Say Hello To The Antennae Galaxies 👋

Our Cassini spacecraft has been traveling in space for almost 20 years, exploring Saturn, its rings and even some of its moons. This mission has revealed never-before-seen events that are changing our understanding of how planetary systems form and what conditions might lead to habitats for life.

Cassini will complete its remarkable story of exploration with an intentional plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, ending its mission.  

Participate in our Grand Finale Events

Wednesday, Sept. 13

1 p.m. EDT – News Conference from our Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a detailed preview of final mission activities Watch HERE.

Thursday, Sept 14

4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EDT - NASA Social Live Broadcast with mission experts Watch HERE.

Friday, Sept. 15

7:00 – 8:30 a.m. EDT – Live commentary on NASA TV and online of the spacecraft’s final dive into Saturn’s atmosphere. Watch HERE.

Around 8:00 a.m. EDT – Expected time of last signal and science data from Cassini Watch HERE.

9:30 a.m. EDT – Post-mission news conference Watch HERE.

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That’s a wrap folks! Gucci is signing off. Thank you for all the amazing questions. Didn’t get your question answered? No worries! We’re coming to you live next week in our second Answer Time of 2020, featuring NASA Astronaut Nick Hague. Submit your questions now here: https://nasa.tumblr.com/ask

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Ask NASA astronaut Nick Hague a question!

Ask NASA astronaut Nick Hague a question!

Cygnus Cargo Craft: What’s Onboard?

New experiments are scheduled to arrive to the International Space Station with the launch of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft on Tuesday. These science payloads will study fires, meteors, regolith, adhesion and 3-D printing in microgravity.

Take a look at the experiments:

Saffire-I

What is it? What happens when you set a fire in space? The Spacecraft Fire Experiment-I (Saffire-I) will find out!

How does it work? This experiment will intentionally light a large-scale fire inside an empty Cygnus resupply vehicle after it leaves the space station and before it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.

Why is it important? The Saffire-I investigation provides a new way to study a realistic fire on an exploration vehicle, which has not been possible in the past because the risks for performing studies on manned spacecraft are too high. Instruments on the returning Cygnus will measure flame growth, oxygen use and more.

Meteor

What is it? A less heated investigation, Meteor Composition Determination (Meteor) will enable the first space-based observations of meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere from space. Meteors are somewhat rare and are difficult to monitor from the ground because of Earth’s atmosphere.

How does it work? This investigation uses high-resolution video and image analysis of the atmosphere to acquire the physical and chemical properties of the meteoroid dust, such as size, density and chemical composition.

Why is it important? Studying the elemental composition of meteors adds to our understanding of how the planets developed, and continuous measurement of meteor interactions with Earth’s atmosphere could spot previously unforeseen meteors.

Strata-1

What is it? A more “grounded” investigation will study the properties and behavior of regolith, the impact-shatterd “soil” found on asteroids, comets, the moon and other airless worlds.

How does it work? The Strata-1 experimental facility exposes a series of regolith simulants, including pulverized meteorite material, glass beads, and regolith simulants composed of terrestrial materials and stored in multiple transparent tubes, to prolonged microgravity on the space station. Scientists will monitor changes in regolith layers and layering, size sorting and particle migration via video images and close examination after return of the samples to Earth.

Why is it important? The Strata-1 investigation could give us new answers about how regolith behaves and moves in microgravity, how easy or difficult it is to anchor a spacecraft in regolith, how it interacts with spacecraft and spacesuit materials and other important properties.

Gecko Gripper

What is it? From grounded to gripping, another investigation launching takes inspiration from small lizards. Geckos have specialized hairs on their feed called setae that let them stick to vertical surfaces without falling, and their stickiness doesn’t wear off after repeated use. The Gecko Gripper investigation tests a gecko-adhesive gripping device that can stick on command in the harsh environment of space.

How does it work? The gripping device is a material with synthetic hairs much like setae that are much thinner than a human hair. When a force is applied to make the tiny hairs bend, the positively charged part of a molecule within a slight electrical field attracts the negatively charged part of its neighbor resulting in “stickiness.” Once adhered, the gripper can bear loads up to 20 pounds. The gripper can remain in place indefinitely and can also be easily removed and reused.

Why is it important? Gecko Grippers have many applications on current and future space missions, including acting as mounting devices for payloads, instruction manuals and many other small items within the space station. In addition, this technology enables a new type of robotic inspection system that could prove vital for spacecraft safety and repair.

Additive Manufacturing Facility

What is it? From adhesion to additive, the new Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) will also launch on the flight. Additive manufacturing (3D printing) is the process of building a part layer-by-layer, with an efficient use of the material.

How does it work? The AMF uses this technology to enable the production of components on the space station for both NASA and commercial objectives.

Why is it important? Parts, entire experiments and tools can be created on demand with this technology. The ability to manufacture on the orbiting laboratory enables on-demand repair and production capability, as well as essential research for manufacturing on long-term missions.

These sticky, stony and sizzling investigations are just a sampling of the wide range of science conducted on the orbiting laboratory that benefits future spaceflight and provides Earth-based benefits as well.

Watch the Launch!

You can watch the launch of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft online. Stream live coverage starting at 10 p.m. EDT on March 22. Launch is scheduled for 11:05 p.m., which is the start of a 30-minute launch window. 

Watch online: nasa.gov/nasatv 

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They Put a Flag on the Moon

It’s 1969 and Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are the first humans to land on the Moon. In now iconic footage, Aldrin and Armstrong carefully assemble and maneuver an American flag to place on the lunar surface. The fabric unfurls, staying suspended without any wind to animate the stars and stripes. The flagpole sways precariously as the crew work to anchor it in the Moon’s low gravity at just 1/6th that of Earth’s. How did this moment come about? On Flag Day, let’s dive behind-the-scenes of what led to getting the American flag on the Moon 50 years ago.

Image: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin poses for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during the Apollo 11 mission.

Seeking to empower the nation, President John F. Kennedy gave us a grand charge. The human spaceflight program of the early 1960s was challenged to work on missions that sent humans to the surface of another world. Following President Kennedy’s death in 1963, President Richard Nixon stressed a more international perspective to the Apollo missions. To reconcile the need for global diplomacy with national interests, we appointed the Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing.

Image: NASA Administrator Thomas Paine and President Richard Nixon are seen aboard the USS Hornet, Apollo 11’s splashdown recovery vessel.

The committee, and the U.S. at large, wanted to avoid violating the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited any nation from taking possession of a celestial body. After some debate, they recommended that the flag only appear during the Apollo 11 spacewalk. A plaque would accompany it, explaining that the flag was meant to stand for peaceful exploration, not conquest. 

Image: The plaque reads “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all of mankind.” Under the text are signatures by President Nixon, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins.

A team of engineers at Johnson Space Center had three months to resolve several issues regarding the flag’s assembly. First, was the Moon’s lack of atmosphere. The flag, quite literally, could not fly the way it does on Earth. To address this, a horizontal crossbar was added to support the flag’s weight and give the illusion of it waving.

Image: NASA technician David L. McCraw shows the flag next to a Lunar Module mockup.

Second was the flag’s assembly, which had to be as lightweight and compact as possible so as not to take up limited storage space. The completed package, which was attached to Lunar Module’s ladder, weighed just under ten pounds. It received an outer case made of steel, aluminum, and Thermoflex insulation and blanketing to shield the flag from the 2,000 degree Fahrenheit spike from the Eagle’s descent engine.

Image: Component pieces of the flag assembly.

The last issue was mobility. Bulky spacesuits significantly restricted the astronauts’ range of motion, and suit pressurization limited how much force they could apply. To accommodate these limits, the team included telescoping components to minimize the need to reach and maneuver the poles. A red painted ring on the flagpole indicated how far into the ground it should be driven. Hinges and catches would lock into place once the pieces were fully extended.

Image: Diagram from the 1969 Apollo 11 press release illustrating astronaut spacesuit reach capabilities and ideal working height.

Fifty years after Apollo 11, the flag we planted on the lunar surface has likely faded but its presence looms large in United States history as a symbol of American progress and innovation.

Image: A close-up view of the U.S. flag deployed on the Moon at the Taurus-by the crew of Apollo 17, the most recent lunar landing mission.

The story doesn’t stop here. Anne Platoff's article “Where No Flag Has Gone Before” sheds more light on the context and technical process of putting the United States flag on the Moon. You can also check out Johnson Space Center’s recent feature story that details its presence in later missions. Happy Flag Day!  Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Does Webb have resolution to look more closely at nearby objects, like Mars or even Earth? Or just far things?

Happy #MoonDay! To celebrate the 49th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, we present you with “Moonlight,” a video by our Goddard science visualizer Ernie Wright set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune. The Apollo missions were a landmark in lunar exploration. The visit and the samples that our Moon walkers collected transformed our understanding of the Moon and the solar system. Now, our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high-resolution data gives an incredibly detailed view of our closest neighbor.

This visualization captures the mood of Claude Debussy's best-known composition, Clair de Lune (which means moonlight in French). The piece was published in 1905 as the third of four movements in the composer's Suite Bergamasque, and unlike the other parts of this work, Clair is quiet, contemplative, and slightly melancholy, evoking the feeling of a solitary walk through a moonlit garden.

“Moonlight” uses a digital 3D model of the Moon built from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter global elevation maps and image mosaics. The lighting is derived from actual Sun angles during lunar days in 2018. Enjoy and read more HERE.

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NASA Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley undock from the International Space Station at 7:34 p.m. EDT tonight, bringing to a close their ~2 month Launch America mission. Check out these science highlights from the 100+ hours of work they completed aboard the orbital lab. 

Watch live coverage of undocking and splashdown here: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

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25 Years in Space for ESA & NASA’s Sun-Watching SOHO

A quarter-century ago, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) launched to space. Its 25 years of data have changed the way we think about the Sun — illuminating everything from the Sun’s inner workings to the constant changes in its outermost atmosphere.

SOHO — a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA — carries 12 instruments to study different aspects of the Sun. One of the gamechangers was SOHO’s coronagraph, a type of instrument that uses a solid disk to block out the bright face of the Sun and reveal the relatively faint outer atmosphere, the corona. With SOHO’s coronagraph, scientists could image giant eruptions of solar material and magnetic fields, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. SOHO’s images revealed shape and structure of CMEs in breathtaking detail.

These solar storms can impact robotic spacecraft in their path, or — when intense and aimed at Earth — threaten astronauts on spacewalks and even disrupt power grids on the ground. SOHO is particularly useful in viewing Earth-bound storms, called halo CMEs — so called because when a CME barrels toward us on Earth, it appears circular, surrounding the Sun, much like watching a balloon inflate by looking down on it.

Before SOHO, the scientific community debated whether or not it was even possible to witness a CME coming straight toward us. Today, SOHO images are the backbone of space weather prediction models, regularly used in forecasting the impacts of space weather events traveling toward Earth.

Beyond the day-to-day monitoring of space weather, SOHO has been able to provide insight about our dynamic Sun on longer timescales as well. With 25 years under its belt, SOHO has observed a full magnetic cycle — when the Sun’s magnetic poles switch places and then flip back again, a process that takes about 22 years in total. This trove of data has led to revolutions in solar science: from revelations about the behavior of the solar core to new insight into space weather events that explode from the Sun and travel throughout the solar system.

Data from SOHO, sonified by the Stanford Experimental Physics Lab, captures the Sun’s natural vibrations and provides scientists with a concrete representation of its dynamic movements.

The legacy of SOHO’s instruments — such as the extreme ultraviolet imager, the first of its kind to fly in orbit — also paved the way for the next generation of NASA solar satellites, like the Solar Dynamics Observatory and STEREO. Even with these newer instruments now in orbit, SOHO’s data remains an invaluable part of solar science, producing nearly 200 scientific papers every year.

Relatively early in its mission, SOHO had a brush with catastrophe. During a routine calibration procedure in June 1998, the operations team lost contact with the spacecraft. With the help of a radio telescope in Arecibo, the team eventually located SOHO and brought it back online by November of that year. But luck only held out so long: Complications from the near loss emerged just weeks later, when all three gyroscopes — which help the spacecraft point in the right direction — failed. The spacecraft was no longer stabilized. Undaunted, the team’s software engineers developed a new program that would stabilize the spacecraft without the gyroscopes. SOHO resumed normal operations in February 1999, becoming the first spacecraft of its kind to function without gyroscopes.

SOHO’s coronagraph have also helped the Sun-studying mission become the greatest comet finder of all time. The mission’s data has revealed more than 4,000 comets to date, many of which were found by citizen scientists. SOHO’s online data during the early days of the mission made it possible for anyone to carefully scrutinize a image and potentially spot a comet heading toward the Sun. Amateur astronomers from across the globe joined the hunt and began sending their findings to the SOHO team. To ease the burden on their inboxes, the team created the SOHO Sungrazer Project, where citizen scientists could share their findings.

Keep up with the latest SOHO findings at nasa.gov/soho, and follow along with @NASASun on Twitter and facebook.com/NASASunScience.

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A magnetic power struggle of galactic proportions - new research highlights the role of the Sun’s magnetic landscape in the development of solar eruptions that can trigger space weather events around Earth.

Using data from our Solar Dynamics Observatory, scientists examined an October 2014 Jupiter-sized sunspot group, an area of complex magnetic fields, often the site of solar activity. This was the biggest group in the past two solar cycles and a highly active region. Though conditions seemed ripe for an eruption, the region never produced a major coronal mass ejection (CME) - a massive, bubble-shaped eruption of solar material and magnetic field - on its journey across the Sun. It did, however, emit a powerful X-class flare, the most intense class of flares. What determines, the scientists wondered, whether a flare is associated with a CME?

The scientists found that a magnetic cage physically prevented a CME from erupting that day. Just hours before the flare, the sunspot’s natural rotation contorted the magnetic rope and it grew increasingly twisted and unstable, like a tightly coiled rubber band.

Credits: Tahar Amari et al./Center for Theoretical Physics/École Polytechnique/NASA Goddard/Joy Ng

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Will the robot be able to send vedio footage?