Science and Technology


Mars Rover Opportunity Examines Clay Clues in Rock

The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called “Esperance,” which was inspected by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Data from the rover’s alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) indicate that Esperance’s composition is higher in aluminum and silica, and lower in calcium and ...

Nine-Year-Old Mars Rover Passes 40-Year-Old Record

On the 3,309th Martian day, or sol, of its mission on Mars (May 15, 2013) NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove 263 feet (80 meters) southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech While Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt visited Earth’s moon for three days in December 1972, they drove ...

Galaxy’s Ring of Fire

How many rings do you see in this new image of the galaxy Messier 94, also known as NGC 4736? While at first glance one might see a number of them, astronomers believe there is just one. This image was captured in infrared light by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Johnny Cash may ...

NASA Helps Pinpoint Glaciers’ Role in Sea Level Rise

The Aletschglacier in Switzerland is the largest valley glacier in the Alps. Its volume loss since the middle of the 19th century is well visible from the trimlines to the right of the image. Credit: Frank Paul, University of Zurich A new study of glaciers worldwide using observations from two NASA satellites has helped resolve ...

Asteroid 1998 QE2 to Sail Past Earth Nine Times Larger Than Cruise Ship

The orbit of asteroid 1998 QE2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech On May 31, 2013, asteroid 1998 QE2 will sail serenely past Earth, getting no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon. And while QE2 is not of much interest to those astronomers and ...

Cassini Shapes First Global Topographic Map of Titan

These polar maps show the first global, topographic mapping of Saturn’s moon Titan, using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. To create these maps, scientists employed a mathematical process called splining, which uses smooth curved surfaces to “join” the areas between grids of existing topography profiles obtained by Cassini’s radar instrument.Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/JHUAPL/Cornell/Weizmann Scientists have created ...

Satellites See Double Jeopardy for Socal Fire Season

The quick dry-out of vegetation in Southern California this year is depicted in this pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft. MODIS measurements show more vegetation with greener areas on Feb. 25, 2013 (upper panel), compared to those on May 1, 2013 (lower panel), which is the ...

NASA Curiosity Rover Team Selects Second Drilling Target on Mars

This map shows the location of “Cumberland,” the second rock-drilling target for NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, in relation to the rover’s first drilling target, “John Klein,” within the southwestern lobe of a shallow depression called “Yellowknife Bay.” Cumberland, like John Klein, is a patch of flat-lying bedrock with pale veins and bumpy surface texture. The ...

NASA Curiosity Rover Wins Prestigious Awards

This self-portrait of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity combines 66 exposures taken by the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (Feb. 3, 2013). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Two prominent aerospace industry organizations are recognizing the contributions of NASA, especially the achievements of the team that ...

Sifting Through the Atmospheres of Far-off Worlds

This image shows the HR 8799 planets with starlight optically suppressed and data processing conducted to remove residual starlight. The star is at the center of the blackened circle in the image. The four spots indicated with the letters b through e are the planets. This is a composite image using 30 wavelengths of light ...

Milky Way Black Hole Snacks on Hot Gas

This artist’s concept illustrates the frenzied activity at the core of our Milky Way galaxy. The galactic center hosts a supermassive black hole in the region known as Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, with a mass of about four million times that of our sun. The Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly ...

NASA’s Spitzer Puts Planets in a Petri Dish

If astronomers could somehow pull planets out of the sky and analyze them in the laboratory, it might look something like this artistically altered image illustrating new research from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared observatory allows astronomers to study closely the atmospheres of hot Jupiter planets — those outside our solar system that orbit ...

‘Tis the Season — for Plasma Changes at Saturn

This is an artist’s concept of the Saturnian plasma sheet based on data from Cassini magnetospheric imaging instrument. It shows Saturn’s embedded “ring current,” an invisible ring of energetic ions trapped in the planet’s magnetic field. Image credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL Researchers working with data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have discovered one way the bubble of charged ...

NASA Opens New Era in Measuring Western U.S. Snowpack

Mt. Dana and Dana Plateau in the Tuolumne River Basin within Yosemite National Park, Calif., as seen out the window of a Twin Otter aircraft carrying NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory on April 3, 2013. The patchy snow cover this early in the snowmelt season is a reflection of the poor snowfall in the Sierra Nevada ...