Hot New Planetary System Just Dropped.

A Total Lunar Eclipse is Coming: 10 Things to Know

If you were captivated by August's total solar eclipse, there's another sky show to look forward to on Jan. 31: a total lunar eclipse!

Below are 10 things to know about this astronomical event, including where to see it, why it turns the Moon into a deep red color and more...

1. First things first. What's the difference between solar and lunar eclipses? We've got the quick and easy explanation in this video:

2. Location, location, location. What you see will depend on where you are. The total lunar eclipse will favor the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and British Columbia on Jan. 31. Australia and the Pacific Ocean are also well placed to see a major portion of the eclipse, if not all of it.

3. Color play. So, why does the Moon turn red during a lunar eclipse? Here's your answer:

4. Scientists, stand by. What science can be done during a lunar eclipse? Find out HERE. 

5. Show and tell. What would Earth look like from the Moon during a lunar eclipse? See for yourself with this artist's concept HERE. 

6. Ask me anything. Mark your calendars to learn more about the Moon during our our Reddit AMA happening Monday, Jan. 29, from 3-4 pm EST/12-1 pm PST.

7. Social cues. Make sure to follow @NASAMoon and @LRO_NASA for all of the latest Moon news leading up to the eclipse and beyond.

8. Watch year-round. Can't get enough of observing the Moon? Make a DIY Moon Phases Calendar and Calculator that will keep all of the dates and times for the year's moon phases right at your fingertips HERE.

Then, jot down notes and record your own illustrations of the Moon with a Moon observation journal, available to download and print from moon.nasa.gov.

9. Lesson learned. For educators, pique your students' curiosities about the lunar eclipse with this Teachable Moment HERE.

10. Coming attraction. There will be one more lunar eclipse this year on July 27, 2018. But you might need your passport—it will only be visible from central Africa and central Asia. The next lunar eclipse that can be seen all over the U.S. will be on Jan. 21, 2019. It won't be a blue moon, but it will be a supermoon.

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@barnabasthebarmy: How do you deal with being cooped up with other people for so long?

Hello!! Its wonderful to be able to ask questions, thank you!

About Perseverance, does it have a self-repair option? And as Curiosity is still operational, will they run missions together? Or will they split up to cover more distance?

Is this a sign that we're close to being able to set foot on Mars?

My final question is how do you receive the messages from such a long distance?

Thanks for all your hard work! 加油/Good luck!

“Is this a sign that we are close to being able to set foot on Mars?”

Will NASA send astronauts to the moon again or any other planet within the next ten years?

@nasaorion spacecraft will launch on the Space Launch system (the largest spacecraft every built, even bigger than the Saturn V rocket!).  Both are under construction @nasa currently, and this is the spacecraft that will take us beyond the low earth orbit of the International Space Station, whether that be the Moon, Mars, or beyond.  We will conduct test missions with astronauts on Orion in the early 2020s, and a first mission will take us 40,000 miles beyond the Moon!

Rocket Launches and Rising Seas

At NASA, we’re not immune to effects of climate change. The seas are rising at NASA coastal centers – the direct result of warming global temperatures caused by human activity. Several of our centers and facilities were built near the coast, where there aren’t as many neighbors, as a safety precaution. But now the tides have turned and as sea levels rise, these facilities are at greater risk of flooding and storms.

Global sea level is increasing every year by 3.3 millimeters, or just over an eighth of an inch, and the rate of rise is speeding up over time. The centers within range of rising waters are taking various approaches to protect against future damage.

Kennedy Space Center in Florida is the home of historic launchpad 39A, where Apollo astronauts first lifted off for their journey to the Moon. The launchpad is expected to flood periodically from now on.

Like Kennedy, Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia has its launchpads and buildings within a few hundred feet of the Atlantic Ocean. Both locations have resorted to replenishing the beaches with sand as a natural barrier to the sea.

Native vegetation is planted to help hold the sand in place, but it needs to be replenished every few years.

At the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, instead of building up the ground, we’re hardening buildings and moving operations to less flood-prone elevations. The center is bounded by two rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

The effects of sea level rise extend far beyond flooding during high tides. Higher seas can drive larger and more intense storm surges – the waves of water brought by tropical storms.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey brought flooding to the astronaut training facility at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Now we have installed flood resistant doors, increased water intake systems, and raised guard shacks to prevent interruptions to operations, which include astronaut training and mission control.

Our only facility that sits below sea level already is Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Onsite pumping systems protected the 43-acre building, which has housed Saturn rockets and the Space Launch System, from Hurricane Katrina. Since then, we’ve reinforced the pumping system so it can now handle double the water capacity.

Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley is going one step farther and gradually relocating farther south and to several feet higher in elevation to avoid the rising waters of the San Francisco Bay.

Understanding how fast and where seas will rise is crucial to adapting our lives to our changing planet.

We have a long-standing history of tracking sea level rise, through satellites like the TOPEX-Poseidon and the Jason series, working alongside partner agencies from the United States and other countries.

We just launched the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite—a U.S.-European partnership—which will use electromagnetic signals bouncing off Earth’s surface to make some of the most accurate measurements of sea levels to date.

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What's That Space Rock?

The path through the solar system is a rocky road. Asteroids, comets, Kuiper Belt Objects—all kinds of small bodies of rock, metal and ice are in constant motion as they orbit the Sun. But what’s the difference between them, anyway? And why do these miniature worlds fascinate space explorers so much? The answer is profound: they may hold the keys to better understanding where we all come from. Here’s 10 things to know about the solar system this week:

This picture of Eros, the first of an asteroid taken from an orbiting spacecraft, came from our NEAR mission in February 2000. Image credit: NASA/JPL

1. Asteroids

Asteroids are rocky, airless worlds that orbit our Sun. They are remnants left over from the formation of our solar system, ranging in size from the length of a car to about as wide as a large city. Asteroids are diverse in composition; some are metallic while others are rich in carbon, giving them a coal-black color. They can be “rubble piles,” loosely held together by their own gravity, or they can be solid rocks.

Most of the asteroids in our solar system reside in a region called the main asteroid belt. This vast, doughnut-shaped ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter contains hundreds of thousands of asteroids, maybe millions. But despite what you see in the movies, there is still a great deal of space between each asteroid. With all due respect to C3PO, the odds of flying through the asteroid belt without colliding with one are actually pretty good.

Other asteroids (and comets) follow different orbits, including some that enter Earth’s neighborhood. These are called near-Earth objects, or NEOs. We can actually keep track of the ones we have discovered and predict where they are headed. The Minor Planet Center (MPC) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) do that very thing. Telescopes around the world and in space are used to spot new asteroids and comets, and the MPC and CNEOS, along with international colleagues, calculate where those asteroids and comets are going and determine whether they might pose any impact threat to Earth.

For scientists, asteroids play the role of time capsules from the early solar system, having been preserved in the vacuum of space for billions of years. What’s more, the main asteroid belt may have been a source of water—and organic compounds critical to life—for the inner planets like Earth.

The nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as seen in January 2015 by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

2. Comets

Comets also orbit the Sun, but they are more like snowballs than space rocks. Each comet has a center called a nucleus that contains icy chunks of frozen gases, along with bits of rock and dust. When a comet’s orbit brings it close to the Sun, the comet heats up and spews dust and gases, forming a giant, glowing ball called a coma around its nucleus, along with two tails – one made of dust and the other of excited gas (ions). Driven by a constant flow of particles from the Sun called the solar wind, the tails point away from the Sun, sometimes stretching for millions of miles.

While there are likely billions of comets in the solar system, the current confirmed number is 3,535. Like asteroids, comets are leftover material from the formation of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago, and they preserve secrets from the earliest days of the Sun’s family. Some of Earth’s water and other chemical constituents could have been delivered by comet impacts.

An artist re-creation of a collision in deep space. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

3. Meteoroids

Meteoroids are fragments and debris in space resulting from collisions among asteroids, comets, moons and planets. They are among the smallest “space rocks.” However, we can actually see them when they streak through our atmosphere in the form of meteors and meteor showers.

This photograph, taken by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, provides the unusual perspective of looking down on a meteor as it passes through the atmosphere. The image was taken on Aug. 13, 2011, during the Perseid meteor shower that occurs every August. Image credit: NASA

4. Meteors

Meteors are meteoroids that fall through Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds. The pressure and heat they generate as they push through the air causes them to glow and create a streak of light in the sky. Most burn up completely before touching the ground. We often refer to them as “shooting stars.” Meteors may be made mostly of rock, metal or a combination of the two.

Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons (44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day.

The constellation Orion is framed by two meteors during the Perseid shower on Aug. 12, 2018 in Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah. Image credit: NASA/Bill Dunford

5. Meteor Showers

Several meteors per hour can usually be seen on any given night. Sometimes the number increases dramatically—these events are termed meteor showers. They occur when Earth passes through trails of particles left by comets. When the particles enter Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up, creating hundreds or even thousands of bright streaks in the sky. We can easily plan when to watch meteor showers because numerous showers happen annually as Earth’s orbit takes it through the same patches of comet debris. This year’s Orionid meteor shower peaks on Oct. 21.

An SUV-sized asteroid, 2008TC#, impacted on Oct. 7, 2008, in the Nubian Desert, Northern Sudan. Dr. Peter Jenniskens, NASA/SETI, joined Muawia Shaddas of the University of Khartoum in leading an expedition on a search for samples. Image credit: NASA/SETI/P. Jenniskens

6. Meteorites

Meteorites are asteroid, comet, moon and planet fragments (meteoroids) that survive the heated journey through Earth’s atmosphere all the way to the ground. Most meteorites found on Earth are pebble to fist size, but some are larger than a building.

Early Earth experienced many large meteorite impacts that caused extensive destruction. Well-documented stories of modern meteorite-caused injury or death are rare. In the first known case of an extraterrestrial object to have injured a human being in the U.S., Ann Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama, was severely bruised by a 8-pound (3.6-kilogram) stony meteorite that crashed through her roof in November 1954.

The largest object in the asteroid belt is actually a dwarf planet, Ceres. This view comes from our Dawn mission. The color is approximately as it would appear to the eye. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

7. Dwarf Planets

Don’t let the name fool you; despite their small size, dwarf planets are worlds that are just as compelling as their larger siblings. Dwarf planets are defined by astronomers as bodies massive enough to be shaped by gravity into a round or nearly round shape, but they don’t have enough of their own gravitational muscle to clear their path of other objects as they orbit the Sun. In our solar system, dwarf planets are mostly found in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune; Pluto is the best-known example. But the largest object in the asteroid belt is the dwarf planet Ceres. Like Pluto, Ceres shows signs of active geology, including ice volcanoes.

8. Kuiper Belt Objects

The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region beyond Neptune that extends from about 30 to 55 astronomical units -- that is, 30 to 55 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. There may be hundreds of thousands of icy bodies and a trillion or more comets in this distant region of our solar system.

An artist's rendition of the New Horizons spacecraft passing by the Kuiper Belt Object MU69 in January 2019. Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Besides Pluto, some of the mysterious worlds of the Kuiper Belt include Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, Makemake and Haumea. Like asteroids and comets, Kuiper Belt objects are time capsules, perhaps kept even more pristine in their icy realm.

This chart puts solar system distances in perspective. The scale bar is in astronomical units (AU), with each set distance beyond 1 AU representing 10 times the previous distance. One AU is the distance from the Sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the Sun, is about 30 AU. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

9. Oort Cloud Objects

The Oort Cloud is a group of icy bodies beginning roughly 186 billion miles (300 billion kilometers) away from the Sun. While the planets of our solar system orbit in a flat plane, the Oort Cloud is believed to be a giant spherical shell surrounding the Sun, planets and Kuiper Belt Objects. It is like a big, thick bubble around our solar system. The Oort Cloud’s icy bodies can be as large as mountains, and sometimes larger.

This dark, cold expanse is by far the solar system’s largest and most distant region. It extends all the way to about 100,000 AU (100,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) – a good portion of the way to the next star system. Comets from the Oort Cloud can have orbital periods of thousands or even millions of years. Consider this: At its current speed of about a million miles a day, our Voyager 1 spacecraft won’t reach the Oort Cloud for more than 300 years. It will then take about 30,000 years for the spacecraft to traverse the Oort Cloud, and exit our solar system entirely.

This animation shows our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collecting a sample of the asteroid Bennu, which it is expected to do in 2020. Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

10. The Explorers

Fortunately, even though the Oort Cloud is extremely distant, most of the small bodies we’ve been discussing are more within reach. In fact, NASA and other space agencies have a whole flotilla of robotic spacecraft that are exploring these small worlds up close. Our mechanical emissaries act as our eyes and hands in deep space, searching for whatever clues these time capsules hold.

A partial roster of our current or recent missions to small, rocky destinations includes:

OSIRIS-REx – Now approaching the asteroid Bennu, where it will retrieve a sample in 2020 and return it to the Earth for close scrutiny.

New Horizons – Set to fly close to MU69 or “Ultima Thule,” an object a billion miles past Pluto in the Kuiper Belt on Jan. 1, 2019. When it does, MU69 will become the most distant object humans have ever seen up close.

Psyche – Planned for launch in 2022, the spacecraft will explore a metallic asteroid of the same name, which may be the ejected core of a baby planet that was destroyed long ago.

Lucy – Slated to investigate two separate groups of asteroids, called Trojans, that share the orbit of Jupiter – one group orbits ahead of the planet, while the other orbits behind. Lucy is planned to launch in 2021.

Dawn – Finishing up a successful seven-year mission orbiting planet-like worlds Ceres and Vesta in the asteroid belt.

Plus these missions from other space agencies:

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)’s Hayabusa2– Just landed a series of small probes on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu.

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s Rosetta – Orbited the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and dispatched a lander to its surface.

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How Well Do You Know Mercury?

Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system and is only slightly larger than Earth’s moon. To give you some perspective, if the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel and Mercury would be about as big as a green pea.

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. Daytime temperatures can reach 430 degrees Celsius (800 degrees Fahrenheit) and drop to –180 degrees Celsius (-290 degrees Fahrenheit) at night.

Here are a few fun facts about Mercury:

Mercury takes only 88 Earth days to orbit the sun

If we could stand on Mercury’s surface when it is at its closest point to the sun, the sun would appear more than three times larger than it does here on Earth

Mercury is home to one of the largest impact basins in the solar system: the Caloris Basin. The diameter of this impact basin is the length of 16,404 football fields (minus the end zones) placed end to end!

Mercury is one of only two planets in our solar system that do not have moons (Venus is the other one)

Mercury completes three rotations for every two orbits around the sun. That means that if you wanted to stay up from sunrise to sunrise on Mercury, you’d be up for 176 Earth days…you’d need a LOT of coffee! 

Two missions have visited Mercury:

Mariner 10 was the first mission to Mercury, and 30 years later, our MESSENGER mission was the second to visit the planet. Mariner 10 was also the first spacecraft to reach one planet by using the gravity of another planet (in this case, Venus) to alter its speed and trajectory.

MESSENGER was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, The spacecraft had its own shades to protect it from the light of the sun. This is important since sunlight on Mercury can be as much as 11 times brighter than it is here on Earth. The spacecraft was originally planned to orbit Mercury for one year, but exceeded expectations and worked for over four years capturing extensive data. On April 30, 2015, the spacecraft succumbed to the pull of solar gravity and impacted Mercury’s surface.

Water Ice?

The MESSENGER spacecraft observed compelling support for the long-held hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters.

This radar image of Mercury’s north polar region. The areas shown in red were captured by MESSENGER, compared to the yellow deposits imaged by Earth-based radar. These areas are believed to consist of water ice.

Mercury Transit of the Sun

For more than seven hours on Monday, May 9, Mercury will be visible as a tiny black dot crossing the face of the sun. This rare event – which happens only slightly more than once a decade – is called a transit.

Where: Skywatchers in Western Europe, South America and eastern North America will be able to see the entirety of the transit. The entire 7.5-hour path across the sun will be visible across the Eastern U.S. – with magnification and proper solar filters – while those in the West can observe the transit in progress at sunrise.

Watch: We will stream a live program on NASA TV and the agency’s Facebook page from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. – an informal roundtable during which experts representing planetary, heliophysics and astrophysics will discuss the science behind the Mercury transit. Viewers can ask questions via Facebook and Twitter using #AskNASA. Unlike the 2012 Venus transit of the sun, Mercury is too small to be visible without magnification from a telescope or high-powered binoculars. Both must have safe solar filters made of specially-coated glass or Mylar; you can never look directly at the sun.

To learn more about our solar system and the planets, visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/

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Could you theoretically time travel through a black hole or other object with such intense mass?

TESS: The Planet Hunter

So you’re thinking...who’s TESS? But, it’s more like: WHAT is TESS? 

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an explorer-class planet finder that is scheduled to launch in April 2018. This mission will search the entire sky for exoplanets — planets outside our solar system that orbit sun-like stars.

In the first-ever space borne all-sky transit survey, TESS will identify planets ranging from Earth-sized to gas giants, orbiting a wide range of stellar types and orbital distances.

The main goal of this mission is to detect small planets with bright host stars in the solar neighborhood, so that we can better understand these planets and their atmospheres.

TESS will have a full time job monitoring the brightness of more than 200,000 stars during a two year mission. It will search for temporary drops in brightness caused by planetary transits. These transits occur when a planet’s orbit carries it directly in front of its parent star as viewed from Earth (cool GIF below).

TESS will provide prime targets for further, more detailed studies with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as well as other large ground-based and space-based telescopes of the future.

What is the difference between TESS and our Kepler spacecraft?

TESS and Kepler address different questions: Kepler answers "how common are Earth-like planets?" while TESS answers “where are the nearest transiting rocky planets?”

What do we hope will come out of the TESS mission?

The main goal is to find rocky exoplanets with solid surfaces at the right distance from their stars for liquid water to be present on the surface. These could be the best candidates for follow-up observations, as they fall within the “habitable zone” and be at the right temperatures for liquid water on their surface.

TESS will use four cameras to study sections of the sky’s north and south hemispheres, looking for exoplanets. The cameras would cover about 90 percent of the sky by the end of the mission. This makes TESS an ideal follow-up to the Kepler mission, which searches for exoplanets in a fixed area of the sky. Because the TESS mission surveys the entire sky, TESS is expected to find exoplanets much closer to Earth, making them easier for further study.

Stay updated on this planet-hunting mission HERE.

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Gravity, Hazard of Alteration

A human journey to Mars, at first glance, offers an inexhaustible amount of complexities. To bring a mission to the Red Planet from fiction to fact, NASA’s Human Research Program has organized some of the hazards astronauts will encounter on a continual basis into five classifications.

The variance of gravity fields that astronauts will encounter on a mission to Mars is the fourth hazard.

On Mars, astronauts would need to live and work in three-eighths of Earth’s gravitational pull for up to two years. Additionally, on the six-month trek between the planets, explorers will experience total weightlessness. 

Besides Mars and deep space there is a third gravity field that must be considered. When astronauts finally return home they will need to readapt many of the systems in their bodies to Earth’s gravity.

To further complicate the problem, when astronauts transition from one gravity field to another, it’s usually quite an intense experience. Blasting off from the surface of a planet or a hurdling descent through an atmosphere is many times the force of gravity.

Research is being conducted to ensure that astronauts stay healthy before, during and after their mission. Specifically researchers study astronauts’ vision, fine motor skills, fluid distribution, exercise protocols and response to pharmaceuticals.

Exploration to the Moon and Mars will expose astronauts to five known hazards of spaceflight, including gravity. To learn more, and find out what NASA’s Human Research Program is doing to protect humans in space, check out the "Hazards of Human Spaceflight" website. Or, check out this week’s episode of “Houston We Have a Podcast,” in which host Gary Jordan further dives into the threat of gravity with Peter Norsk, Senior Research Director/ Element Scientist at the Johnson Space Center.

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