NASA
Searching for Earth’s Trojan Asteroids
Trojan asteroids are common at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of other planets, leading or following the planet in its orbit. But detecting our own Trojan asteroids from Earth is difficult since they appear close to the sun from our...
NASA
OSIRIS-REx Observes a Black Hole
University students and researchers working on a NASA mission orbiting a near-Earth asteroid have made an unexpected detection of a phenomenon 30,000 light-years away. Last fall, the student-built Regolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer...
NASA
NASA's Fermi Catches Gamma-ray Flashes from Tropical Storms
About a thousand times a day, thunderstorms fire off fleeting bursts of some of the highest-energy light naturally found on Earth. These events, called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), last less than a millisecond and produce gamma...
NASA
NASA at Fenway
On May 30th, 2018 NASA descended upon the historic Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox Major League Baseball team, to participate in a STEM Day public engagement event. This collaborative effort was led by members of the Solar System...
NASA
NASA | Van Gogh Sun
A crucial, and often underappreciated, facet of science lies in deciding how to turn the raw numbers of data into useful, understandable information -- often through graphs and images. Such visualization techniques are needed for...
NASA
NASA | The MMS Mission's Unique Orbit
Scientist John Dorelli explains the MMS mission's orbit and why the four spacecraft fly in a tetrahedron formation. This complex arrangement enables scientists to gather data about magnetic reconnection in 3D. On its journey, MMS will...
NASA
NASA | Striking a Solar Balance
Planet Earth is an oasis of life, but without the Sun, our home planet would be a drastically different, inhospitable place. The Sun's electromagnetic energy makes life on Earth possible; solar power also generates clouds, cleans our...
NASA
NASA | The Evaporative Stress Index
The Evaporative Stress Index (ESI) provides objective, high-resolution information about the evaporation of water from land surface. The ESI model combines satellite data with other meteorological factors to determine how much water is...
NASA
NASA | RXTE Satellite Catches the Beat of a Midsize Black Hole
Astronomers from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have uncovered rhythmic pulsations from a rare breed of black hole in archival data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE)...
NASA
NASA | NASA's Fermi Shows How Active Galaxies Can Be
Active galaxies called blazars make up the largest class of objects detected by Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). Massive black holes in the hearts of these galaxies fire particle jets in our direction. Fermi team member Elizabeth Hays...
NASA
NASA | Goddard's Speedy MMS Instruments Will Measure Mysterious Physics
Host Katrina Jackson talks with Craig Pollock and Ulrik Gliese about Goddard's contribution to the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission - the Fast Plasma Investigation suite of instruments. These instruments will study a little-understood...
NASA
NASA | Glory: Hello Crud
This segment provides an introduction to aerosols- their varied sources, brief lifetimes, and erratic behavior. Glory's APS will help researchers determine the global distribution of aerosol particles. This unique instrument will unravel...
NASA
NASA | First Sightings of How a CME Forms
On July 18, 2012, a fairly small explosion of light burst off the lower right limb of the sun. Such flares often come with an associated eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME -- but this one did not....
NASA
NASA | Landsat Tracks Urban Change and Flood Risk
Landsat data, which can identify areas of urbanization, are used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a key indicator of sites where the agency should further investigate the potential for flooding. With its archive of images...
NASA
NASA | Flying Around the Radar
The HIWRAP is the High-Altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler, a "conically scanning" Doppler radar, meaning it scans in a cone-shaped manner. Wind measurements are crucial for understanding and forecasting tropical storms...
NASA
NASA | Desert RATS
Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS) tests procedures and equipment that could one day be a part of human space flight missions to the moon and Mars.
NASA
Investigating Asteroids with Lucy's Scientific Instruments
This video highlights the suite of instruments aboard the Lucy spacecraft that will be used to collect data on the Trojan asteroids. Since Lucy will be the first space mission to explore the Trojans, the information gathered will provide...
NASA
Asteroid Bennu: Selecting Site Nightingale
OSIRIS-REx is a NASA mission to explore near-Earth asteroid Bennu and return a sample to Earth. Prior to arriving at Bennu, mission planners had expected the asteroid's surface to consist largely of fine-grained material, like a sandy...
NASA
Moon Sheds Light on Earth’s Impact History
By analyzing data on lunar craters provided by the Diviner instrument aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have made a fascinating discovery about the history of impacts on both the Earth and the Moon. Watch this video to...
NASA
Mars Gravity Map
A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet. Satellites always orbit a planet’s center of mass, but can be pulled...
NASA
Hubble Views Moon to Study Earth
Taking advantage of the total lunar eclipse of January 2019, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have measured the amount of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere. The method used serves as a proxy for how they will observe...
NASA
Hubble Trivia: 9) Hubble Has Helped Confirm That the Milky Way Will Merge With Which Nearby Galaxy?
The Hubble Space Telescope has been revealing the secrets of the universe for over 30 years, but it turns out Hubble has some secrets of its own! The question is: Hubble has helped confirm that the Milky Way will merge with which nearby...
NASA
Hubble Trivia: 3) What Advantage Does Hubble Space Telescope Have Over Ground-based Telescopes?
The Hubble Space Telescope has been revealing the secrets of the universe for over 30 years, but it turns out Hubble has some secrets of its own! The question is: What advantage does the Hubble Space Telescope have over ground-based...
NASA
Hubble Trivia: 15) What are forming in the Eagle Nebula's 'Pillars of Creation'?
The Hubble Space Telescope has been revealing the secrets of the universe for over 30 years, but it turns out Hubble has some secrets of its own! The question is: What are forming in the Eagle Nebula's 'Pillars of Creation'? You might be...