Chasing Sprites in Electric Skies
Paul Smith is a night-sky fanatic and photographer. His obsession is sprites: immense jolts of light that flicker high above thunderstorms. Last October, he guided NASA scientist Dr. Burcu Kosar through the backroads of Oklahoma to catch one herself. Although she’d studied sprites for more than 15 years, she hadn’t yet chased one.
#viral
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Watch the "Ring of Fire" Solar Eclipse (NASA Broadcast Trailer)
On Oct. 14, 2023, a "ring of fre, or annular, solar eclipse will travel
from Oregon coast to the Gulf of Mexico. Weather permiing, most
of the Americas will be able to view at least a partial solar eclipse
Click here to see the NASA 2023 and 2024 Solar Eclipse Map:
https://go.nasa.gov/USEclipseMaps
An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the
Sun and the Earth, but is just far away enough in its orbit that the Sun
is not completely covered-creating a large, bright ring in the sky.
WARNING: During an annular eclipse, it is never safe to look directly
at the Sun without specialized eye protection designed for solar
viewing. How to safely view an eclipse:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses.
Not in the path of the eclipse? Watch with us from anywhere in the
world. We will provide live broadcast coverage on Oct. 14 from 11:30
a.m. to 1:15 p.m. EDT (1530-1715 UTC) on NASA TV, NASA.gov, the
NASA app, and right here on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/live/LlY79zjud-Q
Learn more about the upcoming annular solar eclipse:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eclipses.
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How Do Spacecraft Slow Down? We Asked a NASA Technologist
How do spacecraft slow down? Rigid heat shields and
retropropulsion have been the favorites of engineers for years. Now
NASA is testing a new inflatable heat shield technology that could
allow us to carry even larger payloads to worlds with atmospheres:
https://www.nasa.gov/loftid
Launching on Nov. 1 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket
along with NOAA's JPSS-2 mission, the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of
an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, will demonstrate the heat
shield's ability to slow down and survive atmospheric entry:
https://go.nasa.gov/3N7yzBG
Producers: Scott Bednar, Jessica Wilde
Editor: Daniel Salazar
Credit: NASA
#NASA #Technology #Spacecraft
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SpaceX DM-2 Flight Day Highlights - May 30, 2020 #space
Almost nine years after the final space shuttle mission, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida May 30, an American rocket launching from American soil, placing NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit in the new Crew Dragon spacecraft for their journey to the International Space Station. Some 12 minutes after a spectacular liftoff from Launch Pad 39-A, Crew Dragon separated from the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket and Hurley and Behnken began monitoring a series of test objectives for the duration of the vehicle’s 19-hour flight to the orbital outpost in the first crewed mission for the Commercial Crew Program. The veteran astronauts are scheduled to oversee an automated docking of Crew Dragon to the station May 31 to join NASA astronaut and Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA and Russian crewmates Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner.
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133 Days on the Sun
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133 Days on the Sun
NASA Goddard
1.5M subscribers
604,349 views Jan 5, 2023
This video 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 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 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 pointed toward the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. 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-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.
The music is a continuous mix from Lars Leonhard’s “Geometric Shapes” album, courtesy of the artist.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Scott Wiessinger (PAO): Lead Producer
Tom Bridgman (SVS): Lead Visualizer
Scott Wiessinger (PAO): Editor
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14263. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14263. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines.
Video Description:
On the left side of the frame is the full circle of the Sun. It appears in a golden yellow color, but splotchy and with thin yellow wisps extending from the surface. Some areas are very bright and others almost black. The whole Sun rotates steadily, with one full rotation taking 12 minutes in this time lapse. There are usually only a few bright regions visible at a time and they shift and flash like small fires. From these regions there are wispy loops reaching up above the surface that rapidly change shape and size.
On the right side of the frame are two white-outlined squares with enlargements of interesting regions of the Sun.
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Astounding View of NASA’s Artemis I Rocket at Rollout
Take in a unique 360-degree view of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft – from high up in Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building – as it begins its rollout to Launch Complex 39B. Targeted for launch no earlier than Aug. 29, Artemis I will mark the first integrated test of the SLS and Orion.
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