And liftoff... After a successful launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the company’s #Dragon spacecraft is beginning its two-day orbital pursuit of the International Space Station (@ISS). Tucked in the trunk of the the Dragon is an expandable structure that has the potential to revolutionize work and life on the space station. The cargo will allow investigators to use microgravity conditions to test the viability of expandable space habitats, assess the impact of antibodies on muscle wasting, use protein crystal growth to aid the design of new disease-fighting drugs and investigate how microbes could affect the health of the crew and their equipment over a long duration mission.
Credit: NASA
Imagine a world with rivers of lava and big pools of extremely hot magma. This animation shows one possible scenario for the rocky exoplanet 55 Cancri e, nearly two times the size of Earth. Observations from our Spitzer Space Telescope have led to the first temperature map of this planet. The map reveals extreme temperature swings from one side of the planet to the other, and hints that a possible reason for this is the presence of lava flows.
Success! Using the International Space Station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, astronaut Tim Kopra successfully captured Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo vehicle at 6:51 a.m. EDT. The cargo ship was bolted into place on the International Space Station's Earth-facing port of the Unity module at 10:52 a.m.
The spacecraft's arrival will support the crew members' research off the Earth to benefit the Earth. The Cygnus is delivering more than 7,700 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory to support dozens of approximately 250 science and research investigations that will occur during the mission.
Credit: NASA
Get Down to Earth This Year With Globe-Spanning Expeditions: We're sending scientists around the world in 2016 – from the edge of the Greenland ice sheet to the coral reefs of the South Pacific – to delve into challenging questions about how our planet is changing and what impacts humans are having on it.
While Earth science field experiments are nothing new for us, the next six months will be a particularly active period with eight major new campaigns taking researchers around the world on a wide range of science investigations. The public is invited to follow this journey of exploration online through our social media channels and the new Earth Expeditions webpage, which will feature regular video, photos and blog posts from these missions and other ongoing field activities. Visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions for more information.
And liftoff! A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Liftoff was at 11:05 p.m. EDT. The Orbital ATK CRS-6 Cygnus spacecraft on a commercial resupply services mission to deliver 7,500 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station.
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While residents of islands and nations in the Western Pacific looked up in the early morning hours to observe a total eclipse of the Sun, the DSCOVR mission looked down from space and captured the shadow of the Moon marching across Earth’s sunlit face.
This animation was assembled from 13 images acquired on March 9, 2016, by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four-megapixel charge-coupled device and Cassegrain telescope on the DSCOVR satellite.
Credit: NASA/DSCOVR EPIC Team
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Wow, a total solar eclipse! See the moon pass directly in front of the sun. It happened from 8:38 to 8:42 p.m. EST Tuesday. As the moon passed precisely between the sun and Earth - a relatively rare occurrence that happens only about once a year because of the fact that the moon and the sun do not orbit in the exact same plane - it blocked the sun's bright face, revealing the tenuous and comparatively faint solar atmosphere, the corona.
The total eclipse was only visible in parts of Southeast Asia.
Unraveling Solar Prominence: An elongated solar prominence rose up above the sun's surface and slowly unraveled on Feb. 3, 2016, as seen in this video by our Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. Prominences, also known as filaments when seen over the sun's limb, are clouds of solar material suspended above the sun's surface by the solar magnetic field - the same complex magnetism that drives solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections. The solar material in the prominence streams along the sun's magnetic field lines before it thins out and gradually breaks away from the solar surface. These images were taken in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of 304 angstroms, a type of light that is invisible to our eyes but is colorized here in red.
Credit: NASA/SDO
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British European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) posted this video and wrote, 'Amazing how much lightning can strike our planet in a short time #Principia #timelapse.' Astronauts capture photographs and video of the Earth from the International Space Station (@ISS) routinely. The station is a unique place - a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.
Fly Over Dwarf Planet Ceres: A colorful new animation shows a simulated flight over the surface of dwarf planet Ceres, based on images from our Dawn spacecraft. The movie shows Ceres in enhanced color, which helps to highlight subtle differences in the appearance of surface materials. Scientists believe areas with shades of blue contain younger, fresher material, including flows, pits and cracks. This animated flight over Ceres emphasizes the prominent crater Occator and its intriguing bright spots, which are believed to be a type of salt.
Credit: NASA
Ping pong in space, anyone? NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who marked day 300 of a historic year in space on Jan. 21, shows off another fascinating feature of life in microgravity. Kelly used two paddles with hydrophobic, or water repellant, features to pass a sphere of water back and forth. Scientists use the microgravity environment of the space station to advance scientific knowledge in Earth, space, physical, and biological sciences that otherwise wouldn't be possible down here on the planet.
The paddles are polycarbonate laser etched so that the surfaces are actually arrays of 300 micrometer posts (0.3mm). The surfaces were then spray coated with a Teflon coat. The combined effects of surface roughness and non-wettability produce a super-hydrophobic surface capable of preventing water adhesion in dynamic processes. The larger the drop, the less force it takes to break it up. The smaller the drop, the harder you can hit it. Scott is demonstrating about a 4 mL drop (over 100 times larger than a rain drop).
SpaceX recently tested its ability to fire engines that will be used to land a human-rated spacecraft safely on the ground with the accuracy of a helicopter at the company’s test facility in McGregor, Texas. SpaceX envisions returning people to Earth from space on the power of thrust instead of beneath parachutes. Working with our Commercial Crew Program, SpaceX is in the early phases of analysis. The Crew Dragon spacecraft will be equipped with eight SuperDraco thrusters that would be used to slow the vehicle’s return to Earth through the atmosphere and ultimately set the spacecraft and its crew down. Propulsive landing will not be used initially for missions with NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. The Crew Dragon will splash down safely in the ocean under parachutes as its passengers return from the space station.
