A test version of the Orion spacecraft is loaded onto a C-17 aircraft in preparation for the 10th in a series of evaluations of its parachute system. During the test on July 24, 2013, the mock capsule was dropped from a C-17 aircraft at its highest altitude yet, 35,000 feet above the Arizona desert. One of three massive main parachutes was cut away early on purpose, leaving the spacecraft to land with only two. The test at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground was the highest-altitude test of a human spacecraft parachute since NASA's Apollo Program. The test was part of a series of parachute tests that will enable NASA to certify Orion to carry humans into space. The system already has met the necessary requirements for Orion's first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), in September 2014. During that flight, Orion will travel 3,600 miles into orbit, then return to Earth at speeds as fast as 20,000 mph, putting the parachute system to the test again as it lands in the Pacific Ocean. > Read more Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
This striking cosmic whirl is the center of galaxy NGC 524, as seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy is located in the constellation of Pisces, some 90 million light-years from Earth. NGC 524 is a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies are believed to be an intermediate state in galactic evolution — they are neither elliptical nor spiral. Spirals are middle-aged galaxies with vast, pin wheeling arms that contain millions of stars. Along with these stars are large clouds of gas and dust that, when dense enough, are the nurseries where new stars are born. When all the gas is either depleted or lost into space, the arms gradually fade away and the spiral shape begins to weaken. At the end of this process, what remains is a lenticular galaxy — a bright disc full of old, red stars surrounded by what little gas and dust the galaxy has managed to cling on to. This image shows the shape of NGC 524 in detail, formed by the remaining gas surrounding the galaxy’s central bulge. Observations of this galaxy have revealed that it maintains some spiral-like motion, explaining its intricate structure. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
In early April 2013, clouds stretched in parallel rows for hundreds of kilometers over the Bering Sea. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of the phenomenon on April 7, 2013. The parallel clouds, known as cloud streets, originated along the edge of the sea ice, which extended southward from the snow-covered expanses of Russia and Alaska. The location of the cloud formation was not a coincidence. When cold air blows over ice and snow and encounters moist air over open water, the meeting of the air masses can cause the formation of parallel cylinders of spinning air. Clouds form along the upward cycle in the cylinders, where air is rising, and skies remain clear along the downward cycle, where air is falling. In the north, light cloud cover partially obscured the sea ice, but its characteristic tendril shapes could still be seen through the clouds. Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC Caption: Michon Scott (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
The Saturn moons Mimas and Pandora remind us of how different they are when they appear together, as in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Pandora's small size means that it lacks sufficient gravity to pull itself into a round shape like its larger sibling, Mimas. Researchers believe that the elongated shape of Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) may hold clues to how it and other moons near Saturn's rings formed. This view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across). North on Mimas is up and rotated 28 degrees to the right. The image was taken in blue light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on May 14, 2013. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 690,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Mimas. Image scale is 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel. Pandora was at a distance of 731,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) when this image was taken. Image scale on Pandora is 4 miles (7 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. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
On July 30, 2013, Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Karen L. Nyberg of NASA took this photograph of a sunrise viewed from the International Space Station. As the space station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, traveling at about 17,500 miles per hour, the crew sees about 16 sunrises and sunsets daily. > Karen Nyberg (@AstroKarenN) on Twitter Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
This color image, taken on May 1, 2013 by the Wide Angle Camera (WAC) instrument aboard NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft orbiting Mercury, features Hovnatanian crater, named for Armenian painter Hakop Hovnatanian. The crater's elliptical shape and the bright rays' butterfly pattern indicate that a very oblique impact produced the crater. The brightness of the rays indicate that they are relatively young features on Mercury's surface. This image was acquired as a targeted high-resolution 11-color image set. Acquiring 11-color targets is a new campaign that began in March, 2013 and that utilizes all of the camera's 11 narrow-band color filters. Because of the large data volume involved, only features of special scientific interest are targeted for imaging in all 11 colors. The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the solar system's innermost planet. MESSENGER has acquired over 150,000 images and extensive other data sets, and is capable of continuing orbital operations until early 2015. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
In late July 2013, a low pressure system off Australia’s southeast coast and moist onshore winds combined to create unsettled weather across central Australia – and a striking image of a broad cloud band across the stark winter landscape. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured this true-color image on July 22 at 01:05 UTC (10:35 a.m. Australian Central Standard Time). To the west of the low pressure trough the skies are clear and dry. To the east, the broad band of bright white clouds obscures the landscape. The system brought wind, precipitation and cooler temperatures to the region. Image Credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio on August 5, 1930 and passed away at age 82 on August 25, 2012. Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, when he became the first person to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 11. This photograph of Armstrong from the Apollo 11 mission was taken inside the Lunar Module (LM) while the LM rested on the lunar surface. Astronauts Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, had already completed their historic spacewalk when this picture was made. Astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the moon's surface. Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team in the MSL Mission Support Area reacts after learning that the Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars and images start coming into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012 in Pasadena, Calif. The MSL Rover named Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. #1YearonMars. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
A crane lifts NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility on Aug. 3, 2013, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft was flown to Kennedy Space Center for launch processing from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado near the Lockheed Martin facility in Littleton, Colo., where it was built. MAVEN is to lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in November, 2013 to begin a 10-month voyage to Mars. It is the first mission dedicated to studying Mars' upper atmosphere and scientists hope to find traces of the ancient environment thought to have existed there. Image Credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, are at the head of the gaseous stream. Since the stream's discovery by radio telescopes in the early 1970s, astronomers have wondered whether the gas comes from one or both of the satellite galaxies. New Hubble observations reveal most of the gas was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud about 2 billion years ago, and a second region of the stream originated more recently from the Large Magellanic Cloud. A team of astronomers, led by Andrew J. Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., determined the source of the gas filament by using Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to measure the amount of heavy elements, such as oxygen and sulfur, at six locations along the Magellanic Stream. They observed faraway quasars, the brilliant cores of active galaxies, that emit light that passes through the stream. They detected the heavy elements from the way the elements absorb ultraviolet light. Fox's team found a low amount of oxygen and sulfur along most of the stream, matching the levels in the Small Magellanic Cloud about 2 billion years ago, when the gaseous ribbon is thought to have formed. In a surprising twist, the team discovered a much higher level of sulfur in a region of the stream that is closer to the Magellanic Clouds. Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
At the robotics workstation in the International Space Station’s Cupola, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Expedition 36 flight engineer, participates in onboard training activity in preparation for the grapple and berthing of the Japanese "Kounotori" H2 Transfer Vehicle-4 (HTV-4). The HTV-4 was installed on its berthing port on the Earth-facing side of the International Space Station’s Harmony node at 11:38 a.m. EDT Friday, August 9, delivering 3.6 tons of science experiments, equipment and supplies to the orbiting complex. Nyberg and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy grappled the HTV-4 with Canadarm2, the station's Canadian Space Agency-provided robotic arm, as the Japanese space freighter flew within about 30 feet of the complex. Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency joined the two NASA astronauts in the cupola to monitor the systems of the Japanese space freighter during its approach. > Read more Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
This Perseid fireball meteor was observed in the skies over Chickamauga, Ga., on Aug. 11, 2013, at 2:14:49 a.m. EDT. It was also recorded by four other cameras in the NASA All Sky Fireball Network. The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks on Aug.11 and 12, 2013, filling the sky with streaks of light. The big meteor showers like the Perseids, and later the Leonids in November, are caused when Earth and its atmosphere travels through a region of the sky filled with left over debris lost by a particular comet. In the case of the Perseids, the small fragments were ripped off the tail of comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 130 years. Image Credit: NASA/MSFC/MEO (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
A Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital rocket carrying experiments developed by university students nationwide in the RockSat-X program was successfully launched at 6 a.m. EDT, August 13, from NASA’s launch range at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The RockSat-X program is conducted with the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. The goal of the program is to provide students a hands-on experience in developing experiments for space flight. This experience allows these students to apply what they have learned in the classroom to a real world hands-on activity. RockSat-X was lofted to an altitude of approximately 94 miles above the Atlantic Ocean before landing via parachute about 90 miles from the Wallops Flight Facility. Recovery of the payload is in progress. The students in the program will receive their experiments later in the day to see how they performed and begin data analysis. Additionally, several experiments transmitted data during the flight down to Wallops via a telemetry system on board the rocket. Image Credit: NASA/Chris Perry (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
A crane in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lowers a test mass simulator (center of frame) onto the Ambient Optical Assembly Stand or AOAS to ensure it can support the James Webb Space Telescope's Optical Telescope Element during its assembly. > Read More Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
Observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a massive cloud of multimillion-degree gas in a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth. The hot gas cloud is likely caused by a collision between a dwarf galaxy and a much larger galaxy called NGC 1232. If confirmed, this discovery would mark the first time such a collision has been detected only in X-rays, and could have implications for understanding how galaxies grow through similar collisions. An image combining X-rays and optical light shows the scene of this collision. The impact between the dwarf galaxy and the spiral galaxy caused a shock wave − akin to a sonic boom on Earth – that generated hot gas with a temperature of about six million degrees. Chandra X-ray data, in purple, show the hot gas has a comet-like appearance, caused by the motion of the dwarf galaxy. Optical data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope reveal the spiral galaxy in blue and white. X-ray point sources have been removed from this image to emphasize the diffuse emission. Near the head of the comet-shaped X-ray emission (mouse over the image for the location) is a region containing several very optically bright stars and enhanced X-ray emission. Star formation may have been triggered by the shock wave, producing bright, massive stars. In that case X-ray emission would be generated by massive star winds and by the remains of supernova explosions as massive stars evolve. The mass of the entire gas cloud is uncertain because it cannot be determined from the two-dimensional image whether the hot gas is concentrated in a thin pancake or distributed over a large, spherical region. If the gas is a pancake, the mass is equivalent to forty thousand Suns. If it is spread out uniformly, the mass could be much larger, about three million times as massive as the Sun. This range agrees with values for dwarf galaxies in the Local Group containing the Milky Way. The hot gas should continue to glow in X-rays for tens to hundreds of millions of years, depending on the geometry of the collision. The collision itself should last for about 50 million years. Therefore, searching for large regions of hot gas in galaxies might be a way to estimate the frequency of collisions with dwarf galaxies and to understand how important such events are to galaxy growth. An alternative explanation of the X-ray emission is that the hot gas cloud could have been produced by supernovas and hot winds from large numbers of massive stars, all located on one side of the galaxy. The lack of evidence of expected radio, infrared, or optical features argues against this possibility. A paper by Gordon Garmire of the Huntingdon Institute for X-ray Astronomy in Huntingdon, PA describing these results is available online and was published in the June 10th, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Huntingdon Institute for X-ray Astronomy/G. Garmire; Optical: ESO/VLT › View large image › Chandra on Flickr (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
The Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. After serving through the Apollo and Space Shuttle Programs, the mammoth structure now is undergoing renovations to accommodate future launch vehicles and to continue as a major part of America's efforts to explore space for another 50 years. Construction began with driving the first steel pilings on Aug. 2, 1963. It was part of NASA's massive effort to send astronauts to the moon for the Apollo Program. Altogether, 4,225 pilings were driven down 164 feet to bedrock with a foundation consisting of 30,000 cubic yards of concrete. Construction of the VAB required 98,590 tons of steel. When completed in 1965, the VAB was one of the largest buildings in the world with 129,428,000 cubic feet of interior volume. The structure covers eight acres, is 525 feet tall and 518 feet wide. To accommodate moving, processing and stacking rocket stages, 71 cranes and hoists, including two 250-ton bridge cranes were installed. On the east and west sides are four high bay doors, each designed to open 456 feet in height allowing rollout of the Apollo/Saturn V moon rockets mounted atop launch umbilical towers. This photo from November 9, 1970, shows a ground level view at Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, with the Apollo 14 (Spacecraft 110/Lunar Module 8/Saturn 509) space vehicle leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building. The Saturn V stack and its mobile launch tower, atop a huge crawler-transporter, were rolled out to Pad A. > Read More Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
On August 15, 2013, at the Naval Station Norfolk near NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, NASA and the U.S. Navy conducted a stationary recovery test on the Orion boilerplate test article in the water near a U.S. Navy ship. NASA and the U.S. Navy are conducting tests to prepare for recovery of the Orion crew module and forward bay cover on its return from a deep space mission. The stationary recovery tests allow the teams to demonstrate and evaluate the recovery processes, the hardware and the test personnel in a controlled environment. During the test, the U.S Navy Dive Team checked the capsule for hazards while sailors from the USS Arlington approached the capsule in inflatable boats, and towed it back to the ship’s flooded well deck. A second test will be conducted next year in the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to destinations not yet explored by humans, including an asteroid and Mars. It will have emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. The first unpiloted test flight of the Orion is scheduled to launch in 2014 atop a Delta IV rocket and in 2017 on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. > Read More Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
Members of NASA's newest astronaut class pose with an Orion capsule at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013. Pictured back row, left to right: Tyler (Nick) Hague, Jessica Meir, Christina Hammock, Nicole Mann, Victor Glover. Picture front row, left to right: Andrew Morgan, Anne McClain, Josh Cassada. Image Credit: NASA (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
Super heated exhaust is a byproduct of engine testing in the Engine Research Building (ERB) at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Generally, the tests involve burning fuel or using heated air in engine test cells. The exhaust from the tests can approach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To protect the building systems and for the safety of the occupants, water is sprayed into the hot exhaust to cool the air quickly. The water is then sent to cooling towers to recirculate for the duration of the tests. The buildings in the ERB complex are some of the first buildings constructed at NASA Glenn. This building contains the electrical switchgear that operates support systems for engine testing and other facilities at Lewis Field. Image Credit: NASA Marvin G. Smith (Wyle Information Systems, LLC) (More at NASA Picture of The Day)
