Nasalangley - NASA Langley Research Center

Curiosity Self-Portrait at Martian Sand Dune

This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at "Namib Dune," where the rover's activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of sand for laboratory analysis.

The scene combines 57 images taken on Jan. 19, 2016, during the 1,228th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars. The camera used for this is the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

Namib Dune is part of the dark-sand "Bagnold Dune Field" along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp. Images taken from orbit have shown that dunes in the Bagnold field move as much as about 3 feet (1 meter) per Earth year.

The location of Namib Dune is show on a map of Curiosity's route athttp://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=7640. The relationship of Bagnold Dune Field to the lower portion of Mount Sharp is shown in a map at PIA16064.

The view does not include the rover's arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, that were used in this mosaic. This process was used previously in acquiring and assembling Curiosity self-portraits taken at sample-collection sites, including "Rocknest" (PIA16468), "Windjana" (PIA18390) and "Buckskin" (PIA19807).

For scale, the rover's wheels are 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and about 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide.

MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl andhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

NASA Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth for 2nd Time in a Year

For only the second time in a year, a NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. 

The images were captured by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four-megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite orbiting 1 million miles from Earth. From its position between the sun and Earth, DSCOVR conducts its primary mission of real-time solar wind monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The first image is from July 2016 and the second image (moon traveling diagonally Northeast in the image) is from July 2015

Credits: NASA

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2016 April 6 

Auroras and the Magnetosphere of Jupiter 

Jupiter has auroras. Like near the Earth, the magnetic field of our Solar System’s largest planet compresses when impacted by a gust of charged particles from the Sun. This magnetic compression funnels charged particles towards Jupiter’s poles and down into the atmosphere. There, electrons are temporarily excited or knocked away from atmospheric gases, after which, when de-exciting or recombining with atmospheric ions, auroral light is emitted. The featured illustration portrays the magnificent magnetosphere around Jupiter in action. In the inset image released last month, the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory shows unexpectedly powerful X-ray light emitted by Jovian auroras, depicted in false-colored purple. That Chandra inset is superposed over an optical image taken at a different time by the Hubble Space Telescope. This aurora on Jupiter was seen in October 2011, several days after the Sun emitted a powerful Coronal Mass Ejection (CME).

Nebula Images: http://nebulaimages.com/

Astronomy articles: http://astronomyisawesome.com/

Apollo 10 Audio — Publicly Available Since 1970s

Recent news articles have reported that “newly declassified” audiotapes reveal that Apollo 10 astronauts heard “outer-spacey” music as the spacecraft flew around the far side of the moon in 1969. 

Here are the facts:

While listed as ‘confidential’ in 1969 at the height of the Space Race, Apollo 10 mission transcripts and audio have been publicly available since 1973.  Since the Internet did not exist in the Apollo era, we have only recently provided digital files for some of those earlier missions. The Apollo 10 audio clips were uploaded in 2012, but the mission’s audio recordings have been available at the National Archives since the early 1970s.

As for the likely source of the sounds, Apollo 10 Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan told us on Monday, ‘I don’t remember that incident exciting me enough to take it seriously. It was probably just radio interference. Had we thought it was something other than that we would have briefed everyone after the flight. We never gave it another thought.’

If you’d like to listen to the audio file, it is available HERE (starting at 2:50). 

The full transcript is available HERE.

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

Help NASA Track and Predict Mosquito-Borne Disease Outbreaks

Picnics, parades and fireworks are the attributes of a grand July Fourth celebration. So are the itch and scratch of mosquito bites. While the bites are annoying, they don't tend to stop the festivities. However, certain types of mosquitoes can cause serious harm. They are known to carry and spread diseases like Zika, West Nile Virus and malaria.

One of the tools researchers are using to track these mosquitos is citizen science data combining with NASA Earth satellite observations to create new forecast models that can predict the spread of mosquito-carrying diseases, but more data are needed to improve models that can predict and track mosquito-borne diseases.

“We do not have enough information on the geographic distribution of mosquito and time-variation in their populations. If a lot of people participated in this citizen science initiative worldwide, it will help fill in gaps and that would help our work,” said Assaf Anyamba, a scientist from Universities Space Research Association using satellite data to study mosquitoes at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

From fall 2017 to spring 2018, two NASA DEVELOP teams at Goddard studied Western Europe, a place not typically known for mosquito disease outbreaks. DEVELOP, part of NASA’s Applied Sciences Program, addresses environmental and public policy issues through interdisciplinary research projects that apply the lens of NASA Earth observations to community concerns around the globe. The Global Mosquito Alert Consortium supplied the DEVELOP teams with citizen science data.

The teams blended the citizen science data with NASA satellite observations of land surface temperatures, humidity, soil moisture, elevation, vegetation and precipitation. The data were then used to create an interactive, open-source map on Google Earth Engine to improve prediction models for disease-carrying mosquitoes. The work is ongoing.

Early results showed that vegetation, humidity and soil moisture made it easier for mosquitoes to thrive during the summer months. During the winter, elevation played a stronger role in creating mosquito-friendly habitats. The lower the altitude, the higher the number of mosquitoes. One challenge with the study was that the citizen science data was concentrated in populated areas; and as a result, it was skewing some of the mosquito results,” said Sara Lubkin, DEVELOP project coordination fellow at Goddard.

More citizen science data from more areas of the world could help.

“Knowing the mosquito species and their approximate populations at a given time provides useful information on the potential of occurrence of a particular pathogen, or disease transmission,” said Anyamba.

Different environmental conditions are suitable for certain types of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Every summer, hot, humid conditions drive up mosquito populations. Since there are plenty of wet areas to live and breed, mosquitoes tend to stay in one area. However, when conditions become hot and dry, mosquitoes migrate to more suitable habitats.

Satellites can detect how wet or how dry an area is, and that information helps determine what types of mosquitoes and disease can move through an environment.

The last significant West Nile outbreak in the United States occurred in 2011, which was a dry year. The hot, dry season led mosquitoes to move into highly urbanized and populated areas seeking food and water.

Warmer temperatures excite some mosquito species, causing them to bite more people. Also, certain high temperature thresholds can reduce the amount of time it takes for mosquitoes to mature from larvae to adults leading to doubling mosquito populations over an average year.

Mosquitoes cannot travel far on their own. Instead, they have to hitch a ride on people and animals to travel any significant distance. If a mosquito is a type that carries and spreads diseases, then the disease can move into new areas, as occurred in Western Europe.

The public can help track mosquitoes by downloading an app called GLOBE Observer, and then collect data over the summer using the Mosquito Habitat Mapper tool in the app. The app guides users through the process of identifying and eliminating mosquito breeding sites in order to reduce mosquito populations in their local area.

Related links:

An Interactive Model of Mosquito Presence and Distribution to Assist Vector-Borne Disease Management in Western Europe

A new report from the National Center for Atmospheric Research evaluates the risk to 50 U.S. cities from the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries Zika.

Global Mosquito Alert Consortium

NASA Citizen Science App Tackles Mosquito-Borne Disease

By Rani Gran NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Homeschool Day Brings STEM Activities to Virginia Air & Space Center

Jacob Earley, left, Frank Jones and his mother, Maria Jones, learned about the effects of gravity on other planets from NASA intern Jessica Hathaway during Homeschool Appreciation Day, which took place May 6 at the Virginia Air & Space Center (VASC) in Hampton, Virginia. Hathaway was one of several volunteers from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton who taught homeschooled children and their parents interactive lessons about everything from ultraviolet radiation to engineering satellites to navigating a rover on Mars. Approximately 300 people registered for the event, which has a focus on activities involving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The VASC is the official visitor center for NASA Langley.

Joe Atkinson NASA Langley Research Center

@nasa

NASA Crash-Test Dummies Make A Splash Landing

Engineers drop a NASA’s Orion Spacecraft test capsule with crash-test dummies inside into 20-foot-deep Hydro Impact Basin to simulate what the spacecraft may experience when splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after deep-space missions.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-crash-test-dummies-suit-up-for-action