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Time for some Sun salutations 🧘
Flow through 133 days of the Sun’s activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory. From its orbit around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K resolution for nearly 13 years.
Video description: Mellow music plays as compiled images taken every 108 seconds condenses 133 days of solar observations into an hour-long video. The video shows bright active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Scott Wiessinger (Lead Producer and editor), Tom Bridgman (Lead Visualizer), Lars Leonhard (music)
Before NASA’s Artemis astronauts head to the Moon, a microwave oven-sized spacecraft will help lead the way. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, is a CubeSat mission set to launch in spring of 2022. For at least six months, the small spacecraft will fly a unique elongated path around the Moon. Its trajectory—known as a near rectilinear halo orbit—has never been flown before! Once tried and tested, the same orbit will be home to NASA’s future lunar space station Gateway. Here are five things to know:
1. The 55-pound (25 kg) spacecraft is equipped with solar arrays, a camera, and antennae for communication and navigation.
2. Powerful thrusters will help propel the CubeSat toward the Moon.
3. CAPSTONE will fly a unique elongated path around the Moon for at least six months.
4. At its closest approach, it will come within 2,100 miles (3,380 km) of the Moon’s North Pole.
5. The same orbit will be home to Gateway— our future outpost for Artemis astronauts heading to the Moon and beyond.
CAPSTONE is commercially owned and operated by Advanced Space in Westminster, Colorado. NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program within the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate funds the demonstration mission. The program is based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The development of CAPSTONE’s navigation technology is supported by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program. The Artemis Campaign Development Division within NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate funds the launch and supports mission operations. The Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida manages the launch.
We just released new eye-catching posters and backgrounds to celebrate the five-year anniversary of Juno’s orbit insertion at Jupiter in psychedelic style.
On July 4, 2016, our Juno spacecraft arrived at Jupiter on a mission to peer through the gas giant planet’s dense clouds and answer questions about the origins of our solar system. Since its arrival, Juno has provided scientists a treasure trove of data about the planet’s origins, interior structures, atmosphere, and magnetosphere.
Juno is the first mission to observe Jupiter’s deep atmosphere and interior, and will continue to delight with dazzling views of the planet’s colorful clouds and Galilean moons. As it circles Jupiter, Juno provides critical knowledge for understanding the formation of our own solar system, the Jovian system, and the role giant planets play in putting together planetary systems elsewhere.
It’s International Asteroid Day, and today we’re talking about everything asteroids! Although there are no known threats for the next 100 years, our Planetary Defense experts are constantly finding, tracking, and monitoring near-Earth objects to protect our home planet.
Asteroids are rocky remnants from the beginning of our solar system, and as of today, 26,110 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered!
So how do we spot these near-Earth objects? Let’s watch and see:
In addition to tracking and monitoring asteroids, we are also launching several missions to study these rocky relics. By studying asteroids, we can better understand the formation of our solar system. Here are some exciting missions you can look forward to:
OSIRIS-REx: Returning a Sample from Asteroid Bennu
Last year, our OSIRIS-REx mission successfully captured a sample of asteroid Bennu, a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid the size of the empire state building.
Currently, OSISRIS-REx is making its long journey home carrying this sample as it returns to Earth in 2023.
Psyche: A Journey to a Metal World
Our Psyche mission will journey to a unique metal asteroid orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Mars.
What makes the asteroid Psyche unique is that it appears to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of the building blocks of our solar system. Deep within rocky, terrestrial planets - including Earth - scientists infer the presence of metallic cores, but these lie unreachably far below the planets’ rocky mantles and crusts. Because we cannot see or measure Earth’s core directly, Psyche offers a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created terrestrial planets.
Lucy: Studying the Trojan Asteroids
Launching this year, our Lucy mission will be the first mission to study the Trojans, a group of asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. Time capsules from the birth of our Solar System more than 4 billion years ago, the swarms of Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter are thought to be remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets.
The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor (called “Lucy” by her discoverers) whose skeleton provided unique insight into humanity’s evolution. Likewise, the Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system.
DART: Double Asteroid Redirection Test
Launching this year, our DART mission is a planetary defense driven test of technologies and will be the first demonstration of a technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space.
The destination of this mission is the small asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits slowly around its larger companion Didymos. Dimorphos is referred to as a moonlet since it orbits a larger asteroid.
The DART spacecraft will achieve the kinetic impact deflection by deliberately crashing itself into the moonlet. The collision will change the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of one percent, but this will change the orbital period of the moonlet by several minutes - enough to be observed and measured using telescopes on Earth.
At NASA, every day is asteroid day, as we have missions exploring these time capsules of our solar system and surveying the sky daily to find potential hazards. We, along with our partners are watching the skies 24/7/365, so rest assured! We’re always looking up.
