NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

California Wildfires Continue to Burn Out of Control

Numerous wildfires continue to burn out of control throughout California. Many of these fires were ignited in late June by dry lighting and made worse by parched conditions and a lack of rainfall, fire officials report.

NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of several of the blazes as it passed over California on June 30, 2008. This image specifically shows the fires burning in the area south of Monterey, some of the state’s largest according to fire officials. Active fires are outlined in red. Smoke can also be seen billowing north up the California coastline.

According to news reports, about 364,600 acres, or almost 570 square miles, of land throughout the state have already burned, and most of the blazes have not yet been contained.

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NASA Goddard Has More Than a Dozen Exciting Missions in the Next Year!

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, located in Greenbelt, Maryland, has the lead on many exciting space missions launching in the next year.

Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) beauty shot. Credit: NASA
These missions include a final repair trip to upgrade the famous Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft to study powerful gamma-rays, the moon, the Sun, and Earth's weather and pollution and the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST). GLAST launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. on June 11. This novel mission is a marriage of astronomy and particle physics teaming NASA with the U.S. Department of Energy and international partners."This is one of the busiest periods in the history of Goddard," said Rick Obenschain, acting director of Goddard.

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Proposed NASA Mission Could Explore Twisted Space Around Black Holes

Credit: NASA A new NASA mission could discover the shape of space that has been distorted by a spinning black hole's crushing gravity, and explore the structure and effects of the formidable magnetic field around magnetars, dead stars with magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than Earth's.

Current missions either don't have the resolution to do this, or in the case of magnetic field imaging, simply can't do this because magnetic fields are invisible. The proposed new mission, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEMS), will use a new technique to accomplish what has been impossible until now. It will build up a picture indirectly by measuring the polarization of X-rays emitted from these violent regions.

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Solar Shield Experiment Aims to Keep the Power On

When you flip a light switch to illuminate the pages of your favorite book or reach into your refrigerator for that last piece of key lime pie, you expect the electric current coursing through the outlets to power everything from your lights to your nifty new big-screen television. When the power goes out, it can be more than just an inconvenience.

NASA’s Solar Shield experiment explores how timely space weather forecasts can help power companies keep the power flowing to the many appliances and electronic gadgets we rely on every day.

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