NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson pops out of a cargo bag during a prank on the International Space Station on Feb. 13, 2017.

NASA astronautPeggy Whitson just pulled off a prank that's literally out of this world.

Whitson, a veteran space traveler, is one of six people living and working on the International Space Station right now. And while astronauts are usually pretty busy in space, Whitson found time Monday (Feb. 13) to surprise her Russian crewmates with a gag you could only pull off in space. As you can see here, Whitson packed herself inside a cargo bag and enlisted two partners-in-prank (NASA's Shane Kimbrough and France's Thomas Pesquet) to surprise their Russian crewmates. [Fun in Zero G: Awesome Weightless Photos]

"They were quite surprised when I popped out!"Whitson wrote in a Twitter post.

Zipped inside a cargo bag @Thom_astro & @astro_kimbrough took me over to the Russian segment. They were quite surprised when I popped out! pic.twitter.com/om59WVfzwE

The Russian members ofthe station's current Expedition 50 crew are Andrewy Borisenko, Sergey Ryzhikov and Oleg Novitskiy. I can only guess at what they thought when a seemingly innocent cargo bag floated into their module, only to have Whitson pop out.

Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut, apparently tried to climb in a cargo bag, too. But that didn't work out.

"I tried ... I but I didn't fit!"Pesquet wrote on Twitter.

This isn't the first time Whitson and her crewmates have had fun in space during their mission. To celebrate the Super Bowl earlier this month, they practiced some weightless tosses of their own ... using Whitson as the ball.

Practicing #SB51 football skills w/ @Thom_astro & @astro_kimbrough. I got a bit worried when Shane yelled "go long. pic.twitter.com/RQ1LvXw21K

And there was that time last month when Whitson decided to play with her space jello.

Gelatin in space! Looks a bit like a tadpole when it is floating around, but I promise it was a tasty treat for us on @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/wlBsC60P5f

Whitson, Pesquet and Novitsky launched to the space station last November, joining Kimbrough (who commands Expedition 50 mission),Borisenko andRyzhikov already onboard. Later this month, Kimbrough,Borisenko andRyzhikov will return to Earth. At that time, Whitson will take command of the space station for the second time in her career a first for a female astronaut.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him@tariqjmalikandGoogle+.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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A NASA Astronaut Just Pulled Off an Awesome Prank in Space - Space.com

When you pack to go to the International Space Station and share a confined space for days on end with a few other people, you had better bring along your sense of humor. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson delivered some laughs to the crew members of Expedition 50 when she pulled off a prank in microgravity.

Whitson hid out in a large cargo bag. Fellow astronauts Shane Kimbrough from NASA and Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency dutifully transported the bag over the space station's Russian segment until Whitson surprised them by popping out of the packaging. Whitson posted about her escapades on Twitter on Monday.

The look on Whitson's face in the Twitter photo says it all. She's having a great time.

There have been other funny happenings on the International Space Station, notably when astronaut Scott Kelly donned a gorilla suit and romped around in microgravity last year. The current crew also recently posed for a photo while pretending to be superheroes, so it looks like everyone up there has a good sense of humor.

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Space cheese and 9 other weird items we've sent into orbit (pictures)

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NASA astronaut pulls off cargo-bag prank in space - CNET

Northeast Syrtis was a hotbed of volcanic activity.

NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers will soon be joined by another mechanical friend. The Mars 2020 rover will seek out signs of past microbial life on the Red Planet. With the launch date getting closer, the US space agency is trying to decided where exactly it should land.

Scientists gathered this month for the third in a series of workshops aimed at choosing the new rover's landing site on Mars. The 30 potential landing locations were winnowed down to just three, all of which are intriguing.

Candidate 1: Columbia Hills in the Gusev Crater shows evidence that it was once home to a hot mineral spring. NASA's Spirit rover, which launched in 2003 and became inactive in 2010, operated in the Gusev crater. If this becomes the target of a second rover mission, then we could learn more about the watery history of the region and the possible presence of a dried-up lake bed.

This image is made from four frames taken by the Spirit rover in 2004.

Candidate 2: The Jezero Crater also hints at a watery past for the Red Planet. "More than 3.5 billion years ago, river channels spilled over the crater wall and created a lake," NASA notes. This could be a prime spot for signs of microbial life that may have survived there in wetter times.

Candidate 3: The final candidate is Northeast Syrtis, an area that was both wet and warm thanks to volcanic activity. "Microbes could have flourished here in liquid water that was in contact with minerals," says NASA.

Any one of the three could result in fascinating new discoveries, but we'll have to wait for the researchers to convene again to find out which is crowned the eventual winner.

Besides hunting for signs of life, the Mars 2020 rover will assess its new home for possible human exploration and collect samples that could one day be returned to Earth by a future mission.

The Jezero Crater shows signs of water-carved landscapes.

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NASA's next Mars rover will land at one of these three sites - CNET

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Jamie Lyons

On Saturday morning, the white stone buildings on UC Berkeleys campus radiated with unfiltered sunshine. The sky was blue, the campanile was chiming. But instead of enjoying the beautiful day, 200 adults had willingly sardined themselves into a fluorescent-lit room in the bowels of Doe Library to rescue federal climate data.

Like similar groups across the countryin more than 20 citiesthey believe that the Trump administration might want to disappear this data down a memory hole. So these hackers, scientists, and students are collecting it to save outside government servers.

But now theyre going even further. Groups like DataRefuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which organized the Berkeley hackathon to collect data from NASAs earth sciences programs and the Department of Energy, are doing more than archiving. Diehard coders are building robust systems to monitor ongoing changes to government websites. And theyre keeping track of whats already been removedbecause yes, the pruning has already begun.

The data collection is methodical, mostly. About half the group immediately sets web crawlers on easily-copied government pages, sending their text to the Internet Archive, a digital library made up of hundreds of billions of snapshots of webpages. They tag more data-intensive projectspages with lots of links, databases, and interactive graphicsfor the other group. Called baggers, these coders write custom scripts to scrape complicated data sets from the sprawling, patched-together federal websites.

Its not easy. All these systems were written piecemeal over the course of 30 years. Theres no coherent philosophy to providing data on these websites, says Daniel Roesler, chief technology officer at UtilityAPI and one of the volunteer guides for the Berkeley bagger group.

One coder who goes by Tek ran into a wall trying to download multi-satellite precipitation data from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Starting in August, access to Goddard Earth Science Data required a login. But with a bit of totally legal digging around the site (DataRefuge prohibits outright hacking), Tek found a buried link to the old FTP server. He clicked and started downloading. By the end of the day he had data for all of 2016 and some of 2015. It would take at least another 24 hours to finish.

The non-coders hit dead-ends too. Throughout the morning they racked up 404 Page not found errors across NASAs Earth Observing System website. And they more than once ran across databases that had already been emptied out, like the Global Change Data Centers reports archive and one of NASAs atmospheric CO2 datasets.

And this is where the real problem lies. They cant be sure when this data disappeared (or if anyone backed it up first). Scientists who understand it better will have to go back and take a look. But meantime, DataRefuge and EDGI understand that they need to be monitoring those changes and deletions. Thats more work than a human could do.

So theyre building software that can do it automatically.

Later that afternoon, two dozen or so of the most advanced software builders gathered around whiteboards, sketching out tools theyll need. They worked out filters to separate mundane updates from major shake-ups, and explored blockchain-like systems to build auditable ledgers of alterations. Basically its an issue of what engineers call version controlhow do you know if something has changed? How do you know if you have the latest? How do you keep track of the old stuff?

There wasnt enough time for anyone to start actually writing code, but a handful of volunteers signed on to build out tools. Thats where DataRefuge and EDGI organizers really envision their movement goinga vast decentralized network from all 50 states and Canada. Some volunteers can code tracking software from home. And others can simply archive a little bit every day.

By the end of the day, the group had collectively loaded 8,404 NASA and DOE webpages onto the Internet Archive, effectively covering the entirety of NASAs earth science efforts. Theyd also built backdoors in to download 25 gigabytes from 101 public datasets, and were expecting even more to come in as scripts on some of the larger datasets (like Teks) finished running. But even as they celebrated over pints of beer at a pub on Euclid Street, the mood was somber.

There was still so much work to do. Climate change data is just the tip of the iceberg, says Eric Kansa, an anthropologist who manages archaeological data archiving for the non-profit group Open Context. There are a huge number of other datasets being threatened with cultural, historical, sociological information. A panicked friend at the National Parks Service had tipped him off to a huge data portal that contains everything from park visitation stats to GIS boundaries to inventories of species. While he sat at the bar, his computer ran scripts to pull out a list of everything in the portal. When its done, hell start working his way through each quirky dataset.

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Diehard Coders Just Rescued NASA's Earth Science Data - WIRED

Tiera Guinn hasnt graduated college yet but shes already working for NASA.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technologyseniorhas workedas a rocket structural design and analysis engineer for the space agency since June 2016. She designs rocket components for ventures to Mars and other deep space destination, and analyzes them to ensure they wont break during flight.

Shes living out adream shes had since she was 11 years old. Guinn remembers seeinga plane and wantingto know how to build one.

Id had a passion to become a mathematician, inventor everything you can think of under STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), but when I lookedat theplane, Iwanted to do that, Guinn tells USA TODAY College. I got stuck on that.

(Photo: Tiera Guinn)

That interest sparked her desire to study aerospace engineering, which led to her work with NASA.

After a Boeing representative visited MIT in 2016, Guinn accepted her dream job with company working on NASA projects. She works withthe structural analysis and design team at BoeingsHuntsville, Ala. location on school breaks and puts in about 20 hours a week working remotely from campus all while maintaining a semesters load of classes.

Ive seen the design (for the rocket) come into fruition somewhat so far, says Guinn, 22. I love looking at something Im designing and realizing it will be built.

Guinns success doesnt surprise her mentor Orren Williams, who taught her high school engineering classes.

Shes fulfilling her dream, but it wasnt handed to her she has worked every step of the way, Williams says.She was one of those students who made me get up in morning looking forward to go to class.

Guinn says her drivecomes from the significanceof her work.

The best part isknowing that what Im building isgoing to affect the world and mankind, shesays.This rocket can really change what we visualize as possible.

Guinn counts Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician,as one of her role models. Johnsons work made instrumental strides in sending the first American to space. Whats more, itinspired the Oscar-nominated, box office hitHidden Figures.

Even in those times, when everything was against her, she still did what she wanted to get done and made history as a result, Guinn says. Shes been a huge motivation in my study.

Like Johnson, Guinn is no stranger to challenges. She says she focuses on the support she has received instead of the obstacles yet to come.

My parents always told me that others dont declare the fate of your destiny, she says. Its up to you to achieve the dream you set in the first place.

Guinn willjoin NASA as a full-time employee inAugust andwill continue to work with rockets.

My most memorable experience in college has been implementing what Ive learned and experienced, says Guinn, who serves on the Black Womens Alliance and also choreographs African dance at MIT. Its great because it gets to continue after I graduate.

She may havealready achieved her childhood dream, but Guinn shows no signs of slowing down.She plans to create an organization for low-income students that will inspire them to reach their goals as well.

I always like to make the dream larger after its achieved, Guinn says.I want to pass onthe resources Ive received and much more.

Brooke Metz is a member of the USA TODAY College contributor network.

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This college senior juggles school and a job with NASA like it's no big deal - USA TODAY College

February 13, 2017 The NASA Kennedy Space Center launch pad from which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin blasted off to the moon has sat dormant for years. In a few days, its next chapter will begin.

On Sunday, SpaceX, an aerospace company based in Hawthorne, Calif. that rents the historic Launch Complex 39A from NASA, tested the engines of its Falcon 9 rocket there in preparation to deliver supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station (ISS) on February 18. This will be the companys 10th cargo trip to the ISS under its contract with NASA, according to Space.com, and its first launch from 39A in Florida.

Falcon 9 rocket now vertical at Cape Canaveral on launch complex 39-A, SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Instagram Sunday, alongside a photo of the rocket.This is the same launch pad used by the Saturn V rocket that first took people to the moon in 1969. We are honored to be allowed to use it, Mr. Musk wrote.

SpaceX signed a 20-year lease to take over the pad in 2014 and has spent the ensuing years fixing it up. NASA stopped using the launch pad in 2011, when its 30-year-old space shuttle program was shut down after Atlantis, one of five NASA space shuttles of that era, blasted off from 39A toward the ISS in the last-ever US shuttle mission.

Throughout the decades-long shuttle program, NASAs spacecraft Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour carried people into orbit, launched and maintained satellites, and made it possible for humans to build the space station. The 18-year-old international science laboratory orbits 240 miles above Earth.

And starting Saturday, SpaceX will use the site to launch cargo in the Dragon capsule aboard its Falcon 9 rocket. The company hopes to use the Florida launch pad to send humans to the ISS in about a year.

That is a big deal. Its absolutely symbolic we are launching from there, former NASA launch director Bob Sieck told the Orlando Sentinel on February 8.

Since shutting down its space shuttle program, NASA has relied on the Russian space fleet and, increasingly, on the private space industry to step in to fill the void in space exploration and to make it more affordable.

In addition to SpaceX, NASA has contracted with Orbital ATK, an aerospace and defense contractor based inDulles, Va., and with Colorado-based aerospace company Sierra Nevada Corporation, to deliver cargo to the ISS for years to come.

The agency also is relying on SpaceX and Boeing to start delivering astronauts to space as soon as possible, though both companies are facing technical delays.

SpaceX, following a rocket explosion in September, has pushed back human flight to the ISS from this year to 2018.Boeing has, too.

Though the delays are necessary to ensure astronaut safety, they put pressure on NASA because of the high cost of sending astronauts to the space station. The agency pays $82 million to the Russian space agency for each seat it reserves aboard Russias Soyuz rocket, the only one capable of ferrying people to space for now. According to recent estimates by NASA, seats aboard SpaceX and Boeing rockets could cost a comparatively cheap $58 million each.

"Given the delays in initiating a US capacity to transport crew to the ISS, NASA has extended its contract with the Russian Space Agency for astronaut transportation through 2018 at an additional cost of $490 million, wrote NASA's Office of Inspector General in a September audit. If the Commercial Crew Program experiences additional delays, NASA may need to buy additional seats from Russia to ensure a continued US presence on the ISS.

Despite pushing private companies to innovate in space technologies, NASA hasn't given up on its own rockets. The agency is working with Boeing to build the Space Launch System rocket, which is expected to carry astronauts into deep space one day. It is scheduled to take its first test flight in fall of 2018, when it will to launch from Kennedys Launch Complex 39B, a site located down the street from SpaceXs historic launch pad.

[Editor's Note: This article was updated with more accurate information about SpaceX's plans for the launch pad 39A.]

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SpaceX reignites historic launch pad that sent NASA astronauts to moon - Christian Science Monitor

Sidd Bikkannavar said in a post on social media that US Customs and Border Protection officers wanted his cell phone -- and password -- before they would let him through at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

"On my way home to the US last weekend, I was detained by Homeland Security and held with others who were stranded under the Muslim ban," Bikkannavar wrote in a Facebook post shared by a friend on Twitter. "I initially refused, since it's a (NASA)-issued phone and I must protect access," Bikkannavar wrote.

"Just to be clear -- I'm a US-born citizen and NASA engineer, traveling with a valid US passport. Once they took both my phone and the access PIN, they returned me to the holding area with cots and other sleeping detainees until they finished copying my data."

Since the order, a Muslim civil rights organization says it has filed 10 complaints with CBP, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice alleging systematic targeting of American-Muslim citizens for enhanced screening by CBP.

The Council on American Islamic Relations reports increased scrutiny of American-Muslims' social media accounts and contents of their mobile phones since Trump's ban, which has since been blocked in court.

CAIR-Florida spokseman Wilfredo A. Ruiz says citizens must surrender laptops and phones if a border agent asks for them, but not the passwords or social media information. Border agents might give the device back and let the person go. Or they might hold onto it and seek a warrant to break it open. Or a wide range of responses in between.

"Sometimes they play hardball and delay you, maybe cause you to miss your flight or get home hours later," he said. "There's no magic formula."

CNN has attempted to contact Bikkannavar, CBP and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where Bikkannavar works for comment. This story will be updated as more information becomes available.

Ruiz, a convert to Islam, said he doesn't know if Bikkannavar is a Muslim, and that it doesn't matter. "This widens the scope of those being targeted to those who are not perceived as being the traditional, white American," Ruiz said. "It is not a Muslim issue."

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US-born NASA scientist says he was told to unlock his phone at border - CNN

NASA has selected three potential landing sites for the upcoming Mars 2020 rover: an ancient lake, a past volcanic hotbed and an early hot-spring site.

Scientists chose the final three candidates at a workshop Feb. 8-10 in Monrovia, California, from eight sites chosen in 2015 (out of a pool of around 30, NASA officials said in a statement ).

NASA began its final design and construction phase for Mars 2020 in July of 2016. The rover is intended to hunt for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet after touching down in February 2021, exploring for at least two years, mission team members have said. [NASA's Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures]

The Jezero crater stood out as a forerunner site in 2015, and is among the three remaining potential sites. It's an ancient lakebed where microbial life could have developed, NASA officials said in the statement. The river-delta structure suggests that water filled and drained from the crater at least twice, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has identified minerals that have been chemically altered by water.

Starting in 2004, the Mars exploration rover Spirit explored Gusev crater, which stretches larger than the state of Connecticut. Spirit discovered evidence of past mineral hot springs at one particular location, according to the statement. That spot, Columbia Hills, is the only place where Spirit found signs of water in the enormous crater, and it is another of NASA's top picks for Mars 2020. (Later data analysis suggested Gusev may have hosted a shallow lake.)

An ancient volcano warmed Northeast Syrtis, and this heat could have led to hot springs and melting ice, making a welcome haven for past microbial life. The edge of the Syrtis Major volcanos is Mars 2020's third potential site. The spot exposes 4-billion-year-old bedrock, as well as many minerals altered by encounters with water during Mars' early history.

To choose from among the three top sites, which all have evidence of liquid water in their history, scientists will determine where the rover could land and travel safely. They will also look at which location has a variety of rocks and soils to analyze, the best conditions to have supported past life, and rock types that would retain evidence of past life, among other considerations .

The final determination should come after a fourth workshop, likely in 2018, researchers said at the 2015 meeting or perhaps at a fifth, in 2019, if necessary. The craft itself should launch in July 2020 on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Original article on Space.com.

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Landing sites for 2020 Mars rover: NASA weighs 3 options - Fox News

February 13, 2017 by Rob Gutro NASA engineers and technicians perform vibration testing on the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

Scientists and engineers had many challenges in designing the components of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and then had to custom design and build ways to test it.

Because of the sheer size and scale of the assembled Webb telescope, some of the equipment typically used to test spacecraft simply doesn't measure up. One of those is a "shaker table" that is used to shake satellites to ensure a spacecraft like Webb can withstand the shaking that comes with a ride into space on a rocket.

So, engineers at Team Corporation in Burlington, Washington built a new, large and advanced shaker table system at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, especially for testing Webb. "The new "Vibration Test Systems" simulates the forces the telescope will feel during the launch by vibrating it from 5 to 100 times per second" said Jon Lawrence, Webb telescope mechanical systems lead and launch vehicle liaison at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

For Webb, the need for a new shaker system was a combination of things, including shaker force magnitude, the shaker table's ability to handle the telescope's highly offset center of gravity, and the need for a precision "smart" shaker control systemone that will automatically adjust shaker input levels based on test article responses, including an automatic 'soft shutdown' capability. "No matter what facility anomaly might be experienced during testing (loss of power, loss of coolant, etc.), the Vibration Test System or VTS is designed to shut down 'softly' so as to avoid imparting potentially damaging loads," Lawrence said. After vibration testing of the telescope is completed soon, the new VTS can be used to test other future large spacecraft.

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To make sure it works properly before using it to test the flight telescope, engineers put the new shaker system though its paces with many practice runs over months, using a dummy mass to represent the telescope. In November, Webb was moved from the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility 'cleanroom' and onto the new neighboring Vibration Test System (VTS), where testing is ongoing. While in the shirtsleeve environment of the VTS, a large 3-story tall cover enshrouds the telescope, acting as a portable 'cleanroom' that protects it from dust and dirt.

This spring, after vibration testing is complete, the Webb telescope will be shipped to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for end-to-end optical tests in a vacuum at extremely cold temperatures, before it goes to Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, for final assembly and testing prior to launch.

Explore further: NASA's Webb Telescope to resume vibration testing in January

Vibration tests are one of the many tests that spacecraft and instruments endure to ensure they are fit for spaceflight. During routine testing of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, an unexpected response occurred from several ...

Testing on the James Webb Space Telescope successfully resumed last week at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland.

What looks like a teleporter from science fiction being draped over NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, is actually a "clean tent."

The year 2015 marked big progress on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and there are still a number of large milestones before the next generation telescope is launched in 2018. Recently, all of the 18 segments of the Webb ...

Inside a massive clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland the James Webb Space Telescope team used a robotic am to install the last of the telescope's 18 mirrors onto the telescope structure.

In this photograph taken on Sept. 1, 2016, the James Webb Space Telescope Pathfinder structure has been configured for the Thermal Pathfinder Test at NASA Johnson Space Center's giant thermal vacuum chamber, called Chamber ...

(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new giant radio galaxy (GRG) associated with the galaxy triplet known as UGC 9555. The newly discovered galaxy turns out to be one of the largest ...

The search for planets beyond our solar system is about to gain some new recruits.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, a supergiant red star ended its life in a spectacular explosion known as a supernova.

An international team of astronomers released the largest-ever compilation of exoplanet-detecting observations made using a technique called the radial velocity method. They demonstrated how these observations can be used ...

Radar images of asteroid 2017 BQ6 were obtained on Feb. 6 and 7 with NASA's 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. They reveal an irregular, angular-appearing asteroid ...

Comet hunters still have a chance to see comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdukov in the next few days using binoculars or a telescope. It's the first of a trio of comets that willbetween now and the end of 2018pass close ...

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NASA gives the Webb Telescope a shakedown - Phys.Org

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset

Nasa

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter

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The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars

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The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays

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NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account

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Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead sharing pictures of black holes

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X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

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This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan

Nasa

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass

Nasa

An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

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An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013

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A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory

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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

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Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack

Nasa

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station

The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts

Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago

The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower

The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 more commonly known as WR 124 and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it

Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto

The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta

This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3

For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)

This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way

Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014

On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called draa

A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere

This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

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Nasa preparing mission to send lander to Europa, offering humanity's best ever chance of meeting aliens - The Independent

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A team of NASA scientists developed electronics that can operate in the harsh conditions on Venus surface.

The new developments mean NASA could soon send a rover to Venus.

With further technology development, such electronics could drastically improve Venus lander designs and mission concepts, enabling the first long-duration missions to the surface of Venus, Phil Neudeck, lead electronics engineer for this NASA project, said in a press statement. We demonstrated vastly longer electrical operation with chips directly exposedno cooling and no protective chip packagingto a high-fidelity physical and chemical reproduction of Venus surface atmosphere.

Presently, extreme conditions on Venus prevent landers from operating on the planets surface for longer than a few hours. Venus average surfacetemperature is typically 864 degrees Fahrenheit, making it hotter than most ovens. Typical electronics simply cant operate in such an environment, forcingany landers to be protected bythermal and pressure-resistant shells. Theseshells only last a few hoursand are extremely expensive, limitingthe amount of science that can be done on the planet.

NASAs Glenn team created anextremely durable silicon carbidecircuit and tested it in a lab simulating conditions of the Venus surface.The circuits tolerated the extreme temperatures and atmospheric conditions for 521 hours, about 100 times longer than any other Venus mission.

This work not only enables the potential for new science in extended Venus surface and other planetary exploration, but it also has potentially significant impact for a range of Earth relevant applications, such as in aircraft engines to enable new capabilities, improve operations, and reduce emissions, Gary Hunter, NASAs principle investigator for Venus surface electronics development, told reporters.

NASA has a long history of successfully operating rovers on Mars. The agencys Curiosityrover found evidence that organic material is all overthe Red Planet in Decemberas well as discovering new geological evidence of liquid water possibly flowing on the Red Planet in the distant past.

The U.S. space agency is currently operating two rovers on Mars, dubbed Opportunity and Curiosity. Americas space agency successfully landed seven different probes on Mars and only crashed two.

No country besides the U.S. has successfully operated a probe on Mars for longer than14.5 seconds.

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Is NASA Ready For A Venus Rover? - Daily Caller

Its probably safe to assume peanuts dont really spark fear in many people unless youre allergic to them.

Unless, of course, what is masquerading as a giant peanut is actually a huge space rock hurdling toward Earth.

On February 12, the Arecibo Observatory, an enormous radio telescope located inside a sinkhole in Puerto Rico, captured new movies of an asteroid, which they have named2015 BN509.

Measuring approximately 200 meters (660 feet) wide by 400 meters (1,310 feet) long which, by the way, is taller than the Empire State Building asteroid 2015 BN509 has been deemed potentially hazardous by NASA.

This means the objects orbit through space may lead it to crash into Earth one day.

According to Ed Rivera-Valentn, who studies Arecibo data as a planetary scientist with the Universities Space Research Association, asteroid 2015 BN509 flew by Earth last week, traveling at about70,500 kilometers per hour (44,000 mph).

Rivera-Valentn told Business Insider,

The peanut shape comes from the fact that it is a contact binary, where the two parts [of asteroids] could not successfully orbit each other and fell back together.

He added these contact binaries are quite often shaped just like peanuts. Yum.

If the threat of a ginormous asteroid striking Earth gives you that dj vu feeling, youre not crazy. In the past three weeks, weve seen not one, but twosimilar space rocks that seem determined to strike our planet.

Whats different about 2015 BN509 (lets just call it the peanut monstrosity), though, is how close its come to Earth. The object flew by at arange of about 14 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Rivera-Valentn added,

An asteroid impact, unlike other natural catastrophes, can actually be avoided. The data from Arecibo can be used by NASA to inform a planetary defense mission.

I guess thats his comforting way of telling us were not actually as screwed as it sounds?

Heres to hoping that, if the peanut monstrosity does make contact with Earth, it will simply unleash millions of peanuts to rain down upon us, la Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

Subscribe to Elite Daily's official newsletter, The Edge, for more stories you don't want to miss.

Allie is a News Writer at Elite Daily, as well as a recent graduate from The University of Delaware. If you are in her social circle, you probably know more than you care to about her cat, Jasper. She loves to exercise, but basically cancels th ...

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NASA Says Asteroid Bigger Than Empire State Building Is On Track To Hit Earth - Elite Daily

Scientists believe that Europa's icy crust is hiding a global saltwater ocean. They also believe that ocean is in contact with a rocky, silicate seafloor, which is a necessary source of elements and energy needed to give rise to and sustain life. The only other ocean in contact with a seafloor outside our planet is Saturn's moon Enceladus, making Europa an ideal world to explore if we want to find extraterrestrial life forms.

Next in the lander's goal list is assessing whether Europa is habitable by examining its non-ice materials. Finally, it has to characterize the properties of its surface and subsurface materials for future explorations. It'll be a long time before this lander takes off, though -- it was designed to follow the Europa Multiple Flyby Mission that's scheduled to launch in the 2020s. If it does push through, it'll be the first mission since the 1970s' Martian Viking program that will "conduct... in situ search for evidence of life on another world."

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NASA wants to send a life-detecting lander to Europa - Engadget

While you were sitting in your office this morning, sipping your half-milk soy latte, space was out there being awesome. It was there when you grabbed lunch at Chipotle, too, and again when you got stuck in traffic on your way home. Thankfully, the Hubble Space Telescope is out there, capturing ridiculously gorgeous shots like this one (full version) of a galaxy in the Andromeda constellation, so at least you can come home at night and enjoy some celestial eye candy while you binge on Netflix and drip Ben & Jerrys on your couch cushions.

The galaxy, known by the very clinical name of NGC 7640, is what is called a barred spiral galaxy. NASA describes it thusly:

These are recognizable by their spiral arms, which fan out not from a circular core, but from an elongated bar cutting through the galaxys center. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is also a barred spiral galaxy.

The agency goes on to note that the photo, while spectacular, might not actually show a visible spiral due to the galaxys orientation to the Hubbles location, making it more difficult to identify the crescent-shaped arms that extend from the bar.

NASA believes that NGC 7640 has experienced some kind of interaction in its past, which is really just a vague way of saying that something intense happened to it in the distant past, such as merger between two smaller galaxies. NASA studies these distant structures in the hopes of further developing our own understanding of how galaxies like our own were born and mature over time. Oh, and because the photos are fantastic.

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NASA reminds us that space is gorgeous with breathtaking new Hubble snapshot - BGR

Back in November, leaked documents showed that Nasa believed that it had cracked the once impossible warp drive mystery and were working on an engine that could drastically reduce the time that it takes to travel through space.

Super-fast warp drive faster than any travel currently available would make it possible to travel to the Moon in a matter of hours.

The warp drive Nasa was working on is an EM Drive which is an engine that would outperform any booster that is currently available and has no exhaust.

The technology works by bouncing microwaves around inside a closed engine. The microwaves subsequently push against the side of the container, acting as a propellor.

GETTY

GETTY

This was once considered impossible as it violate Newtons third law for every action, there is an equal reaction.

The new engine would also make it possible to get humans to Mars within a month, compared to current technology which takes upwards of three months to get to the Red Planet.

GETTY

The news sent shockwaves around the scientific community who were impressed with Nasas feat, but now China says that it already has the technology in operation.

The China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) said that it has been funding research into the project since 2010, and Nasas news just re-confirm what they allegedly already knew.

GETTY

They added that they have been testing the device aboard the Tiangong-2 Chinas low-orbit manned satellite.

Dr Chen Yue, head of the communication satellite division at Cast said at a recent press conference: National research institutions in recent years have carried out a series of long-term, repeated tests on the EmDrive.

NASAs published test results can be said to re-confirm the technology. We have successfully developed several specifications of multiple prototype principles.

The establishment of an experimental verification platform to complete the milli-level micro thrust measurement test, as well as several years of repeated experiments and investigations into corresponding interference factors, confirm that in this type of thruster, thrust exists.

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Has China beaten Nasa in building warp-drive technology dubbed the 'impossible engine'? - Express.co.uk

NASA astronauts train at Fairchild to...

AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. - Four of the astronauts that will put America back in the driver's seat when it comes to space exploration were in Spokane this week.

The crew, training at Fairchild Air Force Base, were practicing what would happen if their SpaceX capsule ended up landing in the ocean.

The four NASA astronauts on that life raft will be among the first Americans to blast into space aboard an American-made spacecraft in more than 6 years. Friday, they were getting some important training.

The astronauts were participating in a water survival course, which is something they need now that they're switching over to space capsules that could possibly splashdown in the ocean beginning in 2018.

When we flew on the shuttle we were always looking for a runway, said Captain Sunny Williams, NASA astronaut. Now we're going to be flying on capsules and capsules can land anywhere.

The 336th training group tried to make its survival lessons as realistic as possible. Fans, fog machines, and fire hoses recreated the difficulties of ditching at sea.

There's lots of waves, lots of wind, and lots of rain, said Colonel Doug Hurley, NASA astronaut. This is a great way to tell how bad it could possibly get. It's a good way to reset everything you've learned over the years.

Dealing with the deluge in a controlled environment, right down to getting hoisted aboard a rescue copter, gives students the confidence they need for the real thing.

It also allows us to talk to the providers and get a better insight as to what type of survival gear and techniques we may need, especially for an ocean-landing spaceship, said Hurley.

There were a lot more people in the pool today than just astronauts and that's because the space crew was integrated in one of Fairchild's regularly scheduled survival courses. It's the only place it can happen in the Air Force and it makes Fairchild that much more valuable to the Pentagon.

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NASA astronauts train at Fairchild to prep for space capsules - KXLY Spokane

SpaceX is preparing to launch its Falcon 9 rocket from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has gone vertical at NASA's historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) for the first time.

The California-based company is getting ready for a planned Feb. 18 liftoff from LC-39A, which is part of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon 9 will blast SpaceX's robotic Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, if all goes according to plan.

Over the years, Apollo moon missions and space shuttles lifted off from LC-39A. SpaceX signed a 20-year lease for the pad in 2014 and, after making some modifications, is now ready to start using it.

"This is the same launch pad used by the Saturn V rocket that first took people to the moon in 1969. We are honored to be allowed to use it," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on Instagram Friday (Feb. 10), along with a photo of the Falcon 9 at LC-39A.

The Feb. 18 launch will kick off SpaceX's 10th ISS resupply mission, during which Dragon will deliver more than 5,500 lbs. (2,500 kg) of scientific hardware and other cargo to the orbiting lab.

SpaceX plans to launch Falcon Heavy rockets as well as Falcon 9s from LC-39A. The Falcon Heavy is still in development; the booster's first flight should come sometime this year, Musk has said.

The last launch from LC-39A occurred in July 2011, when the orbiter Atlantis lifted off on the last-ever mission of NASA's space shuttle program.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Stands Atop Historic NASA Launchpad for 1st Time - Space.com

Given that a return trip to Venus would be about 30 to 50 percent shorter than a round ticket to Mars, you might wonder why so much scientific effort revolves around getting us to the Red Planet, rather than exploring the second planet from the Sun.

Consider this: the longest-lasting probe that made it to the surface of Venus survived for a grand total of 2 hours and 7 minutes before its circuits were fried. Nope, Venus's scorchingly hot, corrosive, and heavy atmosphere isn't exactly inviting but new electronics developed by NASA could give us our best chance yet of studying this toxic hellhole up close.

Engineers at the space agency's Glenn Research Centre in Cleveland have come up with circuitry capable of lasting 100 times longer than previous Venus mission electronics.

That means we might finally have the technological basics for actually getting some long-lasting science done on the hottest planet in the Solar System, with an average surface temperature of 462 Celsius (863 Fahrenheit).

"If you look at Mars missions, there've been rovers on the surface getting all sorts of scientific data," NASA electronics engineer Philip Neudeck told Ryan F. Mandelbaum at Gizmodo.

"That dataset is totally missing from Venus, and that's because the electronics don't function on Venus."

While Venus's skies are made up of clouds of sulphuric acid, the real problem for sensors on the ground is the blistering surface temperature, along with the oppressively dense pressure of the planet's atmosphere.

Venus has a high-pressure carbon dioxide atmosphere, which offers more than 90 times the atmospheric pressure at Earth's surface. That means just standing on the surface of Venus would be comparable to the pressure you'd find 900 metres (3,000 feet) underwater on Earth.

With the dual challenges of insane pressure and scorching heat, regular electronics just wouldn't cut it on Venus, so previous Soviet missions to the surface have used thermal and pressure-resistant vessels equipped with hermetically sealed chambers to try to keep lander circuitry as cool as possible.

But the fact that 127 minutes was the survival record up until now set by the Soviet Venera 13 probe in 1982 shows a whole new approach is required.

To that end, the Glenn Research Centre engineers have developed semiconductor integrated circuits from extremely durable silicon carbide.

The integrated circuit before (above) and after (below) testing. Credit: NASA

Silicon carbide chips have very high heat resistance, whereas conventional silicon chips are only good up to about 250 Celsius (482 Fahrenheit) at which point there's so much energy in the system that electrons behave erratically, meaning the silicon effectively ceases to function as a semiconductor.

To test the new circuitry, the researchers put a pair of the silicon carbide chips in the Glenn Extreme Environments Rig (GEER) an 800-litre chamber that basically works like a hellish oven to accurately recreate the extreme heat and pressure of Venus's atmosphere.

The integrated circuits managed to withstand these pseudo-Venus conditions for 521 hours, a 100-fold improvement on previous tests.

"We demonstrated vastly longer electrical operation with chips directly exposed no cooling and no protective chip packaging to a high-fidelity physical and chemical reproduction of Venus' surface atmosphere," Neudeck says in a press release.

"And both integrated circuits still worked after the end of the test."

It's an impressive result, following on from previous NASA tests with similar silicon carbide integrated circuits, which showed the chips could survive more than 1,000 hours at 500 Celsius (932 Fahrenheit) with Earth's level of atmospheric pressure.

While NASA's current ambitions to explore Venus were put on hold recently in favour of other research missions, it's encouraging to know that studying this tantalising but terrifying planet is now at least technologically feasible.

"No one has ever made circuits run in this environment at this temperature for this long," Neudeck told Gizmodo.

"It really opens up a whole new way of doing Venus missions."

The findings are reported in AIP Advances.

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NASA Has Developed Electronics to Withstand the Toxic Hellhole That Is Venus - ScienceAlert

WGNO

NASA update: Mars projects at Michoud Facility appear undamaged by tornado WGNO NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) NASA says the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft being built at the Michoud Facility in New Orleans East do not appear to be damaged after Tuesday's tornado. NASA crews have assessed the hardware of the two Mars ... and more »

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NASA update: Mars projects at Michoud Facility appear undamaged by tornado - WGNO

Forbes

Why A Tornado-Damaged Facility In New Orleans Is Critical To NASA Forbes An EF-3 tornado tore through east New Orleans, Louisiana on Tuesday February 7th. Widespread damage was found throughout the affected areas. There were also several injuries but thankfully there were no fatalities. I find that to be quite amazing based ... Tornado damages NASA facility in New OrleansThe Verge NASA facility in NO East vows to reopen after tornadoWWLTV.com NASA facility with deep-space rocket takes direct hit from a tornadoWashington Post NOLA.com -Space.com -NASA all 180 news articles »

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Why A Tornado-Damaged Facility In New Orleans Is Critical To NASA - Forbes