Who Was Mary W. Jackson?

Let It Snow for Science

When the weather outside is frightful…

Science in the field gets even more delightful. Two different missions are in the field right now, studying snow and how it affects communities around the country.

From our Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the IMPACTS mission is flying up and down the East Coast, investigating how snow forms inside clouds. In Grand Mesa, Colorado, SnowEx’s teams on the ground and in the air are taking a close look at how much water is stored in snow.

Hate going out in the storm? The IMPACTS mission can help with that! IMPACTS uses two planes – a P-3 Orion and an ER-2 – flying through and high above the clouds to study where intense bands of snowfall form. Better understanding where intense snow will fall can improve forecast models down the road — helping prepare communities for snowstorms.

Cameras mounted on the wings of the P3 took microscopic images of snowflakes, like this one.

At the same time, the SnowEx team is in Colorado, studying the depth and density of snow. Researchers are making radar spirals with snowmobiles and working in giant snow pits to measure things like snow water equivalent, or how much water is stored in snow.

SnowEx is helping us better understand snow’s role in ecosystems and human systems, like irrigation for agriculture. If you want to bring some corn for popping, SnowEx’s science can help grow that crop.

Follow along with our teams as they brave the cold and snow: https://twitter.com/nasaexpeditions

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Hello there 👋

Welcome to Mindful Monday. It’s good to see you 🧘

For our second week, we’ve got an offer of mindfulness y’all can’t POSSIBLY refuse: join us as we tour the rings of Saturn with NASA! Turn on, tune in, and space out to relaxing music and stunning ultra-high-definition visuals of our cosmic neighborhood 🌌

Sounds good, right? Of course, it does. You can watch even more Space Out episodes on NASA+, a new, no-cost, ad-free streaming service.

Why not give it a try? Just a few minutes this Monday morning can make all the difference to your entire week, as @nasa helps to bring mindfulness from the stars and straight to you. 

🧘WATCH: Space Out with NASA: Rings of Saturn 12/04 at 1pm EST🧘

Exploring Our National Parks…from Space!

The United States has nearly 84 million acres of historic and scenic land in its national parks system. In celebration of National Park Week, here are some satellite views of a few of those national treasures.

Throughout National Park Week, you can #FindYourPark and visit for free.

Yosemite National Park – California

Naked summits alternate with forested lowlands in Yosemite Valley, part of California’s Yosemite National Park. Our Landsat 7 satellite captured this true-color image of part of the Yosemite Valley on Aug. 8, 2001.

Yellowstone National Park – Wyoming, Idaho and Montana

Established in 1872, it was the first national park in the United States, and the world! Its geological and biological wonders have led international groups to declare it a world heritage site and a biosphere reserve. Yellowstone National Park captures the spirit and purpose of the National Park Service, blending modern and ancient human history with nature in its raw complexity.

Hot Springs National Park – Arkansas

National Parks usually make us think of pristine landscapes untouched by human civilization. Most of the 59 national parks in the United States fit that mold, but there are a few exceptions. Arkansas’s Hot Springs National Park, the country’s smallest and most urban, is one of them. Hot Springs, a city of 96,000 people, lies at the southern edge of the park and partly within its boarders.

Shenandoah National Park – Virginia

This long, narrow park in the Blue Ridge Mountains spans more than 179,000 acres, with 40% of the land protected as wilderness. More than 95% of the park is forested, sheltering 1,300 plant species and 267 types of trees and shrubs. The park contains 577 archeological sites, more than 100 cemeteries, and some rocks that date back a billion years.

Olympic National Park – Washington

Possibly one of America’s most diverse national landscapes, Olympic National Park is situated on the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington. If you walked from west to east across the park, you would start at the rocky Pacific shoreline, move into rare temperate rainforests and lush river valleys, ascend glaciers and rugged mountain peaks, and then descend into a comparatively dry rain shadow and alpine forest. From beach to the top of Mount Olympus, you would rise 7,980 feet above sea level.

Colorado National Monument – Colorado

Along the Interstate 70 corridor in western Colorado, well-watered croplands, residential properties and urbanized areas create a broad stripe of green and gray. Away from the interstate, dry climate conditions color the landscape shades of beige, brick and tan. Yet these arid regions offer treasures of their own, including stunning vistas and wildlife both living and extinct. The varied landscapes of this park show the effects of tens of millions of years of erosion.

The images above were produced by our Earth Observatory as part of its 2016 series featuring the National Park Service properties. Check out more HERE. 

Want to see more of our nation’s parks from space? Visit our Flickr gallery HERE.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Learn about supermoons, read the monthly blog from the Dawn mission’s chief engineer and more.

1. This Is the Season for Supermoons 

The second of three fall supermoons occurred on November 14 and the final one is December. What are supermoons? Since the moon’s orbit is elliptical, one side (perigee) is about 30,000 miles closer to Earth than the other (apogee). The word syzygy, in addition to being useful in word games, is the scientific name for when the Earth, sun, and moon line up as the moon orbits Earth. When perigee-syzygy of the Earth-moon-sun system occurs and the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun, we get a perigee moon or more commonly, a supermoon!

+ Learn more 

2. Dawn Mission Blog

When Dawn arrived at Ceres in March 2015, it became the first spacecraft to reach a dwarf planet  Meet the Dawn mission’s chief engineer Dr. Marc Rayman and read his insightful blogs about the mission. 

+ Latest Blog

+  All Mission Managers Blogs

3. The Seas of Titan

On its penultimate close flyby of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, Cassini will use its radio science instrument to scan the great seas of methane near the moon’s North Pole. Titan’s three large northern seas, Punga Mare, Ligeia Mare and Kraken Mare, are each hundreds of miles across, but imaging cameras can’t see them very well because the moon’s surface is veiled by a thick haze. Radio signals, however, can penetrate the moon’s atmosphere, and Cassini has an instrument that uses radio signals to reveal Titan's dramatic landscapes.

+ See a map of Titan’s methane seas

4.  Spot the Station!

Have you ever seen the International Space Station fly over your town? Do you want to? 

+ Here's how and where and when to look

5. The Science of Light, Celebrating Dark Skies in Our National Parks

Learning more about the science of light and human vision will help us understand the value and fragility of natural lightscapes. During the day, the surface of the planet is bathed in light from the sun. The energy in sunlight drives weather, the water cycle, and ecosystems. But at night, in the absence of bright light, our atmosphere turns transparent and allows us to see beyond our planet into the vastness of the cosmos.

+ More

Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.

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Unveiling the Center of Our Milky Way Galaxy

We captured an extremely crisp infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Spanning more than 600 light-years, this panorama reveals details within the dense swirls of gas and dust in high resolution, opening the door to future research into how massive stars are forming and what’s feeding the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s core.

Among the features coming into focus are the jutting curves of the Arches Cluster containing the densest concentration of stars in our galaxy, as well as the Quintuplet Cluster with stars a million times brighter than our Sun. Our galaxy’s black hole takes shape with a glimpse of the fiery-looking ring of gas surrounding it.

The new view was made by the world’s largest airborne telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA.

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

GALAXY BRAIN 🧠

Our Hubble Space Telescope spotted this planetary nebula in the constellation of Orion. It's really a vast orb of gas in space, with its aging star in the center... but what does it look like to you? 🤔

When stars like the Sun grow advanced in age, they expand and glow red. These so-called red giants then begin to lose their outer layers of material into space. More than half of such a star's mass can be shed in this manner, forming a shell of surrounding gas. At the same time, the star's core shrinks and grows hotter, emitting ultraviolet light that causes the expelled gases to glow.

Out of all the theories and fantasies created around blackholes, which of them, in your opinion, do you think could come closest to reality?

do you have a favourite planet etc?

3 … 2 … 1… ALOHA!

Sometimes in space, you have to set your clocks to island time and gather for a good Hawaiian shirt day. In this 2001 #TBT, Expedition Two and STS-100 crew members gather for a group photo with a pre-set digital still camera.

Clockwise from the 12 o'clock point in the circle are Kent V. Rominger, Yuri V. Lonchakov, Yury V. Usachev, Umberto Guidoni, James S. Voss, Jeffrey S. Ashby, Scott E. Parazynski, John L. Phillips and Chris A. Hadfield, with Susan J. Helms at center. Usachev, Helms and Voss are members of three Expedition Two crew, with the other seven serving as the STS-100 crew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Usachev and Lonchakov represent Rosaviakosmos; Guidoni is associated with the European Space Agency (ESA); and Hadfield is from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

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

Solar System: 10 Things to Know This Week

Pioneer Days

Someone’s got to be first. In space, the first explorers beyond Mars were Pioneers 10 and 11, twin robots who charted the course to the cosmos.

1-Before Voyager

Voyager, with its outer solar system tour and interstellar observations, is often credited as the greatest robotic space mission. But today we remember the plucky Pioneers, the spacecraft that proved Voyager’s epic mission was possible.

2-Where No One Had Gone Before

Forty-five years ago this week, scientists still weren’t sure how hard it would be to navigate the main asteroid belt, a massive field of rocky debris between Mars and Jupiter. Pioneer 10 helped them work that out, emerging from first the first six-month crossing in February 1973. Pioneer 10 logged a few meteoroid hits (fewer than expected) and taught engineers new tricks for navigating farther and farther beyond Earth.

3-Trailblazer No. 2

Pioneer 11 was a backup spacecraft launched in 1973 after Pioneer 10 cleared the asteroid belt. The new mission provided a second close look at Jupiter, the first close-up views of Saturn and also gave Voyager engineers plotting an epic multi-planet tour of the outer planets a chance to practice the art of interplanetary navigation.

4-First to Jupiter

Three-hundred and sixty-three years after humankind first looked at Jupiter through a telescope, Pioneer 10 became the first human-made visitor to the Jovian system in December 1973. The spacecraft spacecraft snapped about 300 photos during a flyby that brought it within 81,000 miles (about 130,000 kilometers) of the giant planet’s cloud tops.

5-Pioneer Family

Pioneer began as a Moon program in the 1950s and evolved into increasingly more complicated spacecraft, including a Pioneer Venus mission that delivered a series of probes to explore deep into the mysterious toxic clouds of Venus. A family portrait (above) showing (from left to right) Pioneers 6-9, 10 and 11 and the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe series. Image date: March 11, 1982. 

6-A Pioneer and a Pioneer

Classic rock has Van Halen, we have Van Allen. With credits from Explorer 1 to Pioneer 11, James Van Allen was a rock star in the emerging world of planetary exploration. Van Allen (1914-2006) is credited with the first scientific discovery in outer space and was a fixture in the Pioneer program. Van Allen was a key part of the team from the early attempts to explore the Moon (he’s pictured here with Pioneer 4) to the more evolved science platforms aboard Pioneers 10 and 11.

7-The Farthest...For a While

For more than 25 years, Pioneer 10 was the most distant human-made object, breaking records by crossing the asteroid belt, the orbit of Jupiter and eventually even the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 1, moving even faster, claimed the most distant title in February 1998 and still holds that crown.

8-Last Contact

We last heard from Pioneer 10 on Jan. 23, 2003. Engineers felt its power source was depleted and no further contact should be expected. We tried again in 2006, but had no luck. The last transmission from Pioneer 11 was received in September 1995. Both missions were planned to last about two years.

9-Galactic Ghost Ships

Pioneers 10 and 11 are two of five spacecraft with sufficient velocity to escape our solar system and travel into interstellar space. The other three—Voyagers 1 and 2 and New Horizons—are still actively talking to Earth. The twin Pioneers are now silent. Pioneer 10 is heading generally for the red star Aldebaran, which forms the eye of Taurus (The Bull). It will take Pioneer over 2 million years to reach it. Pioneer 11 is headed toward the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle) and will pass nearby in about 4 million years.

10-The Original Message to the Cosmos

Years before Voyager’s famed Golden Record, Pioneers 10 and 11 carried the original message from Earth to the cosmos. Like Voyager’s record, the Pioneer plaque was the brainchild of Carl Sagan who wanted any alien civilization who might encounter the craft to know who made it and how to contact them. The plaques give our location in the galaxy and depicts a man and woman drawn in relation to the spacecraft.

Read the full version of this week’s 10 Things article HERE. 

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