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Image: NASA/JPL-CalTech/Space Science Institute
Look closely at the photo above and you can pick out 5 of Saturn's 60 natural satellites (Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas, and Rhea) as well as the planet's iconic rings:
A quintet of Saturn's moons come together in the Cassini spacecraft's field of view for this portrait.
Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring near the middle of the image. Brightly reflective Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) appears above the center of the image. Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across), is bisected by the right edge of the image. The smaller moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) can be seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.
This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Rhea and 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Rhea and 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Enceladus.
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NASA has released some cool audio files free to the public!
Here’s a collection of NASA sounds from historic spaceflights and current missions. You can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch or Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind” every time you get a phone call. Or, you can hear the memorable words “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” every time you make an error on your computer. We have included both MP3 and M4R (iPhone) sound files to download.
Now, if I only had a smart phone. Link -via mental_floss
No,
that's not a meteor or an alien spaceship - that's an image of the falling
NASA satellite UARS, captured by amateur astronomer Thierry Legault:
The six-tonne, 20-year-old spacecraft has fallen out of orbit and is expected to crash somewhere on Earth on or around 24 September.
The US space agency says the risk to life from the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is 1 in 3,200. [...] Nasa says that most of the satellite will break or burn up before reaching Earth.
But scientists have identified 26 separate pieces that could survive the fall through the atmosphere. This debris could rain across an area 400-500km (250-310 miles) wide.
Link | Thierry's webpage (Image: Thierry Legault)
This image of Manhattan was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) aboard the Landsat 7 satellite, about 27 hours after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. It was uploaded to Flickr only a couple of hours ago. Link -via Gizmodo
(Image credit: Flickr user NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
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This image was selected as the Astronomy Picture of the Day last weekend. It was taken by the Cassini probe in 2006 from the shadow of Saturn.
First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
You should take a look at the larger version at NASA. Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA)
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NASA has just released new images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon (or Burbank sound studio, to all you conspiracy theorists):
The twists and turns of the last tracks left by humans on the moon crisscross the surface in this LRO image of the Apollo 17 site. In the thin lunar soil, the trails made by astronauts on foot can be easily distinguished from the dual tracks left by the lunar roving vehicle, or LRV. Also seen in this image are the descent stage of the Challenger lunar module and the LRV, parked to the east.
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The Opportunity rover sent back a few “postcards” from The Red Planet this weekend. The photos which were taken using the rover’s panoramic camera show the edge of the Endeavor crater. Amazing that these photos are from another planet, look as though they could be taken somewhere in the western US. See more great photos from mars at the link.
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In what could be considered a mock protest to the end of the Space Shuttle program photographer Neil DaCosta and art director Sara Philips have posted a gallery of astronauts suicide photos. Apparently this is the only thing an astronaut has to look forward to these days. Dubbed the Dark Comedy Project the photos depict a person in a full astronaut suit posing in different positions as if they have just committed suicide . Some of these photos some people may find grotesque, inappropriate and offensive, and some people may find them darkly humorous. You be the judge.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is sending back data that may indicate that the red planet has some flowing water during part of the Martian year. The streams are small, short-lived, and must be salty -if it is what they think it is.
Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars’ southern hemisphere.
“The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science.
Some aspects of the observations still puzzle researchers, but flows of liquid brine fit the features’ characteristics better than alternate hypotheses. Saltiness lowers the freezing temperature of water. Sites with active flows get warm enough, even in the shallow subsurface, to sustain liquid water that is about as salty as Earth’s oceans, while pure water would freeze at the observed temperatures.
“These dark lineations are different from other types of features on Martian slopes,” said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Richard Zurek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Repeated observations show they extend ever farther downhill with time during the warm season.”
NASA has a multimedia presentation in which you can see how the images change over time. Link
In 2003 in the wake of the tragic Shuttle Columbia disaster many pieces of the shuttle were recovered in Texas. Now eight years later due to the intense drought in that state, one more piece of debris has been found in in four feet of lake water.
The recent drought in Texas has caused water levels to drop across the state, which has revealed a piece of American history resting on the bottom of lake. In the East Texas city of Nacogdoches, NASA has confirmed that a part of Columbia has been discovered. The piece of debris is a power reactant storage and distribution system (PRSD), which looks like a badly battered disco ball.
According to Lisa Malone, a NASA spokeswoman the PRSD is four feet in diameter, and was used on the Space Shuttle as a tank to provide power and water during missions. NASA is looking into how to recover the object.
Just as when you board an airplane and aren’t allowed to bring certain items like liquids and guns on board, the Apollo astronauts flying to the moon were restricted on what items they could bring as well. Well just like that extra large tube of toothpaste, 40 years ago a few of the Apollo crew brought some contraband as well.
Worden, now 79, and his Apollo 15 crewmates David Scott and James Irwin suffered stinging NASA reprimands for bringing with them into space about 400 unauthorized postage-stamped envelopes (called first-day covers) with the intention of selling them later as souvenirs.
“It wasn’t as bad as people thought. We didn’t violate any regulations, we broke no rules,” Worden said Tuesday from his home in Vero Beach, Florida.
An investigation into the incident revealed that previous Apollo astronauts had carried unauthorized memorabilia on board. But Worden and his fellow crew members bore the brunt of the backlash.
You can put yourself into the experience of witnessing the final mission of the space shuttle program with the shuttle Atlantis in a multimedia post at the Neatorama Spotlight Blog. Read about what it was like to be there at liftoff. Listen to the roar of the shuttle and the crowd that saw it launch. See a collection of beautiful photographs covering the preparations, the launch, and the final landing. It’s all there in Neatorama’s tribute to the ending of the space shuttle program. Link
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Environmental Graffiti has a great collection of pictures of The Orion Nebula for your viewing pleasure. After viewing them all, I can’t help but think they should take over as the Rorschach Test of the new century. I see an astronaut with bird wings, what about you?
The space shuttle Atlantis ended its final mission today when it landed in Florida just before 6AM ET. This photograph, showing the shuttle’s final descent path, was taken this morning by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station. See a much larger and more impressive photo at NASA’s website. Link -Thanks, Ned!
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Over the past several decades, every mission that NASA has ever flown has first been practiced right here on Earth. This gallery shows dozens of training exercises from the Apollo missions through the shuttle launches.
In space, no one wants any surprises. To avoid being caught off guard where no one can hear you scream, every step of every space mission is practiced on the ground (or underwater, or in the air). We take a look back at NASA’s decades of creative methods of astronaut training.
Have you ever wanted to see the inside of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s flight deck as the astronauts see it during a mission? If you answered yes then check out this 360 virtual viewer of the inside, complete with lots of shiny panels full of buttons and switches! Head on over to BoingBoing and see it before it ends up at the Smithsonian.
Comments Off The Sagan Series put together an inspiring video in honor of the final space shuttle flight, narrated by Carl Sagan. You can see the sources for all the video clips at the YouTube page. -via reddit
In honor of the final mission of the space shuttle program, I Can Has Cheezburger posted a cat’s retrospective of NASA history. You’ll find moar pictures and funny videos of kittehs and their dreams of space exploration. Link
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The shuttle’s days are over, but its impact on daily life is by no means diminished. Since NASA began development of new tech for astronauts, we the people have gotten trickle-down innovations from the science implemented in shuttle missions. PopSci has rounded up ten inventions originally used on the shuttle that are implemented right now by non-astronauts. From baby formula to fishing nets, check out the gallery at Popular Science. Link
Image: Goodyear Tires
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Discussion about weather is often relegated to the realm of awkward small-talk and complaints about the heat/snow/rain, but extraplanetary weather is a different thing altogether… at least for me. These images of a storm over Saturn’s surface–the largest ever recorded on the planet–are interesting and beautiful. The false color doesn’t hurt, but it’s still so massive that imagining it takes a bit of brain yoga.
First detected in December 2010, the storm has developed from a small spot into a raging storm covering an area about 4 billion square kilometres, or eight times the surface of the Earth, in Saturn’s northern hemisphere.
The false colours on the images mark the different altitudes of clouds: blue clouds reside at the highest altitude with those in red at the lowest. The two high-resolution images at the bottom are mosaics, each made up of 84 images taken over 4.5 hours. The lower of the two was taken 11 hours, or one Saturn day, after the first.
The top two images are enlargements taken from the earlier of the two bottom images. They show the head of the storm (top left) and its turbulent middle (top right). Calculations reveal that the head of the storm is moving west at a speed of about 100 kilometres per hour.
Link | Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
With the final launch of NASA’s space shuttle program scheduled for Friday, it’s the perfect time to do a little shuttle retrospective. Over on mental_floss, Miss Cellania talks about the beginnings of the 35-year space shuttle program and what NASA has to do with Star Trek.
As soon as Apollo 11 delivered astronauts to the lunar surface, NASA was asked to develop a new space program that would be more immediately useful and (most importantly) more cost-efficient. The Apollo program continued through mission 17 in 1972, but meanwhile engineers were developing a reusable spacecraft. It was a totally new concept, a vehicle tough enough to go into space, complete mission after mission, and land on earth with such little damage that it could be sent up again. We didn’t see the first space shuttle until 1976. It was called Enterprise.
Link via MissCellania
It sounds kind of delicious the way they describe it but NASA has discovered a mysterious cluster of “frothy magnetic bubbles” at the edge of our solar system. Discovered by probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 the bubbles are in the ‘foam zone” or heliosheath. Scientists now have a few theories on what the bubbles are or may do. Sadly none of them are that the solar styem is one giant milk shake.
The simplest way to describe what both probes are currently travelling through is as a grouping of frothy magnetic bubbles. NASA is also referring to the area as the “foam zone.” The bubbles are not small, with each measuring around 100 million miles wide.
The foam zone was entered in 2007 by Voyager 1 and 2008 by Voyager 2. The reason we are only now hearing the details is because scientists had no idea what it was both probes were travelling through. A couple of years later and NASA believe they have worked it out.
This morning, a massive solar flare was caught live by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Though the flare is quite large (a M2.5, or medium-sized flare, in terms of energy), it isn’t expected to alter the weather here on Earth.
“I’ve never seen material released like this before, such a huge amount that falls back down in such a spectacular way,” says Goddard Spaceflight Center’s Dr. C. Alex Young. “It looks like someone just kicked a giant clod of dirt into the air and it fell back down.”
For a video with close-up footage of the flare, check out the post at PopSci. Link
It’s hard to believe that NASA is using the same space helmets they pretty much used for the Apollo missions. However now it seems they could be close to an upgrade and space walkers could be reading text off of the inside of their helmet.
Vancouver-based Recon Instruments, maker of GPS-enabled ski goggles with in-goggle displays tucked in the peripheral, is sending its technology to NASA for potential inclusion in the next generation of spacesuit helmets in which mission critical information and checklists could appear right before astronauts eyes. NASA’s spacesuit designers have been toying with the idea of an in-helmet displays for a while now, and considering that spacewalking astronauts currently rely on paper checklists taped to their arms, such a display represents a pretty big technological leap forward.
This mini documentary shows the breathtaking views from space astronauts have captured with their video cameras. And you thought your vacation video was neat.
An intimate tour… in 1080p… of Earth’s most impressive landscapes… as captured by astronauts with their digital cameras. Dr. Justin Wilkinson from NASA’s astronaut team describes the special places that spacemen focus on whenever they get a moment.
It’s hard to believe that NASA’s Mars Rover Spirit which was only supposed to function for a short period of time had been going strong on the Red Planet for years. Sadly however its mission is coming to an end.
From surviving bouts of amnesia to an escape from a sandy dungeon, sometimes it seemed that NASA’s Mars rover Spirit had at least nine lives. But yesterday, after hearing not a peep since March 2010, NASA decided to cut communications with the rover, putting an end to a six-year Martian mission during which it traveled 7730.5 meters. Daredevil escapes aside, here we assess the scientific legacy of this robot geologist.
NASA and DARPA are looking for some good ideas on creating plans and research toward building a star ship. The goal is to generate a business model that will help foster the infrastructure needed for such a monumental endeavor. Who better to turn to then the public? It’s sort of like crowd sourcing on a galactic scale. Read more to submit your interplanetary travel plans at the link.
The idea for a 100-year starship has been tossed around recently, and now DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has put out a Request for Information (RFI) looking for ideas about how a long-term human mission to boldly go out to the stars could possibly happen. It’s been estimated that such a mission would cost over $10 billion, and the idea has gotten $100,000 from NASA and $ 1 million from DARPA – which means that as of now it is just that, an idea.
Along with the humans another small passenger has hitched a ride aboard the space shuttle Endeavor; a squid. While monkeys and dogs have long been space faring species, it appears this is the first ever squid.
The reason that a baby bobtail squid is going along for Endeavor’s final flight in the first place is not to study whether squid turn into superhuman monster brain sucking aliens when exposed to cosmic rays and a low gravity environment, but rather to watch and see whether a certain type of bacteria inside the squid plays naughty or nice in orbit.
“Per Aspera Ad Astra” (through hardships to the stars), part four of The Sagan Series, is a promotion for NASA. Creator Reid Gower, is admired by NASA, but they have no funding for public relations whatsoever. Link
How to you kill two birds with one stone? We haven’t been back to the moon since the Apollo missions and we have a looming energy crisis. Former NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt has a big plan to solve both those issues.
Former astronaut, Apollo moonwalker, geologist and former Senator Harrison Schmitt has a modest plan to solve the world’s energy problems. All we need is $15 billion over 15 years and some fusion reactors that have yet to be invented.
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