6 Reasons NOAA’s GOES-R Satellite Matters

The James Webb Space Telescope: A Story of Art & Science

Artists of all kinds were invited to apply for the chance to visit our Goddard Space Flight Center to be inspired by the giant, golden, fully-assembled James Webb Space Telescope mirror.

Art/Photo Credit: Jedidiah Dore

Webb has a mirror that is nearly 22 feet high and (to optimize it for infrared observations) is covered in a microscopic layer of actual gold.

Art/Photo Credit: Susan Lin

Because of Webb’s visually striking appearance, the project hosted a special viewing event on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016.

Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti

There was an overwhelming response to the event invitation and ultimately twenty-four people were selected to attend. They represented a broad range of artistic media and styles, including: watercolor, 3D printed sculpture, silk screening, acrylics, sumi-e (East Asian brush technique), comics, letterpress, woodwork, metalwork, jewelry making, fiber art, ink, mural painting, kite-making, tattooing, scientific illustration, poetry, songwriting, and video making.

Art/Photo Credit: Sue Reno

Project scientists and engineers spoke with visitors to give context to what they were seeing and explain why Webb is an engineering marvel, and how it will change our view of the universe. 

Among other things, Webb will see the first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe and help us to better understand how planetary systems form and evolve. It will help us answer questions about who we, as humans, are and where we came from.

Art Credit: Jessica Lee Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti

The artists spent several hours sitting right in front of the telescope, where they sketched, painted, took photos and even filmed a music video.

Art Credit: Joanna Barnum Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti

While some of the pieces of art are finished, most of the artists went home with their heads full of ideas and sketchbooks full of notes. Stay tuned for more info on where you can see their final works displayed!

Art/Photo Credit: Susan Lin

Finished art from the event continues to be added HERE.

The James Webb Space Telescope is finishing environmental testing at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Next it will head to our Johnson Space Center in Houston for an end-to-end test at cryogenic temperatures. After that, it goes to Northrop Grumman to be mated with the giant tennis court-sized sunshield and the spacecraft bus.  The observatory will launch in October of 2018 from a European Space Agency (ESA) launch site in French Guiana, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.  Webb is a collaboration of NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Follow Webb on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

There’s even more to Mars.

1. Batten Down the Hatches

Good news for future astronauts: scientists are closer to being able to predict when global dust storms will strike the Red Planet. The winds there don’t carry nearly the same force that was shown in the movie “The Martian,” but the dust lofted by storms can still wreak havoc on people and machines, as well as reduce available solar energy. Recent studies indicate a big storm may be brewing during the next few months.

+ Get the full forecast

2. Where No Rover Has Gone Before

Our Opportunity Mars rover will drive down an ancient gully that may have been carved by liquid water. Several spacecraft at Mars have observed such channels from a distance, but this will be the first up-close exploration. Opportunity will also, for the first time, enter the interior of Endeavour Crater, where it has worked for the last five years. All this is part of a two-year extended mission that began Oct. 1, the latest in a series of extensions going back to the end of Opportunity’s prime mission in April 2004. Opportunity landed on Mars in January of that year, on a mission planned to last 90 Martian days (92.4 Earth days). More than 12 Earth years later, it’s still rolling.

+ Follow along + See other recent pictures from Endeavour Crater

3. An Uphill Climb

Opportunity isn’t the only NASA Mars rover getting a mission extension. On the other side of the planet, the Curiosity rover is driving and collecting samples amid some of the most scenic landscapes ever visited on Mars. Curiosity’s two-year mission extension also began Oct. 1. It’s driving toward uphill destinations, including a ridge capped with material rich in the iron-oxide mineral hematite, about a mile-and-a-half (two-and-a-half kilometers) ahead. Beyond that, there’s an exposure of clay-rich bedrock. These are key exploration sites on lower Mount Sharp, which is a layered, Mount-Rainier-size mound where Curiosity is investigating evidence of ancient, water-rich environments that contrast with the harsh, dry conditions on the surface of Mars today.

+ Learn more

4. Keep a Sharp Lookout

Meanwhile, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues its watch on the Red Planet from above. The mission team has just released a massive new collection of super-high-resolution images of the Martian surface.

+ Take a look

5. 20/20 Vision for the 2020 Rover

In the year 2020, Opportunity and Curiosity will be joined by a new mobile laboratory on Mars. In the past week, we tested new “eyes” for that mission. The Mars 2020 rover’s Lander Vision System helped guide the rocket to a precise landing at a predesignated target. The system can direct the craft toward a safe landing at its primary target site or divert touchdown toward better terrain if there are hazards in the approaching target area.

+ Get details

Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.

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

Biotronium series

Hello everyone Im happy to say yo that i f-taser is releasing the biotronium series which is all connected with your biological world or Mother nature..

CHAKRAS (this is a post of cosmic portal,i like it very much)

Match this understanding to other ancient temples

That's true

Pirates didn’t make their captives walk the plank. Though big fans of torture methods like flogging and marooning, there are no actual records of pirates using a plank. The first mention of plank walking was in a 1724 fictional novel by author Daniel Defoe, but if real-life pirates wanted to drown someone, they probably just threw them off the boat. Source Source 2

Nikola Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a ‘working model’ of his 'death beam’. He warned the staff never to open it, describing it as a war-ending particle weapon that could stop invading armies and make warfare pointless. After his death in 1943, someone finally pried the box open and found nothing but a bunch of harmless old electrical components. Source

humanitys journey to mars

post by nasa

Getting to Mars: 4 Things We’re Doing Now

We’re working hard to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. Here are just a few of the things we’re doing now that are helping us prepare for the journey:

1. Research on the International Space Station

The International Space Station is the only microgravity platform for the long-term testing of new life support and crew health systems, advanced habitat modules and other technologies needed to decrease reliance on Earth.

When future explorers travel to the Red Planet, they will need to be able to grow plants for food, atmosphere recycling and physiological benefits. The Veggie experiment on space station is validating this technology right now! Astronauts have grown lettuce and Zinnia flowers in space so far.

The space station is also a perfect place to study the impacts of microgravity on the human body. One of the biggest hurdles of getting to Mars in ensuring that humans are “go” for a long-duration mission. Making sure that crew members will maintain their health and full capabilities for the duration of a Mars mission and after their return to Earth is extremely important. 

Scientists have solid data about how bodies respond to living in microgravity for six months, but significant data beyond that timeframe had not been collected…until now! Former astronaut Scott Kelly recently completed his Year in Space mission, where he spent a year aboard the space station to learn the impacts of microgravity on the human body.

A mission to Mars will likely last about three years, about half the time coming and going to Mars and about half the time on the Red Planet. We need to understand how human systems like vision and bone health are affected and what countermeasures can be taken to reduce or mitigate risks to crew members.

2. Utilizing Rovers & Tech to Gather Data

Through our robotic missions, we have already been on and around Mars for 40 years! Before we send humans to the Red Planet, it’s important that we have a thorough understanding of the Martian environment. Our landers and rovers are paving the way for human exploration. For example, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has helped us map the surface of Mars, which will be critical in selecting a future human landing site on the planet.

Our Mars 2020 rover will look for signs of past life, collect samples for possible future return to Earth and demonstrate technology for future human exploration of the Red Planet. These include testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as subsurface water), improving landing techniques and characterizing weather, dust and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.

We’re also developing a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon. Once it’s there, astronauts will explore it and return with samples in the 2020s. This Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) is part of our plan to advance new technologies and spaceflight experience needed for a human mission to the Martian system in the 2030s.

3. Building the Ride

Okay, so we’ve talked about how we’re preparing for a journey to Mars…but what about the ride? Our Space Launch System, or SLS, is an advanced launch vehicle that will help us explore beyond Earth’s orbit into deep space. SLS will be the world’s most powerful rocket and will launch astronauts in our Orion spacecraft on missions to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.

In the rocket’s initial configuration it will be able to take 154,000 pounds of payload to space, which is equivalent to 12 fully grown elephants! It will be taller than the Statue of Liberty and it’s liftoff weight will be comparable to 8 fully-loaded 747 jets. At liftoff, it will have 8.8 million pounds of thrust, which is more than 31 times the total thrust of a 747 jet. One more fun fact for you…it will produce horsepower equivalent to 160,000 Corvette engines!

Sitting atop the SLS rocket will be our Orion spacecraft. Orion will be the safest most advanced spacecraft ever built, and will be flexible and capable enough to carry humans to a variety of destinations. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.

4. Making it Sustainable

When humans get to Mars, where will they live? Where will they work? These are questions we’ve already thought about and are working toward solving. Six partners were recently selected to develop ground prototypes and/or conduct concept studies for deep space habitats.

These NextSTEP habitats will focus on creating prototypes of deep space habitats where humans can live and work independently for months or years at a time, without cargo supply deliveries from Earth.

Another way that we are studying habitats for space is on the space station. In June, the first human-rated expandable module deployed in space was used. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is a technology demonstration to investigate the potential challenges and benefits of expandable habitats for deep space exploration and commercial low-Earth orbit applications.

Our journey to Mars requires preparation and research in many areas. The powerful new Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft will travel into deep space, building on our decades of robotic Mars explorations, lessons learned on the International Space Station and groundbreaking new technologies.

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

"We shall never know all the good that a simple SMILE can do"

St.Mother Teresa

Biotronium series post-2

The weather suddenly changes.. 'Oh what the Heck, as usual the weather changes suddenly' That's what we say now.But a decade back when weather suddenly changes people say 'some thing is wrong' ..Now what's exactly happening ?.Scientist and theorists say its really something wrong...really wrong - Like a global wipe out ?!.