NASALAB

Join the journey as NASA’s Psyche mission team prepares for a targeted Oct. 5, 2023, launch to explore a unique metallic asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid, likely made largely of nickel-iron metal mixed with rock, could contain metal from the core of a planetesimal (the building block of an early rocky planet) and may offer a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created the terrestrial planets like Earth. Arizona State University leads the Psyche mission. JPL, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, provided the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis. For more info about NASA's #MissionToPsyche, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/psyche and https://psyche.asu.edu/ Link to download this video: https://images.nasa.gov/details/JPL-2... Credit: NASA

What's going on with the hole in the ozone layer? Thanks to a global effort to regulate ozone-depleting substances, the ozone hole is showing signs of recovery and is projected to return to a healthy level by mid-century. However, at NASA, scientists continue to monitor its progress. @NASAGoddard's Qing Liang explains more. Keep up: https://go.nasa.gov/3DhEBvp Link to download this video: https://images.nasa.gov/details/What's Going on with the Hole in the Ozone Layer_ - Horizontal Video Producers: Scott Bednar, Jessica Wilde Editor: James Lucas Credit: NASA

On May 16, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, and then the gas giant soon after. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is a world in constant torment. Not only is the biggest planet in the solar system forever pulling at it gravitationally, but so are its Galilean siblings – Europa and the biggest moon in the solar system, Ganymede. The result is that Io is continuously stretched and squeezed, actions linked to the creation of the lava seen erupting from its many volcanoes. This rendering provides a “starship captain” point of view of the flyby, using images from JunoCam. For both targets, Io and Jupiter, raw JunoCam images were reprojected into views similar to the perspective of a consumer camera. The Io flyby and the Jupiter approach movie were rendered separately and composed into a synchronous split-screen video. Launched on Aug. 5, 2011, Juno embarked on a 5-year journey to Jupiter. Its mission: to probe beneath the planet's dense clouds and answer questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our solar system, and giant planets in general across the cosmos. Juno arrived at the gas giant on July 4, 2016, after a 1.7-billion-mile journey, and settled into a 53-day polar orbit stretching from just above Jupiter’s cloud tops to the outer reaches of the Jovian magnetosphere. Now in its extended mission, NASA’s most distant planetary orbiter continues doing flybys of Jupiter and its moons. Visit http://www.nasa.gov/juno & http://missionjuno.swri.edu to learn more. Animation: Koji Kuramura and Gerald Eichstädt Music: Vangelis Producer: Scott J. Bolton Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory — SDO — has now been watching the Sun non-stop for over a full decade. From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years. This information has enabled countless new 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 10 different wavelengths of light. This 10-year 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 one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions. The custom music, titled “Solar Observer,” was composed by musician Lars Leonhard (https://www.lars-leonhard.de/). While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed towards the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. The dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. A longer blackout in 2016 was caused by a temporary issue with the AIA instrument that was successfully resolved after a week. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments. SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun in the years to come, providing further insights about our place in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe. Some noteworthy events appear briefly in this time lapse. Use the time links below to jump to each event, or follow the links to more detailed views.

NASA’s Lucy mission tests the deployment of its solar arrays in the thermal vacuum chamber at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Each of the two circular arrays is nearly 24 feet (7.3 m) wide. These arrays will power Lucy on its 12-year odyssey through the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, breaking records for a solar powered mission by traveling 530 million miles (853 million km) from the Sun. These large arrays will capture the sunlight needed to power the spacecraft as it travels through deep space. More: nasa.gov/lucy Music: "CSI," Anthony Edward Phillips, Atmosphere Music, Ltd. Video credit: Copyright Lockheed Martin, 2021; used with permission

Sharing the incomparable silent beauty of our planet with all our fellow travelers on this, our Spaceship Earth.” @SergeyISS @Astro_Paolo @Astrokomrade “Our thanks to Mr. Paul Simon and Disturbed.” “Our thanks to all the people within the partnership of the International Space Station who show us daily what heights we can achieve together.” “The Sound of Silence” Written by Paul Simon. SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. on behalf of PAUL SIMON MUSIC. Performed by Disturbed. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records. Captured by astronauts Sergey Ryazanskiy, Paolo Nespoli, and Commander Randy Bresnik, the video features stunning footage of Earth and outer space from the International Space Station in low-earth orbit during the months of August through October in 2017. For more on the International Space Station, visit: www.nasa.gov/station