Tag archives for NASA
Posted by My God, It’s Full of Stars…
Posted by Jason Major on January 20, 2012 Here’s a wonderful time-lapse video made of photos taken from orbit as the International Space Station passed over Switzerland, western Europe and eventually Saudi Arabia on the night of December 22, 2011. A portion of the Station can be seen along the right side, reflecting the lights of the major cities passing 240 miles below.…
Oil, Gasoline Prices Hit All-Time Highs in 2011—and May Continue Rising
Posted by Mason Inman on January 12, 2012 Average prices of oil and gasoline at the pump reached an all-time high in 2011, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, averaged $111 a barrel—the first time it broke $100 for a whole year. In some ways, these records snuck up on Americans, since there was no extreme…
Space Shuttle Discovery Powers Down
Posted by Susan Poulton on December 16, 2011 
Friday morning marked a sad and permanent milestone in the ongoing decommissioning of the space shuttles at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with the closing of the payload bay doors and the final power-down of Discovery.
A New Milestone for New Horizons
Posted by Jason Major on December 9, 2011 
Artist’s rendering of New Horizons. Southwest Research Institute (Dan Durda)/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Ken Moscati) Last Friday, December 2, 2011, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the closest spacecraft ever to Pluto, a record previously held by Voyager 1 which came within 983 million miles of Pluto on January 29, 1986. This…
California Adopts Cap-and-Trade System, Serves as Greenhouse Guinea Pig
Posted by Mason Inman on October 27, 2011 After a unanimous vote by the California Air Resources Board, the state adopted the most comprehensive cap-and-trade system in the country, a key part of a 2006 global warming law that had yet to be implemented. The system will cover 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, and allows businesses to counterbalance up to…
Final Chapter: Diary of a Shuttle Launch Enthusiast
Posted by Susan Poulton on July 20, 2011 
From a true space shuttle launch “junkie” here are the top six moments from six years of shuttle launch experiences.
Posted by In Roman mythology, Mercury was the fleet-footed messenger to the gods. It’s therefore fitting that NASA went to great pains to name the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury MESSENGER. That’s an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging. (Personally, I would have tried to find a way to name the orbiter…
Night Sky News: Tiny Mercury Easy to See This Week
Posted by Andrew Fazekas on March 14, 2011 Of the eight planets in our solar system, five are visible to the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Known since ancient times, these naked-eye planets appear similar to stars, but they “wander” across the sky instead of staying in fixed positions relative to each other. Knowing where a planet will pop up…
The Journal of Cosmology is at it again. Hot on the heels of their recent issue supporting a one-way human mission to Mars, the journal has published a paper by a NASA researcher who says he’s found evidence of bacteria-esque microfossils in meteorites recovered from France and Tanzania. A long, winding filament inside the Orgueil…
If you’ve been following the exploits of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, you probably already know that the mission finds new planets using what’s called the transit method. In short, Kepler stares at a bunch of stars and records when there’s a periodic dip in a star’s light caused by an object passing in front. With enough…
It’s probably no surprise that today’s astronauts are discouraged from drinking on the job. Space tourists, however, may have different expectations. Enter Australia’s 4 Pines Brewing Company, which this Saturday will be conducting human experiments in Florida—taste testing space beer. (Related: “‘Global Warming Beer’ Taps Melted Arctic Ice.”) According to ABC Melbourne, the brewery has…
Yesterday—Superbowl *Sun*day—NASA released the first global view of our sun, courtesy of a pair of space probes collectively called Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, or STEREO. Launched in October 2006, the two probes left Earth together but then separated and headed for opposite sides of the solar orb. On February 6, STEREO-A and STEREO-B finally reached…
UPDATE: In Wednesday’s press conference, the Kepler team announced the new public data includes readings on several hundred new planetary candidates. The findings increase the number of planet candidates Kepler’s found to 1,235. Of these, 68 are roughly Earth-size, 288 are super Earth-size, 662 are Neptune-size, 165 are Jupiter-size, and 19 are larger than Jupiter.…
Twenty-five years ago today, seven astronauts embarked on NASA’s 25th space shuttle mission, on January 28, 1986. The shuttle Challenger lifted off from Launch Complex 39-B at Kennedy Space Center at 11:38 a.m. local time. Then, 73 seconds into the flight of STS-51L, the shuttle was engulfed in a cloud of vapor as it began…
Has it been a while since your last physical exam? Consider this: It’s been 25 years since anyone took a close look at Uranus. Uranus, as seen by Voyager 2. —Picture courtesy NASA/JPL The Voyager 2 spacecraft, which launched in 1977, made its closest approach to Uranus on January 24, 1986, coming within 50,600 miles…
Technically, everything within our solar system could be said to exist in the sun‘s atmosphere. In most cases we call the corona the sun’s upper atmosphere, because that’s the part we see as the faint, outermost halo stretching from the bright orb, usually visible from Earth only during a solar eclipse. (See eclipse pictures from…
Today NASA officials announced that a tiny satellite launched last week has started conducting astrobiology experiments in low-Earth orbit. —Image courtesy NASA No bigger than a bread box, the Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses, or O/OREOS, satellite lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska on November 19 aboard a U.S. Air Force rocket.…
News reports on comets have been dominated the past few days by NASA’s flyby yesterday morning of the comet 103P/Hartley 2 and the subsequent close-up pictures. Before the NASA craft got cozy, the comet made its closest approach by Earth on October 20, coming a mere 11 million miles (17.7 million kilometers) from our planet.…
The space shuttle Discovery is slated to launch on its final mission this week, and that means voting will soon close on NASA’s Space Rock contest. —Image courtesy NASA As we reported back in August, it’s been a tradition since the Apollo program to rouse slumbering astronauts with music selected either by flight controllers or…
One of the perks of coming to a scientific meeting is that, in addition to press briefings and poster sessions, you get to sit down and just chat with some of the bright minds working on solving the mysteries of the universe. In my case, I ran into planetary scientist James Wray of Cornell University…
Your Breaking Orbit blogger is back from vacation, and I’ll be bringing you highlights direct from the 42nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, California. It’s a cold, drizzly day outside the convention center, but inside it’s raining hot new finds about planets, dwarf planets, exoplanets, minor planets, and…
Each year 35 billion cubic feet (261 billion gallons) of water are lost in the Colorado River watershed due to dust settling on snows near the headwaters. The amount lost is five times more water than needed to restore flows through the dried-out Colorado River Delta and is twice Las Vegas’ draw. By Jonathan Waterman,…
As if having the most impressive rings in the solar system isn’t enough, Saturn also boasts some of the shiniest “footwear”—just check out new shots of the planet’s southern auroras: —Image courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Leicester This quartet of candy-colored pictures comes from NASA’s Cassini orbiter, which carries a nifty tool that can collect…
Discovery’s Last Ride
Posted by Susan Poulton on September 21, 2010 
By Susan Poultonfor Breaking Orbit Space Shuttle Discovery rolled out to the launch pad for the final time tonight, with first motion out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) coming 30 minutes early at 7:23pm ET, beneath a stunning sunset. Hundreds of employees gathered to watch the event and cheer on Discovery as they watched…
