of the 19th century, the binary star system Eta Carinae was faint and undistinguished. Our Hubble Telescope captured this image of Eta Carinae, binary star system. The larger of the two stars in the Eta Carinae system is a huge and unstable star that is nearing the end of its life, and the event that the 19th century astronomers observed was a stellar near-death experience. Scientists call these outbursts supernova impostor events, because they appear similar to supernovae but stop just short of destroying their star.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO

An Eye-Catching Eruption

Extremely energetic objects permeate the universe. But close to home, the Sun produces its own dazzling lightshow, producing the largest explosions in our solar system and driving powerful solar storms.. When solar activity contorts and realigns the Sun’s magnetic fields, vast amounts of energy can be driven into space. This phenomenon can create a sudden flash of light—a solar flare.The above picture features a filament eruption on the Sun, accompanied by solar flares captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

The Science Behind the Summer Solstice

Today – Thursday, June 21 – is the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. But what causes this change in seasons? And what exactly is a solstice? It’s all about Earth’s tilt!

Many people believe that Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer and that is why it is hotter. And, likewise, they think Earth is farthest from the Sun in the winter.

Although this idea makes sense, it is incorrect. There is a different reason for Earth's seasons.

Earth's axis is an imaginary pole going right through the center of Earth from "top" to "bottom." Earth spins around this pole, making one complete turn each day. That is why we have day and night, and why every part of Earth's surface gets some of each.

Earth has seasons because its axis doesn't stand up straight. Today, the north pole is tipped toward the Sun, and the south pole is tipped away from the Sun. The northern summer solstice is an instant in time when the north pole of the Earth points more directly toward the Sun than at any other time of the year. It marks the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere.

To mark the beginning of summer, here are four ways to enjoy the many wonders of space throughout the season: 

1. Spot the International Space Station

As the third brightest object in the sky, the International Space Station is easy to see if you know when to look up. Sign up to get alerts when the station is overhead: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/. Visible to the naked eye, it looks like a fast-moving plane only much higher and traveling thousands of miles an hour faster!

2.  Treat your ears to space-related podcasts

From our “Gravity Assist” podcast that takes you on a journey through the solar system (including the Sun!) to our “NASA in Silicon Valley” podcast that provides an in-depth look at people who push the boundaries of innovation, we have podcast offerings that will suit everyone’s taste. For a full list of our podcasts, visit https://www.nasa.gov/podcasts.

3. Explore space by downloading NASA apps

Our apps for smartphones, tablets and digital media players showcase a huge collection of space-related content, including images, videos on-demand, NASA Television, mission information, feature stories, satellite tracking and much more. For a full list of our apps available for download, visit https://www.nasa.gov/connect/apps.html

4. Watch launches to space

This summer, we have multiple opportunities for you to take in the sights of spacecraft launches that will deliver supplies and equipment to astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, explore our solar system and much more. Be sure to mark your calendar for upcoming launches and landings!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Meet Our ICONic New Satellite

The boundary between Earth and space is complicated and constantly changing. Unlike the rest of the atmosphere, the upper atmosphere near the edge of space has a mix of both neutral particles similar to the air we breathe, as well as electrically charged particles called ions. Changes in this region are unpredictable, but they can affect satellites and garble signals, like GPS, that pass through this region. That’s why we’re launching ICON (the Ionospheric Connection Explorer) to get our first-ever comprehensive look at our interface to space.

About 60 miles above Earth’s surface, Earth’s atmosphere gives way to space. The change is gradual: The gases of the atmosphere get steadily thinner the higher you go. On the edge of space, the Sun’s radiation cooks some of those thin gases until they lose an electron (or two or three), creating a population of electrically charged particles swarming alongside the neutral particles. These charged particles make up the ionosphere.

Because the particles of the ionosphere are electrically charged, they respond uniquely to electric and magnetic fields. Dynamic conditions in space — including shifting fields and surges of charged particles, collectively called space weather — induce shifts in the ionosphere that can have far-reaching effects. The ionosphere is where space weather manifests on Earth, and it’s inextricably connected with the neutral upper atmosphere — so distortions in one part affect the other.  

Changes in the ionosphere and upper atmosphere — including sudden shifts in composition, density, temperature, and conductivity — can affect satellites, building up electric charge that has the potential to disrupt instruments, and garble signals like those used by GPS satellites. Predicting these variances is hard, because the causes are so complex: They’re driven not only by space weather — usually a product of solar activity — but also by regular weather down near Earth’s surface.  

Differences in pressure caused by events like hurricanes, or even something as simple as a sustained wind over a mountain range, can ripple upwards until they reach this region and trigger fluctuations. Weather’s influence on the upper atmosphere was only discovered in the past ten years or so — and ICON is the first mission designed specifically to look at that interaction.

ICON carries four types of instruments to study the ionosphere and upper atmosphere. Three of them rely on taking far-away pictures of something called airglow, a faint, global glow produced by reactive compounds in the upper atmosphere. The fourth type collects and analyzes particles directly.

MIGHTI (the Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging) uses Doppler shift — the same effect that makes a siren change pitch as an ambulance passes you — to precisely track the speed and direction of upper-atmosphere winds.

FUV (the Far Ultraviolet instrument) measures airglow produced by certain types of oxygen and nitrogen molecules on Earth’s day side, as well as oxygen ions on Earth’s night side.

EUV (the Extreme Ultraviolet instrument) measures shorter wavelengths of light than FUV. Airglow measured by EUV is produced by oxygen ions on Earth’s day side, which make up the lion’s share of Earth’s daytime ionosphere.

The two identical IVMs (Ion Velocity Meters) make very precise measurements of the angle at which ionized gas enters the instruments, helping us build up a picture of how this ionized gas around the spacecraft is moving.

We’re launching ICON on June 14 Eastern Time on an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which will deploy from Orbital’s L-1011 Stargazer aircraft. NASA TV will cover the launch — stay tuned to nasa.gov/live for updates and follow the mission on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Solar System: 10 Things to Know

Movie Night

Summer break is just around the corner. Hang a sheet from the clothesline in the backyard and fire up the projector for a NASA movie night.

1. Mars in a Minute

Back in the day, movies started with a cartoon. Learn the secrets of the Red Planet in these animated 60 second chunks.

2. Crash of the Titans

Watch two galaxies collide billions of years from now in this high-definition visualization.

3. Tour the Moon in 4K

Wait for the dark of the waning Moon next weekend to take in this 4K tour of our constant celestial companion.

4. Seven Years of the Sun

Watch graceful dances in the Sun’s atmosphere in this series of videos created by our 24/7 Sun-sentinel, the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO).

5. Light ‘Em Up

Crank up the volume and learn about NASA science for this short video about some of our science missions, featuring a track by Fall Out Boy.

6. Bennu’s Journey

Follow an asteroid from its humble origins to its upcoming encounter with our spacecraft in this stunning visualization.

7. Lunar Landing Practice

Join Apollo mission pilots as they fly—and even crash—during daring practice runs for landing on the Moon.

8. Earthrise

Join the crew of Apollo 8 as they become the first human beings to see the Earth rise over the surface of the Moon.

9. Musical Descent to Titan

Watch a musical, whimsical recreation of the 2005 Huygens probe descent to Titan, Saturn’s giant moon.

10. More Movies

Our Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio provides a steady stream of fresh videos for your summer viewing pleasure. Come back often and enjoy.

Read the full version of this article on the web HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Our Spacecraft Have Discovered a New Magnetic Process in Space

Just as gravity is one key to how things move on Earth, a process called magnetic reconnection is key to how electrically-charged particles speed through space. Now, our Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, has discovered magnetic reconnection – a process by which magnetic field lines explosively reconfigure – occurring in a new and surprising way near Earth.

Invisible to the eye, a vast network of magnetic energy and particles surround our planet — a dynamic system that influences our satellites and technology. The more we understand the way those particles move, the more we can protect our spacecraft and astronauts both near Earth and as we explore deeper into the solar system.

Earth’s magnetic field creates a protective bubble that shields us from highly energetic particles that stream in both from the Sun and interstellar space. As this solar wind bathes our planet, Earth’s magnetic field lines get stretched. Like elastic bands, they eventually release energy by snapping and flinging particles in their path to supersonic speeds.

That burst of energy is generated by magnetic reconnection. It’s pervasive throughout the universe — it happens on the Sun, in the space near Earth and even near black holes.

Scientists have observed this phenomenon many times in Earth’s vast magnetic environment, the magnetosphere. Now, a new study of data from our MMS mission caught the process occurring in a new and unexpected region of near-Earth space. For the first time, magnetic reconnection was seen in the magnetosheath — the boundary between our magnetosphere and the solar wind that flows throughout the solar system and one of the most turbulent regions in near-Earth space.

The four identical MMS spacecraft — flying through this region in a tight pyramid formation — saw the event in 3D. The arrows in the data visualization below show the hundreds of observations MMS took to measure the changes in particle motion and the magnetic field.

The data show that this event is unlike the magnetic reconnection we’ve observed before. If we think of these magnetic field lines as elastic bands, the ones in this region are much smaller and stretchier than elsewhere in near-Earth space — meaning that this process accelerates particles 40 times faster than typical magnetic reconnection near Earth. In short, MMS spotted a completely new magnetic process that is much faster than what we’ve seen before.

What’s more, this observation holds clues to what’s happening at smaller spatial scales, where turbulence takes over the process of mixing and accelerating particles. Turbulence in space moves in random ways and creates vortices, much like when you mix milk into coffee. The process by which turbulence energizes particles in space is still a big area of research, and linking this new discovery to turbulence research may give insights into how magnetic energy powers particle jets in space.

Keep up with the latest discoveries from the MMS mission: @NASASun on Twitter and Facebook.com/NASASunScience.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com. 

Craving some summer Sun? We're inviting people around the world to submit their names to be placed on a microchip that will travel to the Sun aboard Parker Solar Probe! 

Launching summer 2018, Parker Solar Probe will be our first mission to "touch" a star. The spacecraft - about the size of a small car - will travel right through the Sun's atmosphere, facing brutal temperatures and radiation as it traces how energy and heat move through the solar corona and explores what accelerates the solar wind and solar energetic particles.

Send your name along for the ride at go.nasa.gov/HotTicket! Submissions will be accepted through April 27, 2018. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

Week of March 5: Great Shots Inspiring views of our solar system and beyond

1-Mars-By-Numbers

“The first TV image of Mars, hand colored strip-by-strip, from Mariner 4 in 1965. The completed image was framed and presented to JPL director, William H. Pickering. Truly a labor of love for science!” -Kristen Erickson, NASA Science Engagement and Partnerships Director

2-Night Life

“There are so many stories to this image. It is a global image, but relates to an individual in one glance. There are stories on social, economic, population, energy, pollution, human migration, technology meets science, enable global information, etc., that we can all communicate with similar interests under one image.” -Winnie Humberson, NASA Earth Science Outreach Manager

3-Pale Blue Dot

“Whenever I see this picture, I wonder...if another species saw this blue dot what would they say and would they want to discover what goes on there...which is both good and bad. However, it would not make a difference within the eternity of space—we’re so insignificant...in essence just dust in the galactic wind—one day gone forever.”

-Dwayne Brown, NASA Senior Communications Official

4-Grand Central

“I observed the Galactic Center with several X-ray telescopes before Chandra, including the Einstein Observatory and ROSAT. But the Chandra image looks nothing like those earlier images, and it reminded me how complex the universe really is. Also I love the colors.” -Paul Hertz, Director, NASA Astrophysics Division

5-Far Side Photobomb

“This image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth in 2015. It shows a view of the farside of the Moon, which faces the Sun, that is never directly visible to us here on Earth. I found this perspective profoundly moving and only through our satellite views could this have been shared.” -Michael Freilich, Director NASA Earth Science Division

6-”Shocking, Exciting and Wonderful”

“Pluto was so unlike anything I could imagine based on my knowledge of the Solar System. It showed me how much about the outer solar system we didn’t know. Truly shocking, exciting and wonderful all at the same time.” -Jim Green, Director, NASA Planetary Science Division

7-Slices of the Sun

“This is an awesome image of the Sun through the Solar Dynamic Observatory’s many filters. It is one of my favorites.” - Peg Luce, Director, NASA Heliophysics Division (Acting)

8-Pluto’s Cold, Cold Heart

“This high-resolution, false color image of Pluto is my favorite. The New Horizons flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015 capped humanity’s initial reconnaissance of every major body in the solar system. To think that all of this happened within our lifetime! It’s a reminder of how privileged we are to be alive and working at NASA during this historic era of space exploration.” - Laurie Cantillo, NASA Planetary Science Public Affairs Officer

9-Family Portrait

“The Solar System family portrait, because it is a symbol what NASA exploration is really about: Seeing our world in a new and bigger way.” - Thomas H. Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate

10-Share Your Favorite Space Shots

Tag @NASASolarSystem on your favorite social media platform with a link to your favorite image and few words about why it makes your heart thump.

Check out the full version of this article HERE.

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A magnetic power struggle of galactic proportions - new research highlights the role of the Sun’s magnetic landscape in the development of solar eruptions that can trigger space weather events around Earth.

Using data from our Solar Dynamics Observatory, scientists examined an October 2014 Jupiter-sized sunspot group, an area of complex magnetic fields, often the site of solar activity. This was the biggest group in the past two solar cycles and a highly active region. Though conditions seemed ripe for an eruption, the region never produced a major coronal mass ejection (CME) - a massive, bubble-shaped eruption of solar material and magnetic field - on its journey across the Sun. It did, however, emit a powerful X-class flare, the most intense class of flares. What determines, the scientists wondered, whether a flare is associated with a CME?

The scientists found that a magnetic cage physically prevented a CME from erupting that day. Just hours before the flare, the sunspot’s natural rotation contorted the magnetic rope and it grew increasingly twisted and unstable, like a tightly coiled rubber band.

Credits: Tahar Amari et al./Center for Theoretical Physics/École Polytechnique/NASA Goddard/Joy Ng

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A Year on the Sun Through Our Satellite’s Eyes

Did you know we’re watching the Sun 24/7 from space?

We use a whole fleet of satellites to monitor the Sun and its influences on the solar system. One of those is the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It’s been in space for eight years, keeping an eye on the Sun almost every moment of every day. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, this satellite (also known as SDO) was originally designed for a two-year mission, but it’s still collecting data to this day — and one of our best ways to keep an eye on our star.

To celebrate another year of SDO, we’re sharing some of our favorite solar views that the spacecraft sent back to Earth in 2017.

 March: A long spotless stretch

For 15 days starting on March 7, SDO saw the yolk-like spotless Sun in visible light.

The Sun goes through a natural 11-year cycle of activity marked by two extremes: solar maximum and solar minimum. Sunspots are dark regions of complex magnetic activity on the Sun’s surface, and the number of sunspots at any given time is used as an index of solar activity.

Solar maximum = intense solar activity and more sunspots

Solar minimum = less solar activity and fewer sunspots

This March 2017 period was the longest stretch of spotlessness since the last solar minimum in April 2010 – a sure sign that the solar cycle is marching on toward the next minimum, which scientists expect in 2019-2020. For comparison, the images on the left are from Feb. 2014 – during the last solar maximum –  and show a much spottier Sun.

June: Energized active regions

 A pair of relatively small but frenetic active regions – areas of intense and complex magnetic fields – rotated into SDO’s view May 31 – June 2, while spouting off numerous small flares and sweeping loops of plasma. The dynamic regions were easily the most remarkable areas on the Sun during this 42-hour period.

July: Two weeks in the life of a sunspot

On July 5, SDO watched an active region rotate into view on the Sun. The satellite continued to track the region as it grew and eventually rotated across the Sun and out of view on July 17.  

With their complex magnetic fields, sunspots are often the source of interesting solar activity: During its 13-day trip across the face of the Sun, the active region — dubbed AR12665 — put on a show for our Sun-watching satellites, producing several solar flares, a coronal mass ejection and a solar energetic particle event. 

August: An eclipse in space

While millions of people in North America experienced a total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, SDO saw a partial eclipse from space. SDO actually sees several lunar transits a year from its perspective – but an eclipse on the ground doesn’t necessarily mean that SDO will see anything out of the ordinary. Even on Aug. 21, SDO saw only 14 percent of the Sun blocked by the Moon, while most US residents saw 60 percent blockage or more.

September: A spate of solar activity

In September 2017, SDO saw a spate of solar activity, with the Sun emitting 31 notable flares and releasing several powerful coronal mass ejections between Sept. 6-10. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation, while coronal mass ejections are massive clouds of solar material and magnetic fields that erupt from the Sun at incredible speeds.

One of the flares imaged by SDO on Sept. 6 was classified as X9.3 – clocking in at the most powerful flare of the current solar cycle. The current cycle began in December 2008 and is now decreasing in intensity, heading toward solar minimum. During solar minimum, such eruptions on the Sun are increasingly rare, but history has shown that they can nonetheless be intense.

September: A trio of tempests

Three distinct solar active regions with towering arches rotated into SDO’s view over a three-day period from Sept. 24-26. Charged particles spinning along the ever-changing magnetic field lines above the active regions trace out the magnetic field in extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in gold. To give some sense of scale, the largest arches are many times the size of Earth.

December: A curling prominence

SDO saw a small prominence arch up and send streams of solar material curling back into the Sun over a 30-hour period on Dec. 13-14. Prominences are relatively cool strands of solar material tethered above the Sun’s surface by magnetic fields.

 December: Solar question mark

An elongated coronal hole — the darker area near the center of the Sun’s disk — looked something like a question mark when seen in extreme ultraviolet light by SDO on Dec. 21-22. Coronal holes are magnetically open areas on the Sun that allow high-speed solar wind to gush out into space. They appear as dark areas when seen in certain wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light.

For all the latest on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, visit nasa.gov/sdo. Keep up with the latest on the Sun on Twitter @NASASun or at facebook.com/NASASunScience.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

A Total Lunar Eclipse is Coming: 10 Things to Know

If you were captivated by August's total solar eclipse, there's another sky show to look forward to on Jan. 31: a total lunar eclipse!

Below are 10 things to know about this astronomical event, including where to see it, why it turns the Moon into a deep red color and more...

1. First things first. What's the difference between solar and lunar eclipses? We've got the quick and easy explanation in this video:

2. Location, location, location. What you see will depend on where you are. The total lunar eclipse will favor the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and British Columbia on Jan. 31. Australia and the Pacific Ocean are also well placed to see a major portion of the eclipse, if not all of it.

3. Color play. So, why does the Moon turn red during a lunar eclipse? Here's your answer:

4. Scientists, stand by. What science can be done during a lunar eclipse? Find out HERE. 

5. Show and tell. What would Earth look like from the Moon during a lunar eclipse? See for yourself with this artist's concept HERE. 

6. Ask me anything. Mark your calendars to learn more about the Moon during our our Reddit AMA happening Monday, Jan. 29, from 3-4 pm EST/12-1 pm PST.

7. Social cues. Make sure to follow @NASAMoon and @LRO_NASA for all of the latest Moon news leading up to the eclipse and beyond.

8. Watch year-round. Can't get enough of observing the Moon? Make a DIY Moon Phases Calendar and Calculator that will keep all of the dates and times for the year's moon phases right at your fingertips HERE.

Then, jot down notes and record your own illustrations of the Moon with a Moon observation journal, available to download and print from moon.nasa.gov.

9. Lesson learned. For educators, pique your students' curiosities about the lunar eclipse with this Teachable Moment HERE.

10. Coming attraction. There will be one more lunar eclipse this year on July 27, 2018. But you might need your passport—it will only be visible from central Africa and central Asia. The next lunar eclipse that can be seen all over the U.S. will be on Jan. 21, 2019. It won't be a blue moon, but it will be a supermoon.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Get Ready to Watch Us Go for GOLD

The boundary where Earth’s atmosphere gives way to outer space is a complex place: Atmospheric waves driven by weather on Earth compete with electric and magnetic fields that push charged particles, all while our signals and satellites whiz by.

On Jan. 25, we’re launching the GOLD instrument (short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk) to get an exciting new birds-eye view of this region, Earth’s interface to space.

High above the ozone layer, the Sun’s intense radiation cooks some of the particles in the upper atmosphere into an electrically charged soup, where negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions flow freely. This is the ionosphere. The ionosphere is co-mingled with the highest reaches of our planet’s neutral upper atmosphere, called the thermosphere.

Spanning from just a few dozen to several hundred miles above Earth’s surface, the ionosphere is increasingly part of the human domain. Not only do our satellites, including the International Space Station, fly through this region, but so do the signals that are part of our communications and navigation systems, including GPS. Changes in this region can interfere with satellites and signals alike.  

Conditions in the upper atmosphere are difficult to predict, though. Intense weather, like hurricanes, can cause atmospheric waves to propagate all the way up to this region, creating winds that change its very makeup.

Because it’s made up of electrically charged particles, the upper atmosphere also responds to space weather. Space weather – which is usually driven by activity on the Sun – often results in electric and magnetic fields that push and pull on the ionosphere’s charged particles, changing the region’s makeup. On top of that, space weather can also mean incoming showers of high-energy particles that can affect satellites or endanger astronauts, and, in extreme cases, even cause power outages on Earth.

That’s where GOLD comes in. GOLD takes advantage of its host satellite’s geostationary orbit over the Western Hemisphere to maintain a constant view of the upper atmosphere, day and night. By scanning across, GOLD builds up a complete picture of Earth’s disk every half hour.

GOLD is an imaging spectrograph, a type of instrument that breaks light down into its component wavelengths. Studying light in this way lets scientists track the movement and temperatures of different chemical species and build up a picture of how the upper atmosphere changes over time. Capturing these measurements several times a day means that, for the first time, scientists will be able to record the short-term changes in the region -- our first look at its day-to-day ‘weather.’

GOLD is our first-ever mission to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial satellite. A hosted payload flies aboard an otherwise unrelated satellite, hitching a ride to space. GOLD studies the upper atmosphere, while its host satellite supports commercial communications.

Later this year, we’re launching another mission to study the ionosphere: ICON, short for Ionospheric Connection Explorer. Like GOLD, ICON studies Earth’s interface to space, but with a few important distinctions. ICON employs a suite of different instruments to study the ionosphere both remotely and in situ. The direct in situ measurements are possible because ICON flies in low-Earth orbit, giving us a detailed view to complement GOLD’s global perspective of the regions that both missions study.  

How to watch the launch on Jan. 25

Arianespace, a commerical aerospace company, is launching GOLD’s host commercial communications satellite, SES-14, for SES from Kourou, French Guiana.

Watch liftoff live on NASA Television - nasa.gov/live Launch Coverage starts at 5 p.m. EST  (2 p.m. PST, 7 p.m. Kourou local time)

We’ll be streaming the launch live on NASA TV! You can also follow along on Twitter (@NASA and @NASASun), Facebook (NASA and NASA Sun Science), Instagram, and on our Snapchat (NASA). 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

January 8: Images for Your Computer or Phone Wallpaper

Need some fresh perspective? Here are 10 vision-stretching images for your computer desktop or phone wallpaper. These are all real pictures, sent recently by our planetary missions throughout the solar system. You'll find more of our images at solarsystem.nasa.gov/galleries, images.nasa.gov and www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages.

Applying Wallpaper: 1. Click on the screen resolution you would like to use. 2. Right-click on the image (control-click on a Mac) and select the option 'Set the Background' or 'Set as Wallpaper' (or similar).

1. The Fault in Our Mars

This image from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of northern Meridiani Planum shows faults that have disrupted layered deposits. Some of the faults produced a clean break along the layers, displacing and offsetting individual beds.

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2. Jupiter Blues

Our Juno spacecraft captured this image when the spacecraft was only 11,747 miles (18,906 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter's clouds -- that's roughly as far as the distance between New York City and Perth, Australia. The color-enhanced image, which captures a cloud system in Jupiter's northern hemisphere, was taken on Oct. 24, 2017, when Juno was at a latitude of 57.57 degrees (nearly three-fifths of the way from Jupiter's equator to its north pole) and performing its ninth close flyby of the gas giant planet.

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3. A Farewell to Saturn

After more than 13 years at Saturn, and with its fate sealed, our Cassini spacecraft bid farewell to the Saturnian system by firing the shutters of its wide-angle camera and capturing this last, full mosaic of Saturn and its rings two days before the spacecraft's dramatic plunge into the planet's atmosphere on Sept. 15, 2017.

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4. All Aglow

Saturn's moon Enceladus drifts before the rings, which glow brightly in the sunlight. Beneath its icy exterior shell, Enceladus hides a global ocean of liquid water. Just visible at the moon's south pole (at bottom here) is the plume of water ice particles and other material that constantly spews from that ocean via fractures in the ice. The bright speck to the right of Enceladus is a distant star. This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 6, 2011.

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5. Rare Encircling Filament

Our Solar Dynamics Observatory came across an oddity this week that the spacecraft has rarely observed before: a dark filament encircling an active region (Oct. 29-31, 2017). Solar filaments are clouds of charged particles that float above the Sun, tethered to it by magnetic forces. They are usually elongated and uneven strands. Only a handful of times before have we seen one shaped like a circle. (The black area to the left of the brighter active region is a coronal hole, a magnetically open region of the Sun).

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6. Jupiter's Stunning Southern Hemisphere

See Jupiter's southern hemisphere in beautiful detail in this image taken by our Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced view captures one of the white ovals in the "String of Pearls," one of eight massive rotating storms at 40 degrees south latitude on the gas giant planet. The image was taken on Oct. 24, 2017, as Juno performed its ninth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 20,577 miles (33,115 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet.

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7. Saturn's Rings: View from Beneath

Our Cassini spacecraft obtained this panoramic view of Saturn's rings on Sept. 9, 2017, just minutes after it passed through the ring plane. The view looks upward at the southern face of the rings from a vantage point above Saturn's southern hemisphere.

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8. From Hot to Hottest

This sequence of images from our Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the Sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere all taken at about the same time (Oct. 27, 2017). The first shows the surface of the sun in filtered white light; the other seven images were taken in different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. Note that each wavelength reveals somewhat different features. They are shown in order of temperature, from the first one at about 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,000 degrees Celsius) on the surface, out to about 10 million degrees in the upper atmosphere. Yes, the sun's outer atmosphere is much, much hotter than the surface. Scientists are getting closer to solving the processes that generate this phenomenon.

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9. High Resolution View of Ceres

This orthographic projection shows dwarf planet Ceres as seen by our Dawn spacecraft. The projection is centered on Occator Crater, home to the brightest area on Ceres. Occator is centered at 20 degrees north latitude, 239 degrees east longitude.

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10. In the Chasm

This image from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a small portion of the floor of Coprates Chasma, a large trough within the Valles Marineris system of canyons. Although the exact sequence of events that formed Coprates Chasma is unknown, the ripples, mesas, and craters visible throughout the terrain point to a complex history involving multiple mechanisms of erosion and deposition. The main trough of Coprates Chasma ranges from 37 miles (60 kilometers) to 62 miles (100 kilometers) in width.

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Explore and learn more about our solar system at: solarsystem.nasa.gov/. 

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Meet Fermi: Our Eyes on the Gamma-Ray Sky

Black holes, cosmic rays, neutron stars and even new kinds of physics — for 10 years, data from our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have helped unravel some of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos. And Fermi is far from finished!

On June 11, 2008, at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the countdown started for Fermi, which was called the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) at the time. 

The telescope was renamed after launch to honor Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American pioneer in high-energy physics who also helped develop the first nuclear reactor. 

Fermi has had many other things named after him, like Fermi’s Paradox, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the synthetic element fermium.

Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory

The Fermi telescope measures some of the highest energy bursts of light in the universe; watching the sky to help scientists answer all sorts of questions about some of the most powerful objects in the universe. 

Its main instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which can view 20% of the sky at a time and makes a new image of the whole gamma-ray sky every three hours. Fermi’s other instrument is the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. It sees even more of the sky at lower energies and is designed to detect brief flashes of gamma-rays from the cosmos and Earth.

This sky map below is from 2013 and shows all of the high energy gamma rays observed by the LAT during Fermi’s first five years in space.  The bright glowing band along the map’s center is our own Milky Way galaxy!

So what are gamma rays? 

Well, they’re a form of light. But light with so much energy and with such short wavelengths that we can’t see them with the naked eye. Gamma rays require a ton of energy to produce — from things like subatomic particles (such as protons) smashing into each other. 

Here on Earth, you can get them in nuclear reactors and lightning strikes. Here’s a glimpse of the Seattle skyline if you could pop on a pair of gamma-ray goggles. That purple streak? That’s still the Milky Way, which is consistently the brightest source of gamma rays in our sky.

In space, you find that kind of energy in places like black holes and neutron stars. The raindrop-looking animation below shows a big flare of gamma rays that Fermi spotted coming from something called a blazar, which is a kind of quasar, which is different from a pulsar... actually, let’s back this up a little bit.

One of the sources of gamma rays that Fermi spots are pulsars. Pulsars are a kind of neutron star, which is a kind of star that used to be a lot bigger, but collapsed into something that’s smaller and a lot denser. Pulsars send out beams of gamma rays. But the thing about pulsars is that they rotate. 

So Fermi only sees a beam of gamma rays from a pulsar when it’s pointed towards Earth. Kind of like how you only periodically see the beam from a lighthouse. These flashes of light are very regular. You could almost set your watch by them!

Quasars are supermassive black holes surrounded by disks of gas. As the gas falls into the black hole, it releases massive amount of energy, including — you guessed it — gamma rays. Blazars are quasars that send out beams of gamma rays and other forms of light — right in our direction. 

When Fermi sees them, it’s basically looking straight down this tunnel of light, almost all the way back to the black hole. This means we can learn about the kinds of conditions in that environment when the rays were emitted. Fermi has found about 5,500 individual sources of gamma rays, and the bulk of them have been blazars, which is pretty nifty.

But gamma rays also have many other sources. We’ve seen them coming from supernovas where stars die and from star factories where stars are born. They’re created in lightning storms here on Earth, and our own Sun can toss them out in solar flares. 

Gamma rays were in the news last year because of something Fermi spotted at almost the same time as the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and European Gravitational Observatory’s Virgo on August 17, 2017. Fermi, LIGO, Virgo, and numerous other observatories spotted the merger of two neutron stars. It was the first time that gravitational waves and light were confirmed to come from the same source.

Fermi has been looking at the sky for almost 10 years now, and it’s helped scientists advance our understanding of the universe in many ways. And the longer it looks, the more we’ll learn. Discover more about how we’ll be celebrating Fermi’s achievements all year.

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Going for GOLD

On Jan. 25, we’re going for GOLD!

We’re launching an instrument called Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, GOLD for short. It’s a new mission that will study a complicated — and not yet fully understood — region of near-Earth space, called the ionosphere.

Space is not completely empty: It’s teeming with fast-moving energized particles and electric and magnetic fields that guide their motion. At the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, these particles and fields — the ionosphere — co-exist with the upper reaches of the neutral atmosphere.

That makes this a complicated place. Big events in the lower atmosphere, like hurricanes or tsunamis, can create waves that travel all the way up to that interface to space, changing the wind patterns and causing disruptions.

It’s also affected by space weather. The Sun is a dynamic star, and it releases spurts of energized particles and blasts of solar material carrying electric and magnetic fields that travel out through the solar system. Depending on their direction, these bursts have the potential to disrupt space near Earth.

This combination of factors makes it hard to predict changes in the ionosphere — and that can have a big impact. Communications signals, like radio waves and signals that make our GPS systems work, travel through this region, and sudden changes can distort them or even cut them off completely.

Low-Earth orbiting satellites — including the International Space Station — also fly through the ionosphere, so understanding how it fluctuates is important for protecting these satellites and astronauts.  

GOLD is a spectrograph, an instrument that breaks light down into its component wavelengths, measuring their intensities. Breaking light up like this helps scientists see the behavior of individual chemical elements — for instance, separating the amount of oxygen versus nitrogen. GOLD sees in far ultraviolet light, a type of light that’s invisible to our eyes.

GOLD is a hosted payload. The instrument is hitching a ride aboard SES-14, a commercial communications satellite built by Airbus for SES Government Solutions, which owns and operates the satellite.

Also launching this year is the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, which will also study the ionosphere and neutral upper atmosphere. But while GOLD will fly in geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles above the Western Hemisphere, ICON will fly just 350 miles above Earth, able to gather close up images of this region.

Together, these missions give us an unprecedented look at the ionosphere and upper atmosphere, helping us understand the very nature of how our planet interacts with space.

To learn more about this region of space and the GOLD mission, visit: nasa.gov/gold.

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What Scientists Are Learning from the Eclipse

While millions of people in North America headed outside to watch the eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, hundreds of scientists got out telescopes, set up instruments, and prepared balloon launches – all so they could study the Sun and its complicated influence on Earth.

Total solar eclipses happen about once every 18 months somewhere in the world, but the August eclipse was rare because of its long path over land. The total eclipse lasted more than 90 minutes over land, from when it first reached Oregon to when it left the U.S. in South Carolina.

This meant that scientists could collect more data from land than during most eclipses, giving us new insight into our world and the star that powers it.

A moment in the Sun’s atmosphere

During a total solar eclipse, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, is visible from Earth. It’s normally too dim to see next to the Sun’s bright face, but, during an eclipse, the Moon blocks out the Sun, revealing the corona.

Image Credit: Peter Aniol, Miloslav Druckmüller and Shadia Habbal

Though we can study parts of the corona with instruments that create artificial eclipses, some of the innermost regions of the corona are only visible during total solar eclipses. Solar scientists think this part of the corona may hold the secrets to some of our most fundamental questions about the Sun: Like how the solar wind – the constant flow of magnetized material that streams out from the Sun and fills the solar system – is accelerated, and why the corona is so much hotter than the Sun’s surface below.  

Depending on where you were, someone watching the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21 might have been able to see the Moon completely obscuring the Sun for up to two minutes and 42 seconds. One scientist wanted to stretch that even further – so he used a pair of our WB-57 jets to chase the path of the Moon’s shadow, giving their telescopes an uninterrupted view of the solar corona for just over seven and half minutes.

These telescopes were originally designed to help monitor space shuttle launches, and the eclipse campaign was their first airborne astronomy project!

These scientists weren’t the only ones who had the idea to stretch out their view of the eclipse: The Citizen CATE project (short for Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse) did something similar, but with the help of hundreds of citizen scientists. 

Citizen CATE included 68 identical small telescopes spread out across the path of totality, operated by citizen and student scientists. As the Moon’s shadow left one telescope, it reached the next one in the lineup, giving scientists a longer look at the way the corona changes throughout the eclipse.

After accounting for clouds, Citizen CATE telescopes were able to collect 82 minutes of images, out of the 93 total minutes that the eclipse was over the US. Their images will help scientists study the dynamics of the inner corona, including fast solar wind flows near the Sun’s north and south poles.

The magnetized solar wind can interact with Earth’s magnetic field, causing auroras, interfering with satellites, and – in extreme cases – even straining our power systems, and all these measurements will help us better understand how the Sun sends this material speeding out into space.

Exploring the Sun-Earth connection

Scientists also used the eclipse as a natural laboratory to explore the Sun’s complicated influence on Earth.

High in Earth’s upper atmosphere, above the ozone layer, the Sun’s intense radiation creates a layer of electrified particles called the ionosphere. This region of the atmosphere reacts to changes from both Earth below and space above. Such changes in the lower atmosphere or space weather can manifest as disruptions in the ionosphere that can interfere with communication and navigation signals.

One group of scientists used the eclipse to test computer models of the ionosphere’s effects on these communications signals. They predicted that radio signals would travel farther during the eclipse because of a drop in the number of energized particles. Their eclipse day data – collected by scientists spread out across the US and by thousands of amateur radio operators – proved that prediction right.

In another experiment, scientists used the Eclipse Ballooning Project to investigate the eclipse’s effects lower in the atmosphere. The project incorporated weather balloon flights from a dozen locations to form a picture of how Earth’s lower atmosphere – the part we interact with and which directly affects our weather – reacted to the eclipse. They found that the planetary boundary layer, the lowest part of Earth’s atmosphere, actually moved closer to Earth during the eclipse, dropped down nearly to its nighttime altitude.

A handful of these balloons also flew cards containing harmless bacteria to explore the potential for contamination of other planets with Earth-born life. Earth’s stratosphere is similar to the surface of Mars, except in one main way: the amount of sunlight. But during the eclipse, the level of sunlight dropped to something closer to what you’d expect to see on Mars, making this the perfect testbed to explore whether Earth microbes could hitch a ride to the Red Planet and survive. Scientists are working through the data collected, hoping to build up better information to help robotic and human explorers alike avoid carrying bacterial hitchhikers to Mars.

Image: The small metal card used to transport bacteria.

Finally, our EPIC instrument aboard NOAA’s DSCOVR satellite provided awe-inspiring views of the eclipse, but it’s also helping scientists understand Earth’s energy balance. Earth’s energy system is in a constant dance to maintain a balance between incoming radiation from the Sun and outgoing radiation from Earth to space, which scientists call the Earth’s energy budget. The role of clouds, both thick and thin, is important in their effect on energy balance.

Like a giant cloud, the Moon during the total solar eclipse cast a large shadow across a swath of the United States. Scientists know the dimensions and light-blocking properties of the Moon, so they used ground- and space-based instruments to learn how this large shadow affects the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, especially around the edges of the shadow. Measurements from EPIC show a 10% drop in light reflected from Earth during the eclipse (compared to about 1% on a normal day). That number will help scientists model how clouds radiate the Sun’s energy – which drives our planet’s ocean currents, seasons, weather and climate – away from our planet.

For even more eclipse science updates, stay tuned to nasa.gov/eclipse.

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SpaceX Dragon breathes Astronomical Amounts of Science to Space Station

SpaceX is helping the crew members aboard the International Space Station get down and nerdy as they launch their Dragon cargo spacecraft into orbit for the 13th commercial resupply mission, targeted for Dec. 15 from our Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

This super science-heavy flight will deliver experiments and equipment that will study phenomena on the Sun, materials in microgravity, space junk and more. 

Here are some highlights of research that will be delivered to the station:

ZBLAN Fiber Optics Tested in Space!

The Optical Fiber Production in Microgravity (Made in Space Fiber Optics) experiment demonstrates the benefits of manufacturing fiber optic filaments in a microgravity environment. This investigation will attempt to pull fiber optic wire from ZBLAN, a heavy metal fluoride glass commonly used to make fiber optic glass.

When ZBLAN is solidified on Earth, its atomic structure tends to form into crystals. Research indicates that ZBLAN fiber pulled in microgravity may not crystalize as much, giving it better optical qualities than the silica used in most fiber optic wire. 

Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor is Totally Teaching us About Earth’s Climate

The Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor, or TSIS, monitors both total solar irradiance and solar spectral irradiance, measurements that represent one of the longest space-observed climate records. Solar irradiance is the output of light energy from the entire disk of the Sun, measured at the Earth. This means looking at the Sun in ways very similar to how we observe stars rather than as an image with details that our eye can resolve.

Understanding the variability and magnitude of solar irradiance is essential to understanding Earth’s climate.  

Sensor Monitors Space Station Environment for Space Junk

The Space Debris Sensor (SDS) will directly measure the orbital debris environment around the space station for two to three years.

Above, see documentation of a Micro Meteor Orbital Debris strike on one of the window’s within the space station’s Cupola. 

Research from this investigation could help lower the risk to human life and critical hardware by orbital debris.

Self-Assembling and Self-Replicating Materials in Space!

Future space exploration may utilize self-assembly and self-replication to make materials and devices that can repair themselves on long duration missions. 

The Advanced Colloids Experiment- Temperature-7 (ACE-T-7) investigation involves the design and assembly of 3D structures from small particles suspended in a fluid medium. 

Melting Plastics in Microgravity

The Transparent Alloys project seeks to improve the understanding of the melting and solidification processes in plastics in microgravity. Five investigations will be conducted as a part of the Transparent Alloys project.

These European Space Agency (ESA) investigations will allow researchers to study this phenomena in the microgravity environment, where natural convection will not impact the results.  

Studying Slime (or…Algae, at Least) on the Space Station

Arthrospira B, an ESA investigation, will examine the form, structure and physiology of the Arthrospira sp. algae in order to determine the reliability of the organism for future spacecraft biological life support systems.

The development of these kinds of regenerative life support systems for spaceflight could also be applied to remote locations on Earth where sustainability of materials is important. 

Follow @ISS_Research on Twitter for more space science and watch the launch live on Dec. 15 at 10:36 a.m. EDT HERE!

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Researchers Just Found (For The First Time) An 8th Planet Orbiting A Star Far, Far Away

Our Milky Way galaxy is full of hundreds of billions of worlds just waiting to be found. In 2014, scientists using data from our planet-hunting Kepler space telescope discovered seven planets orbiting Kepler-90, a Sun-like star located 2,500 light-years away. Now, an eighth planet has been identified in this planetary system, making it tied with our own solar system in having the highest number of known planets. Here’s what you need to know:

The new planet is called Kepler-90i.

Kepler-90i is a sizzling hot, rocky planet. It’s the smallest of eight planets in the Kepler-90 system. It orbits so close to its star that a “year” passes in just 14 days.

Average surface temperatures on Kepler-90i are estimated to hover around 800 degrees Fahrenheit, making it an unlikely place for life as we know it.

Its planetary system is like a scrunched up version of our solar system.

The Kepler-90 system is set up like our solar system, with the small planets located close to their star and the big planets farther away. This pattern is evidence that the system’s outer gas planets—which are about the size of Saturn and Jupiter—formed in a way similar to our own.

But the orbits are much more compact. The orbits of all eight planets could fit within the distance of Earth’s orbit around our Sun! Sounds crowded, but think of it this way: It would make for some great planet-hopping.

Kepler-90i was discovered using machine learning.

Most planets beyond our solar system are too far away to be imaged directly. The Kepler space telescope searches for these exoplanets—those planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system—by measuring how the brightness of a star changes when a planet transits, or crosses in front of its disk. Generally speaking, for a given star, the greater the dip in brightness, the bigger the planet!

Researchers trained a computer to learn how to identify the faint signal of transiting exoplanets in Kepler’s vast archive of deep-space data. A search for new worlds around 670 known multiple-planet systems using this machine-learning technique yielded not one, but two discoveries: Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g. The latter is part of a six-planet star system located 1,000 light-years away.

This is just the beginning of a new way of planet hunting.

Kepler-90 is the first known star system besides our own that has eight planets, but scientists say it won’t be the last. Other planets may lurk around stars surveyed by Kepler. Next, researchers are using machine learning with sophisticated computer algorithms to search for more planets around 150,000 stars in the Kepler database.

In the meantime, we’ll be doing more searching with telescopes.

Kepler is the most successful planet-hunting spacecraft to date, with more than 2,500 confirmed exoplanets and many more awaiting verification. Future space missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the James Webb Space Telescope and Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will continue the search for new worlds and even tell us which ones might offer promising homes for extraterrestrial life.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

*All images of exoplanets are artist illustrations.

The age-old mystery of why otherwise healthy dolphins, whales and porpoises get stranded along coasts worldwide deepens: After a collaboration between our scientists and marine biologists, new research suggests space weather is not the primary cause of animal beachings — but the research continues. The collaboration is now seeking others to join their search for the factors that send ocean mammals off course, in the hopes of perhaps one day predicting strandings before they happen.

Scientists have long sought the answer to why such animals get beached, and one recent collaboration hoped to find a clear-cut solution: Scientists from a cross-section of fields pooled massive data sets to see if disturbances to the magnetic field around Earth could be what confuses these sea creatures, known as cetaceans. Cetaceans are thought to use Earth's magnetic field to navigate. Since intense solar storms can disturb the magnetic field, the scientists wanted to determine whether they could, by extension, actually interfere with animals' internal compasses and lead them astray.

During this first attempt, the scientists – from our Goddard Space Flight Center; the International Fund for Animal Welfare, or IFAW; and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM – were not able to hammer down a causal connection. Now, the team is opening their study up much wider: They're asking other scientists to participate in their work and contribute data to the search for the complex set of causes for such strandings.

Read the story: https://www.nasa.gov/beachings

Watch this video on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1cAiLKP2F-U

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Why We Study the Sun-Earth Connection – Explained Through Songs

We're launching a new mission to the International Space Station to continue measurements of the Sun's energy reaching Earth.

The Total and Spectral solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS-1) will precisely measure the total amount of sunlight that falls on Earth and how that light is distributed among different wavelengths, including the ultraviolet, visible and infrared. This will give us a better understanding of Earth’s primary energy supply and help improve models simulating Earth’s climate.

1. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.

The Sun is Earth's sunshine and it does more than make us happy; it gives us life. Our Sun's energy drives our planet's ocean currents, seasons, weather and climate. Changes in the Sun also alter our climate in at least two ways.

First, solar radiation has a direct effect where it heats regions of Earth, like our oceans, land, and atmosphere. Second, the solar radiation can cause indirect effects, such as when sunlight interacts with molecules in the upper atmosphere to produce ozone which can affect human health.  

Earth’s energy system is in a constant dance to maintain a balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing energy from Earth to space, which scientists call Earth’s energy budget. If you have more energy absorbed by the Earth than leaving it, its temperature increases and vice versa. Because the Sun is Earth's fundamental energy source and only sunshine, we need a quantitative record of the Sun's solar energy output. TSIS-1 will provide the most accurate measurements ever made of sunlight as seen from above Earth’s atmosphere.

2. You're hot then you're cold…You're in then you're out. You're up then you're down.

The energy flow between the Earth and Sun's connection is not a constant thing. The Sun can be fickle, sometimes it puts out slightly more energy and some years less. Earth is no better. The Earth absorbs different amounts of the Sun's energy depending on many factors, such as the presence of clouds and tiny particles in the atmosphere called aerosols.  

What we do know is that the Sun's cycle is about 11 years rolling through periods of quiet to times of intense activity. When the Sun is super-intense it releases explosions of light and solar material. This time is a solar maximum.

When the Sun is in a quiet state this period is called the solar minimum.

Over the course of one solar cycle (one 11-year period), the Sun’s total emitted energy varies on average at about 0.1 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but the Sun emits a large amount of energy – 1,361 watts per square meter. Even fluctuations at just a tenth of a percent can affect Earth. That's why TSIS-1 is launching: to help scientists understand and anticipate how changes in the Sun will affect us on Earth.

3. You're so vain. You probably think this climate model is about you.

Scientists use computer models to interpret changes in the Sun’s energy input. If less solar energy is available, scientists can gauge how that affects Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, weather and seasons by using computer simulations. But the Sun is just one of many factors scientists use to model Earth’s climate. A lot of other factors come into play in addition to the energy from the Sun. Factors like greenhouse gases, clouds scattering light and small particles in the atmosphere called aerosols all can affect Earth’s climate so they all need to be included in climate models. So, while we need to measure the total amount of energy from the Sun, we also need to understand how these other factors alter the amount of energy reaching Earth's surface and affect our climate.

4. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and me.

We receive the Sun's energy in many different wavelengths, including visible light (rainbows!) as well as light we can't see like infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. Each color or wavelength of light from the Sun affects Earth’s atmosphere differently.

For instance, ultraviolet light from the Sun can affect Earth's ozone. High in the atmosphere is a layer of protective ozone gas. Ozone is Earth’s natural sunscreen, absorbing the Sun’s most harmful ultraviolet radiation and protecting living things below. But ozone is vulnerable to certain gases made by humans that reach the upper atmosphere. Once there, they react in the presence of sunlight to destroy ozone molecules. Currently, several satellites from us and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) track the ozone in the upper atmosphere and the solar energy that drives the photochemistry that creates and destroys ozone. Our new instrument, TSIS-1, will join that fleet with even better accuracy.

TSIS-1 will see different types of ultraviolet (UV) light, including UV-B and UV-C. Each plays a different role in the ozone layer. UV-C rays are essential in creating ozone. UV-B rays and some naturally occurring chemicals regulate the abundance of ozone in the upper atmosphere. The amount of ozone is a balance between these natural production and loss processes.

TSIS-1 data of the Sun's UV energy will help improve computer models of the atmosphere that need accurate measurements of sunlight across the ultraviolet spectrum to model the ozone layer correctly. While UV light represents a tiny fraction of the total sunlight that reaches the top of Earth's atmosphere, it fluctuates from 3 to 10 percent, a change that, in turn causes small changes in the chemical composition and thermal structure of the upper atmosphere.

This is just one of the important applications of TSIS-1 measurements. TSIS-1 will measure how the Sun's energy is distributed over 1,000 different wavelengths.

5. Every move you make…every step you take, I'll be watching you.

TSIS-1 will continue our nearly 40 years of closely studying the total amount of energy the Sun sends to Earth from space. We've previously studied this 'total solar irradiance' with nine previous satellites, currently with Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, (SORCE).

NASA’s SORCE collected this data on the total amount of the Sun’s radiant energy throughout Sept. 2017. The satellite actually detected a dip in total irradiance – or the total amount of energy from the Sun- during the month’s intense solar activity.

But there's still very much we don't know about total solar irradiance. We do not know how it varies over longer timescales. Longer term observations are especially important because scientists have observed unusually quiet magnetic activity from the Sun for the past two decades with previous satellites. During the last prolonged solar minimum in 2008-2009, our Sun was the quietest it has ever been since we started observations in 1978. Scientists expect the Sun to enter a solar minimum within the next three years, and TSIS-1 will be primed to take measurements of the next minimum and see if this is part of a larger trend.

For all the latest Earth updates, follow us on Twitter @NASAEarth or Facebook. 

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September 2017 Was 🔥 on the Sun

The Sun started September 2017 with flair, emitting 31 sizable solar flares and releasing several powerful coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, between Sept. 6-10.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. 

CMEs are massive clouds of solar material and magnetic fields that erupt from the Sun at incredible speeds. Depending on the direction they’re traveling in, CMEs can spark powerful geomagnetic storms in Earth’s magnetic field.

As always, we and our partners had many missions observing the Sun from both Earth and space, enabling scientists to study these events from multiple perspectives. With this integrated picture of solar activity, scientists can better track the evolution of solar eruptions and work toward improving our understanding of space weather.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16, or GOES-16, watches the Sun’s upper atmosphere — called the corona — at six different wavelengths, allowing it to observe a wide range of solar phenomena. GOES-16 caught this footage of an X9.3 flare on Sept. 6, 2017. 

This was the most intense flare recorded during the current 11-year solar cycle. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, and so on. GOES also detected solar energetic particles associated with this activity.

Our Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of X2.2 and X9.3 flares on Sept. 6, 2017, in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light that shows solar material heated to over one million degrees Fahrenheit.

JAXA/NASA’s Hinode caught this video of an X8.2 flare on Sept. 10, 2017, the second largest flare of this solar cycle, with its X-ray Telescope. The instrument captures X-ray images of the corona to help scientists link changes in the Sun’s magnetic field to explosive solar events like this flare.

Key instruments aboard our Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, include a pair of coronagraphs — instruments that use a metal disk called an occulting disk to study the corona. The occulting disk blocks the Sun’s bright light, making it possible to discern the detailed features of the Sun’s outer atmosphere and track coronal mass ejections as they erupt from the Sun.

On Sept. 9, 2017, STEREO watched a CME erupt from the Sun. The next day, STEREO observed an even bigger CME. The Sept. 10 CME traveled away from the Sun at calculated speeds as high as 7 million mph, and was one of the fastest CMEs ever recorded. The CME was not Earth-directed: It side-swiped Earth’s magnetic field, and therefore did not cause significant geomagnetic activity. Mercury is in view as the bright white dot moving leftwards in the frame.

Like STEREO, ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, uses a coronagraph to track solar storms. SOHO also observed the CMEs that occurred during Sept. 9-10, 2017; multiple views provide more information for space weather models. As the CME expands beyond SOHO’s field of view, a flurry of what looks like snow floods the frame. These are high-energy particles flung out ahead of the CME at near-light speeds that struck SOHO’s imager.

Our Interface Region Imaging Spectrometer, or IRIS, captured this video on Sept. 10, 2017, showing jets of solar material swimming down toward the Sun’s surface. These structures are sometimes observed in the corona during solar flares, and this particular set was associated with the X8.2 flare of the same day.  

Our Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, collected the above data on total solar irradiance, the total amount of the Sun’s radiant energy, throughout Sept. 2017. While the Sun produced high levels of extreme ultraviolet light, SORCE actually detected a dip in total irradiance during the month’s intense solar activity. 

A possible explanation for this observation is that over the active regions — where solar flares originate — the darkening effect of sunspots is greater than the brightening effect of the flare’s extreme ultraviolet emissions. As a result, the total solar irradiance suddenly dropped during the flare events. 

Scientists gather long-term solar irradiance data in order to understand not only our dynamic star, but also its relationship to Earth’s environment and climate. We are ready to launch the Total Spectral solar Irradiance Sensor-1, or TSIS-1, this December to continue making total solar irradiance measurements.

The intense solar activity also sparked global aurora on Mars more than 25 times brighter than any previously seen by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission. MAVEN studies the Martian atmosphere’s interaction with the solar wind, the constant flow of charged particles from the Sun. These images from MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph show the appearance of bright aurora on Mars during the September solar storm. The purple-white colors show the intensity of ultraviolet light on Mars’ night side before (left) and during (right) the event.

For all the latest on solar and space weather research, follow us on Twitter @NASASun or Facebook.

GOES images are courtesy of NOAA. Hinode images are courtesy of JAXA and NASA. SOHO images are courtesy of ESA and NASA. 

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Why Webb Needs to Chill

Our massive James Webb Space Telescope just recently emerged from about 100 days of cryogenic testing to make sure it can work perfectly at incredibly cold temperatures when it’s in deep space. 

How cold did it get and why? Here’s the whole scoop...

Webb is a giant infrared space telescope that we are currently building. It was designed to see things that other telescopes, even the amazing Hubble Space Telescope, can’t see.  

Webb’s giant 6.5-meter diameter primary mirror is part of what gives it superior vision, and it’s coated in gold to optimize it for seeing infrared light.  

Why do we want to see infrared light?

Lots of stuff in space emits infrared light, so being able to observe it gives us another tool for understanding the universe. For example, sometimes dust obscures the light from objects we want to study – but if we can see the heat they are emitting, we can still “see” the objects to study them.

It’s like if you were to stick your arm inside a garbage bag. You might not be able to see your arm with your eyes – but if you had an infrared camera, it could see the heat of your arm right through the cooler plastic bag.

Credit: NASA/IPAC

With a powerful infrared space telescope, we can see stars and planets forming inside clouds of dust and gas.

We can also see the very first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe. These objects are so far away that…well, we haven’t actually been able to see them yet. Also, their light has been shifted from visible light to infrared because the universe is expanding, and as the distances between the galaxies stretch, the light from them also stretches towards redder wavelengths. 

We call this phenomena “redshift.”  This means that for us, these objects can be quite dim at visible wavelengths, but bright at infrared ones. With a powerful enough infrared telescope, we can see these never-before-seen objects.

We can also study the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. Many of the elements and molecules we want to study in planetary atmospheres have characteristic signatures in the infrared.

Because infrared light comes from objects that are warm, in order to detect the super faint heat signals of things that are really, really far away, the telescope itself has to be very cold. How cold does the telescope have to be? Webb’s operating temperature is under 50K (or -370F/-223 C). As a comparison, water freezes at 273K (or 32 F/0 C).

How do we keep the telescope that cold? 

Because there is no atmosphere in space, as long as you can keep something out of the Sun, it will get very cold. So Webb, as a whole, doesn’t need freezers or coolers - instead it has a giant sunshield that keeps it in the shade. (We do have one instrument on Webb that does have a cryocooler because it needs to operate at 7K.)

Also, we have to be careful that no nearby bright things can shine into the telescope – Webb is so sensitive to faint infrared light, that bright light could essentially blind it. The sunshield is able to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the Earth and Moon, as well as the Sun.  

Out at what we call the Second Lagrange point, where the telescope will orbit the Sun in line with the Earth, the sunshield is able to always block the light from bright objects like the Earth, Sun and Moon.

How do we make sure it all works in space? 

By lots of testing on the ground before we launch it. Every piece of the telescope was designed to work at the cold temperatures it will operate at in space and was tested in simulated space conditions. The mirrors were tested at cryogenic temperatures after every phase of their manufacturing process.

The instruments went through multiple cryogenic tests at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Once the telescope (instruments and optics) was assembled, it even underwent a full end-to-end test in our Johnson Space Center’s giant cryogenic chamber, to ensure the whole system will work perfectly in space.  

What’s next for Webb? 

It will move to Northrop Grumman where it will be mated to the sunshield, as well as the spacecraft bus, which provides support functions like electrical power, attitude control, thermal control, communications, data handling and propulsion to the spacecraft.

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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13 Reasons to Have an Out-of-This-World Friday (the 13th)

1. Not all of humanity is bound to the ground

Since 2000, the International Space Station has been continuously occupied by humans. There, crew members live and work while conducting important research that benefits life on Earth and will even help us eventually travel to deep space destinations, like Mars.

2. We’re working to develop quieter supersonic aircraft that would allow you to travel from New York to Los Angeles in 2 hours

We are working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieter – all while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently. Seventy years after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 aircraft, we’re continuing that supersonic X-plane legacy by working to create a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight.

3. The spacecraft, rockets and systems developed to send astronauts to low-Earth orbit as part of our Commercial Crew Program is also helping us get to Mars

Changes to the human body during long-duration spaceflight are significant challenges to solve ahead of a mission to Mars and back. The space station allows us to perform long duration missions without leaving Earth’s orbit.

Although they are orbiting Earth, space station astronauts spend months at a time in near-zero gravity, which allows scientists to study several physiological changes and test potential solutions. The more time they spend in space, the more helpful the station crew members can be to those on Earth assembling the plans to go to Mars.

4. We’re launching a spacecraft in 2018 that will go “touch the Sun”

In the summer of 2018, we’re launching Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that will get closer to the Sun than any other in human history. Parker Solar Probe will fly directly through the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. Getting better measurements of this region is key to understanding our Sun. 

For instance, the Sun releases a constant outflow of solar material, called the solar wind. We think the corona is where this solar wind is accelerated out into the solar system, and Parker Solar Probe’s measurements should help us pinpoint how that happens.  

5. You can digitally fly along with spacecraft…that are actually in space…in real-time!

NASA’s Eyes are immersive, 3D simulations of real events, spacecraft locations and trajectories. Through this interactive app, you can experience Earth and our solar system, the universe and the spacecraft exploring them. Want to watch as our Juno spacecraft makes its next orbit around Juno? You can! Or relive all of the Voyager mission highlights in real-time? You can do that too! Download the free app HERE to start exploring.

6. When you feel far away from home, you can think of the New Horizons spacecraft as it heads toward the Kuiper Belt, and the Voyager spacecraft are beyond the influence of our sun…billions of miles away

Our New Horizons spacecraft completed its Pluto flyby in July 2015 and has continued on its way toward the Kuiper Belt. The spacecraft continues to send back important data as it travels toward deeper space at more than 32,000 miles per hour, and is ~3.2 billion miles from Earth.

In addition to New Horizons, our twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Continuing on their more-than-37-year journey since their 1977 launches, they are each much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between the stars, filled with material ejected by the death of nearby stars millions of years ago.

7. There are humans brave enough to not only travel in space, but venture outside space station to perform important repairs and updates during spacewalks

Just this month (October 2017) we’ve already had two spacewalks on the International Space Station...with another scheduled on Oct. 20. 

Spacewalks are important events where crew members repair, maintain and upgrade parts of the International Space Station. These activities can also be referred to as EVAs – Extravehicular Activities. Not only do spacewalks require an enormous amount of work to prepare for, but they are physically demanding on the astronauts. They are working in the vacuum of space in only their spacewalking suit. 

8. Smart people are up all night working in control rooms all over NASA to ensure that data keeps flowing from our satellites and spacecraft

Our satellites and spacecraft help scientists study Earth and space. Missions looking toward Earth provide information about clouds, oceans, land and ice. They also measure gases in the atmosphere, such as ozone and carbon dioxide and the amount of energy that Earth absorbs and emits. And satellites monitor wildfires, volcanoes and their smoke.

9. A lot of NASA-developed tech has been transferred for use to the public

Our Technology Transfer Program highlights technologies that were originally designed for our mission needs, but have since been introduced to the public market. HERE are a few spinoff technologies that you might not know about.

10. We have a spacecraft currently traveling  to an asteroid to collect a sample and bring it back to Earth

OSIRIS-REx is our first-ever mission that will travel to an asteroid and bring a sample of it back to Earth. Currently, the spacecraft is on its way to asteroid Bennu where it will survey and map the object before it “high-fives” the asteroid with its robotic arm to collect a sample, which it will send to Earth.

If everything goes according to plan, on Sept. 24, 2023, the capsule containing the asteroid sample will make a soft landing in the Utah desert.

11. There are Earth-sized planets outside our solar system that may be habitable

To date, we have confirmed 3,000+ exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system that orbit a Sun-like star. Of these 3,000, some are in the habitable zone – where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist on the surface.  

Recently, our Spitzer Space Telescope revealed the first known system of SEVEN Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these plants are firmly in the habitable zone, and could have liquid water on the surface, which is key to life as we know it.

12. Earth looks like art from space

In 1960, the United States put its first Earth-observing environmental satellite into orbit around the planet. Over the decades, these satellites have provided invaluable information, and the vantage point of space has provided new perspectives on Earth.

The beauty of Earth is clear, and the artistry ranges from the surreal to the sublime.

13. We’re building a telescope that will be able to see the first stars ever formed in the universe

Wouldn’t it be neat to see a period of the universe’s history that we’ve never seen before? That’s exactly what the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to do…plus more!

Specifically, Webb will see the first objects that formed as the universe cooled down after the Big Bang. We don’t know exactly when the universe made the first stars and galaxies – or how for that matter. That is what we are building Webb to help answer.

Happy Friday the 13th! We hope it’s out-of-this-world!

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

What's next for NASA? A quick look at some of the big things coming up:

1. We will add to our existing robotic fleet at the Red Planet with the InSight Mars lander set to study the planet's interior.

This terrestrial planet explorer will address one of the most fundamental issues of planetary and solar system science - understanding the processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner solar system (including Earth) more than four billion years ago.

2. The Mars 2020 rover will look for signs of past microbial life, gather samples for potential future return to Earth.

The Mars 2020 mission takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on the Red Planet in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a "cache" on the surface of Mars.

3. The James Webb Space Telescope will be the premier observatory of the next decade, studying the history of our Universe in infrared.

Webb will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own solar system.

4. The Parker Solar Probe will "touch the Sun," traveling closer to the surface than any spacecraft before.

This spacecraft, about the size of a small car, will travel directly into the sun's atmosphere about 4 million miles from our star's surface. Parker Solar Probe and its four suites of instruments – studying magnetic and electric fields, energetic particles, and the solar wind – will be protected from the Sun’s enormous heat by a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite heat shield.

5. Our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrives at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in August 2018, and will return a sample for study in 2023.

This mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.

6. Launching in 2018, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets around 200,000 bright, nearby stars.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is the next step in the search for planets outside of our solar system (exoplanets), including those that could support life. The mission will find exoplanets that periodically block part of the light from their host stars, events called transits.

7. A mission to Jupiter's ocean-bearing moon Europa is being planned for launch in the 2020s.

The mission will place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter in order to perform a detailed investigation of Europa -- a world that shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust and which could host conditions favorable for life.

8. We will launch our first integrated test flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, known as Exploration Mission-1.

The Space Launch System rocket will launch with Orion atop it. During Exploration Mission-1, Orion will venture thousands of miles beyond the moon during an approximately three week mission.

9. We are looking at what a flexible deep space gateway near the Moon could be.

We’ve issued a draft announcement seeking U.S. industry-led studies for an advanced solar electric propulsion (SEP) vehicle capability. The studies will help define required capabilities and reduce risk for the 50 kilowatt-class SEP needed for the agency’s near-term exploration goals.

10. Want to know more? Read the full story.

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The Daredevil Spacecraft That Will Touch the Sun

In the summer of 2018, we’re launching Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that will get closer to the Sun than any other in human history.

Parker Solar Probe will fly directly through the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. Getting better measurements of this region is key to understanding our Sun. For instance, the Sun releases a constant outflow of solar material, called the solar wind. We think the corona is where this solar wind is accelerated out into the solar system, and Parker Solar Probe’s measurements should help us pinpoint how that happens.  

The solar wind, along with other changing conditions on the Sun and in space, can affect Earth and are collectively known as space weather. Space weather can trigger auroras, create problems with satellites, cause power outages (in extreme cases), and disrupt our communications signals. That’s because space weather interacts with Earth’s upper atmosphere, where signals like radio and GPS travel from place to place.

Parker Solar Probe is named after pioneering physicist Gene Parker. In the 1950s, Parker proposed a number of concepts about how stars — including our Sun — give off energy. He called this cascade of energy the solar wind. Parker also theorized an explanation for the superheated solar atmosphere, the corona, which is hotter than the surface of the Sun itself.

Getting the answers to our questions about the solar wind and the Sun’s energetic particles is only possible by sending a probe right into the furnace of the Sun’s corona, where the spacecraft can reach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Parker Solar Probe and its four suites of instruments – studying magnetic and electric fields, energetic particles, and the solar wind – will be protected from the Sun’s enormous heat by a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite heat shield.

Over the course of its seven-year mission, Parker Solar Probe will make two dozen close approaches to the Sun, continuously breaking its own records and sending back unprecedented science data.

Getting close to the Sun is harder than you might think, since the inertia of a spacecraft launched from Earth will naturally carry it in repeated orbits on roughly the same path. To nudge the orbit closer to the Sun on successive trips, Parker Solar Probe will use Venus’ gravity.

This is a technique called a gravity assist, and it’s been used by Voyager, Cassini, and OSIRIS-REx, among other missions. Though most missions use gravity assists to speed up, Parker Solar Probe is using Venus’ gravity to slow down. This will let the spacecraft fall deeper into the Sun’s gravity and get closer to our star than any other spacecraft in human history.

Get a behind-the-scenes view of the Parker Solar Probe under construction in a clean room on the NASA Sun Science Facebook page.

Keep up with all the latest on Parker Solar Probe at nasa.gov/solarprobe or on Twitter @NASASun.

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The Sun Just Released the Most Powerful Flare of this Solar Cycle

The Sun released two significant solar flares on Sept. 6, including one that clocked in as the most powerful flare of the current solar cycle.

The solar cycle is the approximately 11-year-cycle during which the Sun’s activity waxes and wanes. The current solar cycle began in December 2008 and is now decreasing in intensity and heading toward solar minimum, expected in 2019-2020. Solar minimum is a phase when solar eruptions are increasingly rare, but history has shown that they can nonetheless be intense.

Footage of the Sept. 6 X2.2 and X9.3 solar flares captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light (131 angstrom wavelength)

Our Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, which watches the Sun constantly, captured images of both X-class flares on Sept. 6.

Solar flares are classified according to their strength. X-class denotes the most intense flares, followed by M-class, while the smallest flares are labeled as A-class (near background levels) with two more levels in between. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each of the five levels of letters represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. 

The first flare peaked at 5:10 a.m. EDT, while the second, larger flare, peaked at 8:02 a.m. EDT.

Footage of the Sept. 6 X2.2 and X9.3 solar flares captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light (171 angstrom wavelength) with Earth for scale

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb Earth’s atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

Both Sept. 6 flares erupted from an active region labeled AR 2673. This area also produced a mid-level solar flare on Sept. 4, 2017. This flare peaked at 4:33 p.m. EDT, and was about a tenth the strength of X-class flares like those measured on Sept. 6.

Footage of the Sept. 4 M5.5 solar flare captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light (131 angstrom wavelength)

This active region continues to produce significant solar flares. There were two flares on the morning of Sept. 7 as well. 

For the latest updates and to see how these events may affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

Follow @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook to keep up with all the latest in space weather research.

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Eclipse 2017 From Space

On Aug. 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse passed over North America. People throughout the continent captured incredible images of this celestial phenomenon. We and our partner agencies had a unique vantage point on the eclipse from space. Here are a few highlights from our fleet of satellites that observe the Sun, the Moon and Earth.

Our Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which watches the Sun nearly 24/7 from its orbit 3,000 miles above Earth, saw a partial eclipse on Aug. 21.

SDO sees the Moon cross in front of the Sun several times a year. However, these lunar transits don’t usually correspond to an eclipse here on Earth, and an eclipse on the ground doesn’t guarantee that SDO will see anything out of the ordinary. In this case, on Aug. 21, SDO did see the Moon briefly pass in front of the Sun at the same time that the Moon’s shadow passed over the eastern United States. From its view in space, SDO only saw 14 percent of the Sun blocked by the Moon, while most U.S. residents saw 60 percent blockage or more.

Six people saw the eclipse from the International Space Station. Viewing the eclipse from orbit were NASA’s Randy Bresnik, Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson, the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli, and Roscosmos’ Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy. The space station crossed the path of the eclipse three times as it orbited above the continental United States at an altitude of 250 miles.

From a million miles out in space, our Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera, or EPIC, instrument captured 12 natural color images of the Moon’s shadow crossing over North America. EPIC is aboard NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, where it photographs the full sunlit side of Earth every day, giving it a unique view of the shadow from total solar eclipses. EPIC normally takes about 20 to 22 images of Earth per day, so this animation appears to speed up the progression of the eclipse.

A ground-based image of the total solar eclipse – which looks like a gray ring – is superimposed over a red-toned image of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. This view of the corona was captured by the European Space Agency and our Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. At center is an orange-toned image of the Sun’s surface as seen by our Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of light.

During a total solar eclipse, ground-based telescopes can observe the lowest part of the solar corona in a way that can’t be done at any other time, as the Sun’s dim corona is normally obscured by the Sun’s bright light. The structure in the ground-based corona image — defined by giant magnetic fields sweeping out from the Sun’s surface — can clearly be seen extending into the outer image from the space-based telescope. The more scientists understand about the lower corona, the more they can understand what causes the constant outward stream of material called the solar wind, as well as occasional giant eruptions called coronal mass ejections.

As millions of Americans watched the total solar eclipse that crossed the continental United States, the international Hinode solar observation satellite captured its own images of the awe-inspiring natural phenomenon. The images were taken with Hinode's X-ray telescope, or XRT, as it flew above the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of the United States, at an altitude of approximately 422 miles. Hinode is a joint endeavor by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the European Space Agency, the United Kingdom Space Agency and NASA.

During the total solar eclipse our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, in orbit around the Moon, turned one of its instruments towards Earth to capture an image of the Moon’s shadow over a large region of the United States.

As LRO crossed the lunar south pole heading north at 3,579 mph, the shadow of the Moon was racing across the United States at 1,500 mph. A few minutes later, LRO began a slow 180-degree turn to look back at Earth, capturing an image of the eclipse very near the location where totality lasted the longest. The spacecraft’s Narrow Angle Camera began scanning Earth at 2:25:30 p.m. EDT and completed the image 18 seconds later.

Sensors on the polar-orbiting Terra and Suomi NPP satellites gathered data and imagery in swaths thousands of miles wide. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, sensor on Terra and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS, on Suomi NPP captured the data used to make this animation that alternates between two mosaics. Each mosaic is made with data from different overpasses that was collected at different times.

This full-disk geocolor image from NOAA/NASA’s GOES-16 shows the shadow of the Moon covering a large portion of the northwestern U.S. during the eclipse.

Our Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, mission captured this view of the Moon passing in front of the Sun on Aug. 21.  

Check out nasa.gov/eclipse to learn more about the Aug. 21, 2017, eclipse along with future eclipses, and follow us on Twitter for more satellite images like these: @NASASun, @NASAMoon, and @NASAEarth.

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