Space Image of the Day - 2013

In this Dec. 21, 2007 photograph, C. Gordon Fullerton capped an almost 50-year flying career, including more than 38 years with NASA, with a final flight in a NASA F/A-18. Fullerton, who was a NASA astronaut, research pilot and Air Force test pilot, died Aug. 21, 2013. He was 76. On this mission, Fullerton and Dryden research pilot Jim Smolka flew a 90-minute pilot proficiency formation aerobatics flight with another Dryden F/A-18 and a Dryden T-38, concluding with two low-level formation flyovers of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center before landing. Fullerton was honored with a water-cannon spray arch provided by two fire trucks from the Edwards Air Force Base fire department as he taxied the F/A-18 up to the Dryden ramp, and was then greeted by his wife Marie and several hundred Dryden staff after his final flight. Fullerton began his flying career with the U.S. Air Force in 1958 after earning bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Initially trained as a fighter pilot, he later transitioned to multi-engine bombers and became a bomber operations test pilot after attending the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. He then was assigned to the flight crew for the planned Air Force Manned Orbital Laboratory in 1966. Upon cancellation of that program, the Air Force assigned Fullerton to NASA's astronaut corps in 1969. He served on the support crews for the Apollo 14, 15, 16 and 17 lunar missions, and was later assigned to one of the two flight crews that piloted the space shuttle prototype Enterprise during the Approach and Landing Test program at Dryden. He then logged some 382 hours in space when he flew on two early space shuttle missions, STS-3 on Columbia in 1982 and STS-51F on Challenger in 1985. He joined the flight crew branch at NASA Dryden after leaving the astronaut corps in 1986. During his 21 years at Dryden, Fullerton was project pilot on a number of high-profile research efforts, including the Propulsion Controlled Aircraft, the high-speed landing tests of space shuttle landing gear components installed on a modified Convair 990 jetliner, the C-140 JetStar Laminar Flow Control, F-111 Mission Adaptive Wing, F-14 Variable Sweep Flow Transition, X-29 Vortex Flow Control, the Russian Tu-144LL supersonic transport evaluation and Dryden's F-18 Systems Research Aircraft projects. He also was project pilot for a number of research projects involving Dryden's now-retired B-52B mothership, and piloted NASA's DC-8 science laboratory on world-wide missions. Fullerton also served as Associate Director of Flight Operations and chief of the flight crew branch in later years. During his long career, Fullerton logged more than 16,000 flying hours. He retired from the Air Force in 1988 as a colonel after 30 years of active service. Fullerton was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2005, and the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982. His retirement from NASA was effective Dec. 31, 2007. > Read More Image Credit: NASA/Jim Ross (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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This image shows the potentially hazardous near-Earth object 1998 KN3 as it zips past a cloud of dense gas and dust near the Orion nebula. NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting portion of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission, snapped infrared pictures of the asteroid, seen as the yellow-green dot at upper left. Because asteroids are warmed by the sun to roughly room temperature, they glow brightly at the infrared wavelengths used by WISE. Astronomers use infrared light from asteroids to measure their sizes, and when combined with visible-light observations, they can also measure the reflectivity of their surfaces. The WISE infrared data reveal that this asteroid is about .7 mile (1.1 kilometers) in diameter and reflects only about 7 percent of the visible light that falls on its surface, which means it is relatively dark. In this image, blue denotes shorter infrared wavelengths, and red, longer. Hotter objects emit shorter-wavelength light, so they appear blue. The blue stars, for example, have temperatures of thousands of degrees. The coolest gas and dust appears red. The asteroid appears yellow in the image because it is about room temperature: cooler than the distant stars, but warmer than the dust. JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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This natural-color satellite image of the drought-fueled Rim Fire was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA's Terra satellite on Aug. 25, 2013. The fire began on Aug. 17 and, as of Aug. 26, continues to burn on the Stanislaus National Forest, Yosemite National Park, and Bureau of Land Management and state responsibility land. Over 224 square miles have been affected. > Read more > Latest news and images: Fire and Smoke Image Credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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In an attempt to answer prevailing questions about our moon, NASA is making final preparations to launch a probe at 11:27 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 6, 2013, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. The small car-sized Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere and determine whether dust is being lofted into the lunar sky. A thorough understanding of these characteristics of our nearest celestial neighbor will help researchers understand other bodies in the solar system, such as large asteroids, Mercury, and the moons of outer planets. In this photo, engineers as NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia encapsule the LADEE spacecraft into the fairing of the Minotaur V launch vehicle nose-cone. LADEE is the first spacecraft designed, developed, built, integrated and tested at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Image credit: NASA Wallops / Terry Zaperach (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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At first glance, this Hubble picture appears to capture two space giants entangled in a fierce celestial battle, with two galaxies entwined and merging to form one. But this shows just how easy it is to misinterpret the jumble of sparkling stars and get the wrong impression — as it’s all down to a trick of perspective. By chance, these galaxies appear to be aligned from our point of view. In the foreground, the irregular dwarf galaxy PGC 16389 — seen here as a cloud of stars — covers its neighboring galaxy APMBGC 252+125-117, which appears edge-on as a streak. This wide-field image also captures many other more distant galaxies, including a quite prominent face-on spiral towards the right of the picture. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Luca Limatola (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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This set of three images shows views three seconds apart as the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passed directly in front of the sun as seen by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. Curiosity photographed this annular, or ring, eclipse with the telephoto-lens camera of the rover's Mast Camera pair (right Mastcam) on Aug. 17, 2013, the 369th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars. Curiosity paused during its drive that sol for a set of observations that the camera team carefully calculated to record this celestial event. The rover's observations of Phobos help make researchers' knowledge of the moon's orbit even more precise. Because this eclipse occurred near mid-day at Curiosity's location on Mars, Phobos was nearly overhead, closer to the rover than it would have been earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon. This timing made Phobos' silhouette larger against the sun -- as close to a total eclipse of the sun as is possible from Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ. (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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The countenance of astronaut candidate Christina M. Hammock signals her success at fire-starting, a technique that will help sustain her for three days in the wilderness. As the first phase of their extensive training program along the way to become full-fledged astronauts, eight new candidates spent three days in the wild participating in their wilderness survival training, near Rangeley, Maine. Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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It is odd to think that US astronauts still go through survival training incase their landing back on Earth goes a little less then expected.

Does anybody recall any emergency landings that ended up with the astronauts in a totally unexpected place like a forested area?
 
Voshod 2 landed in Taiga, very far from populated area. On 3rd day, cosmonauts Leonov and Belyayev were successfuly resqued. It was in late 1965 year. They both were fine, and it wasn't considered as emergency landing. Now, it's probably takes less to located and resque cosmonauts. However... why not, some knowledges about living in "wild" conditions can be usefull in many other situations.
 
Two NASA aircraft equipped with scientific instruments will fly over the Houston area throughout September of 2013 as part of a multi-year airborne science mission to help scientists better understand how to measure and forecast air quality from space. The aircraft are part of NASA's five-year DISCOVER-AQ study, which stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality. This two-engine B200 King Air aircraft, shown on the tarmac at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., will collect data for the DISCOVER-AQ study looking downward from an altitude of 26,000 feet. The plane's instruments will look down at the Earth's surface, much like a satellite, and measure particulate and gaseous air pollution. > Read More Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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During preparations for NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) observatory launch on Sept. 6, 2013, the spacecraft went through final preparations and close-outs, which included checking alignment after its cross-country shipment, checking the propulsion system for leaks, inspecting and repairing solar panels, and final electrical tests. After these activities were completed, more challenging portions of the launch preparations began: spin testing and fueling. To make sure that the spacecraft is perfectly balanced for flight, engineers mounted it onto a spin table and rotate it at high speeds, approximately one revolution per second. The team measured any offsets during the spinning, and then added small weights to the spacecraft to balance it. Once the spacecraft was balanced dry, the team loaded the propulsion tanks with fuel, oxidizer, and pressurant. The spin testing was performed again "wet," or with fuel, in order to see if the balance changed with the full fuel tanks. Engineers from NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., have now successfully completed launch preparation activities for LADEE, which has been encapsulated into the nose-cone of the Minotaur V rocket at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. LADEE is ready to launch when the window opens on Friday. Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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In an attempt to answer prevailing questions about our moon, NASA is making final preparations to launch a probe at 11:27 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 6, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. The small car-sized Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere and determine whether dust is being lofted into the lunar sky. A thorough understanding of these characteristics of our nearest celestial neighbor will help researchers understand other bodies in the solar system, such as large asteroids, Mercury, and the moons of outer planets. For more information about the LADEE mission, visit: LADEE - Lunar Atmosphere Dust and Environment Explorer. Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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A Minotaur V rocket carrying NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) lifts off from at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, Sept. 6, 2013. LADEE is a robotic mission designed to orbit the moon where and provide unprecedented information about the environment around the moon and give scientists a better understanding of other planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond. Credit: NASA/Chris Perry (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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Lying more than 110 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Antlia (The Air Pump) is the spiral galaxy IC 2560, shown here in an image from NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. At this distance it is a relatively nearby spiral galaxy, and is part of the Antlia cluster — a group of over 200 galaxies held together by gravity. This cluster is unusual; unlike most other galaxy clusters, it appears to have no dominant galaxy within it. In this image, it is easy to spot IC 2560's spiral arms and barred structure. This spiral is what astronomers call a Seyfert-2 galaxy, a kind of spiral galaxy characterized by an extremely bright nucleus and very strong emission lines from certain elements — hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. The bright center of the galaxy is thought to be caused by the ejection of huge amounts of super-hot gas from the region around a central black hole. There is a story behind the naming of this quirky constellation — Antlia was originally named antlia pneumatica by French astronomer Abbé Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, in honor of the invention of the air pump in the 17th century. Credit: Hubble/European Space Agency and NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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In preparation for the Expedition 36 return to Earth, Commander Pavel Vinogradov of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) handed over control of the International Space Station Monday, Sept. 9, 2013 at 2:25 p.m. EDT in a traditional Change of Command Ceremony. Roscosmos Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin will take over command and officially lead Expedition 37 when Expedition 36 undocks Tuesday at 7:35 p.m. Going home with Vinogradov are Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy of NASA and Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos, who arrived at the station March 28. They will land a few hours later in their Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft at 10:58 p.m. (8:58 a.m. Wednesday Kazakhstan time). Soyuz landing coverage begins Tuesday on NASA TV at 4 p.m. with farewell and hatch closure. In the bottom half of this photo, left to right, are Vinogradov and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg of NASA and Misurkin. In the top half of the photo are, left to right, Flight Engineers Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, Cassidy, and Yurchikhin. This photo was taken on June 8, 2013. Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft with Expedition 36 Commander Pavel Vinogradov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy of NASA aboard, is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013. Vinogradov, Misurkin and Cassidy returned to Earth after five and a half months on the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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Saturn's rings appear to form a majestic arc over the planet in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 15, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 705 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 657,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 2 degrees. Image scale is 37 miles (60 kilometers) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit https://www.nasa.gov/cassini and Overview | Cassini – NASA Solar System Exploration. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., rolled out its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va on Friday, Sept. 13, 2013. The Antares is scheduled to launch Cygnus at 11:16 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 17 on a demonstration cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. Cygnus will deliver about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food and clothing, to the Expedition 37 crew aboard the space station, who will capture and install the spacecraft on Sept. 22 using the station's robotic arm. Orbital is building and testing its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Following a successful demonstration mission, Orbital is poised to begin eight cargo flights contracted by NASA to resupply the station. Future flights of Cygnus will significantly increase NASA's ability to deliver new science investigations to the nation's only laboratory in microgravity. Image Credit: NASA/Brea Reeves (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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We live on a dynamic, restless planet. On any given day, there is usually a cyclone, tropical depression, or extra-tropical storm brewing somewhere on the Earth. But for a brief moment this week, the skies over all of the oceans were relatively calm. The image above is a composite of fourteen polar satellite passes, or swaths, stitched together from September 8, 2013. The natural-color images were acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. At the time of those near-midday passes, there were no hurricanes, cyclones, or tropical storms in the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Ocean basins—a relatively rare occurrence at the height of the hurricane/cyclone season in the northern hemisphere. There was plenty of cloud cover, of course, and smaller storm systems. In the eastern Pacific, remnants of tropical storm Lorena were breaking up near the Baja Peninsula. In the eastern Atlantic, the pieces of tropical depression #9 were starting to gather near the islands of Cape Verde; by the next day, tropical storm Humberto would form. In its May and August 2013 outlooks, the National Hurricane Center forecasted a 70 percent chance of a “more active than normal” season, with 13 to 20 named storms and 7 to 11 hurricanes. A “normal” season typically produces 12 named storms, including 6 hurricanes. Through the second week of September (the midpoint of the Atlantic hurricane season), there have been nine named storms—keeping pace with predictions—but just one that reached hurricane strength. The one hurricane, Humberto, was observed on September 11, 2013, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Humberto became a hurricane around 5 a.m. on September 11, just hours short of becoming the latest date for the first hurricane in a season. By September 13, Humberto had weakened to a tropical storm. Forecasts were calling for the northwest-moving storm to reach hurricane status again by September 19, when it will be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and well away from land.The slow start does not necessarily mean the hurricane season will be mild. “What happens in the early part of the season is generally not a good predictor of the second half of the season, which is when the majority of hurricanes and major hurricanes form,” said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “NOAA’s outlooks are for the season as a whole, and not for any particular month during the season.” In the period from 1981 to 2010, the Atlantic basin has averaged six hurricanes per year, and 61 percent of all Atlantic named storms form from September through November. “The 2013 hurricane season was billed as a stud, but up through mid-September, it has been a dud,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Stay vigilant, though. Hurricanes could be late and active. Remember hurricane Sandy in late October last year.” Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense. Caption Credit: Michael Carlowicz. Instrument: Suomi NPP - VIIRS (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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A United States flag is flown at half-staff just outside the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad-0A with the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia. President Obama directed Monday that flags be lowered to half-staff to pay tribute to the victims of "the senseless acts of violence" perpetrated at the Washington Navy Yard. NASA's commercial space partner, Orbital Sciences Corporation, is targeting a Sept. 18 launch of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, demonstration cargo resupply mission, to the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls (More at NASA Picture of The Day)

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