How Does It Feel To Take A Walk In Space?

We are swooningggg over this NEW Saturn image. 

Saturn is so beautiful that astronomers cannot resist using the Hubble Space Telescope to take yearly snapshots of the ringed world when it is at its closest distance to Earth. 😍

These images, however, are more than just beauty shots. They reveal exquisite details of the planet as a part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy project to help scientists understand the atmospheric dynamics of our solar system's gas giants.

This year's Hubble offering, for example, shows that a large storm visible in the 2018 Hubble image in the north polar region has vanished. Also, the mysterious six-sided pattern – called the "hexagon" – still exists on the north pole. Caused by a high-speed jet stream, the hexagon was first discovered in 1981 by our Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Saturn's signature rings are still as stunning as ever. The image reveals that the ring system is tilted toward Earth, giving viewers a magnificent look at the bright, icy structure. 

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team

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Space toilet, Radishes, and a Spacewalk in Virtual Reality

A rocket is launching to the International Space Station next week, carrying tons of science and supplies to the orbiting laboratory. It’s Northrop Grumman’s 14th (NG-14) commercial resupply cargo mission, and includes plant research, a new space toilet, and a special virtual reality camera designed to immerse you in a spacewalk. Let’s take a closer look at what’s on board, and how you can ask some of the scientists anything.

A new way to “boldly go” in space  

A new space toilet is heading to the space station. It’s smaller than the current toilets aboard the station, and includes a 3D printed titanium cover for its dual fan separator. These are just some of the upgrades that make it better suited for our deep space exploration missions. Engineers also gathered feedback from astronauts and set out to design more comfortable attachments that would make “boldly going” in space a more enjoyable experience. The toilet is being tested on the space station, and will also be used on a future Artemis mission. The new design will allow us to increase how much water we recover for use, because yep … yesterday’s coffee becomes tomorrow’s drinking water. See below for an opportunity to speak with the folks who made the new space toilet happen.  

Space plants are rad(ish)!  

Astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars will need to grow food to supplement their diets. The latest in plant studies aboard the space station hopes to pack a crunch in that research. We’ll be growing radishes in a special plant chamber, and learning how light, water, atmosphere, and soil conditions affect the bulbous vegetables. Radishes are nutritious, grow quickly (roughly four weeks from sowing to harvest), and are genetically similar to Arabidopsis, a plant frequently studied in microgravity. What we learn could help optimize growth of the plants in space as well as provide an assessment of their nutrition and taste. See below for an opportunity to ask anything of the scientist and engineer behind this new crop.  

Immerse yourself in a spacewalk  

If going to space is on your bucket list, you might be closer than you think to checking that box. Felix & Paul Studios is creating an immersive 360 virtual reality film of a spacewalk that will put you right next to the astronauts as they go about their work on the outside of the space station … at 17,500 miles per hour. The new camera, specially designed to withstand the incredibly harsh environment of space, will be mounted on the station’s robotic arm so it can be maneuvered around the outside of the space station. Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël are the co-founders of the immersive entertainment studio, and have been producing a film aboard the space station – from Earth – for more than a year already. See below for a chance to ask them anything about what filming in space takes.  

You can join in the NG-14 Reddit Ask Me Anything on Friday, Sept. 25 to ask anything of these folks and their projects. Here’s the schedule:  

Space toilet (a.k.a the Universal Waste Management System): Melissa McKinley with NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems and Jim Fuller of Collins Aerospace, and program manager for UWMS at 12 p.m. EDT at https://www.reddit.com/r/space.

Radishes in space (a.k.a. Plant Habitat-02): Dr. Karl Hasenstein is the scientist behind the Plant Habitat-02, and Dave Reed knows the ins and outs of the Advanced Plant Habitat of the space station. Their Reddit AMA begins at 3 p.m. EDT at https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening.

Virtual reality spacewalk camera: Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël co-founders and creative directors of Felix & Paul Studios will be taking questions at 5 p.m. EDT on https://www.reddit.com/r/filmmakers.

These are just a few of the payloads launching aboard the NG-14 Cygnus cargo vehicle to the space station next week. Read about the cancer research, and new commercial products also heading to space and watch the video above to learn more. Launch is targeted for Tuesday, Sept. 29, with a five-minute launch window opening at approximately 10:26 p.m. EDT. Live coverage begins on NASA TV at 10 p.m. EDT.

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To the Moon and Beyond: Why Our SLS Rocket Is Designed for Deep Space

It will take incredible power to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon’s South Pole by 2024.  That’s where America’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket comes in to play.

Providing more payload mass, volume capability and energy to speed missions through deep space than any other rocket, our SLS rocket, along with our lunar Gateway and Orion spacecraft, creates the backbone for our deep space exploration and Artemis lunar mission goals.

Here’s why our SLS rocket is a deep space rocket like no other:

It’s a heavy lifter

The Artemis missions will send humans 280,000 miles away from Earth. That’s 1,000 times farther into space than the International Space Station. To accomplish that mega feat, you need a rocket that’s designed to lift — and lift heavy. With help from a dynamic core stage — the largest stage we have ever built — the 5.75-million-pound SLS rocket can propel itself off the Earth. This includes the 57,000 pounds of cargo that will go to the Moon. To accomplish this, SLS will produce 15% more thrust at launch and during ascent than the Saturn V did for the Apollo Program.

We have the power 

Where do our rocket’s lift and thrust capabilities come from? If you take a peek under our powerful rocket’s hood, so to speak, you’ll find a core stage with four RS-25 engines that produce more than 2 million pounds of thrust alongside two solid rocket boosters that each provide another 3.6 million pounds of thrust power. It’s a bold design. Together, they provide an incredible 8.8 million pounds of thrust to power the Artemis missions off the Earth. The engines and boosters are modified heritage hardware from the Space Shuttle Program, ensuring high performance and reliability to drive our deep space missions.

A rocket with style

While our rocket’s core stage design will remain basically the same for each of the Artemis missions, the SLS rocket’s upper stage evolves to open new possibilities for payloads and even robotic scientific missions to worlds farther away than the Moon like Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. For the first three Artemis missions, our SLS rocket uses an interim cryogenic propulsion stage with one RL10 engine to send Orion to the lunar south pole. For Artemis missions following the initial 2024 Moon landing, our SLS rocket will have an exploration upper stage with bigger fuel tanks and four RL10 engines so that Orion, up to four astronauts and larger cargoes can be sent to the Moon, too. Additional core stages and upper stages will support either crewed Artemis missions, science missions or cargo missions for a sustained presence in deep space.

It’s just the beginning

Crews at our Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans are in the final phases of assembling the core stage for Artemis I— and are already working on assembly for Artemis II.

Through the Artemis program, we aim not just to return humans to the Moon, but to create a sustainable presence there as well. While there, astronauts will learn to use the Moon’s natural resources and harness our newfound knowledge to prepare for the horizon goal: humans on Mars.

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It’s official - we’re headed to do science on the Sun! ☀️

At 11:03 p.m. EST on Sunday, Feb. 9, Solar Orbiter, an international collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, launched aboard United Launch Alliance’s #AtlasV rocket for its journey to our closest star. The spacecraft will help us understand how the Sun creates and controls the constantly changing space environment throughout the solar system. The more we understand about the Sun’s influence on the planets in our solar system and the space we travel through, the more we can protect our astronauts and spacecraft as we journey to the Moon, to Mars and beyond. More here. 

Image Credit: NASA Social participant, Jared Frankle

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6 Ways NASA is Involved in Climate Science

When it comes to climate change, we play a unique role in observing and understanding changes to the planet. Thanks to NASA’s Earth observations and related research, we know our planet and its climate are changing profoundly. We also know human activities, like releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, are driving this change.

Not only do we make these observations, we help people and groups use this knowledge to benefit society. The work we do at NASA is critical to helping us understand the ways our planet is responding to increased temperatures.

Here are 6 ways that we are involved in climate science and informing decisions:

1. Monitoring Earth’s vital signs

Just like a doctor checks your vitals when you go in for a visit, here at NASA we are constantly monitoring Earth’s vital signs - carbon dioxide levels, global temperature, Arctic sea ice minimum, the ice sheets and sea level, and more.

We use satellites in space, observations from airplanes and ships, and data collected on the ground to understand our planet and its changing climate. Scientists also use computers to model and understand what's happening now and what might happen in the future.

People who study Earth see that the planet’s climate is getting warmer. Earth's temperature has gone up more than 1 degree Celsius (~2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last 100 years. This may not seem like much, but small changes in Earth's temperature can have big effects. The current warming trend is of particular significance, because it is predominantly the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and is proceeding at an unprecedented rate.

People drive cars. People heat and cool their houses. People cook food. All those things take energy. Human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are largely responsible for warming our planet. Burning fossil fuels -- which includes coal, oil, and natural gas -- releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where they act like an insulating blanket and trap heat near Earth’s surface.

At NASA, we use satellites and instruments on board the International Space Station to confirm measurements of atmospheric carbon levels. They’ve been increasing much faster than any other time in history.

2. Tracking global land use and its impacts 

We also monitor and track global land use. Currently, half the world's population lives in urban areas, and by 2025, the United Nations projects that number will rise to 60%. 

With so many people living and moving to metropolitan areas, the scientific world recognizes the need to study and understand the impacts of urban growth both locally and globally. 

The International Space Station helps with this effort to monitor Earth. Its position in low-Earth orbit provides variable views and lighting over more than 90% of the inhabited surface of Earth, a useful complement to sensor systems on satellites in higher-altitude polar orbits. This high-resolution imaging of land and sea allows tracking of urban and forest growth, monitoring of hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, documenting of melting glaciers and deforestation, understanding how agriculture may be impacted by water stress, and measuring carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.

3. Research into the causes of climate change

Being able to monitor Earth’s climate from space also allows us to understand what’s driving these changes.

With the CERES instruments, which fly on multiple Earth satellites, our scientists measure the Earth’s planetary energy balance – the amount of energy Earth receives from the Sun and how much it radiates back to space. Over time, less energy being radiated back to space is evidence of an increase in Earth’s greenhouse effect. Human emissions of greenhouse gases are trapping more and more heat.

NASA scientists also use computer models to simulate changes in Earth’s climate as a result of  human and natural drivers of temperature change.

These simulations show that human activities such as greenhouse gas emissions, along with natural factors, are necessary to simulate the changes in Earth’s climate that we have observed; natural forces alone can’t do so.

4. Research into the effects of climate change

Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers and ice sheets have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted, and trees are flowering sooner.

The effects of global climate change that scientists predicted are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.

Climate modelers have predicted that, as the planet warms, Earth will experience more severe heat waves and droughts, larger and more extreme wildfires, and longer and more intense hurricane seasons on average. The events of 2020 are consistent with what models have predicted: extreme climate events are more likely because of greenhouse gas emissions.

Plants are also struggling to keep up with rising carbon dioxide levels. Plants play a key role in mitigating climate change. The more carbon dioxide they absorb during photosynthesis, the less carbon dioxide  remains trapped in the atmosphere where it can cause temperatures to rise. But scientists have identified an unsettling trend – 86% of land ecosystems globally are becoming progressively less efficient at absorbing the increasing levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Helping organizations to use all the data and knowledge NASA generates is another part of our job. We’ve helped South Dakota fight West Nile Virus, helped managers across the Western U.S. handle water, helped The Nature Conservancy protect land for shorebirds, and others. We also support developing countries as they work to address climate and other challenges through a 15-year partnership with the United States Agency for International Development.

5. Action on sustainability

Sustainability involves taking action now to enable a future where the environment and living conditions are protected and enhanced. We work with many government, nonprofit, and business partners to use our data and modeling to inform their decisions and actions. We are also working to advance technologies for more efficient flight, including hybrid-electric propulsion, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. 

These advances in research and technology will not only bring about positive changes to the climate and the world in which we live, but they will also drive the economic engine of America and our partners in industry, to remain the world-wide leader in flight development.  

We partner with the private sector to facilitate the transfer of our research and NASA-developed technologies. Many innovations originally developed for use in the skies above help make life more sustainable on Earth. For example:

Our Earth-observing satellites help farmers produce more with less water.

Expertise in rocket engineering led to a technique that lessens the environmental impact of burning coal.

A fuel cell that runs equipment at oil wells reduces the need to vent greenhouse gases.

6. Applying climate research to preserve NASA centers in coastal areas

Sea level rise in the two-thirds of Earth covered by water may jeopardize up to two-thirds of NASA's infrastructure built within mere feet of sea level.

Some NASA centers and facilities are located in coastal real estate because the shoreline is a safer, less inhabited surrounding for launching rockets. But now these launch pads, laboratories, airfields, and testing facilities are potentially at risk because of sea level rise. We’ve worked internally at NASA to identify climate risks and support planning at our centers.

NASA Climate Science

Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing us today. It involves many dimensions – science, economics, society, politics, and moral and ethical questions – and is a global problem, felt on local scales, that will be around for decades and centuries to come. With our Eyes on the Earth and wealth of knowledge on the Earth’s climate system and its components, we are one of the world’s experts in climate science.

Visit our Climate site to explore and learn more.

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Happy 50th Anniversary of Earth Day! 💙🌍

We’re so glad you could join us for this special Earth edition of Tumblr Answer Time. Today is a perfect day to learn about our home planet directly from the people who work to keep it safe. 

Kick off starts NOW! 

Our Acting Director of Earth Sciences, Sandra Cauffman, and Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen have answers to your questions from their homes! Enjoy. 

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Take a dive between Saturn and its rings to see what our Cassini spacecraft saw during its first daring plunge on April 26! 

As Cassini made its first-ever dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017, one of its imaging cameras took a series of rapid-fire images that were used to make this movie sequence. The video begins with a view of the vortex at Saturn's north pole, then heads past the outer boundary of the planet's hexagon-shaped jet stream and continues further southward. 

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What is the weirdest thing you had to account for when building the perseverance rover?

Why are we studying them? What’s purpose of this field for us on earth?

Chris Williams

Born in New York City, Chris Williams considers Potomac, Maryland, to be his hometown. A private pilot and Eagle Scout, Williams is a board-certified medical physicist and holds a doctorate in physics from MIT. https://go.nasa.gov/49YJJmf

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