Cosmic Ice Sculptures

In the cold vacuum of space, there is no edible ice cream, but there is radiation from massive stars that is carving away at cold molecular clouds...

Five Things About NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover

Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term program of robotic exploration of the Red Planet...

NASA’s Armada of Research Aircraft Monitor Hurricane Karl

NASA's DC-8, Global Hawk, and WB-57 are studying the storm as part of the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Process mission, known as GRIP...

NASA's LRO Exposes Moon's Complex, Turbulent Youth

The moon was bombarded by two distinct populations of asteroids or comets in its youth, and its surface is more complex than previously thought, according to new results from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft featured in three papers appearing in the Sept. 17 issue of Science...

A Growing La Nina Chills Out the Pacific

September 15, 2010

The tropical Pacific Ocean has transitioned from last winter's El Niño conditions to a cool La Niña, as shown by new data about sea surface heights, collected by the U.S-French Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 oceanography satellite...

Observe the Moon Night Goes Global

On September 18, 2010 the world will join the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as other NASA Centers to celebrate the first annual International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN)...

NASA Data Track Seasonal Pollution Changes Over India

Data from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft have been used in a groundbreaking new university study that examines the concentration, distribution and composition of aerosol pollution over the Indian subcontinent. The study documents the region's very high levels of natural and human-produced pollutants, and uncovered surprising seasonal shifts in the source of the pollution...

NASA Uses New Method to Estimate Earth Mass Movements

September 14, 2010

NASA and European researchers have conducted a novel study to simultaneously measure, for the first time, trends in how water is transported across Earth's surface and how the solid Earth responds to the retreat of glaciers following the last major Ice Age, including the shifting of Earth's center of mass...

New Objects Hidden in Hubble Data

Beyond the orbit of Neptune reside countless icy rocks known as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). One of the biggest, Pluto, is classified as a dwarf planet. The region also supplies us with comets such as famous Comet Halley. Most TNOs are small and receive little sunlight, making them faint and difficult to spot...

A Passion for Wildfire Research Takes Her Around the World

Elena Kukavskaya's love of nature began at an early age, in a very cold and faraway place.

She was raised in Siberia's third largest city -- Krasnoyarsk -- and as a child considered herself "an urban resident." So it was nice to escape to the country. "From little up, I love nature and enjoy the beautiful colors of the autumn landscape of the national reserve near Krasnoyarsk," she says...

Closest Encounter with Jupiter until 2022

Sept. 15, 2010:  Been outside at midnight lately? There's something you really need to see. Jupiter is approaching Earth for the closest encounter between the two planets in more than a decade--and it is dazzling.

The night of closest approach is Sept. 20-21st. This is also called "the night of opposition" because Jupiter will be opposite the sun, rising at sunset and soaring overhead at midnight. Among all denizens of the midnight sky, only the Moon itself will be brighter...

Chandra Finds Evidence for Stellar Cannibalism

Evidence that a star has recently engulfed a companion star or a giant planet has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The likely existence of such a "cannibal" star provides new insight into how stars and the planets around them may interact as they age...

Colorado's "Reservoir Road Fire" from Space

September 13, 2010
NASA's MODIS Instrument Sees Colorado's "Reservoir Road Fire" from Space 

NASA's Aqua satellite flies around the Earth twice a day and captures visible and infrared imagery. On Sept. 12 at 19:20 UTC (3:20 p.m. EDT), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on Aqua captured a visible image of the "Reservoir Road Fire" that is currently raging in the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests / Pawnee National Grassland...

ARTEMIS - The First Earth-Moon Libration Orbiter

In August 1960, NASA launched its first communications satellite, Echo 1. Fifty years later, NASA has achieved another first by placing the ARTEMIS-P1 spacecraft into a unique orbit behind the moon, but not actually orbiting the moon itself. This type of orbit, called an Earth-Moon libration orbit, relies on a precise balancing of the Sun, Earth, and Moon gravity so that a spacecraft can orbit about a virtual location rather than about a planet or moon. The diagrams below show the full ARTEMIS-P1 orbit as it flies in proximity to the moon...

A Snapshot of Sea Ice

The Arctic Ocean is covered by a dynamic layer of sea ice that grows each winter and shrinks each summer, reaching its yearly minimum size each fall. While the 2010 minimum remains to be seen, NASA's Aqua satellite captured this snapshot on Sept. 3...