Technicians prep the OCO-2 instrument for shipping at JPL. The instrument consists of three parallel, high-resolution spectrometers, integrated into a common structure and fed by a common telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Its construction now complete,... More »
NASA’s Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft tested its JunoCam instrument on one of the icons of the night sky – the Big Dipper. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS In England it is known as the “Plough,” in Germany the “Great Cart,” and in Malaysia the “Seven P... More »
Mineral Diversity at Vesta’s South Pole This image, made from data obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows the mineral distribution in the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/INAF/MPS/DLR/IDA PASADENA, Calif. ... More »
This image shows an array of geodetic instruments at the surface of Earth and activity that was modeled on the fault below. The yellow colors indicate the highest speeds of slippage between plates along the San Andreas Fault. The reddish colors represent slowe... More »
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove about 12 feet (3.67 meters) on May 8, 2012, after spending 19 weeks working in one place while solar power was too low for driving during the Martian winter. The winter worksite was on the north slope of an outcr... More »
Back-and-forth blinking of this two-image animation shows movement of a sand dune on Mars. The images are part of a study published by Nature on May 9, 2012, reporting movement of Martian sand dunes at about the same flux (volume per time) as movement of dunes... More »
This is a perspective view of the Nili Patera dune field. A HiRISE image has been draped over a digital elevation model of Mars. Colors correspond to the amplitude of the ripple’s displacement extracted by image correlation between two HiRISE observations sepa... More »
This artistically modified image of the local galaxy Arp 220, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, helps illustrate the Herschel results. The bright core of the galaxy, paired with an overlaid artist’s impression of jets emanating from it, indicate that the... More »
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope was able to detect a super Earth’s direct light for the first time using its sensitive heat-seeking infrared vision. Super Earth’s are more massive than Earth but lighter than gas giants like Neptune. As this artist’s concept sho... More »
What do parents want—aside from kids who come home on time and never talk with their mouths full—and why is an economist trying to answer that question? Because, at its heart, economics is all about the process of making choices. And while places like th... More »
This artist’s concept shows NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta. The depiction of Vesta is based on images obtained by Dawn’s framing cameras. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will host a news conference on Thursday, May 10, at 11 a.m. ... More »
Hiroo Kanamori, the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has been elected one of 21 new foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences. Eighty-four new members were also an... More »
