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Ten Awe-Inspiring Photos

We’ve taken 10 of our top Instagram posts and put them here for your viewing pleasure. Now, your next 10 cell phone backgrounds can be found in one place.

10. Water on Mars

With 210,000 likes, this image is a favorite on Instagram. New findings from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars. Dark, narrow streaks on Martian slopes such as these at Hale Crater are inferred to be formed by seasonal flow of water on contemporary Mars. The streaks are roughly the length of a football field.

9. Smoke Ring for a Halo

With 210,000 likes, this image shined on Instagram. Two stars shine through the center of a ring of cascading dust in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The star system is named DI Cha, and while only two stars are apparent, it is actually a quadruple system containing two sets of binary stars. As this is a relatively young star system it is surrounded by dust.

8. Pluto’s Largest Moon, Charon

With 216,000 likes, a lot of people thought this image was interesting on Instagram. Our New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto's largest moon, Charon - and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history. This high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon was captured just before closest approach on July 14. The image combines blue, red and infrared images; the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon.

7. Veil Nebula

With 220,000 likes, many people favorited this image  on Instagram. This is the expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. This view is a mosaic of six pictures from our Hubble Space Telescope of a small area roughly two light-years across, covering only a tiny fraction of the nebula's vast structure. This close-up look unveils wisps of gas, which are all that remain of what was once a star 20 times more massive than our sun.

6. Messier 94 Galaxy

With 234,000 likes, this image is a favorite on Instagram. This image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs, about 16 million light-years away. Within the bright ring or starburst ring around Messier 94, new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it.

5. Solar ‘Pumpkin’

With 247,000 likes, many followers enjoyed this image on Instagram. This photo was posted on Halloween and shows active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face. The image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in October 2014, which watches the sun at all times from its orbit in space.

4. Italy from the International Space Station

With 251,000 likes, this image captivated many of you on Instagram. Before drifting off to sleep, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) captured this images from the International Space Station and wrote, " Day 180. Moonlight over Italy. #BuonaNotte Good night from @ISS! #YearInSpace.”

3. Cosmic Archaeological Dig

With 286,000 likes, this image dazzled many of you on Instagram. Peering deep into the Milky Way's crowded central hub of stars, researchers using our Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered for the first time a population of ancient white dwarfs -- smoldering remnants of once-vibrant stars that inhabited the core. Finding these relics at last can yield clues to how our galaxy was built, long before Earth and our sun formed. This image is a small section of Hubble's view of the dense collection of stars crammed together in the galactic bulge.

2. Super Blood Moon

With 310,000 likes, this image was very popular on Instagram. It shows the Super Blood Moon behind the Washington Monument on Sunday, Sept. 27, in Washington, DC. The combination of a supermoon and total lunar eclipse last occurred in 1982 and will not happen again until 2033.

1. Pluto

With 363,000 likes, this image is one of our most popular pictures on Instagram. The dwarf planet sent a love note back to Earth via our New Horizons spacecraft, which traveled more than 9 years and 3+ billion miles. This was the last and most detailed image of Pluto sent to Earth before the moment of closest approach, which was at 7:49 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 14 - about 7,750 miles above the surface -- roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India - making it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.

For more pictures like these, follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasa/ 

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Take a good look: this is the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

In the inset image, gas in the glowing orange ring surrounds the black hole's event horizon, a boundary from which nothing can escape. The ring is created by light bending in the intense gravity around Sagittarius A*, which has a mass some four million times greater than our Sun. This groundbreaking image of Sagittarius A* was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope team with data from telescopes around the world. After the EHT's iconic image of M87*, released in 2019, this is only the second time a supermassive black hole has been directly observed with its shadow.

The wider look at the space around Sagittarius A* includes data contributed by several NASA missions. The orange specks and purple tendrils were captured in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope, and the blue clouds represent data from our orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Fall in to the whole story: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/sagittarius-a-nasa-telescopes-support-event-horizon-telescope-in-studying-milky-ways.html

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CREDIT: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR: NASA/HST/STScI. Inset: Radio (EHT Collaboration)

What is a typical day in the international space station like?? I cant help but express my admiration for you.

NASA and Veterans

November 11 each year is a day we honor those who have served in our nation’s armed forces. 

Discover how we have close ties to the military, even to this day, and see who has traded in their camouflage uniform for an astronaut flight suit.

There have been veterans working for us since the beginning, even when it was still called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). 

Additionally, there are several active duty military members working at NASA facilities through special government programs.

Today, there are more than 1500 veterans currently employed with us. Their experiences in the military make their expertise invaluable around the agency. We value the unique leadership style they bring to the work place.  Above and below are some astronaut veterans.

A Partnership for the Space Age

Since the early days of NASA, we’ve partnered with all branches of the military. We still work closely with the military today and rely on the expertise of our service members to support our missions both while in active duty and in the civilian workforce. Here are some examples of this close partnership:

The Marines helped with recovery efforts of Astronaut Alan Shepard at the end of his sub-orbital flight on May 5, 1961...a task performed across several of our missions.

Today, the Navy helps us recover spacecraft, just like the Orion space capsule...which will one day carry astronauts into deep space and eventually on our journey to Mars. 

. . .and the Air Force has traditionally and continues to help us transport sensitive and critical space hardware around the globe. 

The Coast Guard has even helped us access remote locations to collect oceanographic data as part of our efforts to study and learn more about the Earth. 

We’ve partnered with the Army to use their unique capabilities at the Yuma Proving Ground to test the entry, descent and landing of our spacecraft systems.

To all the Veteran’s out there, we thank you for your service to America and your continued support of America’s space program.

Happy Veteran’s Day!

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Small Business Saturday: Space Edition!

Today is Small Business Saturday, an annual campaign that American Express started back in 2010 on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to support “local places that make our communities strong.”

The U.S. Senate has even taken note by passing a bipartisan resolution recognizing November 25, 2017 as Small Business Saturday: “an opportunity for all Americans to rally behind these local, independently-owned businesses and support the entrepreneurs who keep our families employed.”

Here at NASA, we look to promote and integrate small businesses across the country into the work we do to pioneer the future of space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

Our Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program seeks to fund the research, development and demonstration of innovative technologies that help address space exploration challenges and have significant potential for commercialization. In fiscal year 2017, our program awarded 567 contracts to 277 small businesses and 44 research institutions for a total of $173.5M that will enable our future missions into deep space and advancements in aviation and science, while also benefiting the U.S. economy. This year, the SBIR/STTR program’s Economic Impact Report indicated a $2.74 return for every dollar spent on awards—money well spent!

Our small business partners’ ideas have helped our work become more efficient and have advanced scientific knowledge on the International Space Station. Over 800 small businesses are contributing to the development of our Space Launch System rocket that will carry humans to deep space. SBIR/STTR program awardees are also helping the Curiosity Rover get around Mars and are even preparing the Mars 2020 Rover to search for signs of potential life on the Red Planet.

Small businesses are also contributing to scientific advances here on Earth like helping our satellites get a clearer picture of soil moisture in order to support water management, agriculture, and fire, flood and drought hazard monitoring.

In an effort to improve our understanding of the Arctic and Antarctica, a small business developed a cost-saving unmanned aircraft system that could withstand some of the coldest temperatures on the planet.

Does your small business have a big idea? Your next opportunity to join the SBIR/STTR program starts on January 11, 2018 when our latest solicitation opens. 

We’ll be seeking new ideas from small businesses and research institutions for research, development and demonstration of innovative technologies. Go to www.nasa.sbir.gov to learn more.

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The Adventures of Commander Moonikin Campos

Artemis I will be an enormous step toward humanity’s return to the Moon. This mission will be the first flight test of the integrated Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft — the same system that will send future Artemis astronauts to the Moon. That’s why NASA needs someone capable to test the vehicle. Someone with the necessary experience. Someone with the Right Stuff. (Or... stuffing).

Meet Commander Moonikin Campos. He is a manikin, or a replica human body. Campos is named after Arturo Campos, a trailblazing NASA employee who worked on Apollo missions. Arturo Campos’ skill as an electrical engineer was pivotal in the rescue efforts to help guide the Apollo 13 astronauts home.

As the leader of the mission, Commander Campos will be flying in the pilot’s seat for the length of the mission: a journey of 1.3 million miles (~2 million km) around the Moon and back to Earth. He's spent years training for this mission and he loves a challenge. Campos will be equipped with two radiation sensors and will have additional sensors under his headrest and behind his seat to record acceleration and vibration data throughout the mission.

Traveling with Campos are his quirky companions, Zohar and Helga. They’re part of a special experiment to measure radiation outside of the protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere. Together with their commander, they’re excited to play a role in humanity’s next great leap. (And hopefully they can last the entire flight without getting on each other's nerves.)

Will our brave explorers succeed on their mission and ensure the success of future Artemis operations? Can Commander Moonikin Campos live up to the legacy of his heroic namesake?? And did anyone remember to bring snacks??? Get the answers in this thrilling three-part series!

In the first part of Commander Moonikin Campos’ journey, our trailblazing hero prepares for liftoff from NASA’s spaceport at Kennedy Space Center  in Florida, gets acquainted with the new hardware aboard the Orion spacecraft, and meets his crewmates: Helga and Zohar!

In the second part of the trio’s adventure, Campos, Helga, and Zohar blast out of the Earth’s atmosphere with nearly 8.8 million pounds (4 million kg) of thrust powering their ascent. Next stop: the Moon!

In the final chapter of the Artemis I mission, Campos and friends prepare for their return home, including the last and most dangerous part of their journey: reentering Earth’s atmosphere at a screeching 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 kph).

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Views of Pluto

10 Images to Celebrate the Historic Exploration of the Pluto System

One year ago, our New Horizons mission made history by exploring Pluto and its moons – giving humankind our first close-up look at this fascinating world on the frontier of our solar system.

Since those amazing days in July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted numerous images and many other kinds of data home for scientists and the public alike to study, analyze, and just plain love. From Pluto’s iconic “heart” and sweeping ice-mountain vistas to its flowing glaciers and dramatic blue skies, it’s hard to pick just one favorite picture. So the mission team has picked 10 – and in no special order, placed them here.

Click the titles for more information about each image. You’ve seen nine of them before, and the team added a 10th favorite, also sure to become one of New Horizons’ “greatest hits.”

Vast Glacial Flows

In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.

Jagged Ice Shorelines and Snowy Pits

This dramatic image from our New Horizons spacecraft shows the dark, rugged highlands known as Krun Macula (lower right), which border a section of Pluto’s icy plains.

Blue Skies

Pluto's haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan.

Charon Becomes a Real World

At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more. 

The Vistas of Pluto

Our New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere.

The Dynamic Duo: Pluto and Charon in Enhanced Color

The color and brightness of both Pluto and Charon have been processed identically to allow direct comparison of their surface properties, and to highlight the similarity between Charon’s polar red terrain and Pluto’s equatorial red terrain. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale. 

Strange Snakeskin Terrain

A moment’s study reveals surface features that appear to be texturally ‘snakeskin’-like, owing to their north-south oriented scaly raised relief. A digital elevation model created by the New Horizons’ geology shows that these bladed structures have typical relief of about 550 yards (500 meters). Their relative spacing of about 3-5 kilometers makes them some of the steepest features seen on Pluto.

Pluto’s Heart

This view is dominated by the large, bright feature informally named the “heart,” which measures approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across. The heart borders darker equatorial terrains, and the mottled terrain to its east (right) are complex. However, even at this resolution, much of the heart’s interior appears remarkably featureless—possibly a sign of ongoing geologic processes.

Far Away Snow-Capped Mountains

One of Pluto’s most identifiable features, Cthulhu (pronounced kuh-THU-lu) stretches nearly halfway around Pluto’s equator, starting from the west of the great nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum. Measuring approximately 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers) long and 450 miles (750 kilometers) wide, Cthulhu is a bit larger than the state of Alaska.

Colorful Composition Maps of Pluto

The powerful instruments on New Horizons not only gave scientists insight on what Pluto looked like, their data also confirmed (or, in many cases, dispelled) their ideas of what Pluto was made of. These compositional maps – assembled using data from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) component of the Ralph instrument – indicate the regions rich in ices of methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2) and carbon monoxide (CO),  and, of course, water ice (H2O).

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A cluster of newborn stars herald their birth in this interstellar picture obtained with our Spitzer Space Telescope. These bright young stars are found in a rosebud-shaped (and rose-colored) nebulosity. The star cluster and its associated nebula are located at a distance of 3300 light-years in the constellation Cepheus.

A recent census of the cluster reveals the presence of 130 young stars. The stars formed from a massive cloud of gas and dust that contains enough raw materials to create a thousand Sun-like stars. In a process that astronomers still poorly understand, fragments of this molecular cloud became so cold and dense that they collapsed into stars. Most stars in our Milky Way galaxy are thought to form in such clusters.

The Spitzer Space Telescope image was obtained with an infrared array camera that is sensitive to invisible infrared light at wavelengths that are about ten times longer than visible light. In this four-color composite, emission at 3.6 microns is depicted in blue, 4.5 microns in green, 5.8 microns in orange, and 8.0 microns in red. The image covers a region that is about one quarter the size of the full moon.

As in any nursery, mayhem reigns. Within the astronomically brief period of a million years, the stars have managed to blow a large, irregular bubble in the molecular cloud that once enveloped them like a cocoon. The rosy pink hue is produced by glowing dust grains on the surface of the bubble being heated by the intense light from the embedded young stars. Upon absorbing ultraviolet and visible-light photons produced by the stars, the surrounding dust grains are heated and re-emit the energy at the longer infrared wavelengths observed by Spitzer. The reddish colors trace the distribution of molecular material thought to be rich in hydrocarbons.

The cold molecular cloud outside the bubble is mostly invisible in these images. However, three very young stars near the center of the image are sending jets of supersonic gas into the cloud. The impact of these jets heats molecules of carbon monoxide in the cloud, producing the intricate green nebulosity that forms the stem of the rosebud.

Not all stars are formed in clusters. Away from the main nebula and its young cluster are two smaller nebulae, to the left and bottom of the central 'rosebud,'each containing a stellar nursery with only a few young stars.

Astronomers believe that our own Sun may have formed billions of years ago in a cluster similar to this one. Once the radiation from new cluster stars destroys the surrounding placental material, the stars begin to slowly drift apart.

Additional information about the Spitzer Space Telescope is available at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu.

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what has nasa and jpl learned from opportunity that has helped with developing this new project?

NASA Science Show & Tell

This week, we’re at one of the biggest science conferences in the country, where our scientists are presenting new results from our missions and projects. It’s called the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting.

Here are a few of the things we shared this week...

The Sun

A few months into its seven-year mission, Parker Solar Probe has already flown far closer to the Sun than any spacecraft has ever gone. The data from this visit to the Sun has just started to come back to Earth, and scientists are hard at work on their analysis.

Parker Solar Probe sent us this new view of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. The image was taken by the mission’s WISPR instrument on Nov. 8, 2018, and shows a coronal streamer seen over the east limb of the Sun. Coronal streamers are structures of solar material within the Sun's atmosphere, the corona, that usually overlie regions of increased solar activity. The fine structure of the streamer is very clear, with at least two rays visible. Parker Solar Probe was about 16.9 million miles from the Sun's surface when this image was taken. The bright object near the center of the image is Mercury, and the dark spots are a result of background correction.

Hurricane Maria

Using a satellite view of human lights, our scientists watched the lights go out in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. They could see the slow return of electricity to the island, and track how rural and mountainous regions took longer to regain power.

In the spring, a team of scientists flew a plane over Puerto Rico’s forests, using a laser instrument to measure how trees were damaged and how the overall structure of the forests had changed.

Earth’s Ice

Our scientists who study Antarctica saw some surprising changes to East Antarctica. Until now, most of the continent’s melting has been on the peninsula and West Antarctica, but our scientists have seen glaciers in East Antarctica lose lots of ice in the last few years.

Our ICESat-2 team showed some of their brand new data. From the changing height of Antarctic ice to lagoons off the coast of Mexico, the little satellite has spent its first few months measuring our planet in 3D. The laser pulses even see individual ocean waves, in this graph.

Scientists are using our satellite data to track Adélie penguin populations, by using an unusual proxy -- pictures of their poop! Penguins are too small to be seen by satellites, but they can see large amounts of their poop (which is pink!) and use that as a proxy for penguin populations.

Asteroid Bennu

Our OSIRIS-REx mission recently arrived at its destination, asteroid Bennu. On approach, data from the spacecraft’s spectrometers revealed chemical signatures of water trapped in clay minerals.  While Bennu itself is too small to have ever hosted liquid water, the finding indicates that liquid water was present at some time on Bennu’s parent body, a much larger asteroid.

We also released a new, detailed shape model of Bennu, which is very similar to our ground-based observations of Bennu’s shape. This is a boon to ground-based radar astronomy since this is our first validation of the accuracy of the method for an asteroid! One change from the original shape model is the size of the large boulder near Bennu’s south pole, nicknamed “Benben.” The boulder is much bigger than we thought and overall, the quantity of boulders on the surface is higher than expected. Now the team will make further observations at closer ranges to more accurately assess where a sample can be taken on Bennu to later be returned to Earth.

Jupiter

The Juno mission celebrated it’s 16th science pass of #Jupiter, marking the halfway point in data collection of the prime mission. Over the second half of the prime mission — science flybys 17 through 32 — the spacecraft will split the difference, flying exactly halfway between each previous orbit. This will provide coverage of the planet every 11.25 degrees of longitude, providing a more detailed picture of what makes the whole of Jupiter tick.

Mars

The Mars 2020 team had a workshop to discuss the newly announced landing site for our next rover on the Red Planet. The landing site...Jezero Crater! The goal of Mars 2020 is to learn whether life ever existed on Mars. It's too cold and dry for life to exist on the Martian surface today. But after Jezero Crater formed billions of years ago, water filled it to form a deep lake about the same size as Lake Tahoe. Eventually, as Mars' climate changed, Lake Jezero dried up. And surface water disappeared from the planet.

Interstellar Space

Humanity now has two interstellar ambassadors. On Nov. 5, 2018, our Voyager 2 spacecraft left the heliosphere — the bubble of the Sun’s magnetic influence formed by the solar wind. It’s only the second-ever human-made object to enter interstellar space, following its twin, Voyager 1, that left the heliosphere in 2012.

Scientists are especially excited to keep receiving data from Voyager 2, because — unlike Voyager 1 — its plasma science instrument is still working. That means we’ll learn brand-new information about what fills the space between the stars.

Learn more about NASA Science at science.nasa.gov. 

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