Our Asteroid-Bound Mission Is Set To Slingshot Around Earth

These three towers are only a small portion of the massive Eagle Nebula.

Known as the “Pillars of Creation,” the beautiful tendrils of cosmic dust and gas are giving birth to new stars, buried within their spires. This iconic image only shows a stretch of about four or five light-years … while the whole nebula itself spans about 70 by 55 light-years.

Learn more about Hubble’s celebration of Nebula November and see new nebula images, here.

You can also keep up with Hubble on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr!

Image credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

We marked the 20th anniversary of Pathfinder's landing on Mars this week. 

We have had an active robotic presence there ever since—in fact, no one under 20 has experienced a day without NASA at Mars—but the Pathfinder mission was the first-ever robotic rover to explore the Red Planet. Below are 10 things to know about this iconic mission as we celebrate two decades of unprecedented science and discovery.

1. A Date to Remember

Pathfinder launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Dec. 4, 1996, and landed at Mars' Ares Vallis on July 4, 1997. The landing site, an ancient flood plain in Mars' northern hemisphere, is among the rockiest parts of the planet. Scientists chose it because they believed it was a relatively safe surface to land on and contained a wide variety of rocks deposited during a catastrophic flood.

2. Precious Cargo 

Pathfinder delivered to Mars a tiny, 23-pound (11.5 kilogram) rover named Sojourner, which carried scientific instruments to analyze the Martian atmosphere, climate and geology. To put its small size in perspective, the mechanisms at the end of the Curiosity Rover's robotic arm are heavier than all of Sojourner. You can check out a 360 video of Pathfinder and Sojourner here.

3. Who Named the Rover? 

The name Sojourner was chosen after a year-long, worldwide competition in which students up to 18 years old were invited to write about a historical heroine and how she would translate their accomplishments to the Martian environment. Twelve-year-old Valerie Ambroise of Bridgeport, Connecticut, submitted the winning essay on Sojourner Truth, a Civil War-era abolitionist who made it her mission to "travel up and down the land" advocating for the rights of all people to be free and participate fully in society.

4. Quite the Entrance 

Pathfinder's landing was innovative and unprecedented. It entered the thin Martian atmosphere assisted by parachute to slow its descent and with a giant system of airbags to cushion the impact. This mission marked the first time this airbag technique was used. Spirit and Opportunity later used the same method successfully.

5. Mobile Matters 

The wireless modem between Pathfinder and Sojourner was a commercial, off-the-shelf product. The project team acquired several and stress-tested them until they found the best ones to send off to Mars.

6. It's in the Details 

Sojourner had bumpers—actual mechanical fenders—painted with black and white stripes. It also had two forward-facing black-and-white cameras, and one rear-facing camera (all one-third of a Megapixel). And Sojourner's tiny wheels measured just 12.5 centimeters in diameter.

7. Viral-worthy

Pathfinder was widely regarded as one of the first "internet sensations." There was so much web traffic from around the world, the entire internet backbone of France crashed under the load.

8. We're Getting Warmer 

Among the many scientific discoveries from Pathfinder and Sojourner: Rounded pebbles and cobbles at the landing site suggested that Mars might have had running water during a warmer past when liquid water was stable on the planet. Early morning water ice clouds also were seen in the lower atmosphere.

9. Long Live the Mission 

The lander and the rover both outlived their design lives—the lander by nearly three times, and the rover by 12 times.

10. Pathfinder's Photo Album 

Go back in time and see historical photographs of Pathfinder's assembly process here.

Infrared is Beautiful

Why was James Webb Space Telescope designed to observe infrared light? How can its images hope to compare to those taken by the (primarily) visible-light Hubble Space Telescope? The short answer is that Webb will absolutely capture beautiful images of the universe, even if it won’t see exactly what Hubble sees. (Spoiler: It will see a lot of things even better.)

The James Webb Space Telescope, or Webb, is our upcoming infrared space observatory, which will launch in 2019. It will spy the first luminous objects that formed in the universe and shed light on how galaxies evolve, how stars and planetary systems are born, and how life could form on other planets.

What is infrared light? 

This may surprise you, but your remote control uses light waves just beyond the visible spectrum of light—infrared light waves—to change channels on your TV.

Infrared light shows us how hot things are. It can also show us how cold things are. But it all has to do with heat. Since the primary source of infrared radiation is heat or thermal radiation, any object that has a temperature radiates in the infrared. Even objects that we think of as being very cold, such as an ice cube, emit infrared.

There are legitimate scientific reasons for Webb to be an infrared telescope. There are things we want to know more about, and we need an infrared telescope to learn about them. Things like: stars and planets being born inside clouds of dust and gas; the very first stars and galaxies, which are so far away the light they emit has been stretched into the infrared; and the chemical fingerprints of elements and molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets, some of which are only seen in the infrared.

In a star-forming region of space called the 'Pillars of Creation,' this is what we see with visible light:

And this is what we see with infrared light:

Infrared light can pierce through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar view.

Webb will see some visible light: red and orange. But the truth is that even though Webb sees mostly infrared light, it will still take beautiful images. The beauty and quality of an astronomical image depends on two things: the sharpness of the image and the number of pixels in the camera. On both of these counts, Webb is very similar to, and in many ways better than, Hubble. Webb will take much sharper images than Hubble at infrared wavelengths, and Hubble has comparable resolution at the visible wavelengths that Webb can see.

Webb’s infrared data can be translated by computer into something our eyes can appreciate – in fact, this is what we do with Hubble data. The gorgeous images we see from Hubble don’t pop out of the telescope looking fully formed. To maximize the resolution of the images, Hubble takes multiple exposures through different color filters on its cameras.

The separate exposures, which look black and white, are assembled into a true color picture via image processing. Full color is important to image analysis of celestial objects. It can be used to highlight the glow of various elements in a nebula, or different stellar populations in a galaxy. It can also highlight interesting features of the object that might be overlooked in a black and white exposure, and so the images not only look beautiful but also contain a lot of useful scientific information about the structure, temperatures, and chemical makeup of a celestial object.

This image shows the sequences in the production of a Hubble image of nebula Messier 17:

Here’s another compelling argument for having telescopes that view the universe outside the spectrum of visible light – not everything in the universe emits visible light. There are many phenomena which can only be seen at certain wavelengths of light, for example, in the X-ray part of the spectrum, or in the ultraviolet. When we combine images taken at different wavelengths of light, we can get a better understanding of an object, because each wavelength can show us a different feature or facet of it. 

Just like infrared data can be made into something meaningful to human eyes, so can each of the other wavelengths of light, even X-rays and gamma-rays.

Below is an image of the M82 galaxy created using X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and visible light data from Hubble. Also note how aesthetically pleasing the image is despite it not being just optical light:

Though Hubble sees primarily visible light, it can see some infrared. And despite not being optimized for it, and being much less powerful than Webb, it still produced this stunning image of the Horsehead Nebula.

It’s a big universe out there – more than our eyes can see. But with all the telescopes now at our disposal (as well as the new ones that will be coming online in the future), we are slowly building a more accurate picture. And it’s definitely a beautiful one. Just take a look...

…At this Spitzer infrared image of a shock wave in dust around the star Zeta Ophiuchi.

…this Spitzer image of the Helix Nebula, created using infrared data from the telescope and ultraviolet data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer.

…this image of the “wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud, created with infrared data from Spitzer and X-ray data from Chandra.

...the below image of the Milky Way’s galactic center, taken with our flying SOFIA telescope. It flies at more than 40,000 feet, putting it above 99% of the  water vapor in Earth's atmosphere-- critical for observing infrared because water vapor blocks infrared light from reaching the ground. This infrared view reveals the ring of gas and dust around a supermassive black hole that can't be seen with visible light. 

…and this Hubble image of the Mystic Mountains in the Carina Nebula.

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Image Credits Eagle Nebula: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team Hubble Image Processing - Messier 17: NASA/STScI Galaxy M82 Composite Image: NASA, CXC, JHU, D.Strickland, JPL-Caltech, C. Engelbracht (University of Arizona), ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Horsehead Nebula: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Zeta Ophiuchi: NASA/JPL-Caltech Helix Nebula: NASA/JPL-Caltech Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech Milky Way Circumnuclear Ring: NASA/DLR/USRA/DSI/FORCAST Team/ Lau et al. 2013 Mystic Mountains in the Carina Nebula: NASA/ESA/M. Livio & Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

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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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In temperatures that drop below -20 degrees Fahrenheit, along a route occasionally blocked by wind-driven ice dunes, a hundred miles from any other people, a team led by two of our scientists are surveying an unexplored stretch of Antarctic ice. 

They’ve packed extreme cold-weather gear and scientific instruments onto sleds pulled by two tank-like snow machines called PistenBullys, and after a stop at the South Pole Station (seen in this image), they began a two- to three-week traverse.

The 470-mile expedition in one of the most barren landscapes on Earth will ultimately provide the best assessment of the accuracy of data collected from space by the Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), set to launch in 2018.

This traverse provides an extremely challenging way to assess the accuracy of the data. ICESat-2’s datasets are going to tell us incredible things about how Earth’s ice is changing, and what that means for things like sea level rise.

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

Eclipse 2017: A Unique Chance for Science

On Aug. 21, the Moon will cast its shadow down on Earth, giving all of North America the chance to see a solar eclipse. Within the narrow, 60- to 70-mile-wide band stretching from Oregon to South Carolina called the path of totality, the Moon will completely block out the Sun’s face; elsewhere in North America, the Moon will cover only a part of the star, leaving a crescent-shaped Sun visible in the sky.

Find eclipse times for your location with our interactive version of this map.

A total solar eclipse happens somewhere on Earth about once every 18 months. But because Earth’s surface is mostly ocean, most eclipses are visible over land for only a short time, if at all. The Aug. 21 total solar eclipse is different – its path stretches over land for nearly 90 minutes, giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to make scientific measurements from the ground.

No matter where you are, it is never safe to look directly at the partially eclipsed or uneclipsed Sun. Make sure you’re prepared to watch safely, whether that’s with solar viewing glasses, a homemade pinhole projector, or online with us at nasa.gov/eclipselive.

Within the path of totality, the Moon will completely obscure the Sun’s face for up to 2 minutes and 40 seconds, depending on location. This will give people within the path of totality a glimpse of the innermost reaches of the Sun’s corona, the outer region of the atmosphere that is thought to house the processes that kick-start much of the space weather that can influence Earth, as well as heating the whole corona to extraordinarily high temperatures.

In fact, scientists got their first hint at these unusually high temperatures during the total solar eclipse of 1869, when instruments detected unexpected light emission. It was later discovered that this emission happens when iron is stripped of its electrons at extremely high temperatures.

This region of the Sun’s atmosphere can’t be measured at any other time, as human-made instruments that create artificial eclipses must block out much of the Sun’s atmosphere – as well as its bright face – in order to produce clear images.

We’re funding six science investigations to study the Sun’s processes on Aug. 21. Teams will spread out across the path of totality, focusing their instruments on the Sun’s atmosphere. One team will use a pair of retro-fitted WB-57F jets to chase the Moon’s shadow across the eastern US, extending the time of totality to more than 7 minutes combined, up from the 2 minutes and 40 seconds possible on the ground.

Our scientists are also using the Aug. 21 eclipse as a natural science experiment to study how Earth’s atmosphere reacts to the sudden loss of solar radiation within the Moon’s shadow.

One region of interest is Earth’s ionosphere. Stretching from roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth’s surface, the tenuous ionosphere is an electrified layer of the atmosphere that reacts to changes from both Earth below and space above and can interfere with communication and navigation signals.

The ionosphere is created by ionizing radiation from the Sun. When totality hits on Aug. 21, we’ll know exactly how much solar radiation is blocked, the area of land it’s blocked over and for how long. Combined with measurements of the ionosphere during the eclipse, we’ll have information on both the solar input and corresponding ionosphere response, enabling us to study the mechanisms underlying ionospheric changes better than ever before.

The eclipse is also a chance for us to study Earth’s energy system, which is in a constant dance to maintain a balance between incoming radiation from the Sun and outgoing radiation from Earth to space, called the energy budget. Like a giant cloud, the Moon during the 2017 total solar eclipse will cast a large shadow across a swath of the United States.

Our scientists already know the dimensions and light-blocking properties of the Moon, and will use ground and space instruments to learn how this large shadow affects the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface, especially around the edges of the shadow. This will help develop new calculations that improve our estimates of the amount of solar energy reaching the ground, and our understanding of one of the key players in regulating Earth’s energy system — clouds.

Learn all about the Aug. 21 eclipse at eclipse2017.nasa.gov, and follow @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook for more. Watch the eclipse through the eyes of NASA at nasa.gov/eclipselive starting at 12 PM ET on Aug. 21.

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Meet Fermi: Our Eyes on the Gamma-Ray Sky

Black holes, cosmic rays, neutron stars and even new kinds of physics — for 10 years, data from our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have helped unravel some of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos. And Fermi is far from finished!

On June 11, 2008, at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the countdown started for Fermi, which was called the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) at the time. 

The telescope was renamed after launch to honor Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American pioneer in high-energy physics who also helped develop the first nuclear reactor. 

Fermi has had many other things named after him, like Fermi’s Paradox, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the synthetic element fermium.

Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory

The Fermi telescope measures some of the highest energy bursts of light in the universe; watching the sky to help scientists answer all sorts of questions about some of the most powerful objects in the universe. 

Its main instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which can view 20% of the sky at a time and makes a new image of the whole gamma-ray sky every three hours. Fermi’s other instrument is the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor. It sees even more of the sky at lower energies and is designed to detect brief flashes of gamma-rays from the cosmos and Earth.

This sky map below is from 2013 and shows all of the high energy gamma rays observed by the LAT during Fermi’s first five years in space.  The bright glowing band along the map’s center is our own Milky Way galaxy!

So what are gamma rays? 

Well, they’re a form of light. But light with so much energy and with such short wavelengths that we can’t see them with the naked eye. Gamma rays require a ton of energy to produce — from things like subatomic particles (such as protons) smashing into each other. 

Here on Earth, you can get them in nuclear reactors and lightning strikes. Here’s a glimpse of the Seattle skyline if you could pop on a pair of gamma-ray goggles. That purple streak? That’s still the Milky Way, which is consistently the brightest source of gamma rays in our sky.

In space, you find that kind of energy in places like black holes and neutron stars. The raindrop-looking animation below shows a big flare of gamma rays that Fermi spotted coming from something called a blazar, which is a kind of quasar, which is different from a pulsar... actually, let’s back this up a little bit.

One of the sources of gamma rays that Fermi spots are pulsars. Pulsars are a kind of neutron star, which is a kind of star that used to be a lot bigger, but collapsed into something that’s smaller and a lot denser. Pulsars send out beams of gamma rays. But the thing about pulsars is that they rotate. 

So Fermi only sees a beam of gamma rays from a pulsar when it’s pointed towards Earth. Kind of like how you only periodically see the beam from a lighthouse. These flashes of light are very regular. You could almost set your watch by them!

Quasars are supermassive black holes surrounded by disks of gas. As the gas falls into the black hole, it releases massive amount of energy, including — you guessed it — gamma rays. Blazars are quasars that send out beams of gamma rays and other forms of light — right in our direction. 

When Fermi sees them, it’s basically looking straight down this tunnel of light, almost all the way back to the black hole. This means we can learn about the kinds of conditions in that environment when the rays were emitted. Fermi has found about 5,500 individual sources of gamma rays, and the bulk of them have been blazars, which is pretty nifty.

But gamma rays also have many other sources. We’ve seen them coming from supernovas where stars die and from star factories where stars are born. They’re created in lightning storms here on Earth, and our own Sun can toss them out in solar flares. 

Gamma rays were in the news last year because of something Fermi spotted at almost the same time as the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and European Gravitational Observatory’s Virgo on August 17, 2017. Fermi, LIGO, Virgo, and numerous other observatories spotted the merger of two neutron stars. It was the first time that gravitational waves and light were confirmed to come from the same source.

Fermi has been looking at the sky for almost 10 years now, and it’s helped scientists advance our understanding of the universe in many ways. And the longer it looks, the more we’ll learn. Discover more about how we’ll be celebrating Fermi’s achievements all year.

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Ever want to ask a real life astronaut a question? Here’s your chance!

Astronauts Drew Feustel & Ricky Arnold will be taking your questions in a Video Answer Time session. We’ll collect your questions and send them to space to be answered by the astronauts on Friday, May 18. We’ll record their answers and post them on Wednesday, May 23 here on NASA’s Tumblr. Make sure to ask your question now by visiting http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask!

Andrew J. Feustel was selected by NASA in 2000.  He has been assigned to Expedition 55/56, which launched in March 2018. The Lake Orion, Michigan native has a Ph.D. in the Geological Sciences, specializing in Seismology, and is a veteran of two spaceflights. Follow Feustel on Twitter and Instagram.

Richard R. Arnold II was selected as an astronaut by NASA in May 2004. The Maryland native worked in the marine sciences and as a teacher in his home state, as well as in countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. Follow Arnold on Twitter and Instagram.

And don’t forget to submit your questions by 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 15 at http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask!

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

New Science from our Mission to Touch the Sun

In August 2018, our Parker Solar Probe mission launched to space, soon becoming the closest-ever spacecraft from the Sun. Now, scientists have announced their first discoveries from this exploration of our star!

The Sun may look calm to us here on Earth, but it's an active star, unleashing powerful bursts of light, deluges of particles moving near the speed of light and billion-ton clouds of magnetized material. All of this activity can affect our technology here on Earth and in space.

Parker Solar Probe's main science goals are to understand the physics that drive this activity — and its up-close look has given us a brand-new perspective. Here are a few highlights from what we've learned so far.

1. Surprising events in the solar wind

The Sun releases a continual outflow of magnetized material called the solar wind, which shapes space weather near Earth. Observed near Earth, the solar wind is a relatively uniform flow of plasma, with occasional turbulent tumbles. Closer to the solar wind's source, Parker Solar Probe saw a much different picture: a complicated, active system. 

One type of event in particular drew the eye of the science teams: flips in the direction of the magnetic field, which flows out from the Sun, embedded in the solar wind. These reversals — dubbed "switchbacks" — last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes as they flow over Parker Solar Probe. During a switchback, the magnetic field whips back on itself until it is pointed almost directly back at the Sun.

The exact source of the switchbacks isn't yet understood, but Parker Solar Probe's measurements have allowed scientists to narrow down the possibilities — and observations from the mission's 21 remaining solar flybys should help scientists better understand these events. 

2. Seeing tiny particle events

The Sun can accelerate tiny electrons and ions into storms of energetic particles that rocket through the solar system at nearly the speed of light. These particles carry a lot of energy, so they can damage spacecraft electronics and even endanger astronauts, especially those in deep space, outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field — and the short warning time for such particles makes them difficult to avoid.

Energetic particles from the Sun impact a detector on ESA & NASA's SOHO satellite.

Parker Solar Probe's energetic particle instruments have measured several never-before-seen events so small that all trace of them is lost before they reach Earth. These instruments have also measured a rare type of particle burst with a particularly high number of heavier elements — suggesting that both types of events may be more common than scientists previously thought.

3. Rotation of the solar wind

Near Earth, we see the solar wind flowing almost straight out from the Sun in all directions. But the Sun rotates as it releases the solar wind, and before it breaks free, the wind spins along in sync with the Sun's surface. For the first time, Parker was able to observe the solar wind while it was still rotating – starting more than 20 million miles from the Sun.

The strength of the circulation was stronger than many scientists had predicted, but it also transitioned more quickly than predicted to an outward flow, which helps mask the effects of that fast rotation from the vantage point where we usually see them from, near Earth, about 93 million miles away. Understanding this transition point in the solar wind is key to helping us understand how the Sun sheds energy, with implications for the lifecycles of stars and the formation of protoplanetary disks.

4. Hints of a dust-free zone

Parker also saw the first direct evidence of dust starting to thin out near the Sun – an effect that has been theorized for nearly a century, but has been impossible to measure until now. Space is awash in dust, the cosmic crumbs of collisions that formed planets, asteroids, comets and other celestial bodies billions of years ago. Scientists have long suspected that, close to the Sun, this dust would be heated to high temperatures by powerful sunlight, turning it into a gas and creating a dust-free region around the Sun.

For the first time, Parker's imagers saw the cosmic dust begin to thin out a little over 7 million miles from the Sun. This decrease in dust continues steadily to the current limits of Parker Solar Probe's instruments, measurements at a little over 4 million miles from the Sun. At that rate of thinning, scientists expect to see a truly dust-free zone starting a little more than 2-3 million miles from the Sun — meaning the spacecraft could observe the dust-free zone as early as 2020, when its sixth flyby of the Sun will carry it closer to our star than ever before.

These are just a few of Parker Solar Probe's first discoveries, and there's plenty more science to come throughout the mission! For the latest on our Sun, follow @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook.

Celebrating the Earth (Off the Earth!)

To find the perfect perch for Earth observation research, just look up – about 240 miles up. The International Space Station serves as an optimal platform for studying our dynamic planet, where spectacular views support science.

With currently active instruments and facilities like High Definition Earth Viewing, Crew Earth Observations, Lightning Imaging Sensor, SAGE-III and Meteor, researchers on the ground are able to use the station’s unique (and useful!) vantage point to track Earth’s weather patterns, obtain images documenting changes on the planet’s surface, understand the origin of meteors falling towards Earth, and better understand the atmosphere.

The space station’s 90-minute orbit allows it to cover 90% of the Earth’s populated surfaces. That means we are able to study A LOT of that big blue marble.

Let’s talk a little about how the space station serves as a platform for Earth observation:

Each day, as the space station passes over regions of the Earth, crew members photograph the area below as a part of the Crew Earth Observations Facility investigation, one of the longest-running experiments on the orbiting laboratory. Crew members are able to photograph large-scale weather events like the recent Hurricane Harvey from the space station’s Cupola. These little science postcards from space can be used by researchers and the public to learn more about our home planet.

Want to see a picture of your hometown from space? Search for it in the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (GAPE).

The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment streams live video of Earth for online viewing. This investigation not only provides hours and hours of footage of the Earth below, but also demonstrates how the technology holds up against the harsh environment of space. High school students helped design some of the cameras' components, through the High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) program, and student teams perform most of the HDEV operation. (Whoa! Check out HUNCH and STEM on Station for more opportunities for student involvement!)

Useful for weather forecasting, hurricane monitoring, and observations of large-scale climate phenomena such as El Niño, RapidScat used radar pulses reflected off the ocean to measure wind speed and direction over the ocean.

RapidScat completed its successful two-year mission, outlasting its original decommission date before suffering a power loss. Although RapidScat is no longer transmitting data back to Earth, the station hosts many other Earth-observation tools the Cyclone Intensity Measurements from the ISS (CyMISS) an experiment that seeks to develop detailed information on tropical storm structure to better estimate storm intensity, which will help government agencies to better prepare communities for impending natural disasters; and the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a previously-flown lidar instrument which measured atmospheric profiles of aerosols and clouds to better understand their properties and interactions, as well as provided data useful to improving climate change models.

Learn more about RapidScat’s mission conclusion HERE! Take a look at CATS mission data HERE!

Watch more inspiring videos and learn about how we’re capturing the beauty of Earth HERE.

Crew members are able to photograph large-scale weather events like the recent Hurricane Harvey from the space station’s Cupola. These little science postcards from space can be used by researchers and the public to learn more about our home planet.

Plants in space!

Future long-duration missions into the solar system will require a fresh food supply to supplement crew diets, which means growing crops in space. Growing food in such a harsh environment also teaches us a little bit about growing in harsh environments here on Earth.

Here are a few plant-based investigations currently happening aboard the orbiting laboratory:

Veggie is a chamber on the space station that helps scientists grow, harvest and study different space crops. This experiment is called VEG-03D and they’ve been able to grow six rounds of crops so far.

SpaceX's 13th Commercial Resupply vehicle carried many valuable items to the orbiting laboratory, including Plant Gravity Perception, an investigation that uses the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) to simulate gravity to help plants grow its roots downward, and shoots upwards. The shoots need to face upwards, towards the light, so they can absorb sunlight and nutrients. Without this, plants wouldn’t know which way to grow. Yikes!

Learn more about Plant Gravity Perception HERE!

The Advanced Plant Habitat is a large chamber that supports commercial and fundamental plant research for at least one year of continuous use. A great feature to this habitat is that the astronauts can view the plant’s progress through a window on the door.

Whether astronauts are taking pictures of the planet or growing crops in space, all science aboard the space station plants seeds for a better life on Earth. Biology investigations directly grow our knowledge of agricultural techniques for harsh environments and imagery from space can give us a clearer idea of our planet’s health and emerging weather patterns.

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