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Solar System: Be in the Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, let us break it down for you. Here are a few things to know this week:

1. Say Farewell to a Comet Rider

After a successful and eventful adventure landing on a comet, no more signals will be received from the Rosetta mission's comet lander, Philae.

Send your goodbyes to Philae

2. Target Shooting

Using new software our very own Mars rover Curiosity can even choose its own rock targets for its laser spectrometer. 

Find out how Curiosity selects its own targets

3. Flares for the Dramatic

Our sun recently emitted three mid-size solar flares, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured it all.  

Watch the Show!

4. Bring the Heat

Jupiter's Great Red Spot may be the mysterious heat source behind the planet’s surprisingly high upper atmospheric temperatures. When Juno begins its science orbits, the Great Red Spot will be among its top targets.

Learn More

5. Cut and Dried

The gullies on today’s Red Planet were not cut by flowing liquid water, as previously thought, but rather by processes such as the freeze and thaw of carbon dioxide frost. New findings using data from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provide a new picture of the cause,

Learn More

Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.

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What is it Like to Visit Jupiter?

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. For some perspective, if it were hollow, more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside of it! The giant planet contains two-thirds of all the planetary mass in the solar system and holds more than dozens of moons in its gravitational grip. But what about a visit to this giant planet?

Let’s be honest…Jupiter is not a nice place to visit. It’s a giant ball of gas and there’s nowhere to land. Any spacecraft – or person – passing through the colorful clouds gets crushed and melted. On Jupiter, the pressure is so strong it squishes gas into liquid. Its atmosphere can crush a metal spaceship like a paper cup.

Jupiter’s stripes and swirls are cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a giant storm BIGGER THAN EARTH! This storm has lasted hundreds of years.

Since Jupiter’s atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, it’s poisonous. There’s also dangerous radiation, more than 1,000 times the lethal level for a human.  

Scientists think that Jupiter’s core may be a thick, super hot soup…up to 50,000 degrees! Woah!

The Moons

Did you know that Jupiter has its own “mini solar system” of 50 moons? Scientists are most interested in the Galilean satellites – which are the four largest moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. 

Today, Galileo would be astounded to know some of the facts about these moons. The moon Io has active volcanos. Ganymede has its own magnetic field while Europa has a frozen crust with liquid-water underneath making it a tempting place to explore for future missions.

When Juno arrives to Jupiter on July 4, it will bring with it a slew of instruments such as infrared imager/spectrometer and vector magnetometer among the half a dozen other scientific tools in its payload.

Juno will avoid Jupiter's highest radiation regions by approaching over the north, dropping to an altitude below the planet's radiation belts – which are analogous to Earth’s Van Allen belts, but far more deadly – and then exiting over the south. To protect sensitive spacecraft electronics, Juno will carry the first radiation shielded electronics vault, a critical feature for enabling sustained exploration in such a heavy radiation environment.

Follow our Juno mission on the web, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr.

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

Applying Earth Observations Data to the Real World

In our DEVELOP Program, participants work on Earth science research projects and are mentored by science advisors from within the agency and from partner agencies, and extend research results to local communities. 

This year, our partners ran the gamut from NASA centers to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) to the University of Georgia to state and local governments. The one thing all have in common: using data from our Earth-observing satellites to inform such topics as disaster relief, preserving watershed and marshlands, working municipalities to provide health and study. The program also helps future scientists develop research and presentation skills.

Annually, the participants gather at NASA Headquarters to present their findings. From more than two dozen, we’re highlighting a cross section whose projects covered climate and invasive species in Alaska; health and air quality in Las Cruces; disaster preparation in the Philippines; and air quality in the Shenandoah Valley.

The projects demonstrate to community leaders how our science measurements and predictions can be used to address local policy issues. This year, DEVELOP features more than two dozen projects covering Earth science topics from all corners of the globe. 

DEVELOP projects apply Earth observations to agriculture, climate, disasters, ecological forecasting, energy, health and air quality, oceans, water resources and weather. These projects highlight NASA Earth observation capabilities relative to environmental issues and concerns for enhanced policy and decision-making to improve life here on Earth.

DEVELOP projects apply Earth observations to agriculture, climate, disasters, ecological forecasting, energy, health and air quality, oceans, water resources and weather. These projects highlight NASA Earth observation capabilities relative to environmental issues and concerns for enhanced policy and decision-making to improve life here on Earth.

Visit the Develop Project page to learn more about the program and how to apply.

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Meet America’s new astronauts! These 12 humans have been selected as part of our 2017 astronaut class and will report for duty at our Johnson Space Center in August. 

Get to know each of them here: https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/161552645129/meet-americas-newastronauts 

Say hello to the Eskimo Nebula 👋 

This nebula began forming about 10,000 years ago when a dying star started flinging material into space. When Sun-like stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, they become unstable and blast their outer layers of gas away into space (bad news for any planets in the area). This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a snapshot of the unworldly process.

Streams of high-energy ultraviolet radiation cause the expelled material to glow, creating a beautiful planetary nebula — a term chosen for the similarity in appearance to the round disk of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.

The Eskimo Nebula got its nickname because it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka. The “parka” is a disk of material embellished by a ring of comet-shaped objects with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. In the middle of the nebula is a bubble of material that is being blown outward by the star’s intense “wind” of high-speed material.

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That’s a wrap! Thank you for all the fantastic questions!

Recent University of Idaho graduate Hannah Johnson and NASA’s STEM on Station activity Manager Becky Kamas answered your questions about our Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science (SPOCS).

Checkout their full Answer Time.

SPOCS helps fund student experiments and launches them to the International Space Station to conduct research. Learn more about SPOCS and this year’s student teams building experiments for space HERE.

If today’s Answer Time got you fired up, HERE are other ways you can get involved with NASA as a student. We have contests, challenges, internships, games, and more!

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Spaceships Don’t Go to the Moon Until They’ve Gone Through Ohio

From the South, to the Midwest, to infinity and beyond. The Orion spacecraft for Artemis I has several stops to make before heading out into the expanse, and it can’t go to the Moon until it stops in Ohio. It landed at the Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport on Nov. 24, and then it was transferred to Plum Brook Station where it will undergo a series of environmental tests over the next four months to make sure it’s ready for space. Here are the highlights of its journey so far.

It’s a bird? It’s a whale? It’s the Super Guppy!

The 40-degree-and-extremely-windy weather couldn’t stop the massive crowd at Mansfield from waiting hours to see the Super Guppy land. Families huddled together as they waited, some decked out in NASA gear, including one astronaut costume complete with a helmet. Despite the delays, about 1,500 people held out to watch the bulbous airplane touch down.

Buckle up. It’s time for an extremely safe ride.

After Orion safely made it to Ohio, the next step was transporting it 41 miles to Plum Brook Station. It was loaded onto a massive truck to make the trip, and the drive lasted several hours as it slowly maneuvered the rural route to the facility. The 130-foot, 38-wheel truck hit a peak speed of about 20 miles per hour. It was the largest load ever driven through the state, and more than 700 utility lines were raised or moved in preparation to let the vehicle pass.

Calling us clean freaks would be an understatement.

Any person who even thinks about breathing near Orion has to be suited up. We’re talking “bunny” suit, shoe covers, beard covers, hoods, latex gloves – the works. One of our top priorities is keeping Orion clean during testing to prevent contaminants from sticking to the vehicle’s surface. These substances could cause issues for the capsule during testing and, more importantly, later during its flight around the Moon.

And liftoff of Orion… via crane.

On the ceiling of the Space Environments Complex at Plum Brook Station is a colossal crane used to move large pieces of space hardware into position for testing. It’s an important tool during pretest work, as it is used to lift Orion from the “verticator”—the name we use for the massive contraption used to rotate the vehicle from its laying down position into an upright testing orientation. After liftoff from the verticator, technicians then used the crane to install the spacecraft inside the Heat Flux System for testing.

It’s really not tin foil.

Although it looks like tin foil, the metallic material wrapped around Orion and the Heat Flux System—the bird cage-looking hardware encapsulating the spacecraft—is a material called Mylar. It’s used as a thermal barrier to help control which areas of the spacecraft get heated or cooled during testing. This helps our team avoid wasting energy heating and cooling spots unnecessarily.

Bake at 300° for 63 days.

It took a little over a week to prep Orion for its thermal test in the vacuum chamber. Now begins the 63-day process of heating and cooling (ranging from -250° to 300° Fahrenheit) the capsule to ensure it’s ready to withstand the journey around the Moon and back. 

View more images of Orion’s transportation and preparation here.

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Our Roman Space Telescope’s Dish is Complete!

NASA engineers recently completed tests of the high-gain antenna for our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observatory has some truly stellar plans once it launches by May 2027. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter – two invisible components that helped shape our universe and may determine its ultimate fate. The mission will also search for and image planets outside our solar system and explore all kinds of other cosmic topics.

However, it wouldn’t be able to send any of the data it will gather back to Earth without its antenna. Pictured above in a test chamber, this dish will provide the primary communication link between the Roman spacecraft and the ground. It will downlink the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.

The antenna reflector is made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand wide temperature fluctuations. It’s very hot and cold in space – Roman will experience a temperature range of minus 26 to 284 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to 140 degrees Celsius)!

The dish spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, standing about as tall as a refrigerator, yet only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms) – about as much as a dachshund. Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth.

At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency to transmit a flood of data at up to 500 megabits per second to ground stations on Earth. The dish is designed to point extremely accurately at Earth, all while both Earth and the spacecraft are moving through space.

Engineers tested the antenna to make sure it will withstand the spacecraft’s launch and operate as expected in the extreme environment of space. The team also measured the antenna’s performance in a radio-frequency anechoic test chamber. Every surface in the test chamber is covered in pyramidal foam pieces that minimize interfering reflections during testing. Next, the team will attach the antenna to the articulating boom assembly, and then electrically integrate it with Roman’s Radio Frequency Communications System.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

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