Our Parker Solar Probe Just Touched The Sun!

Our future Mars 2020 rover, seen here as imagined through the eyes of an artist, will search for signs of past microbial life. The mission will take the next step in exploring the Red Planet by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. 

The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth. Mars 2020 is targeted for launch in July/August 2020, aboard an Atlas V 541 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Learn more.

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Holiday Lights...In Space

Holiday lights don’t come in one shape or size, just like they don’t only appear on Earth. Take a look at a few of these celestial light shows:

1. Galactic Wreath of Lights

This festive image captured by our Hubble Space Telescope resembles a holiday wreath made of sparkling lights. This galactic wreath is located around 6,500 light-years away.

2. Red and Green Aurora

This beautiful aurora was captured by Astronaut Scott Kelly while aboard the International Space Station. He shared it with his Twitter followers on June, 22 during his Year in Space mission. This image of Earth’s aurora is festive with its red and green lights.

3. Holiday Snow Angel

Our Hubble Space Telescope captured this stunning image of what looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. This picture shows a bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106.

4. Cosmic Holiday Ornament

This festive-looking nearby planetary nebula resembles a glass-blown holiday ornament with a glowing ribbon entwined. This cosmic decoration was spotted by our Hubble Space Telescope.

5. Holiday Lights on the Sun

Even the sun gets festive with it’s festive looking solar flares. This significant flare was seen by our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SOHO) on Dec. 19, 2014. Even though solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation, it cannot pas through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground. That said, when intense enough, the radiation can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

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Reviving the Shriveled Lake Urmia

Once the second-largest saltwater lake in the Middle East, Lake Urmia attracted birds and bathers to bask in its turquoise waters in northwest Iran. Then beginning in the 1970s, nearly three decades of drought and high water demands on the lake shriveled the basin, shrinking it by 80 percent. Recent torrential rains have replenished the water levels of this aquatic gem once known as “the turquoise solitaire of Azerbaijan.”

The animation above shows Lake Urmia on April 9, 2018, and April 12, 2019. The images were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on our Terra satellite. Officials report that the lake’s surface area reached roughly 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles) in April 2019—expanding its volume nearly two-fold from a year ago.

Read more about Lake Urmia here.

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Pluto the Small Dwarf Planet

Tired of singing the same holiday songs? Here’s a celestial take on the classic Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer that you can introduce to your friends and family.

(Three infrared wavelength ranges were placed into the three color channels (red, green and blue, respectively) to create this false color Christmas portrait.)

Sung to the tune of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Intro You know Mercury, Venus and Earth and Mars, too Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune But do you recall the most famous Solar System body of all

Verse 1 Pluto the small dwarf planet Has a very shiny glow And if you had discovered it Your name might be Clyde Tombaugh

Verse 2 All of the other planets  used to laugh and call him names They never let poor Pluto join in planetary games

Verse 3 Then one fateful summer eve New Horizons came to say “Pluto with your heart so bright Won’t you let me flyby tonight?”

Verse 4 Then all the planets loved him and they shouted out with glee, “NASA!” Pluto the small dwarf planet You’ll go down in history!

(repeat V3 and V4)

This song was written by Andres Almeida, a NASA employee, for a holiday office party. It’s a fun take on the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, with a NASA spin. Enjoy!

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Tour the Ocean through the Art of Sound

The ocean is one of the largest ecosystems on our planet. From eye-catching waves to the darkness of the twilight zone, it’s a place filled with mystery and rapid change.

For a scientist studying ocean color at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, there was one more question–what does it sound like?

Before long, a “symphonic ocean experience” was born, combining satellite imagery, ocean color data and programming expertise. Learn more about how data gets converted to music and sound here:

This World Oceans Day, enjoy a tour of the ocean set to sound. Here we go:

SoundCloud

Sounds of the Sea

For World Oceans Month, enjoy a moment of zen with a symphonic tour of the ocean. Experience the swirls off the coast of Río de la Plata to

Bering Sea

This melody explores the phytoplankton blooms in the western Bering Sea along the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula collected by Aqua/MODIS on May 15, 2021. The melody created for this image was aimed at capturing the movement of the eddies or the circular movements of water. Data came from the image’s red, green, and blue channels.

Rio de la Plata

This melody explores a spring bloom in the South Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, lending the water many different shades of green, blue, and brown. The Rio de la Plata estuary in the northwest corner of the above image gets most of its tan coloration from sediments suspended in the water. The melody paired with the data evokes the sediment plumes and swirls happening off the coast.

Coral Sea

Data for the sounds of the Coral Sea were collected over the course of one year from the Aqua/Modis satellite. The information was extracted from a series of 32-day rolling averages for the year 2020, displaying the movement of chlorophyll a data.

Chlorophyll a is a specific form of chlorophyll used in photosynthesis. It absorbs most energy from wavelengths of violet-blue and orange-red light. It is a poor absorber of green and near-green portions of the spectrum, and that’s why it appears green.

Western Australia

Off the coast of western Australia is the appearance of swirls in the ocean. To catch the movement of the Indian Ocean, data was collected from 31 days of imagery examining blue wavelengths of light. The information was gathered from the Suomi-NPP/VIIRS instrument aboard the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) series of spacecraft.

More moments of zen

Looking for more moments of zen? Explore them with NASA’s Soundcloud page, where many are out of this world. Curious on how we get these breathtaking ocean images? Take time to read about Goddard Oceanographer Norman Kuring and how he helped create them.

What's your favorite part of the job?

Up for some virtual cloud watching? ☁️

What do you see in Jupiter's hazy atmosphere?

Our NASA JunoCam mission captured this look at the planet’s thunderous northern region during the spacecraft’s close approach to the planet on Feb. 17, 2020.

Some notable features in this view are the long, thin bands that run through the center of the image from top to bottom. Juno has observed these long streaks since its first close pass by Jupiter in 2016.

Image Credits: Image data: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS Image Processing: Citizen Scientist Eichstädt

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Protecting our Home Planet 🌎

Did you ever wonder how we spots asteroids that may be getting too close to Earth for comfort? Wonder no more. Our Planetary Defense Coordination Office does just that. Thanks to a variety of ground and space based telescopes, we’re able to detect potentially hazardous objects so we can prepare for the unlikely threat against our planet. 

What is a near-Earth object?

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun, but their orbits bring them into Earth’s neighborhood – within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.

These objects are relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system’s formation some 4.6 billion years ago. Most of the rocky asteroids originally formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, while comets, composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, formed in the cold outer solar system.

Who searches for near-Earth objects?

Our Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program finds, tracks and monitors near-Earth asteroids and comets. Astronomers supported by the program use telescopes to follow up the discoveries to make additional measurements, as do many observatories all over the world. The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, based at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also uses these data to calculate high-precision orbits for all known near-Earth objects and predict future close approaches by them to Earth, as well as the potential for any future impacts.

How do we calculate the orbit of a near-Earth object?

Scientists determine the orbit of an asteroid by comparing measurements of its position as it moves across the sky to the predictions of a computer model of its orbit around the Sun. The more observations that are used and the longer the period over which those observations are made, the more accurate the calculated orbit and the predictions that can be made from it.

How many near-Earth objects have been discovered so far?

At the start of 2019, the number of discovered NEOs totaled more than 19,000, and it has since surpassed 20,000. An average of 30 new discoveries are added each week. More than 95 percent of these objects were discovered by NASA-funded surveys since 1998, when we initially established its NEO Observations Program and began tracking and cataloguing them.

Currently the risk of an asteroid striking Earth is exceedingly low, but we are constantly monitoring our cosmic neighborhood. Have more questions? Visit our Planetary Defense page to explore how we keep track of near-Earth objects. 

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Black Scientists and Engineers Past and Present Enable NASA Space Telescope

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s next flagship astrophysics mission, set to launch by May 2027. We’re currently integrating parts of the spacecraft in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center clean room.

Once Roman launches, it will allow astronomers to observe the universe like never before. In celebration of Black History Month, let’s get to know some Black scientists and engineers, past and present, whose contributions will allow Roman to make history.

Dr. Beth Brown

The late Dr. Beth Brown worked at NASA Goddard as an astrophysicist. in 1998, Dr. Brown became the first Black American woman to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Michigan. While at Goddard, Dr. Brown used data from two NASA X-ray missions – ROSAT (the ROentgen SATellite) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory – to study elliptical galaxies that she believed contained supermassive black holes.  

With Roman’s wide field of view and fast survey speeds, astronomers will be able to expand the search for black holes that wander the galaxy without anything nearby to clue us into their presence.

Dr. Harvey Washington Banks 

In 1961, Dr. Harvey Washington Banks was the first Black American to graduate with a doctorate in astronomy. His research was on spectroscopy, the study of how light and matter interact, and his research helped advance our knowledge of the field. Roman will use spectroscopy to explore how dark energy is speeding up the universe's expansion.

NOTE - Sensitive technical details have been digitally obscured in this photograph. 

Sheri Thorn 

Aerospace engineer Sheri Thorn is ensuring Roman’s primary mirror will be protected from the Sun so we can capture the best images of deep space. Thorn works on the Deployable Aperture Cover, a large, soft shade known as a space blanket. It will be mounted to the top of the telescope in the stowed position and then deployed after launch. Thorn helped in the design phase and is now working on building the flight hardware before it goes to environmental testing and is integrated to the spacecraft.

Sanetra Bailey 

Roman will be orbiting a million miles away at the second Lagrange point, or L2. Staying updated on the telescope's status and health will be an integral part of keeping the mission running. Electronics engineer Sanetra Bailey is the person who is making sure that will happen. Bailey works on circuits that will act like the brains of the spacecraft, telling it how and where to move and relaying information about its status back down to Earth.  

 Learn more about Sanetra Bailey and her journey to NASA. 

Dr. Gregory Mosby 

Roman’s field of view will be at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's, even though the primary mirrors are the same size. What gives Roman the larger field of view are its 18 detectors. Dr. Gregory Mosby is one of the detector scientists on the Roman mission who helped select the flight detectors that will be our “eyes” to the universe.

Dr. Beth Brown, Dr. Harvey Washington Banks, Sheri Thorn, Sanetra Bailey, and Dr. Greg Mosby are just some of the many Black scientists and engineers in astrophysics who have and continue to pave the way for others in the field. The Roman Space Telescope team promises to continue to highlight those who came before us and those who are here now to truly appreciate the amazing science to come. 

To stay up to date on the mission, check out our website and follow Roman on X and Facebook.

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That’s a wrap! Thank you all so much for your awesome questions! 

If you’re looking for other ways to enjoy #EarthDayatHome, check out this feature: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/earthdayathome-with-nasa/

Don’t forget to follow NASA Earth on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

You can follow Sandra Cauffman on Twitter, HERE. 

You can follow Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen “Dr. Z” on Twitter, HERE. 

Happy Earth Day!