What’s Up For October?

A dream takes flight! Today, our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet.

In a video captured by our Perseverance Mars rover, the helicopter is shown hovering above the Red Planet's surface. During this first flight, the helicopter climbed to an altitude of 10 feet (3 meters), hovered, and then touched back down on the surface of Mars.

More images and video to come...

Join us at 2 p.m. ET (18:00 UTC) for an analysis of Ingenuity’s first flight and what's to come:

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Curious about how NASA will land the next mission to the Red Planet – the Perseverance Mars rover? Here’s your chance to ask our expert! 

After nearly 300 million miles, our Perseverance rover completes its journey to Mars on Feb. 18. To reach the surface of the Red Planet, it has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing. Mission engineer Chloe Sackier will be taking your questions in an Answer Time session on Thursday, Feb. 4 from noon to 1pm ET here on our Tumblr! Make sure to ask your question now by visiting http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask. 

Chloe Sackier is a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. She works on the Mars 2020 Entry, Descent and Landing team, tasked with safely delivering the Perseverance rover to the surface of Mars.

Landing Perseverance on Mars – fun facts: 

The landing system on the mission includes a parachute, descent vehicle, and an approach called a "skycrane maneuver" for lowering the rover on a tether to the surface during the final seconds before landing.

Perseverance will use new technologies for landing, including Terrain-Relative Navigation. This sophisticated navigation system allows the rover to detect and avoid hazardous terrain by diverting around it during its descent through the Martian atmosphere. 

A microphone allows engineers to analyze entry, descent, and landing. It might also capture sounds of the rover at work, which would provide engineers with clues about the rover's health and operations.

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The Adventures of Commander Moonikin Campos

Artemis I will be an enormous step toward humanity’s return to the Moon. This mission will be the first flight test of the integrated Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft — the same system that will send future Artemis astronauts to the Moon. That’s why NASA needs someone capable to test the vehicle. Someone with the necessary experience. Someone with the Right Stuff. (Or... stuffing).

Meet Commander Moonikin Campos. He is a manikin, or a replica human body. Campos is named after Arturo Campos, a trailblazing NASA employee who worked on Apollo missions. Arturo Campos’ skill as an electrical engineer was pivotal in the rescue efforts to help guide the Apollo 13 astronauts home.

As the leader of the mission, Commander Campos will be flying in the pilot’s seat for the length of the mission: a journey of 1.3 million miles (~2 million km) around the Moon and back to Earth. He's spent years training for this mission and he loves a challenge. Campos will be equipped with two radiation sensors and will have additional sensors under his headrest and behind his seat to record acceleration and vibration data throughout the mission.

Traveling with Campos are his quirky companions, Zohar and Helga. They’re part of a special experiment to measure radiation outside of the protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere. Together with their commander, they’re excited to play a role in humanity’s next great leap. (And hopefully they can last the entire flight without getting on each other's nerves.)

Will our brave explorers succeed on their mission and ensure the success of future Artemis operations? Can Commander Moonikin Campos live up to the legacy of his heroic namesake?? And did anyone remember to bring snacks??? Get the answers in this thrilling three-part series!

In the first part of Commander Moonikin Campos’ journey, our trailblazing hero prepares for liftoff from NASA’s spaceport at Kennedy Space Center  in Florida, gets acquainted with the new hardware aboard the Orion spacecraft, and meets his crewmates: Helga and Zohar!

In the second part of the trio’s adventure, Campos, Helga, and Zohar blast out of the Earth’s atmosphere with nearly 8.8 million pounds (4 million kg) of thrust powering their ascent. Next stop: the Moon!

In the final chapter of the Artemis I mission, Campos and friends prepare for their return home, including the last and most dangerous part of their journey: reentering Earth’s atmosphere at a screeching 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 kph).

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Everything You Need to Know About the Aug. 21 Eclipse

On Aug. 21, all of North America will experience a solar eclipse.

If skies are clear, eclipse-watchers will be able to see a partial solar eclipse over several hours, and some people – within the narrow path of totality – will see a total solar eclipse for a few moments.

How to Watch

It’s never safe to look at the Sun, and an eclipse is no exception. During a partial eclipse (or on any regular day) you must use special solar filters or an indirect viewing method to watch the Sun.

If you have solar viewing glasses, check to make sure they’re safe and undamaged before using them to look at the Sun. Make sure you put them on before looking up at the Sun, and look away before removing them. Eclipse glasses can be used over your regular eyeglasses, but they should never be used when looking through telescopes, binoculars, camera viewfinders, or any other optical device.

If you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can still watch the eclipse indirectly! You can make a pinhole projector out of a box, or use any other object with tiny holes – like a piece of cardstock with a hole, or your outstretched, interlaced fingers – to project an image of the partially eclipsed Sun onto the ground.

Of course, if it’s cloudy (or you’d just rather stay inside), you can watch the whole thing online with us at nasa.gov/eclipselive. Tune in starting at noon ET.

If you’re in the path of totality, there will be a few brief moments when it is safe to look directly at the eclipse. Only once the Moon has completely covered the Sun and there is no light shining through is it safe to look at the eclipse. Make sure you put your eclipse glasses back on or return to indirect viewing before the first flash of sunlight appears around the Moon’s edge.

Why do eclipses happen?

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and Earth, casting its shadow down on Earth’s surface. The path of totality – where the Moon completely covers the Sun – is traced out by the Moon’s inner shadow, the umbra. People within the Moon’s outer shadow, the penumbra, can see a partial eclipse.

The Moon’s orbit around Earth is tilted by about five degrees, meaning that its shadow usually doesn’t fall on Earth. Only when the Moon lines up exactly between the Sun and Earth do we see an eclipse.

Though the Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon, it is also about 400 times farther away, making their apparent sizes match up almost exactly. This is what allows the Moon to block out the Sun’s bright face, while revealing the comparatively faint, pearly-white corona.

The Science of Eclipses

Eclipses are a beautiful sight to see, and they’re also helpful for our scientists, so we’re funding eleven ground-based science investigations to learn more about the Sun and Earth.

Total solar eclipses reveal the innermost regions of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona. Though it’s thought to house the processes that kick-start much of the space weather that can influence Earth, as well as heating the whole corona to extraordinarily high temperatures, we can’t study this region at any other time. This is because coronagraphs – the instruments we use to study the Sun’s atmosphere by creating artificial eclipses – must cover up much of the corona, as well as the Sun’s face in order to produce clear images.

Eclipses also give us the chance to study Earth’s atmosphere under uncommon conditions: the sudden loss of solar radiation from within the Moon’s shadow. We’ll be studying the responses of both Earth’s ionosphere – the region of charged particles in the upper atmosphere – and the lower atmosphere.

Learn all about the Aug. 21 eclipse at eclipse2017.nasa.gov, and follow @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook for more. Watch the eclipse through the eyes of NASA at nasa.gov/eclipselive starting at 12 PM ET on Aug. 21. 

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The Artemis Story: Where We Are Now and Where We’re Going

Using a sustainable architecture and sophisticated hardware unlike any other, the first woman and the next man will set foot on the surface of the Moon by 2024. Artemis I, the first mission of our powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, is an important step in reaching that goal.

As we close out 2019 and look forward to 2020, here’s where we stand in the Artemis story — and what to expect in 2020. 

Cranking Up The Heat on Orion

The Artemis I Orion spacecraft arrived at our Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio, on Tuesday, Nov. 26 for in-space environmental testing in preparation for Artemis I.

This four-month test campaign will subject the spacecraft, consisting of its crew module and European-built service module, to the vacuum, extreme temperatures (ranging from -250° to 300° F) and electromagnetic environment it will experience during the three-week journey around the Moon and back. The goal of testing is to confirm the spacecraft’s components and systems work properly under in-space conditions, while gathering data to ensure the spacecraft is fit for all subsequent Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond. This is the final critical step before the spacecraft is ready to be joined with the Space Launch System rocket for this first test flight in 2020!

Bringing Everyone Together

On Dec. 9, we welcomed members of the public to our Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans for #Artemis Day and to get an up-close look at the hardware that will help power our Artemis missions. The 43-acre facility has more than enough room for guests and the Artemis I, II, and III rocket hardware! NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine formally unveiled the fully assembled core stage of our SLS rocket for the first Artemis mission to the Moon, then guests toured of the facility to see flight hardware for Artemis II and III. The full-day event — complete with two panel discussions and an exhibit hall — marked a milestone moment as we prepare for an exciting next phase in 2020.

Rolling On and Moving Out

Once engineers and technicians at Michoud complete functional testing on the Artemis I core stage, it will be rolled out of the Michoud factory and loaded onto our Pegasus barge for a very special delivery indeed. About this time last year, our Pegasus barge crew was delivering a test version of the liquid hydrogen tank from Michoud to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville for structural testing. This season, the Pegasus team will be transporting a much larger piece of hardware — the entire core stage — on a slightly shorter journey to the agency’s nearby Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

Special Delivery

Why Stennis, you ask? The giant core stage will be locked and loaded into the B2 Test Stand there for the landmark Green Run test series. During the test series, the entire stage, including its extensive avionics and flight software systems, will be tested in full. The series will culminate with a hot fire of all four RS-25 engines and will certify the complex stage “go for launch.” The next time the core stage and its four engines fire as one will be on the launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Already Working on Artemis II

As Orion and SLS make progress toward the pad for Artemis I, employees at NASA centers and large and small companies across America are hard at work assembling and manufacturing flight hardware for Artemis II and beyond.  The second mission of SLS and Orion will be a test flight with astronauts aboard that will go around the Moon before returning home. Our work today will pave the way for a new generation of moonwalkers and Artemis explorers.

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What does “chemical fingerprints” mean? What chemicals indicate possible life on other planets?

Five Record-Setting Gamma-ray Bursts!

For 10 years, our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has scanned the sky for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the universe’s most luminous explosions!

Most GRBs occur when some types of massive stars run out of fuel and collapse to create new black holes. Others happen when two neutron stars, superdense remnants of stellar explosions, merge. Both kinds of cataclysmic events create jets of particles that move near the speed of light.

A new catalog of the highest-energy blasts provides scientists with fresh insights into how they work. Below are five record-setting events from the catalog that have helped scientists learn more about GRBs:

1. Super-short burst in Boötes!

The short burst 081102B, which occurred in the constellation Boötes on Nov. 2, 2008, is the briefest LAT-detected GRB, lasting just one-tenth of a second!

2. Long-lived burst!

Long-lived burst 160623A, spotted on June 23, 2016, in the constellation Cygnus, kept shining for almost 10 hours at LAT energies — the longest burst in the catalog.

For both long and short bursts, the high-energy gamma-ray emission lasts longer than the low-energy emission and happens later.

3. Highest energy gamma-rays!

The highest-energy individual gamma ray detected by Fermi’s LAT reached 94 billion electron volts (GeV) and traveled 3.8 billion light-years from the constellation Leo. It was emitted by 130427A, which also holds the record for the most gamma rays — 17 — with energies above 10 GeV.

4. In a constellation far, far away!

The farthest known GRB occurred 12.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Carina. Called 080916C, researchers calculate the explosion contained the power of 9,000 supernovae.

5. Probing the physics of our cosmos!

The known distance to 090510 helped test Einstein’s theory that the fabric of space-time is smooth and continuous. Fermi detected both a high-energy and a low-energy gamma ray at nearly the same instant. Having traveled the same distance in the same amount of time, they showed that all light, no matter its energy, moves at the same speed through the vacuum of space.

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See Why Our Researchers Explore Earth's Extreme and Remote Environments

When we talk about exploration in far-flung places, you might think of space telescopes taking images of planets outside our solar system, or astronauts floating on the International Space Station. 

But did you know our researchers travel to some of Earth's most inaccessible and dangerous places, too? 

Two scientists working with the ICESat-2 mission just finished a trek from the South Pole to latitude 88 south, a journey of about 450 miles. They had to travel during the Antarctic summer - the region's warmest time, with near-constant sunshine - but the trek was still over solid ice and snow. 

The trip lasted 14 days, and was an important part of a process known as calibration and validation. ICESat-2 will launch this fall, and the team was taking extremely precise elevation measurements that will be used to validate those taken by the satellite. 

Sometimes our research in Earth's remote regions helps us understand even farther-flung locations…like other planets. 

Geologic features on Mars look very similar to islands and landforms created by volcanoes here on our home planet. 

As hot jets of magma make their way to Earth's surface, they create new rocks and land - a process that may have taken place on Mars and the Moon.

In 2015, our researchers walked on newly cooled lava on the Holuhraun volcano in Iceland to take measurements of the landscape, in order to understand similar processes on other rocky bodies in our solar system.

There may not be flowing lava in the mangrove forests in Gabon, but our researchers have to brave mosquitoes and tree roots that reach up to 15-foot high as they study carbon storage in the vegetation there.

The scientists take some measurements from airplanes, but they also have to gather data from the ground in one our of planet's most pristine rainforests, climbing over and around roots that can grow taller than people. They use these measurements to create a 3-D map of the ecosystem, which helps them understand how much carbon in stored in the plants. 

You can follow our treks to Earth’s most extreme locales on our Earth Expeditions blog.

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Questions coming up from….

@maybeinanotherworld: JWST IS HAPPENING! How are all of you feeling about this?

@Anonymous: How powerful is this telescope, exactly?

@Anonymous: Why are the mirrors on it yellow?

@foeofcolor: How long is this estimated to last for? Like how long will it be able to function in space by estimates?

One Hot Year after Another

Globally, 2020 was the hottest year on record, effectively tying 2016, the previous record. Overall, Earth’s average temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1880s.

Temperatures are increasing due to human activities, specifically emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane. 

Heat and the energy it carries are what drive our planet: winds, weather, droughts, floods, and more are expressions of heat. The right amount of heat is even one of the things that makes life on Earth possible. But too much heat is changing the way our planet’s systems act.

My World’s on Fire

Higher temperatures drive longer, more intense fire seasons. As rain and snowfall patterns change, some regions are getting drier and more vulnerable to damage, setting the stage for more fires.

2020 saw several record-breaking fires, both in Australia in the beginning of the year, and in the western U.S. through northern summer and fall. Smoke from fires in both regions reached so high into the atmosphere that it formed clouds and continues to travel around the globe today.

In the Siberian Arctic, unusually high temperatures helped drive at least 19 fires in the region. More than half of them were burning peat soil -- decomposed organic materials -- that stores a lot of carbon. Peat fires release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, potentially leading to even more warming.

The Water’s Getting Warm

It wasn’t just fire seasons setting records. 2020 had more named tropical storms in the Atlantic and more storms making landfall in the U.S. than any hurricane season on record.

Hurricanes rely on warm ocean water as fuel, and this year, the Atlantic provided. 30 named storms weren’t the only things that made this year’s hurricane season notable.

Storms like Eta, Delta, and Iota quickly changed from smaller, weaker tropical storms into more destructive hurricanes. This rapid intensification is complicated, but it’s likely that warmer, more humid weather -- a result of climate change -- helps drive it.

The Ice Is Getting Thin

Add enough heat, and even the biggest chunk of ice will melt. That’s true whether we’re talking about the ice cubes in your glass or the vast sheets of ice at our planet’s poles. Right now, the Arctic region is warming about three times faster than the rest of our planet, which has some major effects both locally and globally.

This year, Arctic sea ice hit a near-record low. Sea ice is actually made of frozen ocean water, and it grows and thaws with the seasons, typically reaching an annual minimum extent in September.

Warmer ocean water led to more ice melting this year, and 2020’s annual minimum extent continued a long trend of shrinking Arctic sea ice extent.

A Long Trend

We study Earth and how it’s changing from the ground, the sky, and space. Using data from sensors all around the planet, we calculate the global average temperature, working with our partners at NOAA.

Many other organizations also track global temperature using their own instruments and methods, and they all match remarkably well. The last seven years were the hottest seven years on record. Earth is getting warmer.

We also study the effects of increasing temperatures, like the melting sea ice and longer fire seasons mentioned above. Additionally, we can study the cause of climate change from space, with a bird’s eye view of increasing carbon in the atmosphere.

The planet is changing because of human activities. We’re working together with other agencies to monitor changes and understand what this means for people in the future.

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