NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission — K2.
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After traveling more than 3,600 miles above Earth and 600 miles over sea, NASA’s Orion spacecraft completed the final leg of its journey by land Thursday, arriving home at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Media representatives are invited to attend an event at 10:30 a.m. EDT Friday, Dec. 19, marking the arrival.
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The observed increase in solar radiation absorbed in the Arctic since 2000 aligns with the steady decrease in Arctic sea ice during the same period.
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NASA will host a media teleconference at 4 p.m. EST today during which agency officials will discuss and answer questions on the selection of an Asteroid Redirect Mission concept.
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It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) — around 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir — to recover from California’s continuing drought, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.
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NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill.
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Now in its seventh month of operation, K2 began its third campaign on Nov. 12. During Campaign 2, Oort Cloud native Comet Siding Spring passed through K2’s field-of-view adding to the data collected by the fleet of NASA science assets.
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On Oct. 20, the Kepler spacecraft joined the fleet of NASA science assets that observed distant Oort Cloud native Comet Siding Spring as it passed through K2’s Campaign 2 field-of-view on its long journey around the sun. The data collected by K2 will add to the study of the comet, giving scientists an invaluable opportunity to learn more about the materials, including water and carbon compounds, that existed during the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
Taken by the Kepler spacecraft operating as the K2 mission, the full-frame image (left) is of the K2 Campaign 2 field-of-view. The image contains bright stars of the constellation Scorpius, with Antares just on the left edge of module-12 in the middle row second from the left. The globular clusters M4 and NGC 6144 can also be seen on module-12 along with the nebulosity of the well-studied rho-Ophiuchus star-forming region. In the upper right of module-2, the first visible module from the left in the top row, Comet Siding Springs can be seen.
The zoomed image (right) shows the nucleus and fuzzy trailing tail of Comet Siding Spring. Because the comet is moving rapidly, its nucleus is smeared over 20 pixels in this 30-minute exposure image causing it to appear oblong. The tail of the comet extends up and to the left from the nucleus. The comet moved through the K2 field-of-view in about 77 hours. A special purpose aperture was created to capture the comet as it moved through the image, allowing scientists to study its behavior just after the close encounter with Mars.
K2 is the two-wheel operation mode of the Kepler spacecraft. Based on a recommendation from the agency’s 2014 Senior Review of its operating missions, the K2 mission was approved to receive NASA funding for two years and officially began in May.
Image credit: NASA Ames/W Stenzel; SETI Institute/D Caldwell
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NASA is offering undergraduate students an opportunity to participate in a new microgravity activity called Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT).
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It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) — around 1.5 times the maximum volume of the largest U.S. reservoir — to recover from California’s continuing drought, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.
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