NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft known as MESSENGER will fly by Mercury for the third and final time on Sept. 29. The spacecraft will pass less than 142 miles above the planet’s rocky surface for a final gravity assist that will enable it to enter Mercury’s … Continue reading
Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA’s ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high. “In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” says Richard Mewaldt of … Continue reading
Water sphere “behavior” experiments aboard the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA Watch the video on YouTube Water, essential to sustaining life on Earth, is that much more highly prized in the unforgiving realm of space travel and habitation. Given a launch cost of $10,000 per pound for space shuttle … Continue reading
Early in the 20th century, a succession of adventurers and scientists pioneered the exploration of Antarctica. A century later, they’re still at it, albeit with a different set of tools. This fall, a team of modern explorers will fly over Earth‘s southern ice-covered regions to study changes to its sea … Continue reading
NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar … Continue reading
Since May 2009, the tropical Pacific Ocean has switched from a cool pattern of ocean circulation known as La Niña to her warmer sibling, El Niño. This cyclical warming of the ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific generally occurs every three to seven years, and is linked … Continue reading
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft‘s observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet. Scientists controlling instruments on the orbiter found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that … Continue reading
Researchers have used NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to compose the most comprehensive picture of changing glaciers along the coast of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The new elevation maps show that all latitudes of the Greenland ice sheet are affected by dynamic thinning — the … Continue reading
Jack Fischer flew F-22 Raptors at Langley Air Force Base but didn’t have a clue about what was going on the other side of the fence. Reid Wiseman flew F-18 Super Hornets at Oceana and had an idea about some of the things done at NASA‘s Langley Research Center, but … Continue reading
New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA‘s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years. Alignment of the layering patterns with the modeled climate cycles provides insight about how the layers accumulated. These … Continue reading