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Star Glint Beams on The Earth's South Atlantic Ocean | International Space Station
The sun's glint beams in between a cloudy stretch of the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Argentina.
Expedition 70 Crew
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
In Search of Cleaner Fuel for Aviation on Earth | This Week @NASA
Week of December 1, 2023: In search of cleaner fuel for aviation, a scientific balloon campaign in Antarctica, and a key engine test for our Artemis Moon rocket . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
The Strangest Stars | European Southern Observatory
ChasingStarlight 7: There are pretty strange stellar characters out there . . . Join European Southern Observatory astronomer, Suzanna Randall, in the latest episode of Chasing Starlight, as she explores three of the wackiest, weirdest, most wonderful stars in our Universe.
00:00 Introduction
01:00 The "Kissing" Stars
03:06 The Eta Carinae "Monster Couple"
04:39 The "WTF" star
Video Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Directed by: L. Calçada
Hosted by: S. Randall
Written by: Thomas Howarth, Claudia Sciarma, Bárbara Ferreira
Editing: L. Calçada
Videography: A. Tsaousis
Animations & Footage: L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, C. Malin, INAF-Padua/S. Zaggia, University of Warwick, spaceengine.org, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Noble; NASA/ESA/N. Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson), J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute, New York), G. Brammer, Videvo
Tonight's Sky: December 2023 (Northern Hemisphere)
Step outside on a cold December night when the stars shine bright to find the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus. They will help you locate a binary star system, a fan-shaped open star cluster, and a variable star. Stay tuned for space-based views of a ragged spiral galaxy, an open star cluster, and an edge-on galaxy.
“Tonight’s Sky” is a monthly video of constellations you can observe in the night sky. The series is produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, home of science operations for the Hubble Space Telescope, in partnership with NASA’s Universe of Learning.
The Space Telescope Science Institute works in partnership with Caltech/IPAC, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and Sonoma State University.
Russian Progress MS-25 Cargo Spacecraft Launch | International Space Station
A Soyuz-2.1a rocket launched the Progress MS-25 spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station (ISS Progress 86 mission) on December 1, 2023, at 09:25:11 UTC (14:25:11 local time; 04:25:11 EST) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Progress MS-25 will deliver about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 70 crew aboard the International Space Station, being scheduled for a two-day, 34-orbit journey to the station, with docking on December 3, 2023, at 11:14 UTC (06:14 EDT).
The Roscosmos Progress 86 space freighter is on a two-day delivery mission carrying nearly 5,600 pounds of cargo to resupply the Expedition 70 crew. Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will be on duty Sunday morning monitoring the cargo craft’s automated docking to the Poisk module planned for 6:14 a.m.
NASA's Space to Ground: Hot News About Cold Atoms | Week of Dec. 1, 2023
NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. A cargo craft is in orbit today, on its way to the International Space Station following its Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, morning launch. Meanwhile, advanced space biology is underway aboard the orbital outpost to improve life on Earth and in space.
The Roscosmos 86 space freighter is in Earth orbit and racing toward the space station after launching at 4:25 a.m. EDT today from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Progress 86 is on a two-day delivery mission carrying nearly 5,600 pounds of cargo to resupply the Expedition 70 crew. Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will be on duty Sunday morning monitoring the cargo craft’s automated docking to the Poisk module planned for 6:14 a.m.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Festive Northern Lights | International Space Station
The spectacular aurora borealis, or the “northern lights,” over Canada is sighted from the space station near the highest point of its orbital path. The station’s main solar arrays are seen in the left foreground.
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
The Fate of Colliding Galaxies | European Southern Observatory
This video is a crash course on galaxy clashes (pun intended!), explaining that the collision between two galaxies is not as violent a process as one could imagine.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO) , A. Milani, J. C. Muñoz, Tubín et al.
Planet Earth's Southernmost Active Volcano: Mount Erebus, Antarctica | Landsat-9
The summit crater of Mount Erebus, the world’s southernmost active volcano, appeared above the clouds on a late-spring day in 2023. The OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 captured this view of the stratovolcano on Nov. 25, 2023.
Mount Erebus is one of several volcanoes forming Ross Island off the coast of West Antarctica. At 3,794 meters (12,450 feet) above sea level, it looms over McMurdo Station, located just 35 kilometers (22 miles) away. These volcanoes occur in a rift zone where extension has caused the crust to thin and allowed magma to migrate up through faults to the surface.
This Landsat image includes the shortwave infrared signal (red) produced by heat from a lava lake in the summit crater. The lake has been active since at least 1972 and is one of only a few long-lived lava lakes on Earth. It constantly churns and occasionally spews bombs of molten rock in Strombolian eruptions. Geologists want to learn why an active lava lake has persisted here for so long. Recent research suggests one reason could be the magma’s low water content, which makes it less volatile as it approaches the surface.
Erebus was active prior to the emergence of this lava lake, including in 1841 when British Royal Navy officer James Clark Ross first sighted it during his Antarctic exploration. Mount Erebus and neighboring Mount Terror were named for warships retrofitted for use in that expedition and numerous other polar voyages.
Landsat 9 was launched on Sept. 27, 2021, and the mission team then tested and calibrated the new satellite and its instruments.
The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Landsat satellites have been consistently gathering data about our planet since 1972. They continue to improve and expand this unparalleled record of Earth's changing landscapes for the benefit of all.
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey
NASA's Espacio a Tierra | Para todo hay una primera vez: 22 de noviembre de 2023
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
Jupiter's Moon Ganymede: The Solar System's Largest | NASA Juno Mission
What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter's moon Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The cause of the grooved terrain remains a topic of research, with a leading hypothesis relating it to shifting ice plates. Ganymede is thought to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth—and might contain life. Ganymede’s ocean is estimated to be 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick—10 times deeper than Earth's ocean—and is thought to be buried under a 95-mile- (150-kilometer-) thick crust of mostly ice. Identifying liquid water is crucial in the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth and in the search for life as we know it.
Like Earth's Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter. The featured image was captured in 2021 by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft when it passed by the immense moon. This close pass reduced Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53 days to 43 days. Juno continues to study the giant planet's high gravity, unusual magnetic field, and complex cloud structures. Ganymede is also the only moon in the Solar System to have a magnetosphere.
The European Space Agency's JUICE Mission will arrive at Ganymede in 2031 to conduct investigations.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
Stellar Disc Discovered in Neighboring Galaxy | European Southern Observatory
ESOCast 268 Light: Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) astronomers have for the first time found a disc around a young star outside our own galaxy. This video summarizes the discovery. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is an ALMA partner.
“When I first saw evidence for a rotating structure in the ALMA data I could not believe that we had detected the first extragalactic accretion disc, it was a special moment,” says Anna McLeod, an associate professor at Durham University in the UK and lead author of the study published today in Nature. “We know discs are vital to forming stars and planets in our galaxy, and here, for the first time, we’re seeing direct evidence for this in another galaxy.”
As matter is pulled towards a growing star, it cannot fall directly onto it; instead, it flattens into a spinning disc around the star. Closer to the center, the disc rotates faster, and this difference in speed shows astronomers an accretion disc is present.
The detailed frequency measurements from ALMA allowed the authors to distinguish the characteristic spin of a disc, confirming the detection of the first disc around an extragalactic young star.
Massive stars, like the one observed here, form much more quickly and live far shorter lives than low-mass stars like our Sun. In our galaxy, these massive stars are notoriously challenging to observe and are often obscured from view by the dusty material they formed from at the time a disc is shaping around them. However, in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a galaxy 160,000 light-years away, the material new stars are being born in is fundamentally different from that of the Milky Way Galaxy. Thanks to the lower dust content, HH 1177 is no longer cloaked in its natal cocoon, offering astronomers an unobstructed, if far away, view of stellar and planetary formation.
Video Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Directed by: Angelos Tsaousis and Martin Wallner
Editing: Angelos Tsaousis
Written by: Pamela Freeman and Tom Howarth
Footage and Photos: ESO / L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), A McLeod et al.
Scientific Consultants: Paola Amico, Mariya Lyubenova
Solar Arrays and The Earth's Blue Glow | International Space Station
Clouds hang over a glaciated region as the International Space Station began to enter orbital nighttime 262 miles above the Tian Shan mountain range on the border between China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The golden hue of three of the station's solar arrays contrasts with the backdrop of Earth's blue glow near the center-right of the image.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
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