How Do Space Plants Grow? This Experiment On The International Space Station Hopes To Find Out. Space-grown

Download Software Used to Get Rovers to the Red Planet

Watching our Perseverance rover safely land on the surface of Mars is the kind of historic feat that gets our adventure-loving hearts racing.

Launching and landing rovers on Mars requires overcoming challenges like defying gravity on two planets, surviving the extreme heat of atmospheric entry, and avoiding rocky obstacles. This takes more than just rocket science – it takes incredible software too.

Did you know that some of the same tried and tested software that helped ensure a safe arrival for Perseverance (and its predecessor, Curiosity) can be downloaded – by you...for free...right now?

Our 2021-22 Software Catalog is full of codes made for space that can be used by entrepreneurs, teachers, gamers, or just about anyone. Whether you are curious about the Martian atmosphere, want to visualize the inside of a volcano, or have an application we’ve never even considered, our software may be able to help. Check out our full site, updated regularly with the latest codes available for download.

Here are a few examples of what you could do with our software!

1. Simulate the Martian atmosphere to prepare spacecrafts for landing

To prepare for exactly what a spacecraft will face on landing day, no matter the location scientists choose, we created software that simulates the Martian atmosphere. The code, Mars (GRAM), is now available to anyone.

We also have a version that simulates Earth's atmosphere, allowing users (especially those in the world of drone design) a way to replicate and design for, potentially dangerous conditions without ever stepping away from the computer.

2. Explore the Red Planet virtually from home with help from the Curiosity rover team

Originally developed for scientists and engineers working on the Curiosity rover mission, OnSight allowed the team a virtual way to walk on and look around Mars. Using an immersive display, such as a virtual reality headset, scientists could see the Red Planet the way a rover would.

This software can also be used to provide virtual experiences of places here on Earth, such as caves and lava fields.

3. Dodge disasters with a risk management tool made for space missions

When preparing for complex space missions, like the upcoming Mars Sample Return mission, it’s crucial to examine how different elements, independently and collectively, impact the probability of success.

But risk management has become an important tool for businesses of all disciplines, from engineering to accounting – and the Space Mission Architecture and Risk Analysis Tool (SMART) could help.

Sound interesting? The NASA software catalog has these and more than 800 additional codes ready for download.

You can also follow our Technology Transfer program on Twitter to learn more about software and technology that can be put to use on Earth.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, so let us break it down for you. Here are a few things you should know this week:

1. Science at the Edge

As the New Horizons spacecraft speeds away at more than 31,000 miles per hour (14 km/s) it continues to explore the Kuiper Belt, the region of icy bodies beyond Neptune. New Horizons has now twice observed 1994 JR1, a 90-mile-wide object orbiting more than 3 billion miles from the sun.

2. A Spaceship, Refined

This artist’s rendering shows our Europa mission spacecraft, which is being developed for a launch sometime in the 2020s. The mission will place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter to explore the giant planet’s moon Europa. This updated concept image shows tow large solar arrays extending from the sides of the spacecraft, to which the mission’s ice-penetrating radar antennas are attached. A saucer-shaped high-gain antenna is also side mounted with a magnetometer boom placed next to it. Find out more about the spacecraft HERE.

3. Sojourn at Saturn

The Cassini spacecraft is hard at work this week, orbiting Saturn to study the planet and its rings. The recent pictures are spectacular, take a look at them HERE.

4. Talking Juno

Our Juno mission arrives at Jupiter on July 4, and that presents a unique opportunity for educators, science communicators and anyone interested in space exploration. We are providing a growing set of Juno-related information resources. Take a look at them HERE.

5. Now THAT’S a Long Distance Call

How do explorers on Earth talk to astronauts and robotic spacecraft flung across the far reaches of space? They use the remarkable technology deployed by our Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program Office. This month, SCaN is celebrating its 10th anniversary of managing the ultimate network. Find out how it works HERE.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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Cosmic Couples and Devastating Breakups

Relationships can be complicated — especially if you’re a pair of stars. Sometimes you start a downward spiral you just can’t get out of, eventually crash together and set off an explosion that can be seen 130 million light-years away.

For Valentine’s Day, we’re exploring the bonds between some of the universe’s peculiar pairs … as well as a few of their cataclysmic endings.

Stellar Couples

When you look at a star in the night sky, you may really be viewing two or more stars dancing around each other. Scientists estimate three or four out of every five Sun-like stars in the Milky Way have at least one partner. Take our old north star Thuban, for example. It’s a binary, or two-star, system in the constellation Draco.

Alpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, is actually a stellar triangle. Two Sun-like stars, Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman, form a pair (called Alpha Centauri AB) that orbit each other about every 80 years. Proxima Centauri is a remote red dwarf star caught in their gravitational pull even though it sits way far away from them (like over 300 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune).

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Davide De Martin/Mahdi Zamani

Sometimes, though, a stellar couple ends its relationship in a way that’s really disastrous for one of them. A black widow binary, for example, contains a low-mass star, called a brown dwarf, and a rapidly spinning, superdense stellar corpse called a pulsar. The pulsar generates intense radiation and particle winds that blow away the material of the other star over millions to billions of years.

Black Hole Beaus

In romance novels, an air of mystery is essential for any love interest, and black holes are some of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe. They also have very dramatic relationships with other objects around them!

Scientists have observed two types of black holes. Supermassive black holes are hundreds of thousands to billions of times our Sun’s mass. One of these monsters, called Sagittarius A* (the “*” is pronounced “star”), sits at the center of our own Milky Way. In a sense, our galaxy and its black hole are childhood sweethearts — they’ve been together for over 13 billion years! All the Milky-Way-size galaxies we’ve seen so far, including our neighbor Andromeda (pictured below), have supermassive black holes at their center!

These black-hole-galaxy power couples sometimes collide with other, similar pairs — kind of like a disastrous double date! We’ve never seen one of these events happen before, but scientists are starting to model them to get an idea of what the resulting fireworks might look like.

One of the most dramatic and fleeting relationships a supermassive black hole can have is with a star that strays too close. The black hole’s gravitational pull on the unfortunate star causes it to bulge on one side and break apart into a stream of gas, which is called a tidal disruption event.

The other type of black hole you often hear about is stellar-mass black holes, which are five to tens of times the Sun’s mass. Scientists think these are formed when a massive star goes supernova. If there are two massive stars in a binary, they can leave behind a pair of black holes that are tied together by their gravity. These new black holes spiral closer and closer until they crash together and create a larger black hole. The National Science Foundation’s LIGO project has detected many of these collisions through ripples in space-time called gravitational waves.

Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle

Here’s hoping your Valentine’s Day is more like a peacefully spiraling stellar binary and less like a tidal disruption! Learn how to have a safe relationship of your own with black holes here.

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Today we celebrate the mission that piqued our curiosities, and drove NASA’s perseverance to pursue further exploration of the Red Planet. The Sojourner rover landed on July 4, 1997, after hitching a ride aboard the Mars Pathfinder mission. Its innovative design became the template for future missions. The rover, named after civil rights pioneer Sojourner Truth, outlived its design life 12 times. This panoramic view of Pathfinder's Ares Vallis landing site shows Sojourner rover is the distance. Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

In Conversation with the Sun: Parker Solar Probe Communications

Our Sun powers life on Earth. It defines our days, nourishes our crops and even fuels our electrical grids. In our pursuit of knowledge about the universe, we’ve learned so much about the Sun, but in many ways we’re still in conversation with it, curious about its mysteries.

Parker Solar Probe will advance this conversation, flying through the Sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles from our star’s surface, more than seven times closer to it than any previous spacecraft. If space were a football field, with Earth at one end and the Sun at the other, Parker would be at the four-yard line, just steps away from the Sun! This journey will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, its surface and solar winds.

Supporting Parker on its journey to the Sun are our communications networks. Three networks, the Near Earth Network, the Space Network and the Deep Space Network, provide our spacecraft with their communications, delivering their data to mission operations centers. Their services ensure that missions like Parker have communications support from launch through the mission.

For Parker’s launch on Aug. 12, the Delta IV Heavy rocket that sent Parker skyward relied on the Space Network. A team at Goddard Space Flight Center’s Networks Integration Center monitored the launch, ensuring that we maintained tracking and communications data between the rocket and the ground. This data is vital, allowing engineers to make certain that Parker stays on the right path towards its orbit around the Sun.

The Space Network’s constellation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) enabled constant communications coverage for the rocket as Parker made its way out of Earth’s atmosphere. These satellites fly in geosynchronous orbit, circling Earth in step with its rotation, relaying data from spacecraft at lower altitudes to the ground. The network’s three collections of TDRS over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans provide enough coverage for continuous communications for satellites in low-Earth orbit.

The Near Earth Network’s Launch Communications Segment tracked early stages of Parker's launch, testing our brand new ground stations’ ability to provide crucial information about the rocket’s initial velocity (speed) and trajectory (path). When fully operational, it will support launches from the Kennedy spaceport, including upcoming Orion missions. The Launch Communications Segment’s three ground stations are located at Kennedy Space Center; Ponce De Leon, Florida; and Bermuda. 

When Parker separated from the Delta IV Heavy, the Deep Space Network took over. Antennas up to 230 feet in diameter at ground stations in California, Australia and Spain are supporting Parker for its 24 orbits around the Sun and the seven Venus flybys that gradually shrink its orbit, bringing it closer and closer to the Sun. The Deep Space Network is delivering data to mission operations centers and will continue to do so as long as Parker is operational.

Near the Sun, radio interference and the heat load on the spacecraft’s antenna makes communicating with Parker a challenge that we must plan for. Parker has three distinct communications phases, each corresponding to a different part of its orbit.

When Parker comes closest to the Sun, the spacecraft will emit a beacon tone that tells engineers on the ground about its health and status, but there will be very little opportunity to command the spacecraft and downlink data. High data rate transmission will only occur during a portion of Parker’s orbit, far from the Sun. The rest of the time, Parker will be in cruise mode, taking measurements and being commanded through a low data rate connection with Earth.

Communications infrastructure is vital to any mission. As Parker journeys ever closer to the center of our solar system, each byte of downlinked data will provide new insight into our Sun. It’s a mission that continues a conversation between us and our star that has lasted many millions of years and will continue for many millions more.

For more information about NASA’s mission to touch the Sun: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

For more information about our satellite communications check out: http://nasa.gov/SCaN

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

Known as the Horsehead Nebula – but you can call it Starbiscuit.

Found by our Hubble Space Telescope, this beauty is part of a much larger complex in the constellation Orion.

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

Hello! Jeanette Epps here ready to take your @nasa questions!

What’s Up November 2017

What’s Up For November?

Dawn pairing of Jupiter and Venus, Moon shines near star clusters, meteor activity all month long!

This month binoculars will come in handy--to view the moon, star clusters, and a close pairing of Venus and Jupiter.

You can’t miss bright Venus in the predawn sky. This month Venus pairs up with Jupiter on the morning of November 13th.

The Leonids peak on a moonless November 17th. Expect no more than 10 meteors an hour around 3:00 a.m., the height of the shower.

The Northern and Southern sub-branches of the Taurid meteor shower offer sparse counts of about 5 meteors per hour, but slow, bright meteors are common.

The nearby November Orionids peak on the 28th. In contrast to the Taurids, the Orionids are swift. But don’t expect more than 3 meteors per hour.

The moon glides by three beautiful star clusters in the morning sky this month, and a pair of binoculars will allow you to see the individual stars in the clusters. Aim your binoculars at the Pleiades and the moon on the 5th.

Then aim at the Messier or M-35 cluster and the moon on the 7th and the Beehive cluster and the moon on the 10th.

Meanwhile, at dusk, catch Saturn as it dips closer to the western horizon and pairs up with Mercury on the 24th through the 28th.

Also, Comet C/2017 O1 should still be a binocular-friendly magnitude 7 or 8 greenish object in November. Use Polaris, the North Star as a guide. Look in the East to Northeast sky in the late evening.  

Watch the full What’s Up for November Video: 

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

Solar System: Things to Know this Week

On May 22 Mars will be at opposition. That's when Mars, Earth and the sun all line up, with Earth directly in the middle. A few days later, Mars and Earth will reach the points in their orbits around the sun where they are nearest to each other. The closer Mars comes to Earth in its orbit, the larger and brighter it appears in the sky.

It's an opportunity for backyard skywatchers—and a good time to catch up on all the exploration now underway at the Red Planet. Here are a few things to know this week about Mars:

1. Red Star Rising

The best time to see Mars at its brightest is when it's highest in the sky, which is around midnight during May. Look toward the south in the constellation Scorpius (where right now you can also catch the planet Saturn). If you have a telescope, you may be able to pick out some of the features on its surface. But don't fall for Internet rumors claiming that Mars will appear as big as the full moon. Instead, it will look like a bright, reddish or orange star. Get Mars viewing tips HERE.

2. Roving Weather Reporter

Our Mars Curiosity mission has now been roving across the floor of Gale Crater for two full Martian years—that's four Earth years. This robotic geologist is a meteorologist, too, and its long journey has allowed it to observe the local weather for two full seasonal cycles. During that time, the rover's instruments have recorded temperatures ranging from 60.5 degrees Fahrenheit (15.9 degrees Celsius) on a summer afternoon, to minus 148 F (minus 100 C) on a winter night. They also detected an intriguing spike in methane gas—but it hasn't happened since.

3. Increasing Clouds, with a Chance of Dust Storms

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter keeps an eye on Martian weather, too, but on a global scale. Every week, you can see the latest weather report, including an animation showing storms and clouds across the face of Mars.

4. Walking the Ancient Shoreline

Mars explorers have studied evidence for years that the early history of the planet included times where liquid water flowed and pooled freely. But just how deep those ancient lakes were, and how long they lasted, remains a topic of debate. A new study offers a more detailed picture of the rise and fall of standing bodies of water.

5. Wish Upon a Star

It's true that Mars will be especially bright in the sky this week. But did you ever consider that Earth often shines for Mars as well? This image from the Curiosity rover shows our whole world as a single point of light. When people finally do stand on Mars, they'll be able to look at the twilight sky—and see home. Left: the Earth and the Moon in the evening sky of Mars, as seen by the Curiosity rover. Right: Mars rising over Salt Lake City. Mars credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU. Earth credit: Bill Dunford.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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Happy Martian New Year!

For any planet, a year is the time it takes to make one orbit around the sun. Because Mars is farther away from the sun, it has to travel a greater distance than Earth. It takes Mars about twice as long as it does for Earth to make one circle around the sun…therefore, a year on Mars lasts twice as long.

On May 5, Mars passes solar longitude 0 as the sun crosses the equator on Mars. This is the vernal equinox and was chosen by planetary scientists as the start of a new year.

Mars has four seasons, roughly twice as long as those on Earth, but with more variation given Mars’ eccentric orbit and the fact its orbital speed varies more as a result.

Did you know that there’s a U.S. city named Mars? Mars, PA hosts an annual Mars New Year celebration and we’re participating in this two-day science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) event to inspire young people to pursue innovation and exploration.

More info on Mars, PA: http://www.marsnewyear.com/

Get updated images from the events in Mars, PA here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/sets/72157683457751005/

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