Get dazzled by the true spectrum of solar beauty. From fiery reds to cool blues, explore the vibrant hues of the Sun in a mesmerizing color order. The images used to make this gradient come from our Solar Dynamics Observatory. Taken in a variety of wavelengths, they give scientists a wealth of data about the Sun.
Don’t miss the total solar eclipse crossing North America on April 8, 2024. (It’s the last one for 20 years!) Set a reminder to watch with us.
On Monday, April 8, 2024, there’ll be a total solar eclipse – and it’ll be the last one to cross North America for 20 years. Make sure you’re tuned in to our live broadcast for this exciting event: there’ll be views from along the path of totality, special guests, and plenty of science.
Follow, follow the Sun / And which way the wind blows / When this day is done 🎶 Today, April 8, 2024, the last total solar eclipse until 2045 crossed North America.
LaRue Burbank, mathematician and computer, is just one of the many women who were instrumental to NASA missions.
4 Little Known Women Who Made Huge Contributions to NASA
Women have always played a significant role at NASA and its predecessor NACA, although for much of the agency’s history, they received neither the praise nor recognition that their contributions deserved. To celebrate Women’s History Month – and properly highlight some of the little-known women-led accomplishments of NASA’s early history – our archivists gathered the stories of four women whose work was critical to NASA’s success and paved the way for future generations.
For Earth Day, we’re inviting you to take a moment to celebrate our wonderful water world, Earth. As far as we know, our Blue Marble is the only place in the universe with life, and that life depends on water. Snap a photo of yourself outside and tag it #GlobalSelfie – bonus points if your selfie features your favorite body of water! http://go.nasa.gov/3xFt0H0
This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the
world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge
scientific instruments.
This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular
region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s
it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?
Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that
deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind —
away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in
Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our
atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the
ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.
The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are
using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding
rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude,
spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means
sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study
the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.
They also fly directly through some of the most interesting
regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage
of for their Grand Challenge experiments.
One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in
Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle.
Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly
under Earth’s magnetic cusp.
But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another
set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during
the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial
tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.
Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait
for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper
atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science
conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles
collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in
the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes
that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.
But even before launch, the extreme conditions make
launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be
encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures
and potential precipitation.
When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the
town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s
up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec.
7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.
These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so
after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that
they can retrieve the pieces later.
The
next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya
Space Center in Norway in March 2019.
For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets
in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4
For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other
sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA
heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.
A simulated image of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s future observations toward the center of our galaxy, spanning less than 1 percent of the total area of Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey. The simulated stars were drawn from the Besançon Galactic Model.
Exploring the Changing Universe with the Roman Space Telescope
The view from your backyard might paint the universe as an unchanging realm, where only twinkling stars and nearby objects, like satellites and meteors, stray from the apparent constancy. But stargazing through NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will offer a front row seat to a dazzling display of cosmic fireworks sparkling across the sky.
It’s amazing what you can do with a little needle and thread! For #WorldEmbroideryDay, we asked what NASA imagery inspired you. You responded with a variety of embroidered creations, highlighting our different areas of study.
Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, created this embroidered piece inspired by Webb’s Carina Nebula image. Captured in infrared light, this image revealed for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Credit: Wendy Edwards, NASA. Pattern credit: Clare Bray, Climbing Goat Designs
We’re on the verge of launching a new spacecraft to the Sun to take the first-ever images of the Sun’s north and south poles!
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Solar Orbiter is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. After it launches — as soon as Feb. 9 — it will use Earth’s and Venus’s gravity to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane — the swath of space, roughly aligned with the Sun’s equator, where all the planets orbit. From there, Solar Orbiter’s bird’s eye view will give it the first-ever look at the Sun’s poles.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
The Sun plays a central role in shaping space around us. Its massive magnetic field stretches far beyond Pluto, paving a superhighway for charged solar particles known as the solar wind. When bursts of solar wind hit Earth, they can spark space weather storms that interfere with our GPS and communications satellites — at their worst, they can even threaten astronauts.
To prepare for potential solar storms, scientists monitor the Sun’s magnetic field. But from our perspective near Earth and from other satellites roughly aligned with Earth’s orbit, we can only see a sidelong view of the Sun’s poles. It’s a bit like trying to study Mount Everest’s summit from the base of the mountain.
Solar Orbiter will study the Sun’s magnetic field at the poles using a combination of in situ instruments — which study the environment right around the spacecraft — and cameras that look at the Sun, its atmosphere and outflowing material in different types of light. Scientists hope this new view will help us understand not only the Sun’s day-to-day activity, but also its roughly 11-year activity cycles, thought to be tied to large-scales changes in the Sun’s magnetic field.
Solar Orbiter will fly within the orbit of Mercury — closer to our star than any Sun-facing cameras have ever gone — so the spacecraft relies on cutting-edge technology to beat the heat.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Solar Orbiter has a custom-designed titanium heat shield with a calcium phosphate coating that withstands temperatures more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit — 13 times the solar heating that spacecraft face in Earth orbit. Five of the cameras look at the Sun through peepholes in that heat shield; one observes the solar wind out the side.
Over the mission’s seven-year lifetime, Solar Orbiter will reach an inclination of 24 degrees above the Sun’s equator, increasing to 33 degrees with an additional three years of extended mission operations. At closest approach the spacecraft will pass within 26 million miles of the Sun.
Solar Orbiter will be our second major mission to the inner solar system in recent years, following on August 2018’s launch of Parker Solar Probe. Parker has completed four close solar passes and will fly within 4 million miles of the Sun at closest approach.
Solar Orbiter (green) and Parker Solar Probe (blue) will study the Sun in tandem.
The two spacecraft will work together: As Parker samples solar particles up close, Solar Orbiter will capture imagery from farther away, contextualizing the observations. The two spacecraft will also occasionally align to measure the same magnetic field lines or streams of solar wind at different times.
Watch the launch
The booster of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that will launch the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is lifted into the vertical position at the Vertical Integration Facility near Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Jan. 6, 2020. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
Solar Orbiter is scheduled to launch on Feb. 9, 2020, during a two-hour window that opens at 11:03 p.m. EST. The spacecraft will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Did you know that our planet is surrounded by giant,
donut-shaped clouds of radiation?
Here’s what you need to know.
1. The radiation
belts are a side effect of Earth’s magnetic field
The Van Allen radiation belts exist because fast-moving charged
particles get trapped inside Earth’s natural magnetic field, forming two
concentric donut-shaped clouds of radiation. Other planets with global magnetic
fields, like
Jupiter, also have radiation belts.
2. The radiation
belts were one of our first Space Age discoveries
Earth’s radiation belts were first
identified in 1958 by Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite. The
inner belt, composed predominantly of protons, and the outer belt, mostly
electrons, would come to be named the Van Allen Belts, after James Van Allen,
the scientist who led the charge designing the instruments and studying the
radiation data from Explorer 1.
3. The Van Allen
Probes have spent six years exploring the radiation belts
In 2012, we launched the twin Van Allen Probes to
study the radiation belts. Over the past six years, these spacecraft have
orbited in and out of the belts, providing brand-new data about how the
radiation belts shift and change in response to solar activity and other
factors.
4. Surprise! Sometimes
there are three radiation belts
Shortly after launch, the Van Allen Probes detected a
previously-unknown third
radiation belt, created by a bout of strong solar activity. All the
extra energy directed towards Earth meant that some particles trapped in our
planet’s magnetic field were swept out into the usually relatively empty region
between the two Van Allen Belts, creating an additional radiation belt.
5. Swan song for the
Van Allen Probes
Originally designed for a two-year mission, the Van Allen
Probes have spent more than six years collecting data in the harsh radiation
environment of the Van Allen Belts. In spring 2019, we’re changing their orbit to bring the perigee — the part of the
orbit where the spacecraft are closest to Earth — about 190 miles lower. This
ensures that the spacecraft will eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere,
instead of orbiting forever and becoming space junk.
Because the Van Allen Probes have proven to be so hardy,
they’ll continue collecting data throughout the final months of the mission
until they run out of fuel. As they skim through the outer reaches of Earth’s
atmosphere, scientists and engineers will also learn more about how atmospheric
oxygen can degrade satellite measurements — information that can help build
better satellites in the future.