Cosmo Crave: Exploring the Universe's Greatest Mysteries

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite has been scanning Earth for 20 years and now has a long enough record to help support climate change research. AIRS data on Earth’s atmosphere are improving weather forecasts and advancing our understanding of Earth’s climate. AIRS' infrared technology creates 3D maps of air and surface temperature, water vapor, and cloud properties. The infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum is rich in information about gases, especially greenhouse gases such as ozone and carbon dioxide. The advantage of having such an instrument in orbit is the availability of rapid global coverage. AIRS data form a 'fingerprint' of the state of the atmosphere for a given time and place, contributing to climate data for future generations NASA's Aqua satellite, with AIRS onboard, launched into Earth orbit on May 4, 2002.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has arrived at an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, one of the best places on the Red Planet to search for potential signs of ancient life. The delta is an area where scientists surmise that a river once flowed billions of years ago into a lake and deposited sediments in a fan shape. Rachel Kronyak, a member of the Perseverance science operations team, guides the viewer through this Martian panorama and its intriguing sedimentary rocks. It’s the most detailed view ever returned from the Martian surface, consisting of 2.5 billion pixels and generated from 1,118 individual Mastcam-Z images. Those images were acquired on June 12, 13, 16, 17, and 20, 2022 (the 466th, 467th, 470th, 471st, and 474th Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance’s mission). In this panorama, an area called Hogwallow Flats is visible, as is Skinner Ridge, where two rock core samples were taken. The color enhancement in this image improves the visual contrast and accentuates color differences. This makes it easier for the science team to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape.

A game-changing moment emerged in 2008 when India's Chandrayaan-1 mission unveiled an astonishing find: water on the moon's surface. This groundbreaking revelation reignited the world's fascination with lunar exploration, triggering an international craze that saw major players like China, the United States, and Israel join the pursuit. Fast forward to today, and India takes centre stage once more with Chandrayaan 3, its third lunar mission. This determined effort follows a setback experienced during the Chandrayaan 2 mission in 2019, showcasing India's unwavering commitment to unravelling the moon's mysteries. Wondering about the past, present, and future of lunar exploration? Join Dhruv Rathee in this video to dive into all the exciting details!

An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars located about 5,300 light-years from Earth. Each ring was created when the stars came close together, and their colliding stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) caused some of the gas to compress into dust. Collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140, the stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years, so just like the growth rings of a tree trunk, these dusty loops mark the passage of time: The 17 rings reveal more than a century of stellar interactions. And while other Wolf-Rayet stars produce dust, no other pair is known to produce rings quite like Wolf-Rayet 140. Because the stars’ orbits are elliptical rather than circular, the distance between them changes constantly, and dust forms only when they are close. The amount of dust produced by this interaction varies, so the system doesn’t form a perfect bullseye. One of the densest regions of dust production creates the bright feature repeating at 2 o’clock. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech For more information about the Webb telescope’s mission, visit https://www.nasa.gov/webb.

Watch as a dying star wreaks havoc on its planetary system, leaving behind a voracious white dwarf. Witness the extraordinary as debris from both inner and outer realms is devoured, a cosmic first. Archival data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and observatories unveil this unprecedented cosmic cannibalism. Gain insights into evolved planetary systems and new formations—more at https://nasa.gov/hubble.

NASA’s Lucy mission is heading to the Jupiter Trojans – two swarms of primitive asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit that may hold clues to the formation of the planets. Lucy launched on October 16, 2021. After a year in orbit around the Sun, it is returning home on its launch anniversary for the first of three Earth gravity assists. On October 16, 2022, Lucy will fly by the Earth like a partner in a swing dance, boosting its speed and elongating its orbit around the Sun. At 7:04 am, Eastern Time, Lucy will make its closest approach at just 219 miles above the planet: lower than the International Space Station. This exceptionally close shave will increase its velocity by four-and-a-half miles per second, setting Lucy on track to gain even more speed when it returns to Earth for its second gravity assist in December 2024. Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/lucy-ega

Chronicles solar activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has enabled countless discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system. With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at ten different wavelengths of light. This 133-day time-lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona. Compiling images taken 108 seconds apart, the movie condenses 133 days, or about four months, of solar observations into 59 minutes. The video shows bright, active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates. The Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days. The loops extending above the bright regions are magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma. These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, which appear as bright flashes as magnetic fields snap together in a process called magnetic reconnection. While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointing toward the Sun, there have been a few missed moments. Some of the dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. Other blackouts are caused by instrumentation being down or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground every day. The images where the Sun is off-centre were observed when SDO calibrated its instruments. SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun in the future, providing further insights about our place in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe.

A new NASA and Durham University simulation puts forth a different theory of the Moon’s origin – the Moon may have formed in hours when material from the Earth and a Mars sized-body was launched directly into orbit after the impact. The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon’s origins or other giant impacts.

This 4K visualization shows the Moon's phase and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2022, as viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. Each frame represents one hour. In addition, this visualization shows the Moon's orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, and distance from the Earth at a true scale. Craters near the terminator are labelled, as are Apollo landing sites, Maria, and other albedo features in sunlight. Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Data visualization by Ernie Wright (USRA) Producer & Editor - David Ladd (AIMM) Music provided by Universal Production Music: "Build the Future"