Editor's Note:NASA has begun the recovery efforts after this tornado. You can read the full storyhere.

A tornado impacted NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans Tuesday (Feb. 7), according to a statement released by the agency.

"At this time, only minor injuries have been reported and NASA employees and other tenants are being accounted for," NASA officials said in the statement. The tornado hit the facility at 11:25 a.m. CST (12:25 p.m. EST/1725 GMT), they added. [In Photos: Tornado Damage at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility]

NASA posted a video to YouTube that shows cell phone footage of the tornado (taken from afar), as well as footage of the facility after the impact.

"That thing is an awesome thing to look at," one spectator said in the video, referring to the massive grey funnel on the horizon.

@weatherchannel @CNN @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/im2iSxWi7n

"Hopefully, everybody's okay, but it is real bad," said a person taking footage of the facility after the tornado had passed. The video seemed to show damage to buildings and a car flipped over in a parking lot.

"There is still a threat of severe weather in the area and emergency officials are continuing to monitor the situation to ensure the safety of onsite personnel," the statement said. "The onsite Michoud emergency response team is also conducting damage assessments of buildings and facilities."

Currently,the Michoud Assembly Facilityis responsible for manufacturing and assembling the core stage of NASA's next-generation heavy-lift rocket,the Space Launch System (SLS), which is built by Boeing, according to NASA's website. Michoud will also assemble and integrate the SLS main propulsion system, including the RS-25 engines, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The facility is also involved in manufacturing large structures and composites for the Orion crew vehicle. Previously, NASA used the facility to assemble the external propulsion tanks for the space shuttle program,as well as Saturn V moon rocket stages.

News outletsare reportingthat perhaps as many as seven tornadoeshave struck Louisiana today. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has declared a state of emergency.

Follow Calla Cofield@callacofield.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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Tornado Hits NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans - Space.com

Enlarge / Neat painted mural on one of the pool bulkheads at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab.

Lee Hutchinson

On a recent February afternoon, I strolled up to a fat, brightly painted yellow line and peered down into a clear, seemingly bottomless pool. Like the mythical sirens of the Homeric Age, the water called to me. As if he read my mind, Kurt Otten hurriedly called out to me. Please dont jump in, because this would be the last day on my job."

Theres one very good reason why the pool was built so bigit had to accommodate segments of the International Space Station during assembly. Before astronauts flew to the station aboard the shuttle, crews would spend exhausting runs inside the pool, wearing a combination of weights and flotation devices to simulate the weightlessness of orbit. Then they would practice whatever aspects of station construction there were to do in space.

Looking north: Integrated Truss Structure is at left, and at front right is the S3 Truss component w/ELC4 visible.

Looking northwest: S3 Truss in foreground.

Lee Hutchinson

Looking north: The upper floor control rooms and deck-level diving control stations.

Lee Hutchinson

Walking north.

Lee Hutchinson

Diver gear, laid out and ready for use.

Lee Hutchinson

Expensive tanks! (Or are they minions in disguise?)

Lee Hutchinson

More gear, ready for use.

Lee Hutchinson

Looking west from midway across the deck: In foreground is Node 2/with PMA2 and JEM attached.

Lee Hutchinson

North end of pool looking West: P3 located to the left with commercial area to the right.

Lee Hutchinson

Looking south: Integrated Truss Structure is visible near center. To the right of the truss is HTV and HTV EP6-MP Battery Carrier.

Lee Hutchinson

Just visible from one of the upstairs control room are the rock boxes used during asteroid return mission training.

Lee Hutchinson

Looking southwest and down from the second floor at the Integrated Truss Structure: Extending down and left from the S0 Truss is USLAB and Node 2.

Lee Hutchinson

NASA completed construction of the space station about seven years ago. And while astronauts still conduct periodic spacewalks to repair or perform other minor work on the station, the primary focus of astronauts in space now lies inside the station, on scientific experiments in microgravity and learning about the human health effects of long-duration spaceflight.

NASA still needs the pool for these training runs, but it doesnt need all of the massive pool, nor does it need it all of the time. So even before the space shuttle's retirement in 2011, the space agency and the pools contractor, Raytheon, began experimenting with allowing private companies to use the pool.

Ars recently visited the pool insoutheast Houston, not far from Johnson Space Center, to see how this particular public-private partnership was working out. We came less than a month after the massive facility had celebrated its 20th anniversary. One question loomed foremost in our mind: Could the giant pool diversify enough to survive another 20 years?

NASA conducted the first training exercise for the NBL on January 7, 1997 as astronauts prepared for the second mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Although astronauts feel the weight of their suits in the water and the water acts as a drag on motion, neutral buoyancy offers the best available analog to working in space. Like the real thing, too, it offers astronauts a grueling, six-hour workout. John Grunsfeld, who visited Hubble three times, once told me that his body ached for days after a run in the NBL.

Raytheon began offering commercial access to the pool in 2010, and has since worked with a number of oil and gas companies. Some have tested robotic equipment for subsea activities with offshore rigs, while others have trained rig employees in safe egress from helicopters transporting them to and from offshore locations.

Kurt Otten (left), Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory Operations Manager, Randal Lindner, a senior Raytheon manager, and the story's author (right) in the South High Bay.

Lee Hutchinson

Lindner, with the S0 Truss in background.

Lee Hutchinson

Standing next to the S0 Truss segment for scale.

Lee Hutchinson

Berger experiences the NBL in virtual reality. (It felt deep, man.)

Lee Hutchinson

Helicopter emergency egress trainer sits on the north deck. This is used by one of the commercial partners.

Joint EVA NBL Orion Mockup model sits on the floor of the North High Bay. It is used for EVA evaluations in a weightless environment.

Lee Hutchinson

An Oceaneering ROV also sits in the North High Bay, being worked on by NBL techs.

Kurt Otten turns on the screens in TC-A to give us a peek inside the pool.

Lee Hutchinson

The sealed carrier in which the James Webb Space Telescope will be transported once it's completed.

Lee Hutchinson

The carrier can be filled with inert nitrogen to keep JWST sterile and safe. Just don't poke your head in here.

Lee Hutchinson

I smile every time I see this tug. Go Speed Racer, go!

Lee Hutchinson

In this space north of the NBL, modules undergo refurbishment.

Lee Hutchinson

The wall of the South High Bay is thick with patches and memorabilia. It features a large portrait of astronaut Sonny Carter, in whose honor the facility is named.

Lee Hutchinson

Huge NBL logo on the floor.

Lee Hutchinson

It turns out these companies arent so much interested in the impressive size and depth of the pool, said Randal Lindner, a senior Raytheon manager, but rather its capabilities. The pool is well instrumented, with multiple cameras, underwater communications, dive gear, and several on-site control rooms. The facility has 40 professional divers to support operations.

At present, NASA uses the facility for about three dive runs a week, and the pools commercial end is used about three days. But there remains considerably more capacity for private activity, and NASA has asked Raytheon to do additional marketing to bring in more customers. Every commercial dollar allows the space agency to offset the multimillion-dollar annual expense of the NBL. Johnson Space Center isn't alone in this, of course. Private companies like SpaceX have taken over launch pads at Kennedy Space Center. Movies are now made at NASA's rocket factory in Michoud, Louisiana. And so on.

For this massive pool, the time to find new users is now. Otherwise, it's not clear what will happen to the NBL in a decade or so. As it looks to expand human activity into deep space, NASA has indicatedthat it will end its participation in the space station program in 2024, or likely 2028 at the latest. The space agency plans to build a deep space habitat for testing near the Moon, but that facility will certainly be much smaller than the space station. NASA wont need such a large pool.

Will customers come to usethe pool and its myriad capabilities? So far, Lindner said the NBL has been able to accommodate all the varied requests of those with interest in using the pool. Lights can be turned out to simulate nighttime conditions. The pool can be drained 18 inches to provide modest, one-foot waves. Just dont come for frivolityor think about jumping in during a visit.

We have not had anything yet that weve had to reject, Lindner said. But theres a certain amount of prestige with this facility. Its a NASA facility where serious work gets done. Were not going to have an underwater wedding or anything like that.

See the original post:

Why is NASA renting out its huge astronaut pool? To keep the lights turned on - Ars Technica

TUESDAY, FEB. 7, 2017, 4:27 P.M.

PUBLIC LANDS -- The checkerboard forestry management on Idaho state lands just south of Priest Lake stands out in a winter photo from NASA.

"An astronaut aboard the International Space Station observed this distinctive checkerboard pattern alongside the Priest River in northern Idaho," says NASA's Earth Observatory blog. "The photograph was taken just before sunset, so some mountainsides glow while others are covered in long shadows because of the low Sun angle."

Some inaccuracies cropped up in the full NASA post, but here's some more info:

"The white patches reflect areas with younger, smaller trees, where winter snow cover shows up brightly to the astronauts. Dark green-brown squares are parcels of denser, intact forest....

"The Priest River, winding through the scene from top to bottom, is bordered on both sides by a forest buffer that can serve as a natural filtration system to protect water quality. For nearly a century, the river was used to transport logs....

"Whitetail Butte has historically been used by state and federal land managers as a lookout point for forest fires.

Here's the Google Earth satellite image of the same landscape (without snow):

Astronaut photograph ISS050-E-28519 was acquired on January 4, 2017, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using an 1150 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 50 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

Original post:

Priest River checkerboard forestry vivid in NASA photo - The Spokesman-Review (blog)

Today, severe thunderstorms and multiple tornadoes passed through New Orleans, Louisiana, causing significant damage to the area including communities that were hit by Hurricane Katrina more than a decade ago. The storms also smashed through NASAs Michoud Assembly Facility, one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world that the space agency uses to create parts for its rockets and spacecraft.

Only minor injuries have been reported and NASA employees and other tenants are being accounted for.

NASA says that a tornado hit the facility at 12:25PM ET and there have been no serious injuries. At this time, only minor injuries have been reported and NASA employees and other tenants are being accounted for, NASA officials said in a statement. There is still a threat of severe weather in the area and emergency officials are continuing to monitor the situation to ensure the safety of onsite personnel. The onsite Michoud emergency response team is also conducting damage assessments of buildings and facilities.

NASA may still be looking over the extent of the storms impact, but pictures of Michoud seem to show significant damage to the facilities buildings, as well as overturned cars in its parking lot.

Overseen by NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center, Michoud has been the birthplace of many key pieces of hardware the space agency has used to get people into space. The first stages of NASAs Saturn V rockets were built at Michoud, and the site was also used to stack portions of the Space Shuttles large, orange external fuel tank. Today, the major components of NASAs next big rocket, the Space Launch System, are being constructed at Michoud, to get the vehicle ready for its first flight scheduled for 2018. Its also where contractors are putting together the Orion crew capsule the vehicle that NASA wants to use to send people into deep space and onto Mars.

We will update this post as we find out more about the state of the facility.

For reference, here is a video of NASAs Michoud Assembly Facility prior to the storm:

Continue reading here:

Tornado damages NASA facility in New Orleans - The Verge

Artist's illustration of the Puffin flying car, a concept vehicle developed by NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore. Uber has hired Moore to work on the company's flying-car initiative, known as Uber Elevate.

Uber has hired longtime NASA engineer Mark Moore to work on the rideshare company's flying-car project, according to Bloomberg Technology.

Moore will become director of engineering for aviation and will help develop the Uber Elevate initiative, which envisions using "air taxis" to ferry people between "vertiports" located within 50 miles to 100 miles (80 to 100 kilometers) of each other, Bloomberg Technology reported Monday (Feb. 6).

Moore has spent the last 30 years at NASA. His research into vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) craft such as the electric Puffin concept vehicle helped inspire Google co-founder Larry Page to start two flying-car companies, Zee.aero and Kitty Hawk, Bloomberg Technology reported.

It won't be too long before we all move into the "Jetsons"-esque future such projects promise, according to Moore: He told Bloomberg Technology that he expects to see several different flying cars come online in the next one to three years. These vehicles will employ human pilots for the foreseeable future, Moore added.

Read the full article on Bloomberg Technology.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+.

Excerpt from:

NASA Engineer Hired to Work on Uber's Flying-Car Project - Space.com

Leading Commercial Space Group Embraces NASA's Biggest Rocket Wall Street Journal WASHINGTONCommercial space interests for the first time are publicly singing the praises of NASA's biggest, most expensive rocket program, seeking to get in sync with the Trump administration's evolving focus on public-private partnerships to further ...

Read the original here:

Leading Commercial Space Group Embraces NASA's Biggest Rocket - Wall Street Journal

February 7, 2017 by Lori Keesey Scientist Will Zhang has created a manufacturing facility to create a new-fangled X-ray optic made of silicon. This image shows the buffing machine to remove imperfections from the mirror's surface. Credit: NASA/W. Hrybyk

NASA scientist William Zhang has created and proven a technique for manufacturing lightweight, high-resolution X-ray mirrors using silicona material commonly associated with computer chips.

Zhang, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has shown in repeated testing that single-crystal silicona hard, brittle non-metallic element used in the manufacturing of computer chipsworks exceptionally well as an X-ray optic.

Given the cost of building space observatorieswhich only increase in price as they get larger and heavierthe goal is to develop easily reproducible lightweight optics, without sacrificing quality. According to Zhang, use of silicon would give X-ray astrophysicists what they have long wanted: lightweight, super-thin mirrors that offer a significantly larger collection area and dramatically improved resolutionall at a reduced cost, Zhang said.

To date, no one has created an X-ray mirror that addresses all these performance goals. Furthermore, no one has polished and figured silicon for X-ray optics, which must be curved and nested inside a canister-like assembly to collect highly energetic X-ray photons. With this special configuration, X-rays graze the mirrors' surfaceslike how a thrown pebble skims across the surface of a pondrather than passing through them.

Silicon, which doesn't warp even when cut or exposed to fluctuating temperatures, offers a viable solution, Zhang said. "We have executed our mirror-making procedures many times," he added. "These represent the best lightweight X-ray mirrors ever. As a matter of fact, of all the astronomical X-ray mirrors that have been produced and flown, only Chandra's are better," he said, referring to one of NASA's Great Observatories, an X-ray mission that carries the highest-resolution X-ray mirrors ever launched. "But we aspire to match and then exceed Chandra's mirror quality before 2020."

Zhang intends to achieve that goal, in part, with NASA Strategic Astrophysics Technology funding. He and his team plan to further advance the non-conventional technology in preparation for a future X-ray mission.

Old Hand at Mirror Making

Zhang is not a newcomer to the mirror-making business.

Fifteen years ago, he set out to develop a less-expensive, more efficient technique for crafting lightweight X-ray mirrors. He succeeded. Four years ago, he delivered 9,000 super-thin, curved glass mirrors for NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission using a novel manufacturing technique in which he placed thin pieces of commercially available glass on a mandrel and heated the entire assembly inside an ovena process called slumping. As the glass heated, it softened and folded over the mandrel to produce a curved mirror that the Copenhagen-based Danish Technical University then coated with layers of silicon and tungsten to maximize its X-ray reflectance.

Taking it to the Limit

Though Zhang proved the technique and produced thousands of modest-resolution mirrors ideal for NuSTAR, Zhang realized that he had taken the approach to its limit. "I spent a couple years trying to make slumped glass better. I got all the mileage I could get."

He got rid of eight of his 10 ovens used in the slumping process and turned his attention, instead, to single-crystal silicon.

Unbeknownst to him, another Goddard technologist, Vince Bly, had already investigated the material's use, ultimately producing a thick, yet lightweight spare mirror for the Goddard-built Thermal Infrared Sensor, one of two instruments developed for NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission. Though the mission didn't use the mirror because the optic had never flown in space, Bly said testing indicated that it offered a viable option.

When Zhang heard about Bly's work, he and Bly started working together, benefiting from each other's experience. "He used what we had done to solve his own problem," Bly said.

No-Stress Silicon

The key, both said, lies with the material itself. Traditional materials for making mirrorsglass, ceramics, and metalssuffer from high internal stress, especially when cut or exposed to changing temperatures. These stresses become increasingly unpredictable as the mirror becomes thinner.

"Single crystal silicon is an excellent material for making spaceflight X-ray mirrors," Zhang said. "It is inexpensive and abundantly available because of the semiconductor industry. Furthermore, it is a perfect material. It is immune from the internal stresses that can change the shape of X-ray mirrors made of glass."

This is because every atom is arranged in a lattice configuration, which prevents the material from distorting even when cut or shaped. In other words, if a sheet of plywood were made of silicon, it would be perfectly flat and immune from warping, he said.

Learned from Slumping

Zhang's new process grows out of what he learned through glass slumping, he said. He takes a block of silicon and heats it to eliminate any stress that may have arisen from its handling. With a band saw, he creates the approximate shape and uses other machining tools and chemicals to further grind and refine the block's surface. Like slicing cheese, he then cuts a thin substrate measuring just a fraction of an inch in thickness from the block and polishes the surface. The last step is coating the individual segments with iridium to improve reflectance.

With his NASA funding, Zhang and his team are perfecting techniques for aligning and bonding 6,000 mirror segments to form meta-shells that would be integrated inside a mirror assembly projected to weigh about 200 pounds and stand just a 1.6-feet tall. Ultimately, he would like to create six meta-shells and automate the alignment process.

"Making lightweight, high-resolution, relatively inexpensive X-ray mirrors has become my life's work," Zhang said, referring to his quest to develop a lighter, more capable X-ray mirror. "When I started developing mirrors 15 years ago, I thought I'd get it done in a couple years. Fifteen years later, I'm still at it," Zhang said.

Explore further: NuSTAR's mirrors baked in Zhang's glass kitchen

(PhysOrg.com) -- It pays to persevere. No one knows this better than Will Zhang.

Inside a massive clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland the James Webb Space Telescope team is steadily installing the largest space telescope mirror ever. Unlike other space telescope mirrors, ...

A lightweight telescope that a team of NASA scientists and engineers is developing specifically for CubeSat scientific investigations could become the first to carry a mirror made of carbon nanotubes in an epoxy resin.

The sole secondary mirror that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope was installed onto the telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on March 3, 2016.

Inside NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's massive clean room in Greenbelt, Maryland, the ninth flight mirror was installed onto the telescope structure with a robotic arm. This marks the halfway completion point for the ...

(Phys.org)The sole secondary mirror and a third primary mirror segment that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Nov. 5, 2012. A video of ...

NASA scientist William Zhang has created and proven a technique for manufacturing lightweight, high-resolution X-ray mirrors using silicona material commonly associated with computer chips.

An exotic binary star system 380 light-years away has been identified as an elusive white dwarf pulsar the first of its kind ever to be discovered in the universe thanks to research by the University of Warwick.

A giant black hole ripped apart a nearby star and then continued to feed off its remains for close to a decade, according to research led by the University of New Hampshire. This black hole meal is more than 10 times longer ...

An experimental Japanese mission to clear 'space junk' or rubbish from the Earth's orbit has ended in failure, officials said Monday, in an embarassment for Tokyo.

Galaxies today fall roughly into two categories: elliptically-shaped collections of reddish, old stars that formed predominantly during a period early in the history of the universe, and spiral shaped objects dominated by ...

(Phys.org)A European team of astronomers led by Oscar Barragn of the University of Turin in Italy reports the discovery of a low-mass warm Jupiter extrasolar planet orbiting a nearby K-type main-sequence star. The newly ...

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Originally posted here:

NASA advances first-ever silicon-based X-ray optic - Phys.Org

Although Mars is now cold and dry, there are decades of evidence suggesting that the Red Planet's surface was once covered with rivers, streams, ponds, lakes and perhaps seas and oceans. Dark, narrow lines seen on Mars even hint that water could run down some of its slopes every spring. There is life virtually wherever there is water on Earth, so these findings raise the possibility that Mars was once a home to life, and might host it still.

"The watery environments that once occupied the floor of Gale Crater look like they were pretty hospitable to life not too hot, not too cold, not too acid, not too alkaline, and the water probably was not too salty," said study lead author Thomas Bristow, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. [ Photos: Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life]Ancient Mars must have been much warmer than the planet is today for such environments to persist, many scientists think. As such, prior work sought to look for signs that Mars once possessed ample amounts of greenhouses gases such as carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, which trap heat from the sun.

However, analyses of data taken from orbit above Mars suggested little in the way of the carbonate minerals on the Martian surface that one would expect to find if its atmosphere were once richer in carbon dioxide. To help solve this mystery, scientists examined data collected from the Red Planet's surface by NASA's Curiosity rover as it traversed the lower slopes of the mountain Aeolis Mons (known informally as Mount Sharp), which rises about 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) high from the center of Gale Crater.

RELATED: Here's What Mars' Amazing Polar Ice Cap Swirls Look Like From Above

The researchers analyzed Martian mudstones, siltstones, sandstones and other sedimentary rocks deposited by lakes and rivers on the floor of Gale Crater about 3.5 billion years ago. They did not detect carbonates, suggesting that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide back then were tens to hundreds of times lower than those required by climate models to warm early Mars enough to keep liquid water on its surface.

These findings do not suggest that ancient Mars wasn't wet, study team members said. "The sedimentary evidence at Gale Crater is indisputable in showing the prolonged presence of liquid water on the surface of early Mars," Bristow told Space.com.

One possible explanation for this discovery is that Mars once did have carbonates on its surface that were later destroyed. However, "the nature of the minerals in the samples we focused on don't support that conclusion," Bristow said. "They don't show any sign of suffering an acidic attack that could have dissolved any carbonates there in the past."

Another possibility is that early Mars was warmed by other greenhouse gases, such as sulfur dioxide, methane or nitrous oxide.

"The downside of all these other greenhouse gases is that they tend to be quite reactive, so when you put them in the atmosphere, they don't hang out an especially long time," Bristow said. "So the warming periods driven by those kinds of greenhouse gases are relatively short-lived, which is not consistent with observations from Gale Crater where we have evidence for lakes and rivers that persisted for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years."

RELATED: Interstellar Clouds Eroded Martian Atmosphere

Other scenarios that might explain the water of early Mars include ice caps that could have kept liquid water insulated under them, or a change in the Martian orbit that made the Red Planet warmer. "Our findings mean that scientists have to think a bit more deeply about what kind of mechanisms could lead to stabilization of surface water," Bristow said.

Future research will analyze more data that Curiosity is collecting as it makes its way up Aeolis Mons.

"It looks like the rover should be sampling the rock record of ancient Mars during a climatic transition as it dried out and cooled down," Bristow said. "We are hoping to get more clues as to how the early Martian climate system operated."

The scientists detailed their findings online today (Feb. 6) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Original article on Space.com.

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NASA's Rover Curiosity Reveals Something Weird About Mars' Ancient Atmosphere - Seeker

The Calabash Nebula, pictured here which has the technical name OH 231.8+04.2 is a spectacular example of the death of a low-mass star like the Sun. ESA/Hubble/NASA

NASA and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope has captured a rare image that shows the spectacular death of a star.

The dying star can be seen transforming from a red giant to a planetary nebula called the Calabash Nebula, technically known as 231.8+04.2, according to the ESA. During this transformation, the dying star blows its outer layers of gas and dust out into the surrounding space at a speed close to 621,371 miles per hour.

The nebula is also known as the Rotten Egg Nebula, the ESA reports, because it contains a lot of sulphur, which smells like rotten egg when it combines with other elements. Luckily, as the nebula resides over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation of Puppis, humans don't need to worry about the stench.

The star's death occurs "within the blink of an eye in astronomical terms," according to the ESA, which explains why this kind of photo is hard to come by. Next, the star will evolve into a fully formed planetary nebula over the next thousand years.

The rest is here:

NASA's Hubble Telescope Captures Rare Image of Dying 'Rotten Egg' Star - TIME

NEWS10 ABC

Skidmore professor spends 27 days in ocean researching with NASA NEWS10 ABC SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (NEWS10) A local oceanographer is getting the chance of a lifetime, spending 27 days in the ocean with NASA. Skidmore's Meg Estapa is hoping to bring a little bit of the pacific ocean back to Saratoga with her. She took a break ...

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Skidmore professor spends 27 days in ocean researching with NASA - NEWS10 ABC

In this artists conception, NanoRacks airlock module is the knobby-looking hardware attached to a port on the International Space Stations Tranquility module. (NanoRacks Illustration)

NASA has accepted a plan froma private venture called NanoRacks to provide the International Space Station with an air lock that would serve as its first commercial portal.

The plan could serve as the model for the eventual development of entire space stations backed by the private sector.

The NanoRacks Airlock Module is to be developed in cooperation with Boeing and could be fitted to the stations Tranquility module by as early as 2019, NASA and Houston-based NanoRacks said today in a pair of announcements.

For years, NanoRacks has been working on logistics with NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, or CASIS, which manages non-NASA payloads for the space station. Scores of miniaturized satellites have been deployed into orbit through an air lock onthe stations Japanese-built Kibomodule with the aid of NanoRacksdeployer.

The new air lock would let NanoRacks and its partners expand its commercial satellite deployment operation, and provide new opportunities for NASA as well as commercial ventures.

We want to utilize the space station to expose the commercial sector to new and novel uses of space, ultimately creating a new economy in low-Earth orbit for scientific research, technology development and human and cargo transportation, Sam Scimemi, director of the ISS Division at NASA Headquarters, said in todays announcement. We hope this new airlock will allow a diverse community to experiment and develop opportunities in space for the commercial sector.

Once NanoRacks has complied with the steps outlined in a Space Act Agreement reached with NASA last year, the space agency will give the official go-ahead for installation. Today, NanoRacks announced a side agreementthat gives Boeing the task of fabricating and installing a criticalcomponent of the air lock, the Passive Common Berthing Mechanism. The PCBM hardware is the standard interface for connecting space station modules.

We are very pleased to have Boeing joining with us to develop the Airlock Module, NanoRacks CEO Jeffrey Manber said. This is a huge step for NASA and the U.S. space program, to leverage the commercial marketplace for low-Earth orbit, on space station and beyond, and NanoRacks is proud to be taking the lead in this prestigious venture.

NanoRacks said San Diego-based ATA Engineering will be in charge of structural and thermal analysis, testing services and support of the air lock.

The Airlock Module is designedto bedetached at a future time if desired. During last summers New Space conference in Seattle, Manber said it could serve as one of the initial building blocks for a commercial space station.

That air lock can leave the station at the proper time four, five, six years from now and attach to a commercial piece of real estate, Manber said at the Seattle meeting.

Other space ventures are pursuing a similar model, starting with commercial components for the space station that could be repurposed or refined for different orbital platforms.

For example, Bigelow Aerospace provided an inflatable module for testing on the space station last year under the terms of a $17.8 million contract with NASA. A larger modulecould serve as thefirst piece of a commercial space station testbed that Bigelow is developing in cooperation with United Launch Alliance.

Yet another private venture, Axiom Space, is working on a commercial orbital module that could be temporarily attached to the space station, and then detached to become the foundation for a private-sector outpost in orbit.

NanoRacks Manber is no stranger to space commercialization: In the late 1990s, he was the CEO of MirCorp, a company that struck a deal with the Russians for commercial orbital activities during the final days of the Mir space station.

For a time, MirCorp worked with NBC and Survivor producer Mark Burnett on a reality-TV space show tentatively titled Destination Mir, but when Mir flamed out in 2001, so did the TV project.

View post:

NASA gives its nod to NanoRacks for space station's first commercial portal - GeekWire

Mark Moore, a 30-year veteran of NASA, has left the aeronautics agency for a seemingly more terrestrial business: ride-hailing giant Uber. But Moore wont be working on anything as boring as expanding Ubers ground operation. According to Bloomberg, he will be working on the companys nascent on-demand aviation service, also known as Ubers flying car project.

To be sure, Moore wont be building a flying car for Uber at least not yet. Last October, the company released a white paper that envisioned a flying taxi service as a network of lightweight, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically from preexisting urban heliports and skyscraper rooftops. These VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing, pronounced vee-tol) aircraft would operate using fixed wings with tilt prop-rotors.

Newsflash: flying cars dont exist yet

Most notably, Uber said it wasnt going to build its own flying car, but stood ready to contribute to the nascent but growing VTOL ecosystem and to start to play whatever role is most helpful to accelerate this industrys development. That probably translates into, Come to us with a decent prototype and well buy it.

But as you can tell by looking out any window right now, flying cars dont exist yet. We havent really even seen a halfway decent prototype. Numerous challenges lay ahead, such as noise level, battery life, and air-traffic restrictions, before we can reasonably expect to see any flying cars, let alone flying Ubers, soaring through the skies.

Thats where Moore steps in. He wont be running Uber Elevate, the name the company gave to its flying car project, but he will be helping smooth out many of its hurdles. Before joining Uber, his title was chief technologist for on-demand mobility at NASAs Langley Research Center. In 2010, he produced a research paper outlining the feasibility of short-range, electric-powered VTOL aircraft called the Puffin Electric Tailsitter.

It was a somewhat goofy, but totally sci-fi prototype that went on to inspire Google founder Larry Page to launch his own flying car startups, Zee Aero and Kitty Hawk, late last year. Uber launched Elevate soon after, and suddenly this niche, totally unrealistic idea for personalized, autonomous aircraft had serious money behind it.

Moore certainly is a true believer. According to Bloomberg, he left NASA one year before he was eligible for retirement, giving up a significant portion of his pension and free health care for life. Thats a lot to leave on the table. Lets hope Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who is personally overseeing the flying car project, made it worth his while.

Update February 6th, 11:01am ET: Uber continues to see its role as an catalyst to the growing developing VTOL ecosystem, said Nikhil Goel, Head of Product for Advanced Programs, in a statement. We're excited to have Mark join us to work with companies and stakeholders as we continue to explore the use case described in our white paper.

Excerpt from:

Uber hires NASA veteran to help it figure out flying cars - The Verge

NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot told agency employees in a Feb. 3 memo that there had yet to be any major changes to NASA programs under the new administration. Credit: NASA

WASHINGTON Two weeks into the administration of President Donald Trump, NASAs acting administrator said there have yet to be any major changes to the agencys activities or any indication of when such changes might come.

In a Feb. 3 memo to NASA employees, Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said that the agency was continuing to carry out its various programs as supported by a continuing resolution, a spending bill that funds NASA and other federal offices at 2016 levels through April.

At this point, there has been no new guidance on any of our current work, despite what you might have heard being speculated, Lightfoot wrote in the memo. We are executing the missions as defined under the current Continuing Resolution.

One policy change that has affected NASA and other agencies is a hiring freeze. President Trump issued that freeze Jan. 23, which prevents agencies from filling open civilian positions without an exemption from the Office of Personnel Management. The hiring freeze is intended as a short-term measure until the administration develops a long-term plan for reducing the size of the federal workforce.

How that hiring freeze will affect NASA activities remains unclear. Lightfoot, in his memo, said that NASAs office of human capital management was working with NASAs field centers on specific guidance, but offered no additional details.

Lightfoot emphasized that the transition to the Trump administration was going well, as the landing team of transition personnel is replaced by an initial beachhead team of presidential appointees, some of whom also served on the landing team.

We are working with the presidential appointees to integrate the new folks into our team. They are extremely engaged and to a person excited to be part of this great Agency, Lightfoot wrote. This team is genuinely interested in maintaining a smooth transition and are working with us to ensure as such.

Lightfoot, who as associate administrator was the top civil servant at NASA, became acting administrator Jan. 20 when former administrator Charles Bolden and deputy administrator Dava Newman departed the agency at the end of the Obama administration. The Trump administration has yet to nominate a new administrator, despite months of speculation about who might be considered for the job.

Also, since I have been asked a lot, there is no news on the next Administrator. I know the new administration is working it along with the many other positions, Lightfoot wrote.

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Business as usual at NASA two weeks into new administration - SpaceNews

NASA is truly ready for some football!

In a new video, NASA employees and affiliates virtually toss a football from space to various centers across the United States to celebrate the Super Bowl, as well as NASA's journey to Mars.

The Super Bowl will play Sunday (Feb. 5) at NRG Stadium in Houston, also home to NASA's Johnson Space Center, where astronauts train for space.[NASA Goes to Super Bowl 2017 (Photos)]

A NASA astronaut poses with Pat Patriot, mascot of the New England Patriots, during a visit to Mission Control in Houston at Johnson Space Center ahead of Super Bowl LI. The Patriots will face off against the Atlanta Falcons during the big game.

The video begins with Shane Kimbrough, Expedition 50 commander, holding a football. "To all of you back on Earth in the Super Bowl city of Houston, welcome," he says. "We hope you enjoy our great city and have a fabulous Super Bowl week."

Kimbrough then tosses the football off camera, and the next scene shows a football landing in the hands of NASA astronaut Victor Glover, on a treadmill in NASA's countermeasure training laboratory in Houston. From there, the football passes to people all over the United States.

Some of the places the football lands includes:

Viewers are also treated to football facts, such as:

So if you watch the big game today, take a moment to think about what a future Super Bowl might be like in space.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebookand Google+.Original article on Space.com.

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NASA 'Space Bowl' Video Takes Super Bowl 2017 Out of this World - Space.com

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Congress is considering funding a giant rocket capable of sending U.S. astronauts to the moon or even Mars, which could furtherPresident Donald Trumps agenda.

Congress could re-authorize funding for the Space Launch System (SLS) a 212-foot heavy-lift rocket, and possibly the most powerful rocket booster ever built. NASAs proposed missions to return a human to the moon or send astronauts to Mars are almost entirely reliant on the SLS and its Orion capsule.

The draft NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 maintains continuity of purpose across a broad array of NASA programs and initiatives, Texas Republican Rep. Brian Babin, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. It continues support for a robust and well-planned human exploration program that includes not only the Space Launch System and Orion programs but also commercial crew and cargo programs, among others.

New legislation supports a balanced portfolio in space science, planetary science, astrophysics, astronomy, and astrobiology, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, the Mars 2020 rover, and a potential mission to Jupiters moon Europa, Babin said.

Trump has expressed interest in space missions that would require the SLS and Orion. The president vowed to unlock the mysteries of space in his inaugural address, lending credence to reports he discussed sending humans to Mars in a private meeting with billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump could slash the more than $2 billion NASA spends on its Earth Science Mission Directorate, which covers global warming science, and divert that money towards space exploration.

Former President Barack Obama tried for years to eliminate the SLS and Orion programs, but Congress rescued the rocket. Obama took money from space exploration programs to fund Earth science programs.

The first manned SLS/Orion mission isnt scheduled until 2021. Congress could potentially speed up this timeline to orbit the moon by 2020. The rocket is currently scheduled to send U.S. astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.

Experts have long suspected Trumps space agenda will fund exploration with robotic probes and, later, sending humans to Mars with money diverted from NASAs global warming science programs. Another billionaire space entrepreneur, Robert Bigelow, thinks Trump could double NASAs budget.

The U.S. is better prepared to visit Mars than it was to visit the moon in the 1960s, according to a study by NASAs Johnson Space Center. The total cost of current plans to send Americans to Mars comes out to roughly $35 billion spent by 2025 to arrive in 2030.

Additional money for Mars exploration could be diverted from NASAs troubled Asteroid Redirect Mission, whichwas heavily supported by Obama.

A number of prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill think that NASA should not be involved to the degree that it is in Earth science, Jeff Foust, a senior writer at the trade publication SpaceNews, told Space.com. I would certainly expect to see some sort of development in terms of potential reduction to NASAs Earth science program.

Obama repeatedly tried to slash space exploration funding and redirect it to Earth science programs, which include climate modeling initiatives designed to measure global warming. Obama increased NASAs budget for environmental programs by 63 percent at the expense of its exploration budget.

Budget cuts have been blamed for China taking the lead in planning missions to Mars. China is rapidly catching up to the space programs of NASA and the U.S. military Republicans and Democrats blame Obama for this.

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Send tips to andrew@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Trump's NASA Is Probably Aiming For The Moon Or Mars - Daily Caller

February 6, 2017 On Feb. 6 at 09:45 UTC: (4:45 a.m. EST) NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Tropical Cyclone Carlos (04S) over La Reunion and Mauritius. Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone Carlos when it was affecting La Reunion and Mauritius islands in the Southern Indian Ocean. The satellite imagery provided a clear picture of how wind shear was affecting the storm. Earlier the GPM core satellite found heavy rain and towering storms within Tropical Cyclone Carlos.

Tropical Cyclone 04S formed north of La Reunion Island on February 4 and continued to track slowly toward the island. This ended an unusual drought of tropical cyclone formation in that part of the Indian Ocean that began in July 2016. When NASA's Terra passed over the newly-formed tropical cyclone imagery showed a concentration of strong thunderstorms around the center of the compact storm. The storm was later renamed Tropical Cyclone Carlos.

NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite flew above tropical storm Carlos on February 5, 2017 at 1056 UTC (5:56 a.m. EST) when Carlos had maximum sustained winds of about 45 knots (51.8 mph). GPM collected data that showed the intensity and structure of precipitation within Carlos. GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) measured rain falling at a rate of over 100 mm (3.9 inches) per hour in intense feeder bands converging into Carlos' northeastern side.

The 3-D vertical structure of tropical storm Carlos was examined by GPM's radar (DPR Ku Band). This inspection showed that some of the powerful storms around the tropical cyclone had storm tops reaching heights greater than 14 km (8.8 miles). Heavy showers in a few of these storms were bouncing radar reflectivity values of almost 49 dBZ values back to the GPM satellite. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

On Feb. 6 at 09:45 UTC: (4:45 a.m. EST) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Carlos' clouds and storms over La Reunion and Mauritius. The image clearly showed the center of circulation was north of the clouds and thunderstorms which covered the two islands. Strong vertical wind shear up to 25 knots 28.7 mph/46.3 kph) from the northwest pushed the clouds and showers south-southeast of the center and over the islands. A thin ring of clouds appeared around the center of circulation.

At 1500 UTC (10 am EST) Tropical Cyclone Carlos had maximum sustained winds near 55 knots (64 mph / 102 kph). Warm sea surface temperatures are expected to allow the system to continue to strengthen. It was centered near 18.3 degrees south latitude and 57.0 degrees east longitude, approximately 120 nautical miles north of Port Louis, Mauritius, has tracked south-southwestward at 4 knots (4.6 mph/7.4 kph).

Meteo France is issuing advisories on Carlos. For forecast updates on La Reunion island, visit: http://www.meteofrance.re/.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center said that Tropical Cyclone Carlos will peak at 80 knots (92 mph/148 kph) in on Feb. 9 as it begins curving to the southeast away from southeastern Madagascar in over the open ocean.

For updated forecasts in English from the Meteo France La Reunion website, visit: http://www.meteo.fr/temps/domtom/La_Reunion/webcmrs9.0/anglais/.

Explore further: NASA sees Tropical Cyclone Haliba affecting La Reunion and Mauritius islands

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NASA sees Tropical Cyclone Carlos over La Reunion and Mauritius - Phys.Org

More than 100 years ago, on June 30, 1908, a mid-air explosion rocked the Siberian wilderness near the Stony Tunguska River, leveling about 800 square miles of forest the size of New York City and Los Angeles combined in an instant. The remote location meant there were no known human casualties. But what if the asteroid or cometthat caused the Tunguska event was just seven or eight hours late in its journey toward Earth? That could have put it in the path of several majorcities including Saint Petersburg, Helsinki, and Oslo or left it to explode harmlessly above the icy ocean, potentially with nobody even noticing at all.

The Tunguska object, which exploded with a force roughly 1,000-times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, captures the essential paradox in thinking about devastating asteroid impactsfrom outer space. The problem is asteroid impacts big enough to cause damage on that sort of scale are astonishingly rare, on the order of one every several hundred or even several thousand years. Indeed, there are no confirmed asteroid-related deaths in recorded human history, though there might have been one dog in Egypt. So are asteroids really a threat, or are they not worthworrying about?

Scientists have decided its worth worrying, but just a little.Asteroid impacts are very unlikely events, especially the large ones, but they are preventable if we find these objects with sufficient warning, Paul Chodas, manager of the Near-Earth Object office at NASAsJet Propulsion Laboratory, told Vocativ. Compared with, say, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, its that predictability that makes asteroid impacts unique. We can do something about this hazard. Many other hazards are more random and you cant.

NASAs Kelly Fast, a scientistat the recently formed Planetary Defense Coordination Office, approaches it witha similarattitude: You dont know if you dont look. Thats why NASAs primary focus is on finding as many potentially hazardous near-earth objects as possible. The Planetary Defense team is on the lookout for any possibly dangerous objects more than about 50 meters wide (the Tunguska object was probably about 40 to 50 meters wide). NASAsNear-Earth Object office takes a still broader view, as a 2005 law calls for them to locate and catalog potentially devastating asteroids more than 140 meters across.

The problem, to some extent,it that were running up against the limits of our current telescopes in searching for such faint objects. Of 140-meter asteroids,there are probably roughly 25,000 in Earths general vicinity, but weve only located about 25 to 30 percent of them, far short of the 90 percent goal Congress had set. In theory, the agency is meant to hit that markby 2020, but theres next to no chance of that happening, in part because of technological limits. The next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes, such as theNEOCam,have the potential to reveal many more of those 140-meter objects, but these are still years away from coming online.

But asteroids smaller than 140 meters, smaller even than the 40-meter Tunguska object, can still make a splash:Just ask the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, above which a meteor exploded on February 15, 2013. This object was considerably smaller than Tunguska, measuring about 20 meters wide. The explosion created an air blast thatreleased about 33 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb, though the effect on the ground wasnt as severe as that might suggest. About 1,500 people suffered injuries, mostly from windows shattered by the blast wave.

In our engineered world, it doesnt take a very large object to cause some damage, Victoria Friedensen of NASAs Planetary Defense told Vocativ. Indeed, this was a frighteningexperience for the residents of Chelyabinsk, made worse because it came with no advance warning. The meteor approached from a sunward direction, making it invisible to ground-based telescopes before it entered the atmosphere.

Surprises like that arent uncommon for such relatively small objects, but they are considerably less likely for asteroids that could cause devastation on a much larger scale. Before NASAs current task of finding all the 140-meter asteroids, the Spaceguard Project in the 1990s called for the agency to find 90 percent of the one-kilometer near-Earth objects a goal taken far more seriously after the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter in 1994, releasing energy equivalent to 600 times the worlds nuclear arsenal. NASA has completed this task, finding about 950 kilometer-long objects.Though there are still some unaccounted for, theres no real risk an object that big could sneak up on Earth unannounced like Chelyabinsk did we would likely have decades worth of warningbefore collision. That means there would be time to do something about it.

The more lead time you have, if you had years to plan, you would only have to deflect an object by a small amount for it to miss Earth years down the road, said Friedensen. One possibility would be to hit the asteroid with a fast-moving object, deflecting it off course like a game of cosmic billiards. Another technique is the gravity tractor technique, where you would put a mass close to an asteroid and hover there, and it would tug it.

Both those options would require a lot of warning, likely at least more than 10 years. And while thats not impossible NASA is tracking asteroids that have less than a one percent chance of hitting Earth in the late 22nd century a more immediate threat might require a solution that sounds like something out of Armageddon. Or at least a more scientifically accurate version of it.

Nuclear is on the table, said Chodas. We could potentially explode a nuclear missile near the surface of the asteroid, which would vaporize part of the asteroid, and the material that comes off the asteroid actually pushes it and changes its trajectory ever so slightly.

But what if an impact did prove unavoidable? As unlikely as that is and Chodas pointed out the chances of an asteroid hitting a populated area is still more improbable there would probably be time to evacuate a city or small region before the impact, though the infrastructure and economic damage could be enormous. And keep in mind that, while we use the term impact, that doesnt necessarily mean the asteroid would reach the ground intact. Neither the Tunguska nor Chelyabinsk objects were big enough to hit the ground, and Chodas said its an open question whether a 140-meter object could make it through the atmosphere without burning up. In those cases, the devastation comes not from the collision with the ground but from the blast created by the mid-air explosion.

Its only the much, much bigger asteroids where the real danger of global catastrophe begins. Most famously, the object that wiped out the dinosaurs was likely about 10 kilometers across. There are at most a handful of these objects, all of which we know about, and the fact that the last one hit Earth 66 million years ago gives asense of their rarity. Asteroids at least a kilometer wide are more common, and while they might not wipe out humanity, theycould kick up enough ash and debris to change the planets climate for months.

But the odds of any of that happening in our lifetimes are, if not nil, then the nearest thing to it. Asteroids remain more a topic for scientific investigation than active threat preparation, though many of NASAs research efforts feature a little of both.

The nice thing about the nearest objects and potentially hazardous objects is they come to us, said Fast. We dont have to go them.The agency is developing missions that will test both the kinetic impactor and gravity tractor techniques, while the recently launched Osiris-Rex mission will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2023, which among other things will allow scientists to better calculate its orbit and determine the true (and likely non-existent) odds of it hitting Earth in the late2100s.

Thinking about asteroid impacts is an exercise in thinking about a series of smaller and smaller probabilities. The odds of a large asteroid heading our way, the odds of all deflection efforts failing, the odds of its path taking it directly over a major inhabited area, the odds of any of this happening while any of use is alive but theres a difference between a zero percent chance and a next to zero percent chance. And its because of that difference that NASA continues its work.

Yes, the Earth is a very small target on the scale of the solar system, said Chodas. But its a very important to us, so thats why we need to keep calculating the orbits to the greatest precision possible.

Whats the worst that can happen? This week, Vocativ explores the power of negative thinking with our look at worst case scenarios in politics, privacy, reproductive rights, antibiotics, climate change, hacking, and more. Read more here.

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How NASA Plays The Odds With Asteroids That Could Kill Us - Vocativ

Wall Street Journal

Advocates of Big NASA Rocket Seek to Fend Off Foes During Transition Wall Street Journal Facing unpredictable White House decision-making and delays in appointing a new NASA leadership team, Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and their supporters are taking extra precautions to safeguard deep-space exploration programs. The Boeing-led ...

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Advocates of Big NASA Rocket Seek to Fend Off Foes During Transition - Wall Street Journal

There are a myriad of satellites in orbit of Earth with cameras that can send back amazing photos, but they cant snap a photo of the entire planet at once. NASAs Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) camera can, though. It sends back thousands of amazing photos every year, and now you can peruse them more easily with the new website. It is, dare I say, epic.

EPIC is a 4MP CCD camera with a telescope mounted on the NOAA DSCOVR satellite (Deep Space Climate Observatory, informally known as GoreSat). It was launched in 2015 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but it wasnt just headed to low-Earth orbit like so many other payloads.

The DSCOVR satellite made its way out to the L1 Lagrangian point. Lagrangian points are locations of gravitational equilibrium between two bodies. In this case, L1 allows the satellite to remain in between Earth and the sun. It always has a view of the daylight side of Earth, which is ideal for taking images. The instrument is 1 million miles away from Earth and 92 million miles away from the sun.

The DSCOVR satellite has several other instruments, but what were interested in here is NASAs EPIC camera. Its designed to take 10 narrow-band spectral images of Earth from 317 to 780 nanometers. It combines those into an image that looks much like what the human eye would see. You can see above an example image with natural color on the left and enhanced color on the right.

EPIC captures an image every hour from mid-April to mid-October, and one every two hours for the rest of the year. That adds up to a huge number of images, all available for public consumption. The new EPIC site makes that a more pleasant experience. Theres not a floating magnifier feature that lets you see up close whats in each image. Over on the left is the image info box that tells you when the image was acquired. Thats important because the axial tilt will determine which hemisphere is most visible at different times of the year. If you want to see a different view, theres a filmstrip at the bottom to page through images and a calendar on the left to jump farther.

Theres a gallery on the site that shows off some of the more notable images like moon transits and eclipses (which are amazing). And of course, you can download any image you want from the site.

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NASA revamps site for EPIC photos of Earth from space - ExtremeTech

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