The Kepler Space Telescope Has Shown Us Our Galaxy Is Teeming With Planets — And Other Surprises

Summer Starts in the Northern Hemisphere!

Today is the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere -- the solstice! People located in the Northern Hemisphere will have the longest day of the year today, and people located in the Southern Hemisphere will have the shortest day of the year.

The angle between the Earth’s orbit and the axis of its rotation creates our seasons, tilting each hemisphere toward the Sun during summer in that half of the Earth. This is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The other half of the year, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, creating winter in the north and summer in the south.

Solstices happen twice per year, at the points in Earth’s orbit where this tilt is most pronounced.

These days are the longest (in the summer hemisphere) and shortest (in the winter hemisphere) of the year, and mark the change of seasons to summer and winter, respectively.

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Hi do you guys really say Houston when responding to each other !?!🤪

Hearing a lot about ocean worlds today? Let’s dive in and see what this news is all about...

We once thought oceans made our planet unique, but we’re now coming to realize that ‘ocean worlds’ are all around us.

Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other ‘ocean worlds’ in our solar system and beyond. The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with our Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope. 

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What’s Up for September 2017?

Set your sights beyond the solar system and take a late summertime road trip along the Milky Way!

On September 15 the Cassini spacecraft ends its glorious Saturnian science tour by plunging into the atmosphere of Saturn, becoming forever a part of the ringed planet. Learn more about the end of mission activities HERE. 

This month Saturn is the only prominent evening planet low in the southwest sky. 

Look for it near the constellation Sagittarius. Above and below Saturn--from a dark sky--you can't miss the summer Milky Way spanning the sky from northeast to southwest.

Grab a pair of binoculars and scan the teapot-shaped Sagittarius, where stars and some brighter clumps appear as steam from the teapot. Those bright clumps are near the center of our galaxy, which is full of gas, dust and stars.

Directly overhead is the great Summer Triangle of stars. Vega, Altair and Deneb are in the pretty constellations Lyra, Aquila and Cygnus.

As you gaze toward the northeast you'll see Cassiopeia, the familiar W-shaped constellation...and Perseus. Through your binoculars, look for the Perseus Double Cluster. Both of the clusters are visible with the naked eye, are 7500 light years away, and contain more than 300 blue-white super-giant stars!

Every star and every object you can see with your unaided eye is part of the Milky Way. With one exception: the great Andromeda galaxy, which is faintly visible through binoculars on the opposite side of the night sky from Saturn and the teapot.

You can find out about our missions studying the solar system and universe at: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/index.html

Watch the full What’s Up for September video: 

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6 Ways NASA Space Communications Connect Astronauts to Earth

1. When Astronauts Phone Home, the Space Network Answers 

Operated by our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, this communications system enables all types of Earth-to-astronaut communication.  The Space Network is a complex system of ground station terminals and satellites. The satellites, called ‘Tracking and Data Relay Satellites’ or TDRS, provide continuous communications for human spaceflight 24/7/365. The information this network relays includes astronaut communication with Mission Control in Houston, posting live video of spacewalks and live interviews with schools, even posting Tweets on Twitter and doing Facebook posts. The Space Network can even broadcast live 4K, ultra-HD video right from the station. You can now watch an astronaut eat a space taco in high definition. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

2. The Space Network Also Communicates Science Data 

Astronauts on the Space Station perform experiments on the station that will enable our Journey to Mars and other future human space missions. For example, astronaut Peggy Whitson works on a bone cell study that could lead to better preventative care or therapeutic treatments for people suffering bone loss as a result of bone diseases like osteopenia and osteoporosis, or for patients on prolonged bed rest. All that fantastic data is sent back to Earth via our Space Network for scientists around the world to analyze and build on.

3. The Space Network Transmits Spacecraft Health Data

The Space Network not only lets us communicate with the astronauts, it also tracks the ‘health’ of the spacecraft, be it the International Space Station where the astronauts are living, a cargo vehicle servicing the space station, or even, in the near future, crewed vehicles to other worlds. We deliver data on a spacecraft’s state of health, from power generation levels and avionics status to carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, and more to Mission Control 24/7/365.

4. The Space Network Helps Monitor Spacecraft Location

The International Space Station Is pretty big, but space is bigger. The Space Network enables flight controllers on the ground to provide a GPS-type service for the Space Station, letting them track the exact location of the space station at all times as it orbits the Earth. It also allows us Earth-bound folk to get real-time text updates when the Space Station is flying overhead. If you want to track the station, sign up here: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov

5. The Space Network Supports Launch Vehicles

Goddard’s Space Network also controls all the communications for all the missions that go to the space station. That includes command and telemetry services during launches, free flight, berthing and un-berthing to the station, as well as re-entry and landing back to Earth. 

6. The Space Network Is Also Looking Toward the Future

It’s also helping to test vehicles that will carry astronauts to other worlds. Currently, they are working with teams for our Space Launch System and commercial crew vehicles. The first flights for these vehicles will occur in 2018 and 2019, setting us on the road to Journey to Mars! This image shows the Orion capsule that will aid in our continuous march into space. 

What’s Next for the Space Network? 

We’re continuing to grow! Watch out for the launch of a new TDRS spacecraft in August 2017! TDRS-M is coming. Check out more info here and join our countdown to TDRS launch: https://tdrs.gsfc.nasa.gov. 

Who Was Mary W. Jackson?

On June 24, 2020, NASA announced the agency’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., was to be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA.

Jackson’s story — along with those of her colleagues Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Christine Darden — was popularized with the release of the “Hidden Figures” movie, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book by the same name.

Today, as the accomplishments of these women are brought to light, we celebrate them as Modern Figures — hidden no longer. Despite their recent recognition, we cannot forget the challenges that women and BIPOC faced and continue to face in the STEM fields.

Background

Jackson showed talent for math and science at an early age. She was born in 1921 in Hampton, Virginia, and attended the all-Black George P. Phenix Training School where she graduated with honors. She graduated from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in 1942 with a bachelor of science degree in both mathematics and physical sciences.

Jackson worked several jobs before arriving at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor organization to NASA. She was a teacher, a receptionist, and a bookkeeper — in addition to becoming a mother — before accepting a position with the NACA Langley Aeronautical Laboratory’s segregated West Area Computers in 1951, where her supervisor was Dorothy Vaughan.

Accomplishments 

After two years in West Computing, Jackson was offered a computing position to work in the 4-foot by 4-foot Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. She was also encouraged to enter a training program that would put her on track to become an engineer — however, she needed special permission from the City of Hampton to take classes in math and physics at then-segregated Hampton High School.

She completed the courses, earned the promotion, and in 1958 became NASA’s first African-American female engineer. That same year, she co-authored her first report, “Effects of Nose Angle and Mach Number on Transition on Cones at Supersonic Speeds.” By 1975, she had authored or co-authored 12 NACA and NASA technical publications — most focused on the behavior of the boundary layer of air around an airplane.

Legacy

Jackson eventually became frustrated with the lack of management opportunities for women in her field. In 1979, she left engineering to become NASA Langley’s Federal Women’s Program Manager to increase the hiring and promotion of NASA’s female mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.

Not only was she devoted to her career, Jackson was also committed to the advancement of her community. In the 1970s, she helped the students in the Hampton King Street Community Center build their own wind tunnel and run experiments. She and her husband Levi took in young professionals in need of guidance. She was also a Girl Scout troop leader for more than three decades.  

Jackson retired from Langley in 1985. Never accepting the status quo, she dedicated her life to breaking barriers for minorities in her field. Her legacy reminds us that inclusion and diversity are needed to live up to NASA’s core values of teamwork and excellence.

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We Found the Perfect Spot to Land our Moon Rover

After an extensive selection process, we chose the mountainous area west of Nobile Crater at the Moon’s South Pole as the landing site for our first-ever robotic Moon rover. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, will explore the Moon’s surface and subsurface in search of water and other resources beginning in late 2023. Thanks to past missions, such as satellites orbiting the Moon or impacting its surface, we know there is ice at the Moon’s poles. But how much? And where did it come from? VIPER aims to answer these questions and more by venturing into shadowed craters and visiting other areas of scientific interest over its 100-day mission. The findings will inform future landing sites under the Artemis program and help pave the way toward establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon. Here are five things to know:

The landing site is located just outside the western rim of Nobile Crater at the Moon’s South Pole.

The region has suitable lighting and terrain for our solar-powered rover to navigate.

VIPER will travel up to 15 miles in search of water and other resources.

Its traverse will change depending on what it finds, but it could look like this.

Drivers on Earth will tell the rover where to explore during its 100-day mission.

The VIPER mission is managed by our Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. The approximately 1,000-pound rover will be delivered to the Moon by a commercial vendor as part of our Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, delivering science and technology payloads to and near the Moon.

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Our Galaxy is Caught Up in a Giant Cosmic Cobweb! 🕸️

If we could zoom waaaay out, we would see that galaxies and galaxy clusters make up large, fuzzy threads, like the strands of a giant cobweb. But we'll work our way out to that. First let's start at home and look at our planet's different cosmic communities.

Our home star system

Earth is one of eight planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — that orbit the Sun. But our solar system is more than just planets; it also has a lot of smaller objects.

An asteroid belt circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Beyond Neptune is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects called the Kuiper Belt. This is where dwarf planets like Pluto and Makemake are found and is likely the source of short-period comets (like Haley’s comet), which orbit the Sun in less than 200 years.

Scientists think that even farther out lies the Oort Cloud, also a likely source of comets. This most distant region of our solar system is a giant spherical shell storing additional icy space debris the size of mountains, or larger! The outer edge of the Oort Cloud extends to about 1.5 light-years from the Sun — that’s the distance light travels in a year and a half (over 9 trillion miles).

Sometimes asteroids or comets get ejected from these regions and end up sharing an orbit with planets like Jupiter or even crossing Earth’s orbit. There are even interstellar objects that have entered the inner solar system from even farther than the Oort Cloud, perhaps coming all the way from another star!

Our home galaxy

Let's zoom out to look at the whole Milky Way galaxy, which contains more than 100 billion stars. Many are found in the galaxy’s disk — the pancake-shaped part of a spiral galaxy where the spiral arms lie. The brightest and most massive stars are found in the spiral arms, close to their birth places. Dimmer, less massive stars can be found sprinkled throughout the disk. Also found throughout the spiral arms are dense clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. The Sun lies in a small spiral arm called the Orion Spur.

The Milky Way’s disk is embedded in a spherical “halo” about 120,000 light-years across. The halo is dotted with globular clusters of old stars and filled with dark matter. Dark matter doesn’t emit enough light for us to directly detect it, but we know it’s there because without its mass our galaxy doesn’t have enough gravity to hold together!

Our galaxy also has several orbiting companion galaxies ranging from about 25,000 to 1.4 million light-years away. The best known of these are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are visible to the unaided eye from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere.

Our galactic neighborhood

The Milky Way and Andromeda, our nearest neighboring spiral galaxy, are just two members of a small group of galaxies called the Local Group. They and the other members of the group, 50 to 80 smaller galaxies, spread across about 10 million light-years.

The Local Group lies at the outskirts of an even larger structure. It is just one of at least 100 groups and clusters of galaxies that make up the Virgo Supercluster. This cluster of clusters spans about 110 million light-years!

Galaxies aren’t the only thing found in a galaxy cluster, though. We also find hot gas, as shown above in the bright X-ray light (in pink) that surrounds the galaxies (in optical light) of cluster Abell 1413, which is a picturesque member of a different supercluster. Plus, there is dark matter throughout the cluster that is only detectable through its gravitational interactions with other objects.

The Cosmic Web

The Virgo Supercluster is just one of many, many other groups of galaxies. But the universe’s structure is more than just galaxies, clusters, and the stuff contained within them.

For more than two decades, astronomers have been mapping out the locations of galaxies, revealing a filamentary, web-like structure. This large-scale backbone of the cosmos consists of dark matter laced with gas. Galaxies and clusters form along this structure, and there are large voids in between.

The scientific visualizations of this “cosmic web” look a little like a spider web, but that would be one colossal spider! <shudder>

And there you have the different communities that define Earth’s place in the universe. Our tiny planet is a small speck on a crumb of that giant cosmic web!

Want to learn even more about the structures in the universe? Check out our Cosmic Distance Scale!

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What do *you* think is inside a black hole? Or If they sun was a black hole what would we see in the sky? Thanks!

A Q&A from the Space Station!

Did you miss it? Astronaut Scott Kelly answered questions over the weekend on People Magazine’s Facebook page! Anything and everything from his favorite food in space to his year aboard the International Space Station. 

Here are a few highlights from the conversation:

Follow Astronaut Scott Kelly during the remainder of his year in space: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

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