What Popular Film Is The Closest To Reality For You?

A cluster of newborn stars herald their birth in this interstellar picture obtained with our Spitzer Space Telescope. These bright young stars are found in a rosebud-shaped (and rose-colored) nebulosity. The star cluster and its associated nebula are located at a distance of 3300 light-years in the constellation Cepheus.

A recent census of the cluster reveals the presence of 130 young stars. The stars formed from a massive cloud of gas and dust that contains enough raw materials to create a thousand Sun-like stars. In a process that astronomers still poorly understand, fragments of this molecular cloud became so cold and dense that they collapsed into stars. Most stars in our Milky Way galaxy are thought to form in such clusters.

The Spitzer Space Telescope image was obtained with an infrared array camera that is sensitive to invisible infrared light at wavelengths that are about ten times longer than visible light. In this four-color composite, emission at 3.6 microns is depicted in blue, 4.5 microns in green, 5.8 microns in orange, and 8.0 microns in red. The image covers a region that is about one quarter the size of the full moon.

As in any nursery, mayhem reigns. Within the astronomically brief period of a million years, the stars have managed to blow a large, irregular bubble in the molecular cloud that once enveloped them like a cocoon. The rosy pink hue is produced by glowing dust grains on the surface of the bubble being heated by the intense light from the embedded young stars. Upon absorbing ultraviolet and visible-light photons produced by the stars, the surrounding dust grains are heated and re-emit the energy at the longer infrared wavelengths observed by Spitzer. The reddish colors trace the distribution of molecular material thought to be rich in hydrocarbons.

The cold molecular cloud outside the bubble is mostly invisible in these images. However, three very young stars near the center of the image are sending jets of supersonic gas into the cloud. The impact of these jets heats molecules of carbon monoxide in the cloud, producing the intricate green nebulosity that forms the stem of the rosebud.

Not all stars are formed in clusters. Away from the main nebula and its young cluster are two smaller nebulae, to the left and bottom of the central 'rosebud,'each containing a stellar nursery with only a few young stars.

Astronomers believe that our own Sun may have formed billions of years ago in a cluster similar to this one. Once the radiation from new cluster stars destroys the surrounding placental material, the stars begin to slowly drift apart.

Additional information about the Spitzer Space Telescope is available at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu.

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Our Kepler Space Telescope team has identified 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and in the habitable zone of their respective stars. The habitable zone is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet to possibly sustain life. This artist rendering is of one of the thousands of planets detected by Kepler beyond our solar system. These exoplanets, as they’re called, vary widely in size and orbital distances, showing us that most stars are home to at least one planet.  Learn more.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

7 Things You Need to Know About Small Satellites

1. Small satellites is the umbrella term for describing any satellite that is the size of an economy-sized washing machine all the way down to a CubeSat, which you can hold in your hand.

2. CubeSats come in multiple sizes defined by the U, which stands for unit. Making it the Unit unit. 1U CubeSats are cubes 4 inches (10 cm) on a side, weighing as little as 4 pounds. A 3U CubeSat is three 1Us hooked together, resembling a flying loaf of bread. A 6U CubeSat is two 3Us joined at the hip, like a flying cereal box. These are the three most common configurations.

Photo courtesy of the University of Michigan 

3. CubeSats were developed by researchers at California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University who wanted a standardized format to make launching them into space easier and to be small enough for students to get involved in designing, building and launching a satellite.

4. Small satellites often hitch a ride to space with another mission. If there’s room on the rocket of a larger mission, they’re in. CubeSats in particular deploy from a p-pod – poly-picosatellite orbital deployer – tucked on the underside of the upper stage of the rocket near the engine bell.

5. Small sats test technology at lower costs. Their small size and the relatively short amount of time it takes to design and build a small satellite means that if we want to test a new sensor component or a new way of making an observation from space, we can do so without being in the hole if it doesn’t work out. There’s no environment on Earth than can adequately recreate space, so sometimes the only way to know if new ideas work is to send them up and see.

6. Small sats force us to think of new ways to approach old problems. With a satellite the size of a loaf of bread, a cereal box, or a microwave oven, we don’t have a lot of room for the science instrument or power to run it. That means thinking outside the box. In addition to new and creative designs that include tape measures, customized camera lenses, and other off-the-shelf parts, we have to think of new ways of gathering all the data we need. One thing we’re trying out is flying small sat constellations – a bunch of the same kind of satellite flying in formation. Individually, each small sat sees a small slice of Earth below. Put them together and we start to see the big picture.

7. Small sats won’t replace big satellites. Size does matter when it comes to power, data storage, and how precise your satellite instrument is. Small satellites come with trade-offs that often mean coarser image resolution and shorter life-spans than their bigger sister satellites. However, small sat data can complement data collected by big satellites by covering more ground, by passing over more frequently, by flying in more dangerous orbits that big satellites avoid, and by continuing data records if there’s a malfunction or a wait between major satellite missions. Together they give us a more complete view of our changing planet.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, let us break it down for you. Here are a few things to know this week:

1. Up at Jupiter, It’s Down to Business

Ever since our Juno mission entered Jupiter's orbit on July 4, engineers and scientists have been busy getting their newly arrived spacecraft ready for operations. Juno's science instruments had been turned off in the days leading up to Jupiter orbit insertion. As planned, the spacecraft powered up five instruments on July 6, and the remaining instruments should follow before the end of the month. The Juno team has also scheduled a short trajectory correction maneuver on July 13 to refine the orbit.

2. The Shadows Know

Scientists with our Dawn mission have identified permanently shadowed regions on the dwarf planet Ceres. Most of these areas likely have been cold enough to trap water ice for a billion years, suggesting that ice deposits could exist there now (as they do on the planet Mercury). Dawn is looking into it.

3. Frosts of Summer

Some dusty parts of Mars get as cold at night year-round as the planet's poles do in winter, even in regions near the equator in summer, according to new findings based on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observations. The culprit may be Mars' ever-present dust.

4. Can You Hear Me Now?

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is designed to sample an asteroid and return that sample to Earth. After launch in Sept., the mission's success will depend greatly on its communications systems with Earth to relay everything from its health and status to scientific findings from the asteroid Bennu. That's why engineers from our Deep Space Network recently spent a couple of weeks performing detailed tests of the various communications systems aboard OSIRIS-REx.

5. Cometary Close-ups

The Rosetta spacecraft has taken thousands of photographs of Comet 67/P. The European Space Agency (ESA) is now regularly releasing the highest-resolution images. The word "stunning" is used a lot when referring to pictures from space—and these ones truly are. See the latest HERE.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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Lasers Bring Internet Speeds to Space

Pew. Pew. Lasers in space!

Iconic movie franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek feature futuristic laser technologies, but space lasers aren’t limited to the realm of science fiction. In fact, laser communications technologies are changing the way missions transmit their data. The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) blasts into space this weekend, demonstrating the unique – and totally awesome – capabilities of laser communications systems.

Currently, NASA missions rely on radio frequency to send data to Earth. While radio has served the agency well since the earliest days of spaceflight, there are significant benefits to laser systems. Just as the internet has gone from dial-up to high-speed connections, lasers communications’ higher frequency allows missions to send much more information per second than radio systems. With laser communications, it would only take nine days to transmit a complete map of Mars back to Earth, compared to nine weeks with radio frequency systems.

LCRD will demonstrate these enhanced capabilities from 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface. And although the mission uses lasers, these lasers are not visible to the human eye. Once in orbit, the mission will perform experiments using two telescopes on Earth that will relay data through the spacecraft from one site to the other over an optical communications link. These experiments will help NASA and the aerospace community understand the operational challenges of using lasers to communicate to and from space.

On Earth, there are ground stations telescopes that will capture LCRD’s laser signal and send the data to the mission operations center in New Mexico. The two ground stations are located on Haleakalā, Hawaii and Table Mountain, California. These picturesque locations weren’t chosen because they’re beautiful, but rather for their mostly clear skies. Clouds – and other atmospheric disturbances – can disrupt laser signals. However, when those locations do get cloudy, we’ve developed corrective technologies to ensure we receive and successfully decode signals from LCRD.

This demonstration will help NASA, researchers, and space companies learn more about potential future applications for laser communications technologies. In the next few years, NASA will launch additional laser missions to the Moon on Artemis II and to the asteroid belt, even deeper into space. These missions will give us insight on the use of laser communications further in space than ever before.

Ultimately, laser systems will allow us to glean more information from space. This means more galaxy pics, videos of deep space phenomena, and live, 4K videos from astronauts living and working in space.

Laser communications = more data in less time = more discoveries.

If laser communications interests you, check out our Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Internship Project. This program provides high school, undergrad, graduate, and even Ph.D. candidates with internship opportunities in space communications areas – like laser comm.

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Which do you think you'll miss more after your first trip? Space when you're back on Earth or Earth when you're up in Space?

I think that I will miss space when I’m back on Earth. One astronaut when she returned said that gravity sucks, so I’m looking forward to finding out what that’s like.

What Can We Learn from the Universe’s Baby Picture?

If you look at your baby photos, you might see hints of the person you are today — a certain look in the eyes, maybe the hint of your future nose or ears. In the same way, scientists examine the universe’s “baby picture” for clues about how it grew into the cosmos we know now. This baby photo is the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a faint glow that permeates the universe in all directions.

In late September, NASA plans to launch a balloon-based astronomical observatory from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, to study the universe’s baby picture. Meet PIPER! The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer will fly at the edge of our atmosphere to look for subtle patterns in the CMB.

The CMB is cold. Really, really cold. The average temperature is around minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit. It formed 380,000 years after the big bang, which scientists think happened about 13.8 billion years ago. When it was first discovered, the CMB temperature looked very uniform, but researchers later found there are slight variations like hot and cold spots. The CMB is the oldest light in the universe that we can see. Anything before the CMB is foggy — literally.

Credit: Rob van Hal

Before the CMB, the universe was a fog of hot, dense plasma. (By hot, we’re talking about 500 million degrees F.) That’s so hot that atoms couldn’t exist yet – there was just a soup of electrons and protons. Electrons are great at deflecting light. So, any light that existed in the first few hundred thousand years after the big bang couldn’t travel very far before bouncing off electrons, similar to the way a car’s headlights get diffused in fog.  

After the big bang, the universe started expanding rapidly in all directions. This expansion is still happening today. As the universe continued to expand, it cooled. By the time the universe reached its 380,000th birthday, it had cooled enough that electrons and protons could combine into hydrogen atoms for the first time. (Scientists call this era recombination.) Hydrogen atoms don’t deflect light nearly as well as loose electrons and the fog lifted. Light could now travel long distances across the universe.

The light we see in the CMB comes from the recombination era. As it traveled across the universe, through the formation of stars and galaxies, it lost energy. Now we observe it in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is less energetic than visible light and therefore invisible to our eyes. The first baby photo of the CMB – really, a map of the sky in microwaves – came from our Cosmic Background Explorer, which operated from 1989 to 1993.

Why are we so interested in the universe’s baby picture? Well, it’s helped us learn a lot about the structure of the universe around us today. For example, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe produced a detailed map of the CMB and helped us learn that the universe is 68 percent dark energy, 27 percent dark matter and just 5 percent normal matter — the stuff that you and stars are made of.

Right after the big bang, we’re pretty sure the universe was tiny. Really tiny. Everything we see today would have been stuffed into something smaller than a proton. If the universe started out that small, then it would have followed the rules of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics allows all sorts of strange things to happen. Matter and energy can be “borrowed” from the future then crash back into nothingness. And then cosmic inflation happened and the universe suddenly expanded by a trillion trillion times.

All this chaos creates a sea of gravitational waves. (These are called “primordial” gravitational waves and come from a different source than the gravitational waves you may have heard about from merging neutron stars and black holes.) The signal of the primordial gravitational waves is a bit like white noise, where the signal from merging dead stars is like a whistle you can pick up over the noise.

These gravitational waves filled the baby universe and created distinct patterns, called B-mode polarization, in the CMB light. These patterns have handedness, which means even though they’re mirror images of each other, they’re not symmetrical — like trying to wear a left-hand glove on your right hand. They’re distinct from another kind of polarization called E-mode, which is symmetrical and echoes the distribution of matter in the universe.

That’s where PIPER comes in. PIPER’s two telescopes sit in a hot-tub-sized container of liquid helium, which runs about minus 452 degrees F. It’ll look at 85 percent of the sky and is extremely sensitive, so it will help us learn even more about the early days of the universe. By telling us more about polarization and those primordial gravitational waves, PIPER will help us understand how the early universe grew from that first baby picture.

PIPER’s first launch window in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, is in late September. When it’s getting ready to launch, you’ll be able to watch the balloon being filled on the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website. Follow NASA Blueshift on Twitter or Facebook for updates about PIPER and when the livestream will be available.

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Back to School Resources

Need help with your science homework? We’ve got you covered! Here are some out-of-this world (pun intended) resources for your science and space questions.

Let’s take a look…

NASA Space Place

From questions like “Why does Saturn have rings?” to games that allow you to explore different galaxies, NASA Space Place has a variety of content for elementary-age kids, parents and anyone who likes science and technology topics. 

Visit the NASA Space Place website or follow @NASASpacePlace on Twitter.

SciJinks

Targeting middle-school students and teachers, this NOAA and NASA partnership has games and useful information about weather and other Earth science subjects. 

Visit the SciJinks website or follow @SciJinks on Twitter. 

NASA Education

The NASA Education website includes an A-Z list of education opportunities that we offer throughout the year, as well as education programs, events and resources for both students and educators. 

We have a diverse set of resources for multiple age groups:

Grades K-4

Grades 5-8

Grades 9-12

Higher Education

Informal Education

Visit the NASA Education website or follow @NASAedu on Twitter. 

Want to get NASA Education materials for your classroom? Click HERE. 

A Year of Education on the International Space Station

Although on different crews, astronauts Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold - both former teachers - will work aboard the International Space Station. K-12 and higher education students and educators can do NASA STEM activities related to the station and its role in our journey to Mars. Click HERE for more. 

Sally Ride EarthKAM

Also on the International Space Station, the Sally Ride EarthKAM @ Space Camp allows students to program a digital camera on board the space station to photograph a variety of geographical targets for study in the classroom. 

Registration is now open until Sept. 25 for the Sept. 26-30 mission. Click HERE for more. 

NASA eClips™

NASA eClips™ are short, relevant educational video segments. These videos inspire and engage students, helping them see real world connections by exploring current applications of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, topics. The programs are produced for targeted audiences: K-5, 6-8, 9-12 and the general public.

Space Operations Learning Center

The Space Operations Learning Center teaches school-aged students the basic concepts of space operations using the web to present this educational content in a fun and engaging way for all grade levels. With fourteen modules, there’s lots to explore for all ages.

The Mars Fun Zone

The Mars Fun Zone is a compilation of Red Planet-related materials that engage the explorer inside every kid through activities, games, and educational moments. 

Fly Away with NASA Aeronautics

Frequent flyer or getting ready to earn your first set of wings? From children’s books for story time to interactive flight games, we’ve got Aeronautics activities for students of all ages that are sure to inspire future scientists, mathematicians and engineers. 

On Pinterest? We have a board that highlights NASA science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) lessons, activities, tools and resources for teachers, educators and parents. 

Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/nasa/nasa-for-educators/ 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Welcome to the new, official NASA Tumblr. We’re going to be giving you a regular dose of space here. Follow along and join us as we share information, images and video about our mission of exploration and discovery. First up, check out the moon photobombing Earth in this new animated gif. The far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, is seen as it crosses between our 'EPIC' camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, and the Earth - one million miles away. Check it out: http://go.nasa.gov/1Dq0IO9

Asteroid Terms: Explained

There are interesting asteroid characters in our solar system, including an asteroid that has its own moon and even one that is shaped like a dog bone! Our OSIRIS-REx mission launches at 7:05 p.m. EDT today and will travel to asteroid Bennu.

Scientists chose Bennu as the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission because of its composition, size and proximity to Earth. Bennu is a rare B-type asteroid (primitive and carbon-rich), which is expected to have organic compounds and water-bearing minerals like clays.

Our OSIRIS-REx mission will travel to Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study.

When talking about asteroids, there are some terms scientists use that might not be in your typical vocabulary…but we’ll help with that!

Here are a few terms you should know:

Orbital Eccentricity: This number describes the shape of an asteroid’s orbit by how elliptical it is. For asteroids in orbit around the sun, eccentricity is a number between 0 and 1, with 0 being a perfectly circular orbit and 0.99 being a highly elliptical orbit.

Inclination: The angle, in degrees, of how tilted an asteroid’s orbit is compared to another plane of reference, usually the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

Orbital Period: The number of days it takes for an asteroid to revolve once around the sun. For example, the Earth’s orbital period is 365 days.

Perihelion Distance: The distance between an asteroid and the sun when the asteroid is closest to the sun.

Aphelion Distance: The distance between the asteroid and the sun when the asteroid is farthest away from the sun.

Astronomical unit: A distance unit commonly used to describe orbits of objects around the sun. The distance from the Earth to the sun is one astronomical unit, or 1 AU, equivalent to about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.

Diameter: A measure of the size of an asteroid. It is the length of a line from a point on the surface, through the center of the asteroid, extending out to the opposite surface. Irregularly shaped asteroids may have different diameters depending on which direction they are measured.

Rotation Period: The time it takes for an asteroid to complete one revolution around its axis of rotation. For example, the rotation period of the Earth is approximately 24 hours, or 1 day.

Spectral Type: The classification of an asteroid, based on a measurement of the light reflected by the asteroid. 

Watch live launch coverage of OSIRIS-REx to asteroid Bennu starting at 5:30 p.m, on NASA TV: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv 

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