Crystals in space! 💎
Our orbiting laboratory, the International Space Station (@ISS), is a perfect environment for creating protein crystal structures for research. In microgravity, protein molecules form more orderly, high-quality crystals, giving scientists a clearer picture into understanding their function so they can develop more effective treatments for diseases. Since experiments often need more than one attempt to generate ideal crystals, researchers may have to return samples to Earth for analysis and then revisit the experiment on a later space mission.
Scientists are currently testing new methods of growing crystals that allow astronauts to observe imperfections, make real-time adjustments and try growing them again. This dramatically reduces the time and cost to conduct experiments in space, allowing astronauts to expand how much research happens in space. During their stay aboard the space station, astronauts conduct approximately 250 experiments and investigations that can be applied to future space missions and also to benefit humankind.
Credit: NASA
Great ball of fire! 🔥 This close-up view of the Sun is from a two-hour period on August 13, 2018, showing a minor eruption of charged particles rising up and twisting about before falling back into the Sun. Captured in extreme ultraviolet light, these kinds of events are difficult to see except when they occur along the sun's edge. At its peak, the plasma rises to heights that are several times the diameter of Earth.
We use the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which captured this view, to better understand the Sun's influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere in many wavelengths simultaneously. This allows us to better understand the solar variations that influence life on Earth and humanity's technological systems by looking for solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance that lead to better predictions of space weather events.
What's up in the night sky this month? A late summertime road-trip of constellations along the Milky Way, plus great views of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.
It was Aug. 14, 2017, just one week before the Moon would cross paths with the Sun and Earth, casting its shadow across the United States. The entire country buzzed with anticipation for the fleeting chance to see the corona, the Sun’s tenuous outer atmosphere, during #Eclipse2017.
But the wait was uniquely nerve-wracking for a group of scientists at Predictive Science Inc., a private research company in San Diego: They had just published a prediction of what the corona would look like on Aug. 21, the day of the total solar eclipse. How would their prediction — the result of a complex numerical model and tens of hours of computing — compare to the real thing?
After the eclipse, the group found their prediction bore a striking resemblance to the Aug. 21, 2017, corona, although the model lacks many finer structures. This visualization shows the Sun’s three-dimensional magnetic field during one full solar rotation. The Predictive Science researchers modeled magnetic field lines in order to calculate the presence of complex structures in the corona.
The ability to forecast and predict space weather — much like we do terrestrial weather — is critical to mitigating these impacts, and models such as Predictive Science’s are key tools in the effort.
Credit: Predictive Science Inc./NASA Goddard, Joy Ng
OMG! The Oceans Melting Greenland research team is in the field right now, flying planes and taking measurements over Greenland’s vast sheets of ice. These flights are long and stretch over remote areas. How do they pack to make sure they’re prepared for anything? Take a look at what one NASA team member carries in his flight suit pockets.
The Sun may look unchanging to us here on Earth, but that’s not the whole story. Watching the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light with satellites like the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows how active it really is — constantly changing, with events that influence the entire solar system, including Earth. Learn more about how we study the Sun at nasa.gov/sunearth. Music by Lars Leonhard.
We're sending a helicopter to Mars. The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.
This weekend, Mars is closer to Earth than it's been in 15 years, visible as a bright, reddish jewel in the sky. We took a closer look with the Hubble Space Telescope (@NASAHubble) and saw images of dark red dust in Mars’ atmosphere, the result of a storm raging across the entire planet. Also in our night sky right now? Saturn -- Hubble took some beautiful new snapshots of the ringed planet as well.
Using advanced algorithms, a team of scientists found never-before-detected, fine-grained structures in the Sun’s million-degree atmosphere, also known as the corona. This finding could help answer questions related to the stream of charged particles that flow outward from the Sun, known as solar wind.
In deep space, the solar wind is turbulent and gusty, but how did it get that way? Did it leave the Sun smooth, and become turbulent as it crossed the solar system, or are the gusts telling us about the Sun itself? Answering this question requires observing the outer corona — the source of the solar wind — in extreme detail. If the Sun itself causes the turbulence in the solar wind, then we should be able to see complex structures right from the beginning of the wind’s journey.
But existing data didn’t show such fine-grained structure — at least, until now.
Currently orbiting our Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) sends back data and stunning images of Earth's closest neighbor. Launched in 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data about the Moon's surface, as well as changes to its gravity and surface temperatures. The full Moon this week gives you the chance to see some of the same features LRO captures up close. Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/LRO
Happy #NationalMoonDay! To celebrate the 49th anniversary of #Apollo11 Moon landing, we present you with “Moonlight,” a video by one of our @NASAGoddard Visualizers set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune. The visualization was compiled using 9 years of topographic and visual data from our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to create a stunning portrait of one lunar cycle. Make sure to turn the sound on! 🔊
In celebration of baseball's All-Star Game, our administrator Jim Bridenstine shares imagery from a unique perspective -- views of the cities with Major League Baseball (@MLB) stadiums as captured by our astronauts on the International Space Station (@ISS), located 250 miles above Earth.
Humans are going back to the Moon. And when we get there, we plan to stay for a while. We take you behind the scenes @NASA to show five ways we’re working to get astronauts back to the Moon for long-term exploration and preparation for human missions to Mars and deeper into our solar system. Learn more about our plans to return to the Moon: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasas-exploration-campaign-back-to-the-moon-and-on-to-mars
A room with Earth views! 🌎Earlier this week, astronaut Ricky Arnold (@astro_ricky) captured this spectacular view of our home planet while he was orbiting at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. If you’re wondering where in the world this video was taken, it starts as the International Space Station (@ISS) is above San Francisco and moving southward through the Americas. Each day, the station completes 16 orbits of our home planet as the six humans living and working aboard our orbiting laboratory conduct important science and research. Their work will not only benefit life here on Earth, but will help us venture deeper into space than ever before.
Aerospace engineers take you on a tour of the Kraken – the Disorientation Research Device at Naval Medical Research Unit in Dayton, Ohio. We're working with a U.S. Navy research team to develop and evaluate cockpit displays to help pilots recover from upsets or unusual attitudes.
This animation shows a supermassive black hole billions of times the mass of the Sun. This particular black hole anchors a type of galaxy called a blazar, which produces two jets of particles moving at nearly the speed of light — one of which points almost directly at Earth.
On September 22, our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope saw a powerful flare of high-energy light from this blazar. At the same time, the National Science Foundation’s (@nsfgov) IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected a neutrino — a high-energy cosmic particle — from the same direction.
The neutrino was the first we’ve ever detected from a source outside our galactic neighborhood, and this discovery is also the first time we’ve seen light and a neutrino from the same black hole source. Fermi and IceCube’s work represents a new chapter in multimessenger astronomy – viewing the same event using different messengers like light, particles and gravitational waves.
#nasa #space #science #astronomy #blackhole #galaxy #light #particles #gammaray #blazar #neutrino
