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From space.com: https://www.space.com/australia-fires-hurricane-global-effect-nasa-animation.html The recent catastrophic bush fires in Australia were so immensely destructive that they could be seen from space. Now, a new animation from NASA shows the impact of those fires and other extreme disasters around the world from the past year. In addition to the Australian fires, which began in 2019 and extended into January 2020, this animation shows the impacts of Hurricane Dorian, which took place from August to September 2019, and a series of major fires that took place in South America and Indonesia during the same period. Climate change, which researchers continue to study and monitor using space-based satellites, causes an increase in extreme weather events like those shown in the animation above. Smoke from the Australian bush fires, which astronauts could see from aboard the International Space Station, has interacted with global weather. Smoke plumes have traveled around the globe, accelerating into the upper troposphere (the lowest region of Earth's atmosphere) and even as high up as the lowermost region of the stratosphere (the second layer of Earth's atmosphere, it sits above the troposphere and below the mesosphere). -
This photo of Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover on Nov. 1 shows a bleak landscape of hills and hazy crater mountains. The huge ridge in the background is the rim of Gale Crater, which surrounds Curiosity for about 50 miles (80 kilometers) in every direction.
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https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/02/nasa-released-a-ton-of-software-for-free-and-heres-some-you-should-try/
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When the sun huffs and puffs, its solar wind blows part of Mars' atmosphere out to space. That's the key finding announced at a NASA press conference on Thursday by researchers working on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. The MAVEN mission's spacecraft has been circling the Red Planet for over a year now to study its atmosphere and determine how so much of it was lost over its history, transforming it from a once wet and warm Earth-like planet to the cold, dry place of so many sci-fi storylines. Figuring out what happened to the Martian atmosphere is a big deal because it helps scientists understand why some planets can or can't host life while others like Mars go from potential beach destination to inhospitable. The culprit in the loss of Mars' atmosphere is the solar wind, a stream of mostly protons and electrons flowing from our star's atmosphere at a speed of about a million miles per hour. The solar wind also carries a magnetic field that can generate an electric field as it flows past Mars. This electric field is then capable of accelerating electrically charged gas ions in the planet's upper atmosphere and shooting them out into space, similar to the way a baseball might be launched out of the field of play when a batter hits a high foul ball or home run. MAVEN has eight sensors that gather data on Mars' upper atmosphere and its interaction with the sun and solar wind. According to MAVEN measurements, the solar wind strips away gas in the Martian atmosphere at a rate of about 100 grams (roughly a quarter pound) every second. "Like the theft of a few coins from a cash register every day, the loss becomes significant over time," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "We've seen that the atmospheric erosion increases significantly during solar storms, so we think the loss rate was much higher billions of years ago when the sun was young and more active." Jakosky added that geology on Mars seems to show that water was abundant on the planet until about 3.7 billion years ago, leading the researchers to hypothesize that more active solar storms stripped away most of the atmosphere during a period sometime between 3.7 billion and 4.2 billion years ago. The fact that the sun is less active and prone to big solar wind storms today is just one reason Jakosky says we shouldn't worry too much about something similar happening to Earth's atmosphere anytime soon. The other factor that protects our planet from turning into a dead, frozen hellscape is Earth's rocking magnetic field that shields us from the brunt of the solar wind's wrath. Mars has no such magnetic field to protect its upper atmosphere from the ion-stripping effects of the solar wind. "Understanding what happened to the Mars atmosphere will inform our knowledge of the dynamics and evolution of any planetary atmosphere," NASA's John Grunsfeld said in a news release. "Learning what can cause changes to a planet's environment from one that could host microbes at the surface to one that doesn't is important to know, and is a key question that is being addressed in NASA's journey to Mars." Speaking of that trip to Mars, though, Jakosky added that dreams of someday releasing carbon dioxide sequestered in Mars to aid global warming and make the planet more like Earth will prove more difficult in light of the new findings. That's because Mars' carbon dioxide is "gone, it's blown away," he said. Maybe that's a good thing. Someone call Elon Musk and tell him to put away those nukes he wanted to use to kickstart the process. Source http://www.cnet.com/news/mars-atmosphere-was-likely-blown-away-by-the-sun/
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NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft snapped this image of Jupiter and its moon Io when the two crossed paths in 2008. Astronomers say Jupiter could have ejected another planet from our solar system without losing its moons. NASA/JHU-APL/Southwest Research Institute It's like something out of an interplanetary chess game. Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto have found that a close encounter with Jupiter about 4 billion years ago may have resulted in another planet's ejection from the solar system altogether. The existence of a fifth giant gas planet at the time of the solar system's formation — in addition to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune that we know of today — was first proposed in 2011. But if it did exist, how did it get pushed out? For years, scientists have suspected the ouster was either Saturn or Jupiter. "Our evidence points to Jupiter," said Ryan Cloutier from the University of Toronto. Planet ejections occur as a result of a close planetary encounter in which one of the objects accelerates so much that it breaks free from the massive gravitational pull of the Sun. However, earlier studies that proposed giant planets could possibly eject one another did not consider the effect such violent encounters would have on minor bodies, such as the known moons of the giant planets and their orbits. So Cloutier and his colleagues turned their attention to moons and orbits, developing computer simulations based on the modern-day trajectories of Callisto and lapetus, the regular moons orbiting around Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. They then measured the likelihood of each one producing its current orbit in the event that its host planet was responsible for ejecting the hypothetical planet, an incident that would have caused significant disturbance to each moon's original orbit. "Ultimately, we found that Jupiter is capable of ejecting the fifth giant planet while retaining a moon with the orbit of Callisto," said Cloutier. "On the other hand, it would have been very difficult for Saturn to do so because Iapetus would have been excessively unsettled, resulting in an orbit that is difficult to reconcile with its current trajectory." Source http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/10/this-solar-system-isnt-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us--jupiter -
When we humans down here on Earth look up into the night sky at the constellation of Sagittarius, we see prickles of light forming the rough shape of a mythical centaur pulling back his bow, prepared to send an arrow flying through the heavens. When the Hubble Space Telescope looks at Sagittarius, it sees images that are just as epic. The Hubble returned a new view of the Lagoon Nebula, contained within Sagittarius. It is almost 3 light-years wide and is located about 5,000 light-years away from Earth. Its dramatic gas clouds and pinkish hue make it a real looker. NASA released the image this week. NASA notes that the Lagoon Nebula is a popular target for telescope enthusiasts on Earth and describes it as "an active stellar nursery." While the watery name is the popular term for the nebula, its scientific name is Messier 8 (or M8) for the French astronomer Charles Messier who cataloged the nebula in the late 1700s. Source http://www.cnet.com/
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http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/russian-resupply-ship-experiencing-difficulties-international-space-station-crew-are -
Why Is Flight Path Of Space Shuttle Shown as Wave On Map?
Buckwild posted a topic in Science & Space
Why Is Flight Path Of Space Shuttle Shown as Wave On Map? http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/index.html I've always wondered why the flight path of NASA's space shuttle was shown as a wave On a 2 dimentional global map. How can the Orbit Ground Tracks possibly go up and down like that? Passing over Panama...Then England...then Australia... This web-page explains it: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/q0282.shtml -
NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, designed to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars, likely will not have its debut test flight until November 2018, nearly a year later than previous estimates, agency officials said on Wednesday. NASA is 70 percent confident of making a November 2018 launch date, given the technical, financial and management hurdles the Space Launch System faces on the road to development, NASA associate administrators Robert Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters on a conference call. NASA estimates it could spend almost $12 billion developing the first of three variations of the rocket and associated ground systems through the debut flight, and potentially billions more to build and fly heavier-lift next-generation boosters, a July 2014 General Accountability Office report on the program said. While the rocket might be ready for a test flight in December 2017, as previously planned, the new assessment showed the odds of that were “significantly less” than the 70 percent confidence level NASA requires of new programs, Gerstenmaier said. “We want to commit to this (November 2018) date and show that we can meet it,” added Lightfoot. The schedule assumes flat annual budgets of about $1.3 billion for the SLS rocket and another $1.5 billion for Orion crew capsule and associated ground launch systems at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The GAO report found that NASA’s SLS rocket program was about $400 million short of meeting its December 2017 target. The rocket is a modified version of the shuttle-derived, heavy-lift booster developed under NASA’s previous exploration initiative known as Constellation. The U.S. space agency spent about $9 billion on Constellation, which included the Orion capsule, from 2005 to 2010, before President Obama axed the program. Its goal was to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2020. Instead, the White House and Congress approved a flexible path toward Mars, including a visit to an asteroid that will be robotically relocated into a high lunar orbit. NASA did not say if the 11-month slip in the new rocket’s debut flight, which will be an unmanned test run around the moon, would impact the second mission, slated for 2021, with a two-member crew. Initially, the SLS rocket, which uses leftover space shuttle main engines and shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters, will be able to put about 77 tons (70 metric tons) into an orbit about 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. Later versions are expected to carry nearly twice that load. Ultimately, the rocket is expected to be used to launch astronauts and equipment to Mars. “Our nation has embarked on a very ambitious space exploration program and we owe it to the American taxpayers to get this right,” Lightfoot said. SOurce: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/27/us-space-nasa-rocket-idUSKBN0GR2EB20140827 -
NASA presented the image of a nebula generated by the material ejected from a star that exploded and became supernova called " The Hand of God." This is the first time a high definition image is captured, where we see the extended fingers and thumb object at about 17 thousand light years from Earth and discovered in the 80s. The X-ray picture was captured by the telescope NuSTAR Address Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA scientists are not sure if the ejected material has taken the shape of a hand or whether its interaction with the particles of the pulsar wind nebula makes it look that way. "We do not know if the image of the hand is an optical illusion," said Hongjun An McGill University in Montreal, Canada, in a statement of the NuSTAR mission. NuSTAR scientists hope the image helps provide insight into the phenomenon of black holes and how they grow and interact with the galaxies.
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http://www.space.com/23627-rocket-launch-visible-east-coast-tuesday.html -
NASA | Evolution of the Moon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bPoZAhrnR8
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