Is There Such Thing As A ‘gentle Black Hole’ (as In Interstellar) That Would One Day Be A Candidate

Take a deep breath. Even if the air looks clear, it is nearly certain that you will inhale millions of solid particles and liquid droplets. These ubiquitous specks of matter are known as aerosols, and they can be found in the air over oceans, deserts, mountains, forests, ice, and every ecosystem in between.

If you have ever watched smoke billowing from a wildfire, ash erupting from a volcano, or dust blowing in the wind, you have seen aerosols. Satellites like Terra, Aqua, Aura, and Suomi NPP “see” them as well, though they offer a completely different perspective from hundreds of kilometers above Earth’s surface. A version of one of our models called the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) offers a similarly expansive view of the mishmash of particles that dance and swirl through the atmosphere.

The visualization above highlights GEOS FP model output for aerosols on August 23, 2018. On that day, huge plumes of smoke drifted over North America and Africa, three different tropical cyclones churned in the Pacific Ocean, and large clouds of dust blew over deserts in Africa and Asia. The storms are visible within giant swirls of sea salt aerosol(blue), which winds loft into the air as part of sea spray. Black carbon particles (red) are among the particles emitted by fires; vehicle and factory emissions are another common source. Particles the model classified as dust are shown in purple. The visualization includes a layer of night light data collected by the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP that shows the locations of towns and cities.

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NASA Day of Remembrance

Every year at this time, we take a moment to reflect as the NASA Family on the very broad shoulders on which we stand: the shoulders of those women and men of NASA who gave their lives so that we could continue to reach for new heights for the benefit of all humankind.

To honor our fallen heroes and friends, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Deputy Administrator Dava Newman spoke at a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, at the grave sites of the fallen crew.

The crew aboard the International Space Station also payed tribute with a moment of silence. 

President Barack Obama recognized the day with the release of an official statement that honors the legacy of the heroes who lost their lives helping America touch the stars.

To view the President’s full statement, visit HERE. 

Visit our Day of Remembrance page to learn about the crews & missions we've lost: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/DOR2016/index.html

Thank you for keeping our fallen colleagues in your hearts and for honoring their legacy.

The year is 1965, and thanks to telecommunication engineers at our Jet Propulsions Laboratory, the first color version of one of our first Martian images had been created. Brought to life by hand coloring numbered strips, this image is a true blast to the past.

Fast forward to the 21st century and our Mars InSight mission now enables us to gawk at the Martian horizon as if we were there. InSight captured this panorama of its landing site on Dec. 9, 2018, the 14th Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The 290-degree perspective surveys the rim of the degraded crater InSight landed in and was made up of 30 photos stitched together.

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Hearing a lot about ocean worlds today? Let’s dive in and see what this news is all about...

We once thought oceans made our planet unique, but we’re now coming to realize that ‘ocean worlds’ are all around us.

Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other ‘ocean worlds’ in our solar system and beyond. The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with our Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope. 

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@danizzzxix: Does being in space take a toll on your body?

NASA’s Satellite Data Help Save Lives

For the first time, measurements from our Earth-observing satellites are being used to help combat a potential outbreak of life-threatening cholera. Humanitarian teams in Yemen are targeting areas identified by a NASA-supported project that precisely forecasts high-risk regions based on environmental conditions observed from space.

Cholera is caused by consuming food or water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae.

The disease affects millions of people every year and can be deadly. It remains a major threat to global health, especially in developing countries, such as Yemen, where access to clean water is limited.

To calculate the likelihood of an outbreak, scientists run a computer model that takes satellite observations of things like rain and temperatures and combines them with information on local sanitation and clean water infrastructure. In 2017, the model achieved 92 percent accuracy in predicting the regions where cholera was most likely to occur and spread in Yemen. An outbreak that year in Yemen was the world's worst, with more than 1.1 million suspected cases and more than 2,300 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

International humanitarian organizations took notice. In January 2018, Fergus McBean, a humanitarian adviser with the U.K.'s Department for International Development, read about the NASA-funded team's 2017 results and contacted them with an ambitious challenge: to create and implement a cholera forecasting system for Yemen, in only four months.

“It was a race against the start of rainy season,” McBean said.

The U.S. researchers began working with U.K. Aid, the U.K. Met Office, and UNICEF on the innovative approach to use the model to inform cholera risk reduction in Yemen.

In March, one month ahead of the rainy season, the U.K. international development office began using the model’s forecasts. Early results show the science team’s model predictions, coupled with Met Office weather forecasts, are helping UNICEF and other aid groups target their response to where support is needed most.

Photo Credit: UNICEF

“By joining up international expertise with those working on the ground, we have for the very first time used these sophisticated predictions to help save lives and prevent needless suffering,” said Charlotte Watts, chief scientist for United Kingdom’s Department for International Development.

Read more: go.nasa.gov/2MxKyw4

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Celebrating the Earth (Off the Earth!)

To find the perfect perch for Earth observation research, just look up – about 240 miles up. The International Space Station serves as an optimal platform for studying our dynamic planet, where spectacular views support science.

With currently active instruments and facilities like High Definition Earth Viewing, Crew Earth Observations, Lightning Imaging Sensor, SAGE-III and Meteor, researchers on the ground are able to use the station’s unique (and useful!) vantage point to track Earth’s weather patterns, obtain images documenting changes on the planet’s surface, understand the origin of meteors falling towards Earth, and better understand the atmosphere.

The space station’s 90-minute orbit allows it to cover 90% of the Earth’s populated surfaces. That means we are able to study A LOT of that big blue marble.

Let’s talk a little about how the space station serves as a platform for Earth observation:

Each day, as the space station passes over regions of the Earth, crew members photograph the area below as a part of the Crew Earth Observations Facility investigation, one of the longest-running experiments on the orbiting laboratory. Crew members are able to photograph large-scale weather events like the recent Hurricane Harvey from the space station’s Cupola. These little science postcards from space can be used by researchers and the public to learn more about our home planet.

Want to see a picture of your hometown from space? Search for it in the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (GAPE).

The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment streams live video of Earth for online viewing. This investigation not only provides hours and hours of footage of the Earth below, but also demonstrates how the technology holds up against the harsh environment of space. High school students helped design some of the cameras' components, through the High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) program, and student teams perform most of the HDEV operation. (Whoa! Check out HUNCH and STEM on Station for more opportunities for student involvement!)

Useful for weather forecasting, hurricane monitoring, and observations of large-scale climate phenomena such as El Niño, RapidScat used radar pulses reflected off the ocean to measure wind speed and direction over the ocean.

RapidScat completed its successful two-year mission, outlasting its original decommission date before suffering a power loss. Although RapidScat is no longer transmitting data back to Earth, the station hosts many other Earth-observation tools the Cyclone Intensity Measurements from the ISS (CyMISS) an experiment that seeks to develop detailed information on tropical storm structure to better estimate storm intensity, which will help government agencies to better prepare communities for impending natural disasters; and the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a previously-flown lidar instrument which measured atmospheric profiles of aerosols and clouds to better understand their properties and interactions, as well as provided data useful to improving climate change models.

Learn more about RapidScat’s mission conclusion HERE! Take a look at CATS mission data HERE!

Watch more inspiring videos and learn about how we’re capturing the beauty of Earth HERE.

Crew members are able to photograph large-scale weather events like the recent Hurricane Harvey from the space station’s Cupola. These little science postcards from space can be used by researchers and the public to learn more about our home planet.

Plants in space!

Future long-duration missions into the solar system will require a fresh food supply to supplement crew diets, which means growing crops in space. Growing food in such a harsh environment also teaches us a little bit about growing in harsh environments here on Earth.

Here are a few plant-based investigations currently happening aboard the orbiting laboratory:

Veggie is a chamber on the space station that helps scientists grow, harvest and study different space crops. This experiment is called VEG-03D and they’ve been able to grow six rounds of crops so far.

SpaceX's 13th Commercial Resupply vehicle carried many valuable items to the orbiting laboratory, including Plant Gravity Perception, an investigation that uses the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) to simulate gravity to help plants grow its roots downward, and shoots upwards. The shoots need to face upwards, towards the light, so they can absorb sunlight and nutrients. Without this, plants wouldn’t know which way to grow. Yikes!

Learn more about Plant Gravity Perception HERE!

The Advanced Plant Habitat is a large chamber that supports commercial and fundamental plant research for at least one year of continuous use. A great feature to this habitat is that the astronauts can view the plant’s progress through a window on the door.

Whether astronauts are taking pictures of the planet or growing crops in space, all science aboard the space station plants seeds for a better life on Earth. Biology investigations directly grow our knowledge of agricultural techniques for harsh environments and imagery from space can give us a clearer idea of our planet’s health and emerging weather patterns.

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Hopefully not a total dumb question but, YOUR ultimate goal as an astronaut?

Not all galaxies are lonely. Some have galaxy squads. ⁣

NGC 1706, captured in this image by our Hubble Space Telescope, belongs to something known as a galaxy group, which is just as the name suggests — a group of up to 50 galaxies which are gravitationally bound and relatively close to each other. ⁣

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, has its own squad — known as the Local Group, which also contains the Andromeda galaxy, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds and the Triangulum galaxy.

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Let’s launch some science to space!

The day has finally arrived. After years of work, a team of scientists is at Kennedy Space Center in the hopes of seeing their research liftoff to the International Space Station.

Join #NASAExplorers for the countdown, the emotion and, hopefully, the launch! 

Watch episode 5 here:

Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday!

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