Solar Eruption on the Sun Captured by NASA , 31 Dec 2012
A solar eruption gracefully rose up from the sun on December 31, 2012, twisting and turning. Magnetic forces drove the flow of plasma, but without sufficient force to overcome the sun #39;s gravity much of the plasma fell back into the sun. This four--hour event occurred from 10:20 am to 2:20 pm EST and was captured by NASA #39;s Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light shown here at a high cadence of an image every 36 seconds. Source by Nasa

By: guardthemind

View original post here:

Solar Eruption on the Sun Captured by NASA , 31 Dec 2012 - Video

NEW SHOCKING NASA UFO FOOTAGE
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE 9/11/2013!!! church-of-illumination.com please pray for me because i rejected god for so long and now that the end is near i regret my sins. warn everyone you know that satan is coming 9/11/2013

By: XSTRAIGHTEDGE4EVERX

View post:

NEW SHOCKING NASA UFO FOOTAGE - Video

FLOWER ON MARS - NASA CURIOSITY, MARTIAN FLOWER, ARE THERE REALLY FLOWERS ON MARS? NASA BANNED VIDEO
Flower On Mars - NASA CURIOSITY, Martian Flower 7/1/2013 This has been reported by various news outlets but this is a Flower found on the surface of Mars by the Curiosity Rover in SOL 132. The flower which is transparent and highly reflective is smooth on the sides and has the appearance...

By: featurednewschannel

Visit link:

FLOWER ON MARS - NASA CURIOSITY, MARTIAN FLOWER, ARE THERE REALLY FLOWERS ON MARS? NASA BANNED VIDEO - Video

PROOF NASA Would Let You Die from 2ndSun Brown Dwarf
The 2nd Coming Of Christ Is Happening Sooner Than You Think: church-of-illumination.com Please donate to their site to help warn the world about the atrocities that are about to occur on 9/11/2013. Repent for your sins or risk the fires of hell. Donate as much as you can. Money will soon become irrelevant. All that matters is your soul in the eyes of the lord. Prove your love for him and warn your brothers and sisters. Amen.

By: Steve Palina

Read more:

PROOF NASA Would Let You Die from 2ndSun Brown Dwarf - Video

Building A Lunar Base NASA 1984

By: SpaceTimeForum

Visit link:

Building A Lunar Base NASA 1984 - Video

NASA has selected eight large-scale integrated technology demonstrations to advance aircraft concepts and technologies that will reduce the impact of aviation on the environment over the next 30 years, research efforts that promise future travelers will fly in quieter, greener and more fuel-efficient airliners.

The demonstrations, which are part of by NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project, will focus on five areasaircraft drag reduction through innovative flow control concepts, weight reduction from advanced composite materials, fuel and noise reduction from advanced engines, emissions reductions from improved engine combustors, and fuel consumption and community noise reduction through innovative airframe and engine integration designs.

The selected demonstrations are:

The Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project was created in 2009 and is part of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Integrated Systems Research Program. During its first phase, engineers assessed dozens of broad areas of environmentally friendly aircraft technologies and then matured the most promising ones to the point that they can be tested together in a real world environment in the second phase. Those experiments included nonstick coatings for low-drag wing designs, laboratory testing of a new composite manufacturing technique, advanced engine testing, and test flights of a remotely piloted hybrid wing body prototype.

Key to ERA research is industry partnerships. Each of the demonstrations, which are scheduled to begin this year and continue through 2015, is expected to include selected industry partners, many of which will contribute their own funding. "ERA's research portfolio provides a healthy balance of industry and government partnerships working collaboratively to mature key technologies addressing ERA's aggressive fuel burn, noise and emission reductions goals for tomorrow's transport aircraft," said Ed Waggoner, director of the Integrated Systems Research Program.

ERA is one of many NASA aeronautics research efforts to develop technologies to make aircraft safer, faster, and more efficient and to help transform the national air transportation system. That research is being conducted at NASA Langley, NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

For more information about NASA aeronautics programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics

Provided by NASA

See the article here:

NASA's green aviation research throttles up into second gear

Jan. 9, 2013 Starting this month, NASA will send a remotely piloted research aircraft as high as 65,000 feet over the tropical Pacific Ocean to probe unexplored regions of the upper atmosphere for answers to how a warming climate is changing Earth.

The first flights of the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX), a multi-year airborne science campaign with a heavily instrumented Global Hawk aircraft, will take off from and be operated by NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The Global Hawk is able to make 30-hour flights.

Water vapor and ozone in the stratosphere can have a large impact on Earth's climate. The processes that drive the rise and fall of these compounds, especially water vapor, are not well understood. This limits scientists' ability to predict how these changes will influence global climate in the future. ATTREX will study moisture and chemical composition in the upper regions of the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. The tropopause layer between the troposphere and stratosphere, 8 miles to 11 miles above Earth's surface, is the point where water vapor, ozone and other gases enter the stratosphere.

Studies have shown even small changes in stratospheric humidity may have significant climate impacts. Predictions of stratospheric humidity changes are uncertain because of gaps in the understanding of the physical processes occurring in the tropical tropopause layer. ATTREX will use the Global Hawk to carry instruments to sample this layer near the equator off the coast of Central America.

"The ATTREX payload will provide unprecedented measurements of the tropical tropopause," said Eric Jensen, ATTREX principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "This is our first opportunity to sample the tropopause region during winter in the northern hemisphere when it is coldest and extremely dry air enters the stratosphere."

Led by Jensen and project manager Dave Jordan of Ames, ATTREX scientists installed 11 instruments in the Global Hawk. The instruments include remote sensors for measuring clouds, trace gases and temperatures above and below the aircraft, as well as instruments to measure water vapor, cloud properties, meteorological conditions, radiation fields and numerous trace gases around the aircraft. Engineering test flights conducted in 2011 ensured the aircraft and instruments operated well at the very cold temperatures encountered at high altitudes in the tropics, which can reach minus 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

Six science flights are planned between Jan. 16 and March 15. The ATTREX team also is planning remote deployments to Guam and Australia in 2014. Scientists hope to use the acquired data to improve global model predictions of stratospheric humidity and composition. The ATTREX team consists of investigators from Ames and three other NASA facilities; the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The team also includes investigators from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Center for Atmospheric Research, academia, and private industry.

ATTREX is one of the first investigations in NASA's new Venture-class series of low- to moderate-cost projects. The Earth Venture missions are part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program managed by Langley. These small, targeted science investigations complement NASA's larger science research satellite missions.

For more information about the ATTREX mission, visit: http://espo.nasa.gov/missions/attrex

A digital ATTREX press kit is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/events/2013/attrex.html

Read the rest here:

NASA chases climate change clues into the stratosphere

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has detected 461 new potential alien planets, including four worlds slightly larger than Earth that may be capable of supporting life as we know it.

The 461 newfound candidate exoplanets, which were announced today (Jan. 7), bring Kepler's total haul in its first 22 months of operation to 2,740 alien worlds. Only 105 have been confirmed to date, but scientists say 90 percent or so should end up being the real deal.

Four of the new candidates are "super-Earths" planets 1.25 to 2 times as big as our own that orbit in their stars' habitable zones, a range of distances where liquid water is possible on a world's surface. One of those four is just 1.5 times the size of Earth and circles a sun-like star, researchers said.

"That one in particular is very interesting," Christopher Burke of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute told reporters today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Gallery)]

The new finds represent the latest update to the catalog of the $600 million Kepler mission, which launched in March 2009. Scientists had previously reported roughly 2,300 other candidate planets spotted during the telescope's first 16 months of operation.

Kepler's new detections also increase the number of stars known to host more than one planet candidate from 365 to 467, researchers said.

"The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems," Jack Lissauer, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said in a statement. "This is consistent with what we know about our own planetary neighborhood."

Kepler flags planets by noting the telltale brightness dips caused when they cross the face of, or transit, their host stars from the instrument's perspective. The telescope needs to witness three such transits to make a detection, so its early discoveries have been biased toward larger worlds in relatively tight orbits.

But over time, Kepler should find more and more small planets, and more in distant orbits. The new additions to the catalog reinforce that reality, increasing the number of Earth-size and super-Earth Kepler candidates by 43 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

The new detections also suggest that it's only a matter of time before astronomers detect the first true "alien Earth" a planet the size of our own in its star's habitable zone. Another new Kepler study released today, after all, found that the Milky Way likely hosts at least 17 billion Earth-size worlds in tight orbits, while many more may circle their stars more distantly.

More here:

NASA Finds 461 Alien Planet Candidates, Some Possibly Habitable

NASA captured a beautiful photo of the aftermath of a star explosion.

Updated Jan. 9, 2013 at 5:19 PM

NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) captured the aftermath of a massive star explosion. As a result, we got this beautiful image of the historical supernova remnant Cassiopeia-A, located 11,000 light-years away, NASA reported Wednesday.

According to NASA, light from the explosion that created this dead star must have reached earth 300 years ago after 11,000 years of travel, and though the star is long dead, its remains are still "bursting with action."

"The outer blue ring is where the shock wave from the supernova blast is slamming into surrounding material, whipping particles up to within a fraction of a percent of the speed of light," NASA wrote. "NuSTAR observations should help solve the riddle of how these particles are accelerated to such high energies."

NASA launched NuSTAR in 2012 on a two year mission to look for the high-energy regions of the universe.

Read more here:

Massive star explosion captured in NASA photo

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pulled out another item from its toolkit for the first time, using a brush to sweep Martian rocks clean of the planets ubiquitous red dust, the space agency announced Monday (Jan. 7).

Curiositys first use of the Dust Removal Tool at the tip of its robotic arm marks another milestone for the rover, which has spent about five months on the Red Planet. The Curiosity rover landed Aug. 5 to begin a two-year mission to determine if the Mars may have once been habitable for primitive life.

The Dust Removal Tool is a brush that allows Curiosity to sweep away the reddish-brown particles that coat most surfaces on Mars, in order to get a better look at rocks that could be worth drilling intofor further study. The motorized brush is made with wire bristles, and is attached to the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

The tool, built by New York City-based Honeybee Robotics, resembles brushes that flew to Mars on NASA's previous rover missions, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

"This is similar to the brush on board the Rock Abrasion Tools on Spirit and Opportunity, and will let researchers get a look at the rock (rather than the pervasive dust) before deciding whether to drill for a sample," Honeybee Robotics spokesman John Abrashkin told SPACE.com.

For its inaugural run, Curiosity mission planners chose to use the brush on a Martian rock called "Ekwir_1," which sits in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Curiosity's landing site in Mars' Gale Crater.

"We wanted to be sure we had an optimal target for the first use," Diana Trujillo, the mission's activity lead for the Dust Removal Tool at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "We need to place the instrument within less than half an inch of the target without putting the hardware at risk. We needed a flat target, one that wasn't rough, one that was covered with dust. The results certainly look good."

Cleaning the dust off rocks not only allows Curiosity to get a better look at them, but clears away surface contaminants that might confuse samples taken from deeper in the rocks after the rover digs down into them with its hammering drill.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover is exploring Yellowknife Bay as it makes its way toward a point called Glenelg at the base of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain that rises up from the center of Gale Crater.

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz.Follow SPACE.com on Twitter@Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook&Google+.

See the article here:

NASA's Curiosity Rover Brushes Mars Rock Clean, a First

LONG BEACH, CALIF. A NASA space telescope snapped a new view of two oddball black holes shining ultra-bright in X-ray light in a distant spiral galaxy.

NASAs NuSTAR X-ray observatory spotted the bright black holes while observing the galaxy Caldwell 5, which is located 7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe).

The black holes, which appear in magenta superimposed on a visible-light view of the galaxy in NuSTARs view, present a cosmic mystery: Their X-ray emissions shine as bright as supermassive black holes, yet haven't sunk to the galaxy's core, as such monster black holes usually do. Scientists have dubbed such objects ultra-luminous X-ray sources, or ULXs.

The Milky Way galaxy is filled with so-called stellar black holes created by the collapse of individual giant stars, with masses of up to 12 times that of the sun. Yet those black holes don't emit the intense levels energy to form such blazingly bright black holes as those seen by NuSTAR.

Supermassive black holes, by comparison, contain millions to billions of times the mass of the sun, usually are found at the center of a galaxy.

One possibility is that the black holes seen by NuSTAR are actually of an intermediate size, said NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison, an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology. But intermediate-sized black holes are thought to be much rarer than their bigger and smaller cousins.

"High-energy X-rays hold a key to unlocking the mystery surrounding these objects," Harrison said in a statement. "Whether they are massive black holes, or there is new physics in how they feed, the answer is going to be fascinating."

NASAs NuSTAR telescope (the name is short for Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) launched into space in June 2012. It focuses its observations on high-energy light wavelengths between 6keV and 79 keV in order to take a census of black holes and understand how elements are formed.

The two black holes were first spotted by NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory, but past images of the objects were blurry. The view from NuSTAR is much more refined, offering a clearer picture of their location in the galaxy, researchers said.

Follow Space.com on Twitter @SPACEdotcom. We're also on Facebook& Google+.

Read more:

Mysteriously Bright Black Holes Revealed by NASA Telescope

NASA is facing a conundrum of large proportions; shuttle-sized, in fact. Now that the shuttle program has ended, NASA is no longer using shuttle facilities and equipment. That includes everything from a launch pad to space in the building where rockets were assembled. So NASA is conducting a secret auction. Orlando Sentinel staff writer Scott Powers explains what NASA is selling, why, and who the buyers might be.

Copyright 2013 National Public Radio. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

If you're in the market for a garage, a very large garage, say big enough to hold a space shuttle, well, you're in luck. A year and a half after the last shuttle landed, NASA is seeking renters or buyers for some of its shuttle facilities and equipment. That includes a hangar and even the launch pad of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Scott Powers is with us to tell us more about this unusual auction. He wrote about it for the Orlando Sentinel. Hi there, Scott.

SCOTT POWERS: Hi, Audie.

CORNISH: So basically, NASA is selling off anything that was made just for the shuttle program. Is that correct?

POWERS: Yeah. It's - most of the leased facilities are actually for rent at this point. They're everything from a parachute packing plant. There's an array of radar stations. There's a couple of buildings out there that are used to refurbish and install shuttle tiles. Those kinds of things have a lot of specialized equipment in them and they can be used for other things, I suppose. But NASA realizes their money is going to run out for these facilities soon, and they figured that they need to get partners to continue their use or shut them down and padlock them. They'd rather find partners.

CORNISH: So let's talk about that launch pad for a minute. Given that the shuttle program is over, who's going to want to use that?

POWERS: Probably no one. The problem is with all of the government launch pads out there, there are a lot of hoops that a private space company would have to jump through to use it. A lot of private industry would rather have their own launch pad out there. And there's some talk about building a private launch pad out there someday. And if that were the case, then many of those would work together with a new launch pad.

CORNISH: So other than commercial space flight companies, who else would want to buy some of this stuff? Who are the potential customers?

Link:

In The Market For A Very Large Garage? Call NASA.

LONG BEACH, Calif. NASA's 23-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is still going strong, and agency officials said Tuesday (Jan. 8) they plan to operate it until its instruments finally give out, potentially for another six years at least.

After its final overhaul in 2009, the Hubble telescope was expected to last until at least 2015. Now, NASA officials say they are committed to keeping the iconic space observatory going as long as possible.

"Hubble will continue to operate as long as its systems are running well," Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said here at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Hubble, like other long-running NASA missions such as the Spitzer Space Telescope, will be reviewed every two years to ensure that the mission is continuing to provide science worth the cost of operating it, Hertz added.

In fact, Hubble supporters hope it will continue to run even after its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is launched an event planned for 2018.

"We are not planning to arbitrarily end the operation of Hubble when JWST is launched," Hertz said during a NASA Town Hall Meeting at the AAS conference. "It may be great if we get at least one year of overlap between JWST and Hubble." [Building the James Webb Space Telescope (Photos)]

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April 1990, and has since been upgraded five times by astronauts in orbit. Its last space shuttle servicing mission in May 2009 left the scope with two new instruments, including a wide-field camera and a high-precision spectrograph to spread out light into its constituent wavelengths. The space telescope is named after the late astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), who proved that the universe is expanding.

"It's working better than ever, 23 years in," Dan Coe, an astronomer working with Hubble at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., told SPACE.com. "We're still pushing the frontier."

Coe agreed that overlap time with both Hubble and James Webb operating simultaneously would be ideal. Such a plan would allow the observatories to work on complementary projects and provide crosschecks between the two telescopes' measurements.

How long Hubble can run also depends on NASA's budget, which, like funding for all federal agencies, is uncertain given the economic challenges in the United States.

"It all comes down to money," Coe said.

Continued here:

Hubble Space Telescope Could Last Until 2018, NASA Says

NASA plans to announce tomorrow (Jan. 10) the launch of a new satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), to monitor Earth's landscape and the changes to it.

The new satellite, scheduled to launch Feb. 11, will replace the Landsat 5 satellite, which is to be decommissioned in the coming months, the U.S. Geological Survey reported in December.

The announcement will be made at 1 p.m. EST at NASA headquarters in Washington. You can watch it live here, as well as on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Landsat 5 is the longest-operating Earth-observing satellite mission in history, according to the USGS. Launched in 1984 with a three-year design life, it has been taking images and recording changes on the Earth's surface ever since. The satellite almost failed several times, but engineers brought it back to life. However, the recent failure of a gyroscope (which helps satellites maintain their orientation) left no option but to end the mission, the USGS said in its release.

"Any major event since 1984 that left a mark on this Earth larger than a football field was likely recorded by Landsat 5, whether it was a hurricane, a tsunami, a wildfire, deforestation or an oil spill," USGS Director Marcia McNutt said in the statement. "We look forward to a long and productive continuation of the Landsat program, but it is unlikely there will ever be another satellite that matches the outstanding longevity of Landsat 5."

The satellite monitored the effects of the devastating floods along the Mississippi River in 2011, snapped an image of the path of a tornado in Massachusetts that same year, and helped the effort to battle raging wildfires in Arizona.

LDCM, like Landsat 5, is a collaboration between NASA and the USGS that will continue the Landsat program's 40-year data record of monitoring Earth from space. Landsat 5 has orbited the globe more than 150,000 times and recorded over 2.5 million images.

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter@OAPlanet. We're also onFacebookand Google+.

More:

NASA to Announce Launch of New Earth-Observing Satellite