After being stuck for months, the InSight landers heat probe has managed to dig down a few centimeters into the Martian dirt. Its a positive sign that the probe didnt hit a rock as engineers originally feared and that a newly devised strategy to remedy the situation is actually working.

In this latest test, the heat probe managed to progress about 3 centimeters, which is slightly more than an inch. Thats not a huge distance by any measure, but its a massive leap for the InSight team, which has been grappling with this thorny problem since late February.

Built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) is designed to measure the heat emanating from beneath the Martian surface. The probe component of HP3, dubbed the mole, was expected to descend down to a depth of around 5 meters (16 feet), but it didnt get any further than 35 centimeters (14 inches) before it simply stopped.

Fears quickly emerged that the mole had struck a rock. If true, that wouldve signified the end of the HP3 mission, as the probe cannot be pulled out and relocated.

This past summer, however, new evidence emerged suggesting the mole hadnt struck a rock but rather some dense material. Invigorated with hope, the InSight team devised a new strategy in an attempt to restore friction between the mole and the ground materiala requirement for the probes forward motion (otherwise the mole just bounces around in place like a pogo stick). To get the needed friction, the team used the InSight landers robotic claw to pin the mole against the wall of the shallow hole.

Excitingly, this strategy appears to be working, according to a tweet put out by the German Aerospace Agency.

Good news from #Mars! Confirmed!, exclaimed the agency in the tweet. After 3 cm progress, it appears the @DLR_de Mole on @NASAInSight was not stopped in its tracks by a rock under the Martian surface but had in fact lost friction.

Looking at the animated video (above), the mole appears to be holding steady in place thanks to the robotic claw, and its clearly progressing downward. It actually looks really great, even if its small process.

A tweet from the NASA InSight account echoed the pronouncement: With an assist from my robotic arm, the mole is digging again! We are just starting this new campaign, and are hopeful we can continue to dig.

Not much more is known beyond these tweets, but an astute commenter asked if the attached cable, which is spinning along with the mole, might pose a problem as the probe gets deeper.

Weve noted the spin, replied DLR. Its roughly 10 per 2cm. In the testbed weve seen a rotation by 270 for 5m. Were watching the present situation w/ care being confident that the rotation will be reduced once tether is in ground. Its expected to act as a fin slowing the rotation down.

So, thats a big phew. The heat probe is a key component of InSights mission to study the interior of Mars, and it would have been extremely disappointing if it had failed altogether. Hopefully these precious few centimeters of progress represent a sign of success to come.

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NASA's Plan to Rescue InSights Stuck Heat Probe Appears to Be Working - Gizmodo

(CNN) Delta flies from Salt Lake City to Houston every day, but one recent trip was a little different, packed with girls getting a behind-the-scenes lesson about aviation.

Delta celebrated International Girls in Aviation Day by carrying 120 girls from Salt Lake City to Houston for a tour of NASA.

Courtesy Delta

The girls, who came from area STEM schools (Science Technology Engineering Math), got to see women run all aspects of their flight, Delta said. The plane had an all-female pilot and flight crew, ramp agents and gate agents on the ground, and women in the control tower giving pilots instructions.

The students toured NASA's Mission Control and ate lunch with astronaut and aerospace engineer Jeanette Epps.

"We know representation matters. At Delta, we believe you have to see it to be it," said Beth Poole, general manager of pilot development, who started the program in 2015. "We're taking ownership to improve gender diversity by exposing girls at a young age and providing a pipeline so that 10 years from now, they will be the pilots in the Delta cockpit inspiring generations of women who follow."

Delta says that 5% of its pilots are women and that 7.4% hired over the last four years are women.

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An all-female Delta team flew 120 girls to NASA to get them excited about aviation careers - CNN

NASA released a new video that shows how a supernova morphs and moves over a period of 13 years.

Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, as the debris field is known, was probably generated after a star's explosion in 1680, according to the space agency.

The shock waves in blue can be seen as they pulse through space in data collected between 2000 and 2013 by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

"As the blast wave travels outwards at speeds of about 11 million miles [18 million km] per hour, it encounters surrounding material and slows down, generating a second shock wave," Chandra mission personnel said in a statement.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN 'INDUSTRIAL ZONE' UNCOVERED IN LUXOR'S 'VALLEY OF THE MONKEYS'

A view of Cassiopeia A that includes Chandra X-ray Observatory data. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIKEN/T. Sato et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI) (X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIKEN/T. Sato et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI)

IN POMPEII, SCIENTISTS UNEARTH GLADIATOR FRESCO

This "reverse shock," the agency said, "travels backwards, similar to how a traffic jam travels backwards from the scene of an accident on a highway."

According to Space.com, Cas A was the first object that Chandra observed not long after it launched out to space on July 23, 1999.

NASA noted that other observations from Chandra over the years have shown some of the elements necessary for life in the explosion and have produced 3D models of the supernova remnant.

The full video can be seen here.

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Supernova morphs and its shock waves reverse in stunning new NASA video - Fox News

NASA and USGS began the Earth As Art project at the dawn of the millennium after scientists saw the beauty in the visual data they were collecting. Garnered for scientific purposes, the images reveal areas of the electromagnetic spectrum undetected by human eye.

NASA and USGS collated the photographs to educate the public on the importance of satellite surveillance.

The Landsat time series is so convenient and easy to use and has triggered science that was not possible a few decades ago

Professor Zhe Zhu

NASA wrote in a statement: The Landsat program offers the longest continuous global record of the Earths surface; it continues to deliver visually stunning and scientifically valuable images of our planet.

In 1975, NASA Administrator Dr James Fletcher predicted if one space age development would save the world, it would be Landsat and its successor satellites.

Since the early 1970s, Landsat has continuously and consistently archived images of Earth; this unparalleled data archive offers scientists the ability to assess changes in the planets landscape.

JUST IN:Black hole with power of 100 Suns is flickering in Milky Way

For over four decades, the Landsat program has collected spectral information from Earths surface, creating a historical archive unmatched in quality, detail, coverage, and length.

Dr Darrel Williams, a Landsat 7 Project Scientist added: It was the granddaddy of them all, as far as starting the trend of repetitive, calibrated observations of the Earth at a spatial resolution where one can detect mans interaction with the environment.

Landsat sensors have a moderate spatial-resolution, meaning individual houses cannot be seen on a Landsat image, but larger man-made objects such as roads can.

This is an important spatial resolution because it is coarse enough for global coverage, yet detailed enough to characterise human-scale processes such as urban growth.

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A stunning image shows the skies above the Amazon churning with clouds and storms, making the basin one of the most difficult places for scientists to map and monitor.

One of the most recent images reveals in stunning detail the blue geese breeding ground on the southern coast of Baffin Island, in modern Nunavut territory.

Another shows a portion of the Amur River, the worlds tenth longest, flowing east along the Chinese-Russian border.

A false-colour image reveals a shrinking glacier, threatening a popular hiking area in Europes Mount Blanc.

Another shows the completion of one the worlds longest bridges, the 30 mile (48km) Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah Causeway in Kuwait.

Zhe Zhu, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and the Environment at UConn, said about the project: The Landsat time series is so convenient and easy to use and has triggered science that was not possible a few decades ago.

Bruce Cook, NASA Landsat 9 deputy project scientist, said: Landsats thermal data is critical for tracking water use in the western United States, where rainfall can be short in supply and managing water resources is critical to ensuring a sustainable supply for farmers, cities, and natural ecosystems.

And Dr Stephen Sagar, Aquatic Remote Sensing Project Leader added: The Landsat archive enables us to develop products that tackle problems and address issues at a continental scale.

For a country the size of Australia, this would simply not be possible without free and open access to the full time-series that the Landsat archive provides.

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NASA and USGS reveal stunning infrared aerial photos in Earth As Art project - Express.co.uk

An image released by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team on Sept. 17, 2019, shows the Vikram lander's attempted touchdown site.

(Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

It looks like just a barren moonscape of craters, but somewhere in this image is a hunk of metal and electronics that carried a country's hopes of lunar science.

The image was captured through NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Camera's technology on Sept. 17 as the spacecraft flew over the targeted landing site of India's Chandrayaan-2 mission. That project's lander, dubbed Vikram, fell silent in the final minutes of its touchdown procedure on Sept. 6. The India Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which oversees the mission, spent two weeks trying to establish communications with the lander.

ISRO has said it was able to spot the lander with the orbiter component of the Chandrayaan-2 mission, but the agency has not released those photographs. NASA wanted to help the effort, but LRO's angle on the scene was suboptimal during its first flyover of the targeted landing site after the attempt.

Related: India's Chandrayaan-2 Mission to the Moon in Photos

The Vikram lunar lander should have touched down somewhere inside the blue circle in this image released by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on Sept. 17, 2019.

(Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Space.com)

The Vikram lander was targeting a patch of high ground between two craters called Simpelius N and Manzinus C. The last tracking data the lander sent back to Earth before falling silent suggested that the robot was off course, and according to a NASA statement, the lander's location is still uncertain.

LRO has passed over the region only once since the landing attempt, and at the time, the sun was setting, casting stark shadows that imaging specialists knew in advance could prevent the orbiter from spotting Vikram. The NASA mission will fly over the targeted landing site again next month, when its chances of spotting the lander will be more favorable.

Despite the silence from Vikram and ISRO's reticence to release images of the lander, the agency holds that the overall Chandrayaan-2 mission is a success, meeting between 90% and 95% of its objectives. The orbiter was designed to spend a year circling the moon from pole to pole.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the nature of the image released by NASA. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Need more space? You can get 5 issues of our partner "All About Space" Magazine for $5 for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

(Image credit: All About Space magazine)

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India's Lost Moon Lander Is Somewhere in This NASA Photo - Space.com

Anne McClain during a spacewalk on the ISS on March 22.

NASA has a smorgasbord of spacewalks on tap for the next three months. The space agency announced the upcoming International Space Station action on Monday.

NASA's live TV feed is expected to broadcast "what may become a record pace of 10 complex spacewalks" starting on Sunday, Oct. 6. This rate of spacewalks has not been seen since the ISS was completed in 2011, NASA said.

The spacewalks will focus on necessary station maintenance tasks. The first half of the slate will involve replacing solar array batteries as part of an ongoing upgrade process. We watched a previous battery-replacement spacewalk in March. This project has been underway since early 2017.

The next five spacewalks are expected to begin in November and will tackle the refurbishment of the station'sAlpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics detector attached to the exterior of the ISS. This instrument is on a mission to help scientists investigate some heavy-duty subjects, including dark matter and antimatter. NASA describes it as looking for "what the universe is made of and how it began."

If you plan to (slowly) binge-watch all of the spacewalks, you'll need to tune in starting on Sunday around 4:50 a.m. PT for the first battery-replacement stroll in space. NASA Television coverage will start at 3:30 a.m.

NASA will announce scheduling details for the other spacewalks as they get closer, but you can go ahead and get pumped for all the upcoming spacesuit action.

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NASA will air a gazillion ISS spacewalks over the next few months - CNET

Astronomers think the supermassive black hole weighs around six million times the sun's mass and is located about 375 million light-years away. USA TODAY

NASA has given us another historic glimpse into the wonders of spaceafter releasing a video that shows a star-shredding black hole in a galaxy millions of light-years away.

The amazing footage of the "cataclysmicphenomenon" was taken by NASAs planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS.

Astronomers think the supermassive black hole weighs around 6 million times the suns mass and is located about 375 million light-years away in a galaxy of similar size to the Milky Way, NASA said.

The incredible event, called a tidal disruption, is veryrare and occurs once every 10,000 to 100,000 years in galaxies like the Milky Way.

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When a star gets too close, the intense tides of ablack holebreak apart the starinto a stream of gas, according to NASA. As shown in the video, the tail of that stream breaksaway from the black hole while other parts of it swing back around and create a halo of debris.

Scientists believe the star in the video may have been about the same size as our sun.

The event, named ASASSN-19bt, was first discovered on Jan. 29 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae telescope network, a worldwide network of 24robotic telescopes headquartered at Ohio State University.

NASA says that scientists have only been able to observe about 40tidal disruptions in history and TESS was able to capture one after launching in April 2018.

For TESS to observe (the event) so early in its tenure, and in the continuous viewing zone where we could watch it for so long, is really quite extraordinary, said Padi Boyd, TESS project scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Future collaborations with observatories around the world and in orbit will help us learn even more about the different outbursts that light up the cosmos.

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

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A black hole is shredding a star, and NASA caught the incredible space event on camera - USA TODAY

The asteroid, dubbed Asteroid 2018 FK5, will come flying by on an Earth Close Approach trajectory. The asteroid will arrive close to Earth later tonight (Tuesday, October 1). US space agency NASA expects Asteroid FK5 to make an appearance around 11.56pm BST (10.56pm UTC). When this happens, the rock will shoot by at speeds of around 10.48km per second or 23,443mph (37,728kph).

The speedy asteroid was first observed flying around the solar system on March 28, 2018.

NASA has since calculated the objects size, speed and trajectory based on a total of 33 observations.

The asteroid was determined to be a so-called Near-Earth Object or NEO.

All NEOs are comets and asteroids in the inner solar system that approach Earth from a close distance.

READ MORE: How often do asteroids hit Earth? What is the danger?

Frequently, NEOs of varying sizes cross Earths orbit and sometimes they strike the planet head-on.

NASA said: As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects can occasionally approach close to Earth.

Note that a close passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.

Asteroid FK5 is estimated to measure somewhere in the range of 19ft to 42ft (5.8 m to 13m) across.

READ MORE: Watch major asteroid DESTROY Earth in fiery crash simulation

At the upper end of this scale, the asteroid is about as tall as Brachiosaurus dinosaur.

At the lower end of NASAs estimate, the space rock is comparable in size to an adult giraffe.

If an object this small entered the atmosphere, it would safely burn up before striking the ground.

NASA said any object up to 82ft (25m) in diameter is unlikely to survive the fiery descent through the atmosphere.

READ MORE:NASA unveils $600m planetary defence system

Despite its incredibly fast approach today, the asteroid will not come close enough to strike.

At its closest, NASA predicts the asteroid will miss our home planet from a distance of about 0.03405 astronomical units (au).

A single astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the Sun about 93 million miles (149.6 million km).

In other words, the asteroid will safely fly by from a distance of about 3.16 million miles (5.09 million km).

1. A football field-sized space rock slams into the planet roughly once every 2,000 years, according to NASA.

2. Some of the bigger objects in the asteroid belt measure around 583 miles across.

3. NASA estimates a car-sized asteroid collides with Earth about once a year.

4. Comets are different from asteroids because they are covered in icy layers that sublimate in space.

5. If a meteor survives the descent through the atmosphere it is called a meteorite.

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Asteroid alert: NASA tracked rock about to skim Earth at 23,400mph tonight - Will it hit? - Express.co.uk

The dramatic image was snapped by NASAs probe and enhanced by citizen scientist Kevin Gill. The picture features Jupiters upper hemisphere where a pitch-black and round shadow has appeared. NASAs Juno took the picture on its 22nd close flyby of the Gas Giant on September 11, 2019. During the flyby, the spacecraft dipped to a distance of just 4,885 miles (7,862km) above the planets cloud tops.

So, what exactly is the dark shadow blemishing the surface of the solar systems biggest planet?

Could it be a black hole threatening to trap Jupiter in the unavoidable grip of its gravity?

Thankfully, the black hole is completely harmless and is the result of Jupiters moon Io passing directly in front of the Sun.

NASA said: Jupiters volcanically active moon Io casts its shadow on the planet in this dramatic image from NASAs Juno spacecraft.

READ MORE: Jupiters magnetic field is CHANGING and you wont believe why

As with solar eclipses on the Earth, within the dark circle racing across Jupiters cloud tops, one would witness a full solar eclipse as Io passes in front of the Sun.

Such events occur frequently on Jupiter because it is a large planet with many moons.

According to the USspaceagency, the Gas Giant boasts a total of 75 lunar satellites.

Similarly to Saturn, NASAs 1979 Voyager probe also discovered a faint ring of material running around the planet.

READ MORE:NASA spacecraft will hunt for life on Jupiter's moon Europa

However, unlike most of the other planets in the solar system, the Sun never moves far away from the planets equator.

Jupiters axis is not tilted highly when compared to its orbit, meaning the Sun often crosses paths with Jupiters moons.

As a result, NASA said dark shadows like the one above often fall on the planets cloudy surface.

The exact same effect takes place on Earth during a spectacular total solar eclipse.

READ MORE: NASAs Juno spacecraft captures stunning image of gas giant

NASA said: Junos close proximity to Jupiter provides an exceptional fish-eye view, showing a small fraction near the planets equator.

The shadow is about 2,200 miles (3,600km) wide, approximately the same width as Io, but appears much larger relative to Jupiter.

A little larger than Earths Moon, Io is perhaps most famous for its many active volcanoes, often caught lofting fountains of ejecta well above its thin atmosphere.

All of Junos raw images are shared online in the JunoCam archive and NASA encourages members of the public to play around with and process them as they see fit.

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NASA news: An incredible black hole appeared on Jupiter - What is this 'dramatic image'? - Express.co.uk

As a former NASA astronaut who spent 520 days in space the second-longest stint and traveled more than 143 million miles through the cosmos, Capt. Scott Kelly knows a thing or two about taking the road less traveled.

The best part about being in space is that its a really, really hard thing to do, Kelly told more than 1,000 people Tuesday night, all huddled on the event center bleachers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Thats what I want to talk to you about today, Kelly said. Its about doing the hard things, not the easy things.

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Hard things for Kelly included taking risks, such as becoming a test pilot for the Navy. Kelly admits he struggled, in school and flying planes. But that didnt stop him.

In my experience, when I was able to put all these things together, what I learned was that the sky is not the limit ... he said. Theres a trait that a lot of successful people have: that risk-taking mentality ... In certain points of your life, taking risks and seeing what you can be able to achieve is really an incredible trait that people have.

Kelly lived aboard the International Space Station as a commander for 340 days through three expeditions. His time aboard the space station set the record for the accumulated number of days spent in space, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut.

In this Oct. 22, 2015 photo, Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly tries on his spacesuit inside the U.S. Quest airlock of the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)

A unique aspect to his career was that his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, was also a NASA astronaut. The Kelly brothers are the only twin astronauts in NASA history.

In 2015, NASA studied them to compare the effects on the human physiological, molecular and behavioral lenses. Scott spent a year at the ISS while Mark worked at ground control. When Scott returned, his body had undergone several genetic changes, most notably to his chromosomes. Researchers found the ends of Scotts chromosomes, called the telomeres, lengthened instead of shortening as they had expected.

It was a high-risk mission, Scott said, but it helped kick-start genetic testing on people during space travel, further propelling mankind into space studies. Scott said it was the most important thing hes done in his life.

Of course I learned a lot about empathy and being a good human on this planet, he said.

When you look out at planet Earth from space, you dont see political borders like you do on maps and globes of the Earth. You see a planet. You know that there people down there, and were all in this thing together called humanity.

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Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly tells crowd at UCCS to 'do the hard things' - Colorado Springs Gazette

The asteroids are flying in Earths direction on trajectories dubbed by astronomers Earth Close Approaches. The asteroids will all come screaming by on Monday, September 30. NASA expects the first of the three tracked space rocks, Asteroid 2019 SH3, to appear around 2.37am BST (1.37am UTC) next week. On its closest approach, the rock will reach speeds of around 14.16km per second or 31,675mph (50,976kph).

According to NASAs Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), all three space rocks are classified as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).

NEOs are comets and asteroids trapped in the inner solar system that come very close to our planet.

Occasionally, an asteroid will come close enough to Earths orbit for NASA to monitor its trajectory for the possibility of impact.

The space agency said: As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects occasionally approach close to Earth.

FIND OUT MORE: How often do asteroids hit Earth? What is the danger

CNEOS calculates the motion of all NEOs forwards to 2200 AD and backwards to 1900 AD, and determines the times and distances of the Earth close approaches.

The first of the three asteroids is thespacerock known as Asteroid 2019 SH3.

Asteroid SH3 is the second largest of the trio, estimated to measure somewhere between 62.3ft to 137.8ft (19m to 42m) in diameter.

The asteroid is flying through space at speeds of around 31,675mph (50,976kph).

The rocks closest approach to Earth will occur around 2.37am BST (1.37am UTC) on Monday.

READ MORE:Expert fears NASA can't stop an asteroid impact - 'Insanely irresponsible'

Shortly after, Asteroid 2019 SN3 will skim the planet around 12.46pm BST (11.46am UTC).

The asteroid is the smallest of the three space rocks.

NASA estimates SN3 measures somewhere in the range of 42.6ft to 95ft (13m to 29m) across.

The asteroid is travelling through space at speeds of around 7.68km per second or 17,179mph (27,648kph).

READ MORE: Billions of people will die in asteroid impact - shock warning

The final of the three asteroids is the space rock known as Asteroid 2019 SP.

Asteroid SP measures in the range of 111.5ft to 249ft (34m to 76m) making it the largest of the trio.

The asteroid will close-in on Earths location around 6.41pm BST (5.41am UTC).

During the approach, NASA said the space rock will travel at speeds of 15.06km per second or 33,688mph (54,216kph).

Thankfully, there is no need to sound the alarm bells just yet because all three space rocks will safely miss the planet.

The closest of the three rocks, Asteroid SN3, will approach Earth from a distance of 0.00565 astronomical units.

A single astronomical unit equals about 93 million miles (149.6 million km), which is the distance from the Sun to Earth.

Asteroid SN3 will drastically cut this down to just 525,200 miles (845,227km) on Monday only twice as far as the Moon is.

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Asteroid alert: NASA tracks three space rocks heading past Earth at once Will they hit? - Express.co.uk

On Dec. 18,2018, a large "fireball" - the term used forexceptionally bright meteors that are visible over a wide area -exploded about 16 miles (26 kilometers) above the Bering Sea. The explosionunleashed an estimated 173 kilotons of energy, or more than 10 times the energyof the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima during World War II.

Two NASAinstruments aboard the Terra satellite captured images of the remnants of the largemeteor. The image sequence shows views from five of nine cameras on the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrumenttaken at 23:55 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a few minutes after theevent. The shadow of the meteor's trail throughEarth's atmosphere, cast on the cloud tops and elongated by the low sun angle,is to the northwest. The orange-tinted cloud that the fireball left behind bysuper-heating the air it passed through can be seen below and to the right ofthe GIF's center.

Thestill image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging SpectroRadiometer(MODIS) instrument, is a true-color image showing the remnants of the meteor's passage,seen as a dark shadow cast on thick, white clouds. MODIS captured the image at23:50 UTC.

TheDec. 18 fireball was the most powerful meteor to be observed since 2013;however, given its altitude and the remote area over which it occurred, theobject posed no threat to anyone on the ground. Fireball events are actually fairlycommon and are recorded in the NASA Center for Near Earth ObjectStudies database.

TheTerra spacecraft was launched in 1999 and is managed by NASA's Goddard SpaceFlight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The MISR instrument was built and ismanaged by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for NASA'sScience Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of Caltech. TheMISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center AtmosphericScience Data Center in Hampton, Virginia. The MODIS instrument is managed by NASA's GoddardSpace Flight Center.

More information about MISR and MODIS is available at thefollowing site(s):

https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/

MODIS

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Patrick Lynch NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center301-286-2102 patrick.lynch@nasa.gov

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News | NASA Instruments Image Fireball over Bering Sea

NASA and its Commercial Crew Program providers Boeing and SpaceX have agreed to move the target launch dates for the upcoming inaugural test flights of their next generation American spacecraft and rockets that will launch astronauts to the International Space Station.

The agency now is targeting March 2 for launch of SpaceXs Crew Dragon on its uncrewed Demo-1 test flight. Boeings uncrewed Orbital Flight Test is targeted for launch no earlier than April.

These adjustments allow for completion of necessary hardware testing, data verification, remaining NASA and provider reviews, as well as training of flight controllers and mission managers.

The uncrewed test flights will be the first time commercially-built and operated American spacecraft designed for humans will dock to the space station. The first flights are dress rehearsals for missions with astronauts aboard the vehicles.Commercial crew has continued working toward these historic missions throughout the month of January.

The uncrewed flight tests are a great dry run for not only our hardware, but for our team to get ready for our crewed flight tests, said Kathy Lueders, Commercial Crew Program manager. NASA has been working together with SpaceX and Boeing to make sure we are ready to conduct these test flights and get ready to learn critical information that will further help us to fly our crews safely.We always learn from tests.

In January, SpaceX successfully completed a static fire test of its Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon atop the rocket at Kennedy Space Centers Launch Complex 39A in Florida, in preparation for Demo-1.

Boeings CST-100 Starliner continues to undergo testing in preparation for its Orbital Flight Test, and United Launch Alliance is conducting final processing of the Atlas V rocket that will launch Starliner from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

There still are many critical steps to complete before launch and while we eagerly are anticipating these launches, we will step through our test flight preparations and readiness reviews, said Lueders. We are excited about seeing the hardware we have followed through development, integration, and ground testing move into flight.

NASAs Commercial Crew Program will return human spaceflight launches to U.S. soil, providing safe, reliable and cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit and the space station on systems that meet safety and performance requirements.

To meet NASAs requirements, the commercial providers must demonstrate their systems are ready to begin regular flights to the space station. After the uncrewed flight tests, Boeing and SpaceX will complete a flight test with crew prior to being certified by NASA for crew rotation missions. The following planning dates reflect inputs by the Commercial Crew Program and the two companies and are current as of Feb. 4, 2019.

Test Flight Planning Dates:SpaceX Demo-1 (uncrewed): March 2, 2019Boeing Orbital Flight Test (uncrewed): NET April 2019Boeing Pad Abort Test: NET May 2019SpaceX In-Flight Abort Test: June 2019SpaceX Demo-2 (crewed): July 2019Boeing Crew Flight Test (crewed): NET August 2019

SpaceX also completed apad abort testin 2015. Following the test flights, NASA will review performance data and resolve any necessary issues to certify the systems for operational missions. Boeing, SpaceX and the Commercial Crew Program are actively working to be ready for the operational missions. As with all human spaceflight vehicle development, learning from each test and adjusting as necessary to reduce risk to the crew may override planning dates.

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NASA, Partners Update Commercial Crew Launch Dates ...

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Nov. 30, 2018: This series of images from NASA's Juno spacecraft captures changing cloud formations across Jupiter's southern hemisphere. A cloud in the shape of a dolphin appears to be swimming through the cloud bands along the South South Temperate Belt.

This sequence of images was taken between 2:26 p.m. and 2:46 p.m. PDT (5:26 p.m. and 5:56 p.m. EDT) on Oct. 29, 2018, as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno's altitude ranged from about 11,400 to 31,700 miles (18,400 to 51,000 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, at approximately 32 to 59 degrees south latitude.

Citizen scientists Brian Swift and Sen Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.

The fifth planet from the Sun, and the most massive in our solar system, Jupiter has a long history surprising scientistsall the way back to 1610 when Galileo Galilei found the first moons beyond Earth. That discovery changed the way we see the universe. Explore Jupiter

Ten Things to Know About Jupiter

10 Things to Know About Jupiter

1

Eleven Earths could fit across Jupiters equator. If Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be the size of a basketball.

2

Jupiter orbits about 484 million miles (778 million kilometers) or 5.2 Astronomical Units (AU) from our Sun (Earth is one AU from the Sun).

3

Jupiter rotates once about every 10 hours (a Jovian day), but takes about 12 Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun (a Jovian year).

Jupiter's Bands of Clouds

4

Jupiter is a gas giant and so lacks an Earth-like surface. If it has a solid inner core at all, its likely only about the size of Earth.

5

Jupiter's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2) and helium (He).

6

Jupiter has more than 75 moons.

7

In 1979 the Voyager mission discovered Jupiters faint ring system. All four giant planets in our solar system have ring systems.

8

Nine spacecraft have visited Jupiter. Seven flew by and two have orbited the gas giant. Juno, the most recent, arrived at Jupiter in 2016.

9

Jupiter cannot support life as we know it. But some of Jupiter's moons have oceans beneath their crusts that might support life.

10

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a gigantic storm thats about twice the size of Earth and has raged for over a century.

Juno's Eighth Close Approach to Jupiter

Did You Know

There are no rockets powerful enough to hurl a spacecraft into the outer solar system and beyond. In 1962, scientists calculated how to use Jupiter's intense gravity to hurl spacecraft into the farthest regions of the solar system. We've been traveling farther and faster ever since.

Pop Culture

The biggest planet in our solar system, Jupiter also has a large presence in pop culture, including many movies, TV shows, video games and comics. Jupiter was a notable destination in the Wachowski siblings science fiction spectacle Jupiter Ascending, while various Jovian moons provide settings for Cloud Atlas, Futurama, Power Rangers, and Halo, among many others. In Men in Black when Agent Jplayed by Will Smithmentions he thought one of his childhood teachers was from Venus, Agent Kplayed by Tommy Lee Jonesreplies that she is actually from one of Jupiters moons.

Kid-Friendly Jupiter

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. It's similar to a star, but it never got big enough to start burning.

Jupiter is covered in swirling cloud stripes. It has big storms like the Great Red Spot, which has been going for hundreds of years.

Jupiter is a gas giant and doesn't have a solid surface, but it may have a solid inner core about the size of Earth. Jupiter also has rings, but they're too faint to see very well.

Visit NASA Space Place for more kid-friendly facts.

Resources

Galileo Spacecraft Model

Galileo was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter.

Pioneer 10 was first through the asteroid belt and first to Jupiter.

With a few materials and a few steps, you can build your own glasses to view 3D images.

You can create your own red/blue 3D images to print, or look at on a computer screen, using a normal digital camera and some image processing software.

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Overview | Jupiter Solar System Exploration: NASA Science

Usingdata from NASA's Keplerspace telescope, citizen scientists have discovered a planet roughlytwice the size of Earth located within its star's habitable zone, the range oforbital distances where liquid water may exist on the planet's surface. The newworld, known as K2-288Bb, could be rocky or could be a gas-rich planet similarto Neptune. Its size is rare among exoplanets - planets beyond our solarsystem.

"It'sa very exciting discovery due to how it was found, its temperate orbit and becauseplanets of this size seem to be relatively uncommon," said Adina Feinstein,a University of Chicago graduate student who discussed the discovery on Monday,Jan. 7, at the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.She is also the lead author of a paper describing the new planet accepted forpublication by TheAstronomical Journal.

Located226 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, the planet lies in a stellarsystem known as K2-288, which contains a pair of dim, cool M-type starsseparated by about 5.1 billion miles (8.2 billion kilometers) - roughly sixtimes the distance between Saturn and the Sun. The brighter star is about halfas massive and large as the Sun, while its companion is about one-third the Sun'smass and size. The new planet, K2-288Bb, orbits the smaller, dimmer star every31.3 days.

In2017, Feinstein and Makennah Bristow, an undergraduate student at theUniversity of North Carolina Asheville, worked as interns with Joshua Schlieder,an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.They searched Kepler data for evidence of transits, the regular dimming of astar when an orbiting planet moves across the star's face.

Examiningdata from the fourth observing campaignof Kepler's K2mission, the team noticed two likely planetary transits in the system.But scientists require a third transit before claiming the discovery of a candidateplanet, and there wasn't a third signal in the observations they reviewed.

Asit turned out, though, the team wasn't actually analyzing all of the data.

InKepler's K2 mode, which ran from 2014 to 2018, the spacecraft repositioneditself to point at a new patch of sky at the start of each three-monthobserving campaign. Astronomers were initially concerned that thisrepositioning would cause systematic errors in measurements.

"Re-orientingKepler relative to the Sun caused miniscule changes in the shape of thetelescope and the temperature of the electronics, which inevitably affectedKepler's sensitive measurements in the first days of each campaign," saidco-author Geert Barentsen, an astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center inCalifornia's Silicon Valley and the director of the guest observer office forthe Kepler and K2 missions.

Todeal with this, early versions of the software that was used to prepare thedata for planet-finding analysis simply ignored the first few days ofobservations - and that's where the third transit was hiding.

Asscientists learned how to correct for these systematic errors, this trimmingstep was eliminated - but the early K2 data Barstow studied had been clipped.

"Weeventually re-ran all data from the early campaigns through the modifiedsoftware and then re-ran the planet search to get a list of candidates, butthese candidates were never fully visually inspected," explained Schlieder,a co-author of the paper. "Inspecting, or vetting, transits with the humaneye is crucial because noise and other astrophysical events can mimic transits."

Instead,the re-processed data were posted directly to ExoplanetExplorers, a project where the public searches Kepler's K2 observationsto locate new transiting planets. In May 2017, volunteers noticed the thirdtransit and began an excited discussion about what was then thought to be anEarth-sized candidate in the system, which caught the attention of Feinsteinand her colleagues.

"That'show we missed it - and it took the keen eyes of citizen scientists to make thisextremely valuable find and point us to it," Feinstein said.

Theteam began follow-up observations using NASA'sSpitzer Space Telescope, the Keck II telescope at the W. M. KeckObservatory and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility(the latter two in Hawaii), and also examined data from ESA's (the EuropeanSpace Agency's) Gaiamission.

Estimatedto be about 1.9 times Earth's size, K2-288Bb is half the size of Neptune. This placesthe planet within a recentlydiscovered category called the Fulton gap, or radius gap. Amongplanets that orbit close to their stars, there's a curious dearth of worlds betweenabout 1.5 and two times Earth's size. This is likely the result of intensestarlight breaking up atmospheric molecules and eroding away the atmospheres ofsome planets over time, leaving behind two populations. Since K2-288Bb's radiusplaces it in this gap, it may provide a case study of planetary evolutionwithin this size range.

OnOct. 30, 2018, Kepler ran out of fuel and ended its mission after nine years,during which it discovered 2,600 confirmed planets around other stars - thebulk of those now known - along with thousands of additional candidatesastronomers are working to confirm. And while NASA'sTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is the newest space-basedplanet hunter, this new finding shows that more discoveries await scientists inKepler data.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science MissionDirectorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managedKepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporationoperated the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric andSpace Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Formore information about the Kepler and K2 missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

News Media Contact

Calla CofieldJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.626-808-2469calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov

By Francis ReddyNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

2019-002

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Citizen Scientists Find New World with NASA Telescope

In November2017, scientists pointed NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object knownas 'Oumuamua- the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system. The infraredSpitzer was one of many telescopes pointed at 'Oumuamua in the weeks after itsdiscovery that October.

'Oumuamua wastoo faint for Spitzer to detect when it looked more than two months after theobject's closest aproach to Earth in early September. However, the "non-detection"puts a new limit on how large the strange object can be. The results arereported in a new study published today in the Astronomical Journal andcoauthored by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,California.

Scientists have concluded that vents on the surface of 'Oumuamua must have emitted jets of gases, giving the object a slight boost in speed, which researchers detected by measuring the position of the object as it passed by Earth in 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Larger view

The new size limitis consistent with the findings of a research paper published earlierthis year, which suggested that outgassing was responsible for theslight changes in 'Oumuamua's speed and direction as it was tracked last year:The authors of that paper conclude the expelled gas acted like a small thrustergently pushing the object. That determination was dependent on 'Oumuamua beingrelatively smaller than typical solar system comets. (The conclusion that'Oumuamua experienced outgassing suggested that it was composed of frozen gases,similar to a comet.)

"'Oumuamuahas been full of surprises from day one, so we were eager to see what Spitzer mightshow," said David Trilling, lead author on the new study and a professorof astronomy at Northern Arizona University. "The fact that 'Oumuamua wastoo small for Spitzer to detect is actually a very valuable result."

'Oumuamua wasfirst detected by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope onHaleakala, Hawaii (the object's name is a Hawaiian word meaning "visitorfrom afar arriving first"), in October 2017 while the telescope wassurveying for near-Earth asteroids.

Subsequent detailedobservations conducted by multiple ground-based telescopes and NASA's HubbleSpace Telescope detected the sunlight reflected off 'Oumuamua's surface. Largevariations in the object's brightness suggested that 'Oumuamua is highly elongatedand probably less than half a mile (2,600 feet, or 800 meters) in its longestdimension.

But Spitzertracks asteroids and comets using the infrared energy, or heat, that they radiate,which can provide more specific information about an object's size than opticalobservations of reflected sunlight alone would.

The fact that'Oumuamua was too faint for Spitzer to detect sets a limit on the object's totalsurface area. However, since the non-detection can't be used to infer shape, thesize limits are presented as what 'Oumuamua's diameter would be if it werespherical. Using three separate models that make slightly different assumptionsabout the object's composition, Spitzer's non-detection limited 'Oumuamua's "sphericaldiameter" to 1,440 feet (440 meters), 460 feet (140 meters) or perhaps aslittle as 320 feet (100 meters). The wide range of results stems from theassumptions about 'Oumuamua's composition, which influences how visible (or faint)it would appear to Spitzer were it a particular size.

Small but Reflective

The new studyalso suggests that 'Oumuamua may be up to 10 times more reflective than the cometsthat reside in our solar system - a surprising result, according to the paper'sauthors. Because infrared light is largely heat radiation produced by"warm" objects, it can be used to determine the temperature of acomet or asteroid; in turn, this can be used to determine the reflectivity ofthe object's surface - what scientists call albedo. Just as a dark T-shirt in sunlightheats up more quickly than a light one, an object with low reflectivity retainsmore heat than an object with high reflectivity. So a lower temperature means ahigher albedo.

A comet'salbedo can change throughout its lifetime. When it passes close to the Sun, acomet's ice warms and turns directly into a gas, sweeping dust and dirt off thecomet's surface and revealing more reflective ice.

'Oumuamua hadbeen traveling through interstellar space for millions of years, far from anystar that could refresh its surface. But it may have had its surface refreshed throughsuch "outgassing" when it made an extremely close approach to our Sun,a little more than five weeks before it was discovered. In addition to sweepingaway dust and dirt, some of the released gas may have covered the surface of'Oumuamua with a reflective coat of ice and snow - a phenomenon that's alsobeen observed in comets in our solar system.

'Oumuamua ison its way out of our solar system - almost as far from the Sun as Saturn'sorbit - and is well beyond the reach of any existing telescopes.

"Usually,if we get a measurement from a comet that's kind of weird, we go back andmeasure it again until we understand what we're seeing," said DavideFarnocchia, of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at JPL and acoauthor on both papers. "But this one is gone forever; we probably knowas much about it as we're ever going to know."

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA'sScience Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted atthe Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraftoperations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Littleton,Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC atCaltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit:

https://spitzer.caltech.edu

https://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

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NASA Learns More About Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua

A burst of 1999 Leonid meteors as seen at 38,000 feet from Leonid Multi Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Leonid MAC) with 50 mm camera. Image Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/ISAS/Shinsuke Abe and Hajime Yano

The Leonids, which peak during mid-November each year, are considered to be a major shower though meteor rates are often as low as about 15 meteors per hour. The Leonids are bright meteors and can also be colorful. They are also fast: Leonids travel at speeds of 44 miles (71 kilometers) per second, and are considered to be some of the fastest meteors out there.

Every 33 years, or so, viewers on Earth may experience a Leonid storm that can peak with hundreds to thousands of meteors seen per hour depending on the location of the observer.

A meteor storm versus a shower is defined as having at least 1,000 meteors per hour. Viewers in 1966 experienced a spectacular Leonid storm: thousands of meteors per minute fell through Earth's atmosphere during a 15 minute period. There were so many meteors seen that they appeared to fall like rain. The last Leonid meteor storm took place in 2002.

Leonids are also known for their fireballs and earthgrazer meteors. Fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of cometary material. Fireballs are also brighter, with magnitudes brighter than -3. Earthgrazers are meteors that streak close to the horizon and are known for their long and colorful tails.

The Leonids are best viewed starting at about midnight local time. Find an area well away from city or street lights. Come prepared for winter temperatures with a sleeping bag, blanket or lawn chair. Orient yourself with your feet towards east, lie flat on your back, and look up, taking in as much of the sky as possible. In less than 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors. Be patient -- the show will last until dawn, so you have plenty of time to catch a glimpse.

Meteors come from leftover comet particles and bits from broken asteroids. When comets come around the sun, the dust they emit gradually spreads into a dusty trail around their orbits. Every year the Earth passes through these debris trails, which allows the bits to collide with our atmosphere where they disintegrate to create fiery and colorful streaks in the sky.

The pieces of space debris that interact with our atmosphere to create the Leonids originate from comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. It takes comet Tempel-Tuttle 33 years to orbit the sun once.

Comet Tempel-Tuttle was discovered twice independentlyin 1865 and 1866 by Ernst Tempel and Horace Tuttle, respectively. Tempel-Tuttle is a small cometits nucleus measures only about 2.24 miles (3.6 kilometers) across.

You should not look only to the constellation of Leo to view the Leonidsthey are visible throughout the night sky. It is actually better to view the Leonids away from the radiant: They will appear longer and more spectacular from this perspective. If you do look directly at the radiant, you will find that the meteors will be shortthis is an effect of perspective called foreshortening.

Determine Meteor Shower Activity for Where You Live

http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html

Eyewitness Accounts of the 1966 Storm

http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/1966.html

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In Depth | Leonids Solar System Exploration: NASA Science

All These Worlds

Nov. 29, 2018: The latest mission to explore Marsthe only planet we know of populated entirely by robotsis safe on the ground and gearing up for two years of groundbreaking science.

NASA's Nov. 26 InSight landing on the Red Planet was supported by the twin MarCO spacecraft, the first interplanetary CubeSats.

More science robots are actively exploring these worlds: Venus, Earth, Earth's Moon, Mars, asteroid Bennu and Jupiter. Several spacecraft are watching the Sun.

NASA's New Horizons is closing in on a Jan. 1, 2019 rendezvous with a small body in the Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond Pluto. Meanwhile, ESA's BepiColombo is working its way toward Mercury in the inner solar system.

Explore in 3DEyes on the Solar System

Eyes on the Solar System lets you explore the planets, their moons, asteroids, comets and the spacecraft exploring them from 1950 to 2050. Ride with the Curiosity Rover as it lands on Mars or fly by Pluto with the New Horizons spacecraft all from the comfort of your home computer.

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Overview | Planets Solar System Exploration: NASA Science

Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2018 October 29

Explanation: How do galaxies grow?To help find out, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed to image the unusual elliptical galaxy PGC 42871.How this galaxy came to be surrounded by numerous shells of stars may give clues about how it evolved. Embedded in the diffuse shells are massive globular clusters of stars -- stars which analyses show were born during three different epochs. This and other data indicate that PGC 42871 has been in at least two galactic collisions, at least one of which might have been with a former spiral galaxy.The remaining spiral galaxy on the far left is at the same distance as PGC 42871 and may have been involved in some of the collisions. PGC 42871 spans about 20 thousand light years and lies about 270 million light years away toward the constellation of Centaurus.

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APOD: 2018 October 29 - apod.nasa.gov

New images from NASA's Mars InSight lander show itsrobotic arm is ready to do some lifting.

With a reach of nearly 6 feet (2 meters), the arm will beused to pick up science instruments from the lander's deck, gently setting themon the Martian surface at Elysium Planitia, the lava plain where InSight toucheddown on Nov. 26.

But first, the arm will use its Instrument DeploymentCamera, located on its elbow, to take photos of the terrain in front of thelander. These images will help mission team members determine where to setInSight's seismometer and heat flow probe - the only instruments ever to berobotically placed on the surface of another planet.

"Today we can see the first glimpses of our workspace,"said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's JetPropulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "By early next week, we'llbe imaging it in finer detail and creating a full mosaic."

Another camera, called the Instrument Context Camera, islocated under the lander's deck. It will also offer views of the workspace,though the view won't be as pretty.

"We had a protective cover on the Instrument ContextCamera, but somehow dust still managed to get onto the lens," said TomHoffman of JPL, InSight's project manager. "While this is unfortunate, itwill not affect the role of the camera, which is to take images of the area infront of the lander where our instruments will eventually be placed."

Placement is critical, and the team is proceeding withcaution. Two to three months could go by before the instruments have beensituated and calibrated.

Over the past week and a half, mission engineers have beentesting those instruments and spacecraft systems, ensuring they're in workingorder. A couple instruments are even recording data: a drop in air pressure,possibly caused by a passing dust devil, was detected by the pressure sensor.This, along with a magnetometer and a set of wind and temperature sensors, arepart of a package called the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem, which willcollect meteorological data.

More images from InSight's arm were scheduled to come downthis past weekend. However, imaging was momentarily interrupted, resuming thefollowing day. During the first few weeks in its new home, InSight has beeninstructed to be extra careful, so anything unexpected will trigger what's calleda fault. Considered routine, it causes the spacecraft to stop what it is doingand ask for help from operators on the ground.

"We did extensive testing on Earth. But we know thateverything is a little different for the lander on Mars, so faults are notunusual," Hoffman said. "They can delay operations, but we're not ina rush. We want to be sure that each operation that we perform on Mars is safe,so we set our safety monitors to be fairly sensitive initially."

Spacecraft engineers had already factored extra time intotheir estimates for instrument deployment to account for likely delays causedby faults. The mission's primary mission is scheduled for two Earth years, orone Mars year - plenty of time to gather data from the Red Planet's surface.

About InSight

JPL manages InSight for NASA'sScience Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program,managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including itscruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners,including France's Centre National d'tudes Spatiales (CNES) and the GermanAerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES and the Institutde Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) provided the Seismic Experiment forInterior Structure (SEIS)instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute forSolar System Research (MPS) in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH)in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom,and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3)instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK)of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro deAstrobiologa (CAB) supplied the wind sensors.

For more informationabout InSight, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

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News | NASA's Mars InSight Flexes Its Arm