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New time-lapse movies from NASA’s NEOWISE mission give astronomers the opportunity to see objects, like stars and black holes, as they move and change over time. The videos include previously hidden brown dwarfs, a feeding black hole, a dying star, a star-forming region, and a brightening star. They combine more than 10 years of NEOWISE observations and 18 all-sky images, enabling a long-term analysis and a deeper understanding of the universe. 0:44 – NEOWISE all-sky scan animation 1:03 – Feeding black hole 1:14 – Pulsing star reaches the end of its life 1:21 – Protostars in star-forming region 1:34 – Brown dwarf moves across the sky 2:00 – Unexplained stellar brightening The NEOWISE mission uses a space telescope to hunt for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. Launched in December 2009 as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, the space telescope was originally designed to survey the sky in infrared, detecting asteroids, stars and some of the faintest galaxies in space. WISE did so successfully until completing its primary mission in February 2011. Observations resumed in December 2013, when the telescope was taken out of hibernation and re-purposed for the NEOWISE project as an instrument to study near-Earth objects, or NEOs, as well as more distant asteroids and comets. For more information on the NEOWISE mission go to: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/neo... For more NEOWISE data go to: https://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech WISE-NEOWISE movies compiled by Dan Caselden

We’re testing a new way of landing on Mars… by crashing into its surface. The Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) is a lander concept being tested at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It could one day provide a new way for low-cost missions to land on Mars. Rather than rely on parachutes or retrorockets, SHIELD would include a collapsible, accordion-like base to absorb the energy of a landing. A full-size prototype of the base was tested on Aug. 12, 2022. The prototype was hurled at the ground from the top of a nearly 90-foot-tall (27-meter-tall) drop tower at JPL. A steel plate ensured the impact was even harder than what would be experienced on Mars. The design worked: After crushing against the steel plate at 110 mph (177 kph), several electronic components inside the SHIELD prototype, including a smartphone, survived the impact. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/California Academy of Sciences

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is filling sample tubes with rocky material on the Red Planet as the agency works on the next steps to get them safely back to Earth. The Mars Sample Return campaign would bring samples collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth for detailed study. The campaign involves an international interplanetary relay team, including the European Space Agency (ESA). These samples could answer a key question: did life ever exist on Mars? Aaron Yazzie, who works on the Mars Sample Return campaign, explains the work being done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to ensure the safe return of the sample tubes. For more information on Mars Sample Return, visit mars.nasa.gov/msr/ Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronaut Chris Hadfield demonstrates how to contain vomit in space. www.nasa.gov/education/tfs/dil

In this video, measurements collected by the Waves instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa on Sept. 29, 2022 have been converted to an audible frequency. As the white line moves across the spectrogram, which is a visual way of representing signal strength over time, the variation of frequency of the plasma waves observed near Europa can be heard as the plasma density varies. The video shows data collected over approximately 1.5 hours during the Europa flyby. For more information about NASA’s Juno mission, visit: http://nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.com Details about the Europa flyby can be found at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa... Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/Univ of Iowa