The Daredevil Spacecraft That Will Touch The Sun

Digital Creators: Apply to Watch Astronauts Launch to Space with NASA

Do you spend a lot of time online? Would you like to see our next crew of astronauts lift off to the International Space Station?

We're looking for digital content creators of all backgrounds to join us at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for our Crew-6 mission to the space station, set to lift off no earlier than Sunday, Feb. 26. Applications close Friday, Jan. 27 at 3 p.m. EST (2000 UTC)—we'd love to see you there! Apply now.

Can't make this one? Click here to stay updated about future opportunities.

What's something you didn't know about being an astronaut before you actually became one? Do you have any words of advice for young astronauts?

We’re Landing a Rover on Mars in 2020…But How Do We Decide Where?

In 2020, we will launch our next Mars rover. It will journey more than 33 million miles to the Red Planet where it will land, explore and search for signs of ancient microbial life. But how do we pinpoint the perfect location to complete this science…when we’re a million miles away on Earth?

We utilize data sent to us by spacecraft on and orbiting Mars. That includes spacecraft that have recorded data in the past.

This week, hundreds of scientists and Mars enthusiasts are gathering to deliberate the four remaining options for where we’re going to land the Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet.

The landing site for Mars 2020 is of great interest to the planetary community because, among the rover's new science gear for surface exploration, it carries a sample system that will collect rock and soil samples and set them aside in a "cache" on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth. The next Mars landing, after Mars 2020, could very well be a vehicle which would retrieve these Mars 2020 samples.

Here's an overview of the potential landing sites for our Mars 2020 rover…

Northeast Syrtis

This area was once warmed by volcanic activity. Underground heat sources made hot springs flow and surface ice melt. Microbes could have flourished here in liquid water that was in contact with minerals. The layered terrain there holds a rich record of interactions between water and minerals over successive periods of early Mars history.

Jezero Crater

This area tells a story of the on-again, off-again nature of the wet past of Mars. Water filled and drained away from the crater on at least two occasions. More than 3.5 billion years ago, river channels spilled over the crater wall and created a lake. Scientists see evidence that water carried clay minerals from the surrounding area into the crater after the lake dried up. Conceivably, microbial life could have lived in Jezero during one or more of these wet times. If so, signs of their remains might be found in lakebed sediments.

Columbia Hills

At this site, mineral springs once bubbled up from the rocks. The discovery that hot springs flowed here was a major achievement of the Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit. The rover’s discovery was an especially welcome surprise because Spirit had not found signs of water anywhere else in the 100-mile-wide Gusev Crater. After the rover stopped working in 2010, studies of its older data records showed evidence that past floods may have formed a shallow lake in Gusev.

Midway

Candidate landing sites Jezero and Northeast Syrtis are approximately 37 km apart…which is close enough for regional geologic similarities to be present, but probably too far for the Mars 2020 rover to travel. This midway point allows exploration of areas of both landing sites.

How Will We Select a Site?

The team is gathered this week for the fourth time to discuss these locations. It'll be the final workshop in a series designed to ensure we receive the best and most diverse range of information and opinion from the scientific community before deciding where to send our newest rover.

The Mars 2020 mission is tasked with not only seeking signs of ancient habitable conditions on Mars, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. So how do we choose a landing site that will optimize these goals? Since InSight is stationary and needs a flat surface to deploy its instruments, we’re basically looking for a flat, parking lot area on Mars to land the spacecraft.

The first workshop started with about 30 candidate landing sites and was narrowed down to eight locations to evaluate further. At the end of the third workshop in February 2017, there were only three sites on the radar as potential landing locations…

…but in the ensuing months, a proposal came forward for a landing site that is in between Jezero and Northeast Syrtis – The Midway site. Since our goal is to get to the right site that provides the maximum science, this fourth site was viewed as worthy of being included in the discussions.

Now, with four sites remaining, champions for each option will take their turn at the podium, presenting and defending their favorite spot on the Red Planet.

On the final day, after all presentations have concluded, workshop participants will weigh the pros and cons of each site. The results of these deliberations will be provided to the Mars 2020 Team, which will incorporate them into a recommendation to NASA Headquarters. A final selection will be made and will likely be announced by the end of the year.

To get more information about the workshop, visit: https://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/workshops/wkshp_2018_10.cfm

Learn more about our Mars 2020 rover HERE.

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How the Sun Affects Asteroids in Our Neighborhood

It’s no secret the Sun affects us here on Earth in countless ways, from causing sunburns to helping our houseplants thrive. The Sun affects other objects in space, too, like asteroids! It can keep them in place. It can move them. And it can even shape them.

Asteroids embody the story of our solar system’s beginning. Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun on the same path as the gas giant, are no exception. The Trojans are thought to be left over from the objects that eventually formed our planets, and studying them might offer clues about how the solar system came to be.

Over the next 12 years, NASA’s Lucy mission will visit eight asteroids—including seven Trojans— to help answer big questions about planet formation and the origins of our solar system. It will take the spacecraft about 3.5 years to reach its first destination.

How does the Sun affect what Lucy might find?

Place in Space

Credits: Astronomical Institute of CAS/Petr Scheirich

The Sun makes up 99.8% of the solar system’s mass and exerts a strong gravitational force as a result. In the case of the Trojan asteroids that Lucy will visit, their very location in space is dictated in part by the Sun’s gravity. They are clustered at two Lagrange points. These are locations where the gravitational forces of two massive objects—in this case the Sun and Jupiter—are balanced in such a way that smaller objects (like asteroids or satellites) stay put relative to the larger bodies. The Trojans lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit by 60° at Lagrange points L4 and L5.

Pushing Asteroids Around (with Light!)

The Sun can move and spin asteroids with light! Like many objects in space, asteroids rotate. At any given moment, the Sun-facing side of an asteroid absorbs sunlight while the dark side sheds energy as heat. When the heat escapes, it creates an infinitesimal amount of thrust, pushing the asteroid ever so slightly and altering its rotational rate. The Trojans are farther from the Sun than other asteroids we’ve studied before, and it remains to be seen how sunlight affects their movement.

Cracking the Surface (Also with Light!)

The Sun can break asteroids, too. Rocks expand as they warm and contract when they cool. This repeated fluctuation can cause them to crack. The phenomenon is more intense for objects without atmospheres, such as asteroids, where temperatures vary wildly. Therefore, even though the Trojans are farther from the Sun than rocks on Earth, they’ll likely show more signs of thermal fracturing.

Solar Wind-Swept

Like everything in our solar system, asteroids are battered by the solar wind, a steady stream of particles, magnetic fields, and radiation that flows from the Sun. For the most part, Earth’s magnetic field protects us from this bombardment. Without magnetic fields or atmospheres of their own, asteroids receive the brunt of the solar wind. When incoming particles strike an asteroid, they can kick some material off into space, changing the fundamental chemistry of what’s left behind.

Follow along with Lucy’s journey with NASA Solar System on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and be sure to tune in for the launch at 5 a.m. EDT (09:00 UTC) on Saturday, Oct. 16 at nasa.gov/live.

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What’s Up for December 2016?

What’s Up for December? Mars and Neptune above the crescent moon and a New Year’s Eve comet!

2016 ends with fireworks as three planets line up as if ejected from a Roman candle. Mercury, Venus and Mars are visible above the sunset horizon all month long. 

As Venus climbs higher in the sky, it looks brighter and larger than it appeared last month.

On New Year’s Eve, Mars and Neptune appear very close to each other. Through telescopes, rusty red Mars and blue-green Neptune‘s colors contrast beautifully.

There are two meteor showers this month – the Geminds and the Ursids. The best time to see the reliable Geminids will be next year, when the full moon won’t be so bright and interfering. This year, however, we may luck out and see some of the brighter meteors on the evening of the 13th and the morning of the 14th.

The best time to view the Ursids, radiating from Ursa Minor, or the little Dipper, will be from midnight on the 21st until about 1 a.m. on the 22nd, before the moon rises. They may be active on the 23rd and 24th, too.

We haven’t had a good easy-to-see comet in quite a while, but beginning in December and through most of 2017 we will have several binocular and telescopic comets to view.

The first we’ll be able to see is Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková, which will appear low on the western horizon on December 15th. On that date, the comet will pass the pretty globular cluster M75. 

By the 21st, it will appear edge-on, sporting a bluish-green head and a thin, sharp view of the fan-shaped tail.

On New Years Eve, the comet and the crescent moon will rendezvous to say farewell to 2016. A “periodic” comet is a previously-identified comet that’s on a return visit. Periodic comet 45P returns to the inner solar system every 5.25 years, and that’s the one that will help us ring in the new year.

Watch the full What’s Up for December video: 

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Mark your calendars for summer 2018: That's when we're launching a spacecraft to touch the sun. 

In honor of our first-ever mission to the heart of the solar system, this week we’re delving into the life and times of this powerful yellow dwarf star.

1. Meet Parker 

Parker Solar Probe, our first mission to go to the sun, is named after Eugene Parker, an American astrophysicist who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. This historic mission will explore one of the last regions of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft and help scientists unlock answers to questions they've been pondering for more than five decades.

2. Extra SPF, Please 

Parker Solar Probe will swoop within 4 million miles of the sun's surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. The mission will provide new data on solar activity to help us better understand our home star and its activity - information that can improve forecasts of major space-weather events that could impact life on Earth.

3. Majorly Massive 

The sun is the center of our solar system and makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be about the size of a nickel.

4. Different Spin 

Since the sun is not a solid body, different parts of the sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.

5. Can't Stand on It

The sun is a star and a star doesn't have a solid surface. Rather, it's a ball of ionized gas 92.1% hydrogen (H2) and 7.8% helium (He) held together by its own gravity.

6. Center of Attention 

The sun isn't a planet, so it doesn't have any moons. But, the sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of thousands to trillions of comets and icy bodies.

7. It's Hot in There 

And we mean really, really hot. The temperature at the sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. However, its atmosphere, the corona, can reach temperatures of 3 million degrees. (That's as if it got hotter the farther away you got from a fire, instead of cooler!) Parker Solar Probe will help scientists solve the mystery of why the corona's temperature is so much higher than the surface.

8. Travel Conditions

The sun influences the entire solar system, so studying it helps us better understand the space weather that our astronauts and spacecraft travel through.

9. Life on the Sun? 

Better to admire from afar. Thanks to its hot, energetic mix of gases and plasma, the sun can't be home to living things. However, we can thank the sun for making life on Earth possible by providing the warmth and energy that supply Earth’s food chain.

10. Chance of a Lifetime 

Last but not least, don't forget that the first total solar eclipse to sweep across the U.S. from coast-to-coast since 1918 is happening on August 21, 2017. Our toolkit has you need to know to about it. 

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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Swift: Our Sleuth for the Universe’s Gamma-ray Bursts

The universe is full of mysteries, and we continue to search for answers. How can we study matter and energy that we can’t see directly? What’s it like inside the crushed core of a massive dead star? And how do some of the most powerful explosions in the universe evolve and interact with their surrounding environment? 

Luckily for us, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is watching the skies and helping astronomers answer that last question and more! As we celebrate its 15-year anniversary, let’s get you up to speed about Swift.

What are gamma-ray bursts and why are they interesting?

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. When they occur, they are about a million trillion times as bright as the Sun. But these bursts don’t last long — from a few milliseconds (we call those short duration bursts) to a few minutes (long duration). In the 1960s, spacecraft were watching for gamma rays from Earth — a sign of nuclear testing. What scientists discovered, however, were bursts of gamma rays coming from space!

Gamma-ray bursts eventually became one of the biggest mysteries in science. Scientists wanted to know: What events sparked these fleeting but powerful occurrences?

So how do gamma-ray bursts and Swift connect?

When it roared into space on a rocket, Swift’s main goals included understanding the origin of gamma-ray bursts, discovering if there were additional classes of bursts (besides the short and long ones), and figuring out what these events could tell us about the early universe.

With Swift as our eyes on the sky, we now know that gamma-ray bursts can be some of the farthest objects we’ve ever detected and lie in faraway galaxies. In fact, the closest known gamma-ray burst occurred more than 100 million light-years from us. We also know that these explosions are associated with some of the most dramatic events in our universe, like the collapse of a massive star or the merger of two neutron stars — the dense cores of collapsed stars.

Swift is still a powerful multiwavelength observatory and continues to help us solve mysteries about the universe. In 2018 it located a burst of light that was at least 10 times brighter than a typical supernova. Last year Swift, along with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, announced the discovery of a pair of distant explosions which produced the highest-energy light yet seen from gamma-ray bursts.

Swift can even study much, much closer objects like comets and asteroids!

Why is Swift unique?

How do we study events that happen so fast? Swift is first on the scene because of its ability to automatically and quickly turn to investigate sudden and fascinating events in the cosmos. These qualities are particularly helpful in pinpointing and studying short-lived events.

The Burst Alert Telescope, which is one of Swift’s three instruments, leads the hunt for these explosions. It can see one-sixth of the entire sky at one time. Within 20 to 75 seconds of detecting a gamma-ray burst, Swift automatically rotates so that its X-ray and ultraviolet telescopes can view the burst.

Because of the “swiftness” of the satellite, it can look at a lot in 24 hours — between 50 and 100 targets each day! Swift has new “targets-of-opportunity” to look at every day and can also look at objects for follow up observations. By doing so, it can see how events in our cosmos change over time.

How did Swift get its name?

You may have noticed that lots of spacecraft have long names that we shorten to acronyms. However, this isn’t the case for Swift. It’s named after the bird of the same name, and because of the satellite’s ability to move quickly and re-point its science instruments.

When it launched, Swift was called NASA’s Swift Observatory. But in January 2018, Swift was renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in memory of the mission’s original principal investigator, Neil Gehrels.

Follow along with Swift to see a typical day in the life of the satellite:

Juno: Exploring Jupiter’s Intense Radiation

Since 2011, our Juno spacecraft has been heading towards Jupiter, where it will study the gas giant’s atmosphere, aurora, gravity and magnetic field. Along the way, Juno has had to deal with the radiation that permeates space.

All of space is filled with particles, and when these particles get moving at high speeds, they’re called radiation. We study space radiation to better protect spacecraft as they travel through space, as well as to understand how this space environment influences planetary evolution. Once at Jupiter, Juno will have a chance to study one of the most intense radiation environments in our solar system.

Near worlds with magnetic fields – like Earth and Jupiter – these fast-moving particles can get trapped inside the magnetic fields, creating donut-shaped swaths of radiation called radiation belts.

Jupiter’s radiation belts – the glowing areas in the animation below – are especially intense, with particles so energetic that they zip up and down the belts at nearly the speed of light.

Earth also has radiation belts, but they aren’t nearly as intense as Jupiter’s – why? First, Jupiter’s magnetic field is much stronger than Earth’s, meaning that it traps and accelerates faster particles.

Second, while both Earth’s and Jupiter’s radiation belts are populated with particles from space, Jupiter also has a second source of particles – its volcanically active moon Io. Io’s volcanoes constantly release plumes of particles that are energized by Jupiter’s magnetic field. These fast particles get trapped in Jupiter’s radiation belts, making the belts that much stronger and more intense.  

In addition to studying this vast space environment, Juno engineers had to take this intense radiation into consideration when building the spacecraft. The radiation can cause instruments to degrade, interfere with measurements, and can even give the spacecraft itself an electric charge – not good for something with so many sensitive electronics.  

Since we know Jupiter is a harsh radiation environment, we designed Juno with protections in place to keep it safe. Most of Juno’s electronics live inside a half-inch-thick titanium vault, where most of the radiation can’t reach them. We also planned Juno’s orbit to swoop in very close to Jupiter’s surface, underneath the most intense pockets of radiation in Jupiter’s radiation belts.

Juno arrives at Jupiter on July 4th. Throughout its time orbiting the planet, it will send back data on Jupiter’s magnetic field and energetic particles, helping us understand this intense radiation environment better than ever before.

For updates on the Juno mission, follow the spacecraft on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Isolation, Hazard of the Mind

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.A human journey to Mars, at first glance, offers an inexhaustible amount of complexities. To bring a mission to the Red Planet from fiction to fact, our Human Research Program has organized hazards astronauts will encounter on a continual basis into five classifications. (View the first hazard). Let’s dive into the second hazard:

Overcoming the second hazard, isolation and confinement, is essential for a successful mission to Mars. Behavioral issues among groups of people crammed in a small space over a long period of time, no matter how well trained they are, are inevitable. It is a topic of study and discussion currently taking place around the selection and composition of crews.

On Earth, we have the luxury of picking up our cell phones and instantly being connected with nearly everything and everyone around us. 

On a trip to Mars, astronauts will be more isolated and confined than we can imagine. 

Sleep loss, circadian desynchronization (getting out of sync), and work overload compound this issue and may lead to performance decrements or decline, adverse health outcomes, and compromised mission objectives.

To address this hazard, methods for monitoring behavioral health and adapting/refining various tools and technologies for use in the spaceflight environment are being developed to detect and treat early risk factors. Research is also being conducted in workload and performance, light therapy for circadian alignment or internal clock alignment, and team cohesion.

Exploration to the Moon and Mars will expose astronauts to five known hazards of spaceflight, including isolation and confinement. To learn more, and find out what the Human Research Program is doing to protect humans in space, check out the "Hazards of Human Spaceflight" website. Or, check out this week’s episode of “Houston We Have a Podcast,” in which host Gary Jordan further dives into the threat of isolation and confinement with Tom Williams, a NASA Human Factors and Behavior Performance Element Scientist at the Johnson Space Center. 

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Ready for a virtual adventure through the Orion Nebula?

Suspended in space, the stars that reside in the Orion Nebula are scattered throughout a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. This visualization uses visible and infrared views, combining images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope to create a three-dimensional visualization.

Learn more about Hubble’s celebration of Nebula November and see new nebula images, here.

You can also keep up with Hubble on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr!

Visualization credits: NASA, ESA, and F. Summers, G. Bacon, Z. Levay, J. DePasquale, L. Hustak, L. Frattare, M. Robberto, M. Gennaro (STScI), R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC), M. Kornmesser (ESA); Acknowledgement: A. Fujii, R. Gendler