NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA's LRO: Four Years in Orbit

06.18.13 - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO, in orbit around the moon for four years, has forever changed our view of our nearby neighbor.

Scott Luthcke - Weighing in on Ice Sheet Weight

06.18.13 - Geophysicist Scott Luthcke finds weighing the ice sheets is sometimes easier than coaching his three daughters in field hockey.

James 'Bryan' Blair - Looking for the Next Mountain

06.18.13 - Mathematician-turned-instrument scientist James "Bryan" Blair takes an unconventional approach and is always looking for that next mountain to climb.

The Science of NASA's Newest Solar Explorer

06.19.13 - At the end of June 2013, NASA will launch its newest set of instruments to watch the sun: the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS.

NASA’s MMS Achieves Major Mission Milestone

06.14.13 - This fisheye image shows NASA’s four Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, observatories inside the cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

HS3 Mission to Delve into Saharan Dust

06.14.13 - NASA's 2013 HS3 mission will investigate whether Saharan dust and its associated warm and dry air, known as the Saharan Air Layer favors or suppresses the development of tropical cyclones.

NASA-Led Study Explains Decades of Black Hole Observations

06.14.13 - The study confirms long-held suspicions about how stellar-mass black holes produce their highest-energy light.

Hubble Spots a Very Bright Contortionist

06.14.13 - In this image, the twisted shape hides a number of features. In the very complex and disturbed central region, scientists have distinguished two nuclei, remains of two different galaxies.

Webb Telescope's Last Backbone Component Completed

06.14.13 - Assembly of James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror backplane support structure, is a step closer to completion with the recent addition of the backplane support frame.

A Tactile Tour of Goddard

06.13.13 - Some 100 campers from the Deaf-Blind Camp of Maryland visited Goddard on June 12 to learn about NASA with a variety of hands-on activities.

MAVEN's UV Spectrograph May Help Reveal Mars Atmospheric History

06.13.13 - MAVEN is designed to answer questions about the Martian atmosphere. Extremely high resolution ultraviolet imagery may help piece together the big picture.

Hubble Uncovers Farthest Planet Forming From its Star

06.13.13 - Of the almost 900 known planets outside our solar system, this is the first to be found at such a great distance from its star.

Warm Ocean Causing Most Antarctic Ice Shelf Mass Loss

06.13.13 - Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves are responsible for most of the continent's ice shelf mass loss, a new study by NASA and university researchers has found.

NASA Spacecraft Detect a Mars-Directed CME

06.12.13 - On June 11, 2013, at 2 p.m. EDT, the sun erupted with a coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can affect electronic systems in satellites.

The Moon and Sun: Two NASA Missions Join Images

06.12.13 - NASA visualizers overlay a 3-dimensional model of the moon based on data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter into the shadow of the moon during a lunar transit image from SDO.

Landsat Satellite Looks Back at El Paso, Forward to a New Mission

06.11.13 - Landsat 8 is operational and producing more than 400 images per day, adding to the deep archive collected since 1972.

Brian Christopher Thomas - Puzzling Out A Better Way

06.11.13 - Numbers guy Brian Christopher Thomas puzzles out new ways to work the budget system rather than have the budget system work us.

Maggie Masetti - From Greenbelt to Hollywood via James Webb

06.11.13 - Web developer Maggie Masetti is all about the big bang theory, from working with our Dr. John Mather, who proved the theory, to visiting the set of the television show.

Noctilucent Clouds Get an Early Start

06.07.13 - The early start of the 2013 season appears to be caused by a change in atmospheric “teleconnections,” connections between different layers of the atmosphere that operate over great distances.

The Sun Emits an M5.9 Solar Flare

06.08.13 - The Solar Dynamics Observatory captures the sun emitting a M5.9 class, a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:49pm on June 7, 2013.

Climate Conditions Determine Amazon Fire Risk

06.07.13 - Using an innovative satellite technique, NASA scientists have determined that a previously unmapped type of wildfire in the Amazon rainforest is responsible for destroying several times more forest than has been lost through deforestation in recent years.

Amazon Forest Fire Risk to Increase in 2013

06.07.13 - University and NASA researchers predict that the severity of the 2013 fire season will be considerably higher than in 2011 and 2012 for many Amazon forests in the Southern Hemisphere.

A Hubble View of NGC 1579: The Trifid of the North

06.07.13 - The so-called Trifid of the North is a large, dusty region that is currently forming new stars. These stars are very hot and therefore appear to be very blue.

Black Brant XII Sounding Rocket Launched From Wallops

06.06.13 - A Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket carrying the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER) was successfully launched at 11:05 p.m., June 5 from Wallops.

NASA Builds Sophisticated Earth-Observing Microwave Radiometer

06.05.13 - A NASA team delivered a sophisticated microwave radiometer specifically designed to overcome the pitfalls that have plagued similar Earth-observing instruments in the past.

Study Suggests Black Holes Abundant Among Earliest Stars

06.05.13 - Astronomers has discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe.

Goddard Welcomes Summer Interns

06.04.13 - Nearly 400 high school, college and graduate students, as well as educators, began summer internships at Goddard on June 3.

Hubble Maps 3-D Structure of Ejected Material Around Erupting Star

06.04.13 - A flash of light from a stellar outburst has provided a rare look at the 3-D structure of material ejected by an erupting nova.

Erin McKinley - A Star Before and Behind the Camera

06.04.13 - Teacher and NASA Television star Erin McKinley is an enthusiastic, eternal learner.

John Hagopian - Untangling Challenges at Goddard

06.04.13 - To optical physicist turned inventor John Hagopian, everything is a puzzle and the game is to make connections that are not obvious.

IceBridge Contributes to New Map of Antarctica

06.04.13 - The new map's improved precision will lead to better calculations of Antarctic ice volume and its potential contribution to sea level rise.

NASA's IRIS Mission to Launch in June

06.04.13 - Understanding how energy travels through the lowest layers of the sun's atmosphere is the goal of NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph scheduled to launch on June 26, 2013.

SUNRISE Over Sweden: Solar Observatory to Take Flight

06.03.13 - NASA's Scientific Balloon Program successfully launched, for the second time, the largest solar telescope ever to leave ground, to observe the sun's magnetic fields.

Rare Stellar Alignment Offers Opportunity To Hunt For Planets

06.03.13 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will have two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri.

Swift Produces Best UV Maps of Nearest Galaxies

06.03.13 - The new UV surveys are the most detailed ever of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way's closest neighbor galaxies.

Hubble Sees the Messy Result of a Galactic Collision

05.31.13 - This new Hubble image captures an ongoing cosmic collision between two galaxies — a spiral galaxy is in the process of colliding with a lenticular galaxy.

QandA With Paul Geithner to Explain the MIRI

05.31.13 - Paul Geithner, the deputy technical project manager for the Webb telescope answered questions about the Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI, instrument.

NASA Transfers Landsat 8 Operations to USGS

05.30.13 - NASA transferred operational control of the Landsat 8 satellite (formerly LDCM) to the U.S. Geological Survey in a ceremony in Sioux Falls, S.D.

NASA's GRAIL Mission Solves Moon Mystery

05.30.13 - A mystery of the moon that imperiled astronauts and spacecraft on lunar missions has been solved using measurements made by NASA's GRAIL mission combined with LRO data.

NASA's MMS Team Assembles Final Observatory

05.30.13 - On May 20, 2013, the MMS mission team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center reached an unprecedented milestone: completing the fourth of four observatories, all built for a single mission.

NASA's HS3 Mission May Target Cape Verde Island Hurricanes in 2013

05.29.13 - NASA's multi-year Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel mission may explore tropical cyclones of Cape Verde origins when it takes to the skies again this August.

IRIS Mission Readies For a New Challenge

05.29.13 - In late June 2013, NASA will launch a new set of eyes to offer the most detailed look ever of the sun's lower atmosphere, known as the interface region.

Swift Reveals Neutron Star 'Anti-Glitch'

05.29.13 - NASA's Swift X-ray Telescope has observed a spinning, crushed core of a massive star suddenly slowing down.

Amber Straughn - Dreaming of Deep Space in Arkansas

05.28.13 - Arkansas farm girl-turned-astrophysicist never thought she would be in a rap video about the James Webb Space Telescope that was shown on the “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” show.

NASA’s HS3 Mission Aircraft to Double Team 2013 Hurricane Season

05.29.13 - NASA's HS3 airborne mission will revisit the Atlantic Ocean to investigate storms using additional instruments and for the first time two Global Hawks.

Sun Releases Slow CME

05.26.13 - On May 26, 2013 at 3:24 p.m. EDT, the sun erupted with a non-Earth directed CME traveling at 550 miles per second.

Hubble Sees a Swirl of Star Formation

05.24.13 - The regions where new stars are being born in this starburst galaxy are highlighted by sparkling bright blue regions along the galactic arms.

Hubble reveals the Ring Nebula’s true shape

05.23.13 - New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist.

Science Teachers See NASA IceBridge Research

05.23.13 - NASA's Operation IceBridge hosted three science teachers during their recent Arctic field campaign, giving these educators a first-hand polar science experience that they could use to teach and inspire their students.

Landsat Looks for a Cloud-Free View

05.22.13 - A new feature of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission will help ensure scientists get a cloud-free view of Earth from space.

NASA's SDO Observes Mid-level Solar Flare

05.22.13 - The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, an M7 class, on the morning of May 22, 2013.

Satellite Views of Midwest Storm

05.21.13 - NASA and NOAA satellites observed the severe storm system that spawned the Moore, Okla., tornado on May 20, 2013.

NASA’s BARREL Mission Launches 20 Balloons

05.21.13 - In Antarctica in January, 2013 scientists released 20 balloons, to study the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth and how they lose particles, causing electrons from the belts to stream down toward the poles.

Auroras Visible in Continental U.S.

05.20.13 - Coronal mass ejections that accompanied X-class flares early last week, arrived at Earth over the weekend and sparked a geomagnetic storm and aurora.

IRIS Mission Readies For a New Challenge

05.20.13 - NASA is getting ready to launch a new mission to observe a mysterious region of the solar atmosphere that may be crucial to understanding what powers space weather.

NASA Simulates 'Pulsar-On-A-Table' for Testing

05.20.2013 - A NASA team built a first-of-a-kind testbed to simulate the distinctive signature of pulsars - which radiate in regular bursts anywhere from seconds to milliseconds.

NASA Launching Experiment to Examine the Beginnings of the Universe

05.20.13 - Scientists seek to gain answers to questions about the formation of stars and galaxies with the launch of the CIBER sounding rocket on June 4 from Wallops.

NASA’s STEREO Detects a CME From the Sun

05.17.13 - On 5:24 a.m. EDT on May 17, 2013, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space.

Hubble Peers Through a Spacetime Magnifying Glass

05.17.13 - This Hubble image shows the galaxy cluster Abell S1077. The matter condensed in such clusters is so high their gravity warps the fabric of spacetime.

NASA Data Pinpoints Glaciers' Role in Sea Level Rise

05.16.13 - 99% of all of Earth’s land ice is locked into the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. But from 2003 to 2009, the world’s other glaciers contributed just as much to sea level rise as the two ice sheets combined.

Asteroid-Sampling Mission Moves into Development

05.16.13 - NASA's first mission to sample an asteroid is moving ahead into development and testing in preparation for its launch in 2016.

Cubesat Berth Awarded to Gather Earth Energy Imbalance Measurements

05.16.2013 - A team of scientists has won a berth on a tiny satellite to explore one of NASA's last frontiers in climate studies: the imbalance in Earth's energy budget.

LDCM Arrives in Final Orbit

05.15.13 - The Landsat Data Continuity Mission offers a look at Earth from space with a crisper view than our eyes alone would be capable of.

Webb Undergoes 'Eye Surgery'

05.15.13 - in the Goddard clean room engineers worked meticulously to implant part of the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA Seeks High-Performance Spaceflight Computing Capabilities

05.15.13 - NASA and the Air Force are requesting research and development proposals to define the type of spacecraft computing needed for future missions.

NASA Probe Counts Space Rock Impacts on Mars

05.15.13 - Scientists using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have estimated that the planet is bombarded by more than 200 small asteroids or bits of comets per year forming craters at least 12.8 feet (3.9 meters) across.

Three X-class Solar Flares in 24 Hours

05.14.13 - The sun's third significant solar flare in under 24 hours -- and the strongest so far of 2013 -- peaked at 9:11 p.m. EDT on May 13, 2013.

Impacts of Strong Solar Flares

05.13.13 - Some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible.

Solar Eclipse's Shadow on Earth

On May 10, 2013, the sun experienced what's called an annular eclipse -- when the moon moves directly in front of the sun, but doesn't obscure it completely. This leaves a thin, fiery ring, the annulu...

Robotic Refueling Mission Practices New Tasks

05.10.13 - RRM uses the space station as a test bed for repair and refueling maneuvers to prepare for in orbit satellite-servicing tasks.

Hubble Tells a Tale of Galactic Collisions

05.10.13 - 2MASX is an ultraluminous infrared galaxy which emits a tremendous amount of light at infrared wavelengths. Scientists connect this to intense star formation.

More Webb Telescope Mirrors Delivered

05.10.13 - Another delivery of the James Webb Space Telescope's flight mirrors arrived at a NASA facility during the week of April 29, 2013.

Successful Launch of FORTIS on May 11

05.13.13 - NASA successfully launched the Far-ultraviolet Off Rowland-Circle for Imaging and Spectroscopy (FORTIS) experiment at 1 a.m. EDT, May 11, from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Marshall Islands Campaign Completed

05.09.13 - The launch of a NASA Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket on May 9 brought to an end a very successful campaign studying ionospheric activity and its impact on radio, communication and navigation signals.

New Public Application of Landsat Images Released

05.09.13 - Google has compiled more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space into an interactive time-lapse experience.

Hubble Finds Dead Stars 'Polluted with Planet Debris

05.09.13 - Hubble found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place – the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs.

Solar Eclipse on May 10

05.10.13 - On May 10, 2013, Earth, the sun and the moon lined up to create a solar eclipse visible from the South Pacific.

Thermal Shield Testing on Webb's MIRI

05.08.13 - NASA engineer Acey Herrera checks copper test wires inside the thermal shield of an instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Second and Third Sounding Rockets Launched from the Marshall Islands

05.07.13 - The Equatorial Vortex Experiment was successfully conducted on May 7 from the Marshall Islands when a NASA Terrier-Oriole sounding rocket was launched followed by the launch of a Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket 90 seconds later.

Landsat Thermal Sensor Lights Up from Volcano's Heat

05.06.13 - As LDCM flew over Indonesia's Flores Sea April 29, it captured an image of Paluweh volcano spewing ash into the air.

Satellite Animation Shows Smoke from California Fire

05.06.13 - A video of smoke from California’s Springs Fire was created by animating satellite imagery from NOAA’s GOES-15 satellite.

NASA High School STEM Challenge Announces Winners

05.03.13 - An integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics program focused on NASA's forthcoming Webb telescope, has named its 2012-2013 first place team.

NASA Study Projects Warming-Driven Changes in Global Rainfall

05.03.13 - A NASA-led modeling study provides new evidence that global warming may increase the risk for extreme rainfall and drought.

Hubble Sees the Remains of a Star Gone Supernova

05.03.13 - These thin, blood-red shells of gas are remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago.

Record-Setting 'Shockingly Bright' Burst

05.03.13 - A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world.

Sun Emits Mid-Level Flare

05.03.13 - The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare on May 3. Large enough flares can disrupt radio signals, but this flare's "blackout" has already subsided.

First of Four Sounding Rockets Launched from the Marshall Islands

05.01.13 - A NASA sounding rocket supporting a study of ionosphere and its impact on radio transmissions was launched at 3:38 a.m. EDT, May 1 from Roi-Namur, Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Rover Prototype Set To Explore Greenland

05.01.13 - NASA will test a new robotic explorer, dubbed GROVER, in Greenland from early May to early June 2013.

GOES-R EXIS Instrument Ready for Integration

05.02.13 - The first of six instruments that will fly on GOES-R, NOAA’s next-generation of geostationary operational environmental satellites, has been completed on schedule, seven months before its scheduled installation onto the spacecraft.

NASA Spacecraft Will Visit Asteroid with New Name

05.01.13 - An asteroid that will be explored by a NASA spacecraft has a new name, thanks to a third-grade student in North Carolina.

Send Names and Messages to Mars

05.01.13 - NASA is inviting members of the public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft that will study the Martian upper atmosphere.

A Dynamic Landscape, a Dynamic Sensor  →

04.30.13 - The varied colors and topography of national forests in the Pacific Northwest's Cascade Mountains provide a great test for LDCM's eyesight.

The Day Fermi Dodged a 1.5-ton Bullet

04.30.13 - NASA scientists don't often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite...

Ground Measurement Campaign to Help Predict Floods

04.30.13 - NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission begins collecting ground data in northeastern Iowa that will evaluate how well satellite rainfall data can be used for flood forecasting.

IceBridge Finishing Up Successful Arctic Campaign

04.29.13 - IceBridge scientists begin another season of research activity over Arctic ice sheets and sea ice with the first of a series of science flights from Greenland on Wednesday.

Dr. Paul Racette: Spirit in the Fire

04.26.13 - Dr. Paul Racette raises consciousness by bridging how Native Americans and Western scientists view the world.

Hubble’s View of a Changing Fan

04.26.13 - PV Cep is a favorite target for amateur astronomers because the fan-shaped nebulosity, known as GM 1-29 or Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula, changes over a timescale of months.

Jennifer Wiseman Discusses Hubble Telescope

04.25.13 - Jennifer Wiseman, senior project scientist for Hubble, discusses the history and the status of the pioneering space telescope.

The Sun Sends Two CMEs Toward Mercury

04.25.13 - On the night of April 24 and the morning of April 25, 2013, the sun erupted with two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar phenomena that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space.

NASA Mission to Study What Disrupts Radio Waves

04.25.13 - A NASA-funded sounding rocket mission will launch this spring to observe the formation of electrical storms in Earth's upper atmosphere that can negatively affect satellite communication and global positioning signals.

Hubble Captures Comet ISON

04.23.13 - This image of Comet ISON was captured April 10, when the comet was slightly closer to the Sun than Jupiter, 386 million miles, or 394 million miles from Earth.

Three Years of SDO Images

05.10.13 - Since it first provided images of the sun in spring 2010, SDO has had virtually unbroken coverage of the sun's rise toward solar maximum.

New Satellite Takes Salton Sea's Temperature

04.22.13 - An image from NASA's LDCM satellite may look like a simple black-and-white image of a dramatic landscape, but it tells a story of temperature.

Experiment Examining a SLICE of the Interstellar Medium

04.22.13 - SLICE will study the space between the stars known as interstellar space.

HyspIRI: Seeing the Forest, the Trees and More!

04.22.13 - Light is more than meets the eye -- the human eye, that is. This spring's HyspIRI airborne campaign took a look at light that we can't see to study Earth's chemistry.

For NASA to Build TIRS on Schedule, Every Day Counted

04.22.13 - From the very beginning it was a looming ticking countdown clock to get the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instrument ready for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission launch.

Three Solar Eruptions in 2 Days

04.21.13 - The sun erupted three times over April 20 and 21, sending billions of tons of solar particles into space. The eruptions (called CMEs) were not Earth-directed.

One of the 'Hidden 15'

04.19.13 - Palomar 2 is part of a group of 15 globular clusters discovered in the 1950s. They were discovered relatively recently because they are so faint.

Horsehead of a Different Color

04.19.13 - The iconic Horsehead Nebula seen in a new, infrared light marks the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

EUNIS: Six Minutes in the Life of the Sun

04.23.13 - The EUNIS experiment was successfully launched at 1:30 pm EDT on April 23, 2013 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Preliminary data shows that the experiment performed as planned.

Solar Satellite Arrives at Vandenberg AFB for Launch

04.17.13 - IRIS spacecraft arrives at VAFB for final preparations for a NET May 28 launch aboard a Pegasus rocket.

Eye Exam for LDCM  →

04.16.13 - Once a satellite is in orbit, it's not ready to take measurements until a series of check-out procedures have been performed.

NASA’s Wind Mission Encounters ‘SLAMS’ Waves

04.16.13 - SLAMS, or short large amplitude magnetic structures, have been spotted in the froth of waves in front of Earthspace as it moves through the solar system. They create a magnetic mirror reflecting fast ion beams into space.

Dying Supergiant Stars Implicated in Hours-long Gamma-Ray Bursts

04.16.13 - Three unusually long-lasting stellar explosions discovered by NASA's Swift satellite represent a new class of gamma-ray bursts that likely arise from dying stars hundreds of times larger than the sun.

Celebrating CINDI on Its Fifth Anniversary

04.15.13 - On April 16, 2008, a suite of NASA instruments was launched to study a unique region of space: the electrically charged portion of the upper atmosphere called the ionosphere, a region crucial for radio communications.

NASA Engineers Rehearse Placement of Webb's Microshutters

04.15.13 - Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are currently rehearsing with the placement of the Webb's Microshutter Array into the NIRSpec.

GPM Takes Rain Measurements Global

04.12.13 - GPM will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space by joining forces with countries around the world.

Dusty Details in Elliptical Galaxy NGC 2768

04.12.13 - The soft glow in this image is NGC 2768, an elliptical galaxy located in the northern constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear).

Spring Fling: Sun Emits a Mid-Level Flare

04.16.13 - The CME impact on April 13 was weak but it still produced high latitude aurora. The sun emitted a mid-level flare, peaking at 3:16 a.m. EDT on April 11, 2013 accompanied by an Earth-directed CME.

Video 'For Good Measure' Shows Global Reach of GPM

04.11.13 - The short video, 'For Good Measure' explains why scientists turn to satellites to get a worldwide view of rainfall.

Ice Cloud Heralds Fall at Titan's South Pole

04.11.13 - An ice cloud taking shape over Titan’s south pole is the latest sign that the change of seasons is setting off a cascade of radical changes in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon.

LDCM Sees Its Birthplaces

04.10.13 - Building and launching the Landsat Data Continuity Mission required teams of people across the United States.

NASA's Harvey Moseley Awarded SPIE's 2013 George W. Goddard Award

04.09.13 - The international society for optics and photonics known as SPIE has awarded the 2013 George W. Goddard award to NASA Goddard's Harvey Moseley.

Suzaku 'Post-mortem' Yields Insight into Kepler's Supernova

04.08.13 - X-ray observations from the Japan-led Suzaku satellite are providing a better understanding of the star that met its demise as Kepler's supernova, an event witnessed in 1604 by the famed German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

NASA Taps the Power of Zombie Stars in Two-in-One Instrument

04.05.13 - NICER will not only reveal why neutron stars are the densest objects in nature, but also demonstrate navigation technology that could revolutionize travel to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond.

Hubble Sees Light and Dust in a Nearby Starburst Galaxy

04.05.13 - Visible as a small, sparkling hook in the dark sky, J082354.96 is a starburst galaxy, so named because of the incredibly high rate of star formation occurring within it.

Bi-ocular Animations of Two Oceans

04.05.13 - This new combination video of NOAA's GOES-13 and GOES-15 satellite data shows two rounded images of the Earth as if you were simultaneously looking at the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with very wide-set eyes.

'Interdependence' Key Theme of 51st Goddard Memorial Symposium

04.04.13 - "Success Through Interdependence" was the theme of the American Astronautical Society's (AAS) 51st Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium held March 19-21 at the Marriott Hotel in Greenbelt, Md.

Hubble Breaks Record in Search for Farthest Supernova

04.04.13 - Hubble found the farthest supernova ever recorded. Supernova SN Wilson, named after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago.

Scientists to Io: Your Volcanoes Are in the Wrong Place

04.04.13 - Researchers discover on Io a mysterious eastward offset between where volcanoes are and where they are perdicted to be.

NASA Marks 30th Anniversary of TDRS Era

04.04.13 - On April 4, 1983, space shuttle Challenger began its maiden voyage carrying a new satellite that would revolutionize low-Earth orbit communications.

Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Fifth Lowest on Record

04.03.13 - The Arctic Ocean's icy cover reached its annual maximum extent on February 28. At 5.82 million square miles, the 2013 sea ice winter extent is the fifth lowest in the satellite era.

Used Parachute on Mars Flaps in the Wind

04.03.13 - Photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA's Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground.

Final MAVEN Instrument Integrated to Spacecraft

04.03.13 - An instrument that will measure the composition of Mars' upper atmosphere has been integrated to NASA's MAVEN spacecraft.

Measuring the Seeds of Noctilucent Clouds

04.03.13 - In October 2011, a NASA-funded sounding rocket called CHAMPS flew up through noctilucent ice clouds to measure the meteoric smoke that seeds the clouds.

Earth from Orbit in 2012

04.02.13 - This video takes a look back at the best views of Earth from space in 2012.

SORCE: A Decade in the Sun

03.29.13 - NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite has been providing data on the sun's irradiance for 10 years.

Hubble Sees J 900 Masquerading as a Double Star

03.29.13 - The object in this image is Jonckheere 900 or J 900, a planetary nebula — glowing shells of ionized gas pushed out by a dying star.

NASA's Swift Sizes Up Comet ISON

03.29.13 - The Swift satellite observed a comet that may become one of the most dazzling seen in decades when it rounds the sun later this year.

NASA Provides a Super-speed Look at Webb Telescope Progress

03.26.13 - This time-lapse video shows engineers working on some of the James Webb Space Telescope's flight components to ensure they will work perfectly together in space.

Measuring Mars: The MAVEN Magnetometer

03.26.13 - The Goddard-built MAVEN magnetometer will be a sensitive tool investigating what remains of the Red Planet’s magnetic "shield" and interactions with solar wind.

Hubble Digs Up Galactic Glow Worm

03.22.13 - The twisted, wormlike structure of this galaxy is most likely the result of a collision and subsequent merger of two galaxies. Such interactions are quite common.

A Closer Look at LDCM's First Scene

03.21.13 - Turning on new satellite instruments is like opening new eyes. On March 21, LDCM released its first images of Earth.

NASA Begins New Season of Arctic Ice Science Flights

03.20.13 - IceBridge scientists begin another season of research activity over Arctic ice sheets and sea ice with the first of a series of science flights from Greenland on Wednesday.

Practice Makes Perfect With Webb Telescope Mirror Placement

03.19.13 - NASA issued a video and photos showing the practice run of the James Webb Space Telescope in the giant clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

NASA's LRO Sees GRAIL's Explosive Farewell

03.19.13 - NASA ended its successful GRAIL mission by intentionally crashing the twin spacecraft into the moon. Another satellite observed the event.

NASA's Webb Telescope Gets Its Wings

03.15.13 - A massive backplane that will hold the primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope nearly motionless while it peers into space is another step closer to completion.

Hubble Gazes on a Rosy Ring Galaxy

03.15.13 - Ring galaxies are mysterious objects. They are thought to form when one galaxy slices through the disk of another, larger, one.

NASA's Swift, Chandra Explore a Youthful 'Star Wreck'

03.15.13 - NASA's Swift satellite has uncovered the previously unknown remains of a shattered star which ranks among the youngest-known supernova remnants in our Milky Way galaxy.

Leaping Lunar Dust

03.15.13 - If conditions are right, electrified lunar dust may be able to leap back and forth over shadowy areas on the moon.

Solar Storm Near Earth Caused by Fast CME

03.17.13 - Friday's fast moving CME has reached Earth and sparked a mild geomagnetic storm. Will higher latitude skies be turned green for St. Patrick's Day?

Particles and Fields Package Integrated on MAVEN Spacecraft

03.14.13 - The six science instruments of MAVEN's Particles and Fields Package that will characterize the solar wind and ionosphere of Mars have been integrated with the spacecraft.

NASA's First Laser Communication System Integrated, Ready for Launch

03.14.13 - A new laser-based system will enable rates of satellite communications similar in capability to high-speed fiber optic networks on Earth.

NASA Helps Make Guinness World Record for Largest Astronomy Lesson at SXSW

03.13.13 - Looking up through hundreds of colored filters and spectral glasses, 526 people shattered the record for the Largest Astronomy Lesson at South by Southwest.

NASA Workshop Transforms Teachers Into Glaciologists For a Week

03.13.13 - NASA's week-long History of Winter workshop allows elementary and secondary science teachers to work hand-in-glove with glaciologists while learning about research tools and techniques used in field studies of snow and ice.

Sun Spits Out Two CMEs

03.13.13 - A coronal mass ejection (CME) began at 8:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2013, and may pass by three NASA satellites: Spitzer, Kepler and Epoxi. A second CME began at 6:54 a.m. EDT on March 13, 2013 and may pass Earth.

'Hot Spots' Ride a Merry-Go-Round on Jupiter

03.14.13 - NASA's Cassini spacecraft tracks the shifting shape of holes in Jupiter's atmosphere over time.

NASA Pinpoints Causes of 2011 Arctic Ozone Hole

03.11.13 - A combination of extreme cold temperatures, man-made chemicals and a stagnant atmosphere were behind what became known as the Arctic ozone hole of 2011, a new NASA study finds.

NASA's SDO Sees an Eclipse And a Transit

03.11.13 - On Mar. 11, 2013, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught a rare sight on camera: the sun with both Earth and the moon passing in front of it.

Greenhouse Effect Shifts North's Growing Seasons

03.10.13 - Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study.

GPM "Let it Snow" Photo Contest Winners

03.11.13 - The Global Precipitation Measurement mission is happy to announce the top ten winners of the "Let It Snow" photo competition. Thank you to everyone who submitted their best pictures of winter. From January 7th through February 4th 2013, over 1,000 photos were submitted via Flickr and Instagram. We loved all of your entries and thoroughly appreciate your participation.

Blue Bursts of Hot Young Stars Captured by Hubble

03.08.13 - This image, speckled with blue, white, and yellow light, shows part of the spiral galaxy IC 5052.

Solar Wind Energy Source Discovered  →

03.08.13 - Using data from an aging NASA spacecraft, researchers have found signs of an energy source in the solar wind that has caught the attention of fusion researchers.

Hubble Finds Birth Certificate of Oldest Known Star

03.07.13 - This 'Methuselah star,' cataloged as HD 140283, has been known about for more than a century because of its fast motion across the sky.

NASA Provides Satellite Views of Nor'easter

03.07.13 - The merging of two low pressure areas into a storm on March 6 brought winter weather advisories and warnings to the Mid-Atlantic.

NASA Helps See Buried Mars Flood Channels in 3-D

03.07.13 - NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided images allowing scientists for the first time to create a 3-D reconstruction of ancient water channels below the Martian surface.

NASA Wallops Recovery Continues from Hurricane Sandy

03.05.13 - Hurricane Sandy came ashore in northern New Jersey Oct. 29, 2012, and as the powerful storm made its way along the east coast it brought damage to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va.

A Webb in a Golden Cage

This photograph shows support structures wrapped in gold thermal blankets that look like a golden cage. The structure is housed within the vacuum chamber called the Space Environment Simulator, or SES...

Gravitational Lens Creates Space Invader 'Cartoon'

03.05.13 - A phenomenon called gravitational lensing gives this spiral galaxy the look of a simulated alien from the 1970s "Space Invaders!" arcade game.

NASA Transfers Operational Control of Suomi NPP to NOAA

03.04.13 - The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite, a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), transitioned to NOAA operational organization control.

Goddard Lab Works at Extreme Edge of Cosmic Ice

02.27.13 - Goddard scientists turn ice into tiny test tubes to learn how chemicals involved in life might survive in space.

Cyclone Rusty's Rains Stirred Up Sediment

03.04.13 - Cyclone Rusty's heavy rains created sediment filled rivers and tributaries that flowed northwest into the Southern Indian Ocean.

Hubble Observes Glowing, Fiery Shells of Gas

03.01.13 - It may look like something from "The Lord of the Rings," but this fiery swirl is actually a planetary nebula known as ESO 456-67.

The GPM Anime Challenge

02.28.13 - The NASA's GPM mission and our partners at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are holding a design challenge for people around the world to develop an Anime character for GPM. The winning character will star in a comic series that will teach students about GPM and precipitation science.

NOAA and NASA's Next Generation Weather Satellite May Provide Earlier Warnings

02.28.13 - The GOES-R satellite currently being built has new technology that may help provide earlier warnings for severe weather.

Van Allen Probes Discover a Surprise Circling Earth

02.28.13 - Shortly after the Van Allen Probes launched to study the radiation belts around Earth, they saw something no one had ever seen before: a new configuration, showing an extra, third belt extending out into space.

NASA's Aquarius Sees Salty Shifts

02.27.13 - Aquarius, NASA’s first satellite instrument specifically built to study the salt content of ocean surface waters, has shown some remarkable variations in its first year of data.

Fermi Produces a Study in Spirograph

02.27.13 - The Vela pulsar traces out a loopy, hypnotic pattern reminiscent of art produced by a children's toy in this video created with data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Launching 101: First Weather Balloons, Then Rockets

02.26.13 - Science writer Laura Betz shares her experiences assisting with weather balloons used to prepare for the recent launch of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission.

NASA's Webb Telescope Components Meet ’Big Red’

"Big Red" isn't a golden retriever or a NASA engineer, it's the nickname for a small chamber that helps ensure equipment can withstand very cold temperatures that would be experienced in space.
...

Hubble Sees a Glowing Jet From A Young Star

02.22.13 - HH 151 is a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust, located some 460 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus.

Choreographed to Perfection

02.22.13 - Sometimes NASA engineers and astronauts use an underwater stage to choreograph their space-based productions.

Deciphering the Mysterious Math of the Solar Wind

02.21.13 - A NASA Goddard scientist has created a set of necessary equations to describe a kind of magnetic wave, known as an Alfvén wave, in the solar wind.

SDO Observes Fast-Growing Sunspot

02.20.13 - Over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013, scientist watched a giant sunspot form in under 48 hours.

SDO Shows A Little Rain On the Sun

02.20.13 - On July 19, 2012, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain.

Webb Instruments

02.20.13 - American manufacturing is critical to the development of NASA’s scientific instruments, satellites and telescopes – specifically the James Webb Space Telescope.

Glory Launch Failure Summary Released

02.19.13 - NASA has released a summary report on findings from a panel that investigated the unsuccessful 2011 launch of the agency's Glory spacecraft.

Six Years of THEMIS: Understanding the Magnetosphere

02.19.13 - In THEMIS's sixth year in space, it is helping to show how even small variations in the magnetosphere can sometimes cause extreme space weather responses, helping scientist map and predict events in this complex system.

Webb Telescope to Have a Texas-Sized Presence at South by Southwest

02.19.13 - Everything is bigger in Texas and a life-sized model of the world's largest space telescope, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will be on display at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival

Goddard Employee Supports Animal Rescue Booth At Md. Pet Expo

02.19.13 - Goddard employee Susan Hendrix admits to being an avid dog lover and volunteers with two local Shetland Sheepdog rescues in her spare time.

Hubble Sees Cosmic “Flying V” of Merging Galaxies

02.15.13 - This large “flying V” is actually two distinct objects — a pair of interacting galaxies known as IC 2184. Both the galaxies are seen almost edge-on here.

Tiny CREPT Instrument to Study the Radiation Belts

02.14.13 - A smaller version of an instrument now flying on NASA's Van Allen Probes has won a coveted spot aboard an upcoming NASA-sponsored Cubesat mission -- the perfect platform for this pint-size, solid-state telescope.

UN Braces for Stormy Space Weather  →

02.14.13 - The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has a new item is on the agenda: space weather.

NASA's Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays

02.14.13 - NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in the universe.

NASA Scientists Part of Arctic Sea Ice Study

02.13.13 - NASA data and scientists contributed to a new study out of the United Kingdom that shows Arctic sea ice volume declining in recent years.

NASA Provides Satellite Views of Nor'easter Lifespan

02.12.13 - Satellites have provided views of the historic winter-time nor'easter that brought more than two feet of snow to portions of New England on Feb. 8 and 9, 2013.

NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East

02.12.13 - A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.

JPL to Lead U.S. Science Team for Dark Energy Mission

02.12.13 - The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected three NASA-nominated science teams to participate in their planned Euclid mission, including one team led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

NASA Goddard Team to Participate in Dark Energy Mission

02.12.13 - The European Space Agency (ESA) selected three NASA-nominated science teams to participate in their planned Euclid mission, including one led by Goddard.

Year Three: NASA SDO Mission Highlights

02.11.13 - In its third year in space, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has also offered several new, unexpected doors to scientific inquiry.

Landsat 5 Sets Guinness Record

02.10.13 - Landsat 5 sets the new Guinness World Records title for Longest-Operating Earth Observation Satellite.

Earth-Directed CME Release by Long Duration Solar Flare

02.09.13 - A Coronal Mass Ejection was released by a long duration solar flare early on February 9, 2013.

Powerful Nor'easter Coming Together

A massive winter storm is coming together as two low pressure systems are merging over the U.S. East Coast. A satellite image from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite on Feb. 8 shows a western frontal system app...

MAVEN Begins Environmental Testing

02.08.13 - MAVEN is assembled and is undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities, near Denver.

Hubble Catches a Side-on Spiral Streak

02.08.13 - This thin, glittering streak of stars is the spiral galaxy ESO 121-6, which lies in the southern constellation of Pictor (The Painter's Easel).

Robotic Refueling Demo Points To Bright Future

02.08.13 - Following six historic days of operations, NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission demonstrated remotely controlled robots could refuel satellites.

New NASA Mission to Help Us Better Estimate Asteroid Impact Hazard

02.07.13 - According to NASA's Near Earth Object program, there are more than 1,300 potentially hazardous asteroids that have a very small chance of hitting us someday because their orbits come close to Earth's orbit. The main difficulty is obtaining sufficient observations to predict their orbits with enough certainty to find out if any of them might actually hit us at some point.

NASA Scientists Build First-Ever Wide-Field X-ray Imager

02.07.13 - Using an emerging technology called lobster-eye optics, scientists developed an x-ray camera of sorts to study a poorly understood behavior of the solar wind.

Strobe-Like Flashes in Suspected Binary Protostar

02.07.13 - Two of NASA's great observatories have teamed up to uncover a mysterious infant star that behaves like a strobe light.

The Sun Produces Two CMEs

02.07.13 - In the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, the sun erupted with two coronal mass ejections or CMEs that may glance near-Earth space.

NASA Heliophysics Missions On Display at Aerospace@Annapolis

02.06.13 - NASA Goddard scientists headed to Annapolis on Feb. 1, 2013, for Aerospace@Annapolis, an annual overview of the aerospace industry held for the benefit of Maryland state lawmakers.

Public Invited to Webinar on Citizen Science

02.06.13 - The public is invited to participate in a free webinar to promote citizen science that involves rain and snow measurements across the United States.

VISIONS: A Successful Launch

02.07.13 - The principal investigator for VISIONS (VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom imaging during a Substorm), Goddard's Doug Rowland provided images and updates of the team preparations and the launch.

A Cosmological Masterpiece

02.05.13 - Renowned astro-photographer Robert Gendler combined Hubble archive data with his own ground-based observations to assemble a photo illustration of the magnificent spiral galaxy M106.

2012: The Webb Telescope's Big Year of Progress

02.05.13 - The James Webb Space Telescope marked another year of significant progress in 2012 as flight instrumentation was completed and delivered to NASA.

Explaining the Ribbon in Space Discovered by IBEX

02.05.13 - Using NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), scientists have devised the best model yet for the appearance of a vast ribbon of neutral atoms that curls through the boundaries of Earth's solar system.

Twenty NASA Balloons Studying the Radiation Belts

02.04.13 - Just 96 days since launch, the Van Allen Probes have already provided new insights into the structure and behavior of the radiation belts that surround Earth.

Goddard Astrophysicist Wins Prize for Pulsar Work

02.04.13 - To say that Alice Harding, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has a passion for pulsars is a bit of an understatement.

GPM Completes Thermal Vacuum Testing

01.31.13 - The GPM Core Observatory completed thermal vacuum testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. on Jan. 16, 2013. After twelve days to carefully remove the testing equipment, stow the High Gain Antenna and GPM Microwave Imager, and lift the spacecraft out of the thermal vacuum test chamber, the spacecraft was moved back to the clean room on Jan. 28.

Dinosaur Footprints at NASA Goddard Take Another Step

02.01.13 - Two species of dinosaur left footprints in Cretaceous-era mud on what is now the Goddard campus. The fossilized tracks have been removed for future study and display.

Hubble Catches the Moment the Lights Went Out

02.01.13 - The galaxy in this image marks a transitional phase - a young star-forming galaxy settles down to become a massive, red and dead galaxy.

VISIONS: Seeing the Aurora in a New Light

02.07.13 - A sounding rocket to study the aurora and how oxygen and hydrogen escape Earth's atmosphere may launch as early as Feb. 2, 2013, but the team has a two-week window in order to find the perfect launch conditions.

SDO Provides First Sightings of How a CME Forms

01.31.13 - On July 18, 20012, scientists used NASA's SDO to see for the first time the formation of something they had long known was at the heart of many eruptive events on the sun: a flux rope.

A Coronal Mass Ejection Erupts From the Sun

01.31.13 - A small, Earth-directed Coronal Mass Ejection erupted early this morning.

Video Brings Webb Telescope's 3rd Mirror to Light

01.31.13 - A new video takes viewers behind the scenes for a special look at one of the many mirrors of the upcoming Webb telescope.

Severe Weather Over Eastern U.S.

01.30.13 - A powerful cold front moving from the central United States to the East Coast is wiping out spring-like temperatures.

Building Four Spacecraft for One Mission

01.31.13 - An unprecedented mission is being built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The center is simultaneously building four identical spacecraft for the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission due to launch in late 2014.

Hubble Finds Appearances can be Deceptive

01.25.13 - Globular clusters are roughly spherical collections of extremely old stars, and around 150 of them are scattered around our galaxy. This is not one of them.

Sun Shoots Out 2 Coronal Mass Ejections

01.24.13 - One of the two slow-moving ejections from Jan. 23 is Earth-directed. In the past, CMEs of this speed have not caused substantial geomagnetic storms.

Working on Four Spacecraft Simultaneously

01.24.13 - NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission clean room is buzzing with activity as engineers work on all four observatories at the same time.

NASA Readies Famous "Chamber A" to Welcome the James Webb Space Telescope

01.23.13 - NASA's "Chamber A" thermal vacuum testing chamber has been upgraded and remodeled to accommodate testing the James Webb Space Telescope.

Hidden Treasure in Large Magellanic Cloud

01.23.13 - Nearly 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud floats in space, in a long and slow dance around the Milky Way.

NASA Officially Joins ESA's 'Dark Universe' Mission

01.24.13 - NASA has joined the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Why NASA Observes the Sun in Different Wavelengths

01.22.13 - Specialized instruments in ground-based and space-based solar telescopes, observe light far beyond the ranges visible to the naked eye. Different wavelengths convey information about different components of the sun.

IRIS Spacecraft Is Fully Integrated

01.18.13 - NASA's next Small Explorer mission, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), which will study the little-understood lower levels of the sun's atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway.

NASA Beams Mona Lisa to the Moon

01.17.13 - NASA beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the LRO spacecraft as part of the first demo of laser communication with a satellite at the moon.

Titan Gets a Dune "Makeover"

01.17.13 - Saturn's largest moon may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased.

PODEX Experiment to Reshape Future of Atmospheric Science

01.16.13 - David Starr, project scientist of the PODEX experiment, discusses a new class of instruments that could reshape the next generation of atmospheric science.

NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend

01.15.13 - NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures.

New Sunspots Producing Space Weather

01.14.13 - On Jan. 13, 2013, at 2:24 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. The CME left the sun at speeds of 330 miles per second and is expected to impact Earth around Jan. 16.

Landsat Senses a Disturbance in the Forest

01.14.13 - A new way of studying and visualizing Earth science data from NASA and the U.S. Geological Landsat satellite program is resulting in, for the first time, the ability to tease out the small events that can cause big changes.

NASA's SDO Has Plenty of Content for Ultra HD TVs

01.14.13 - A new kind of television made headlines at the 2013 annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January: Ultra High Definition TV. The TV needs content and NASA's SDO has four months worth of sun movies for them.

NASA Preps for Launch of Next Earth-Observing Satellite

01.10.13 - NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) is scheduled to launch Feb. 11 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

NASA's GALEX Reveals the Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy

01.10.13 - Measuring tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, NGC 6872 spans more than 522,000 light-years, making it more than five times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate  →

01.08.13 - Researchers now realize even tiny solar variations can have a significant effect on Earth's terrestrial climate.

Robotic Refueling Demo To Jumpstart Capabilities

01.10.13 - In mid-January, NASA will take the next step in advancing robotic satellite-servicing technologies as it tests the Robotic Refueling Mission.

Hubble Reveals Rogue Planetary Orbit For Fomalhaut B

01.08.13 - Newly released Hubble Space Telescope images of a vast debris disk encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut, and of a mysterious planet circling it, may provide forensic evidence of a titanic planetary disruption in the system.

Goddard 2012 Film Festival: Producers' Picks

01.18.13 - Goddard producers have picked their favorite videos from 2012. Now it's your turn to choose!

Solar Ballet on the Sun

01.03.13 - NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this solar eruption on Dec. 31, 2012, as it rises and falls with the grace and polished movement of a ballet dancer.

GPM "Let it Snow" Photo Contest

12.21.12 - NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission is proud to announce the follow-up to our popular Extreme Weather Photo Contest!

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Sees GRAIL's Explosive Farewell

03.19.13 - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has imaged the final resting places on the moon of both of NASA's GRAIL spacecraft.

Hubble Focuses on "the Great Attractor"

01.18.13 - Hubble captured a busy patch of space, scattered with many nearby stars. The field also has numerous galaxies in the background.

Webb Telescope Team Completes Optical Milestone

01.16.13 - The performance testing for the aft-optics subsystem (AOS) was recently completed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Redondo Beach, Calif.

Press Release: First Findings from the Van Allen Probes  →

11.30.12 - Scientists from NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission will discuss some of their preliminary data at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2012 Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Ca. on Tue., Dec. 4 at 8:00 a.m. PST.

Hubble Views a Dwarf Galaxy

01.11.13 - NGC 5477, a dwarf galaxy in the Messier 101 group, lacks obvious structure but shows visible signs of ongoing star birth.

Cluster Finds Turbulent Eddies May Warm the Solar Wind

01.08.13 - A new study of data obtained by the European Space Agency's Cluster spacecraft may help explain why the flow of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields from the sun, the solar wind, is hotter than it should be.

Galaxy's Gamma-Ray Flares Erupted Far From its Black Hole

01.07.13 - Theorists expect gamma-ray outbursts occur only near a galaxy's central black hole. A few rare observations suggested otherwise.

The Galaxy Puzzle in the Constellation of Centaurus

01.04.13 - Astronomers initially thought NCG 5011B and NGC 5011C were the same distance from the Earth. That would make them very close in the cosmos, yet there is no sign of interaction between them.

USGS: 'Mission Accomplished for Landsat 5'

12.21.12 - The U.S. Geological Survey announced that 29-year-old Landsat 5 will be decommissioned over the coming months.

Heliophysics 2012: Year in Review

12.31.12 - A year-end review of major news coming from NASA's Heliophysics Division.

Hubble Sees a Wanderer Dancing the Dance of Stars and Space

12.28.12 - Hubble provides us this week with a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097.

An Image Gallery Gift from NASA's Swift

12.28.12 - The Swift team has selected more than 100 images to help celebrate eight years of operations of the satellite's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope.

Reviewing Goddard's 2012 Highlights

12.27.12 - Gathered here are just a few of the shining moments from the Goddard "household" in 2012, from us to you!

Hubble Eyes the Needle Galaxy

12.21.12 - Like finding a silver needle in the haystack of space, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the spiral galaxy IC 2233, one of the flattest galaxies known.

New e-Books Showcase 2 NASA Space Telescopes

12.21.12 - The e-books, produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, showcase the Hubble and Webb space telescopes.

Infrared View of Midwest Snowstorm

12.21.12 - NASA and NOAA satellites have provided data on the powerful storm that dropped more than a foot of snow in some Midwestern states.

WMAP Team Releases Final Results on Universe's Oldest Light  →

12.21.12 - Two years after WMAP's "retirement," the WMAP science team is releasing its final results, based on nine years of observations.

IceBridge Data Brings New Twist to Sea Ice Forecasting

12.19.12 - Sea ice thickness data gathered in April 2012 by NASA's Operation IceBridge has been used in seasonal sea ice forecasts for the first time.

The Webb Telescope's Holiday Package

12.19.12 - This photo shows the James Webb Space Telescope's 'IEC' all wrapped up in a thermal blanket, and looking like a holiday package at a cleanroom at NASA Goddard.

Picture This: Vesta's Dark Materials in Dawn's View

01.03.13 - A new study of images from NASA's Dawn mission examines remarkable, dark-as-coal material that speckles the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.

Operation Give Thanks: Serving Those Who Serve Us

12.17.12 - For a second year the NASA Goddard Veterans Advisory Committee conducted an operation in support of those who continue to defend the American liberties we all enjoy.

NASA's GRAIL Lunar Impact Site Named for Sally Ride

12.17.12 - NASA has named the site where twin agency spacecraft impacted the moon Monday in honor of the late astronaut Sally K. Ride, who was America's first woman in space and a member of the probes' mission team.

A Cosmic Holiday Ornament, Hubble-Style

12.18.12 - 'Tis the season for holiday decorating so astronomers using Hubble have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189.

Hubble's "Smoky" Shells

12.14.12 - Located in a lonely region of space 4,200 light-years away and difficult to see using an amateur telescope, the lonesome planetary nebula NGC 7354 is often overlooked.

NASA to Provide Commentary as Grail Moon Mission Ends

12.14.12 - NASA will provide live commentary of the scheduled lunar surface impacts of its twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft beginning at 2 p.m. PST (5 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 17.

Instrument Deck Installed on MMS Observatory #2

12.13.12 - Installation of the instrument deck is complete on the second of four MMS observatories, which are being assembled at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Study: Remarkable Symmetry in Black Hole Jets

12.13.12 - High-speed jets launched from active black holes possess fundamental similarities regardless of mass, age or environment, a new study finds.

NASA Probes Prepare for Mission-Ending Moon Impact

12.13.12 - Twin lunar-orbiting NASA spacecraft that have allowed scientists to learn more about the internal structure and composition of the moon are being prepared for their controlled descent and impact on a mountain near the moon's north pole at about 2:28 p.m. PST (5:28 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 17.

Astronomers Catch Binging Black Hole's Jet

12.12.12 - A new X-ray source in the Andromeda galaxy is the first detection of radio-emitting jets from a stellar-mass black hole outside the Milky Way.

Hubble Provides First Census of Galaxies Near Cosmic Dawn

12.12.12 - Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 4 percent of its present age.

A Right Royal Week for Goddard's Piers Sellers

12.11.12 - British-born astronaut and climate scientist Piers Sellers never dreamed that he would meet Queen Elizabeth II.

Mars Rover Self-Portrait Shoot Uses Arm Choreography

12.11.12 - A self-portrait of the NASA Mars Rover Curiosity stitches together dozens of images by the camera at the end of the rover's arm.

DXL Mission Successfully Launches

12.13.12 - NASA has launched an astrophysics mission to study the Diffuse X-ray emission from the Local galaxy (DXL).

Hubble's Glitter galaxy: The ESO 318-13 galaxy

12.07.12 - The brilliant cascade of stars through the middle of this image is the galaxy ESO 318-13 as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Wildfires Light Up Western Australia

12.07.12 - Why does the western portion of Australia look so lit up in the new "Black Marble" imagery?

Fermi's Vision for Thunderstorm Gamma-Rays Improves

12.06.12 - The Fermi space telescope is now 10 times better at catching brief outbursts of high-energy light produced above thunderstorms.

Apollo's Lunar Dust Data Being Restored

12.06.12 - Readings from Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored and made available to scientists thanks to work by the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard.

What is Creating Gullies on Vesta?

12.06.12 - Something is forming intriguing gullies on the giant asteroid Vesta. Scientists with NASA's Dawn mission are trying to figure out what could be creating these features.

The Black Marble: Earth at Night

12.05.12 - This new look at our planet at night shows the glow of natural and human-built phenomena across Earth in greater detail than ever before.

Plant Stress Paints Early Picture of Drought

12.05.12 - Before a lack of rain and record-breaking heat signaled a problem in July 2012, scientists observed another indication of drought in data from NASA and NOAA satellites: plant stress.

Van Allen Probes Reveal New Dynamics of Radiation Belts

12.05.12 - Just 96 days since launch, the Van Allen Probes have already provided new insights into the structure and behavior of the radiation belts that surround Earth.

NASA Investigates Use of ‘Trailblazing’ Material

12.05.12 - Tiny sensor -- made of a potentially trailblazing material just one atom thick and heralded as the 'next best thing' since the invention of silicon -- are now being developed to detect trace elements in Earth’s upper atmosphere and structural flaws in spacecraft.

Sungrazing Comets as Solar Probes

12.05.12 - On Dec. 15, 2011, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured footage of Comet Lovejoy approaching the sun. The images and data collected by NASA's solar observing fleet can help scientists learn more about the sun itself.

Climate Models Project Increase in U.S. Wildfire Risk

12.04.12 - Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades.

NASA's GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map

12.05.12 - Twin NASA probes orbiting Earth's moon have generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.

Curiosity Shakes, Bakes, and Tastes Mars with SAM

12.03.12 - NASA's Curiosity rover analyzed its first solid sample of Mars with a variety of instruments, including the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite.

Testing the Fold: The James Webb Space Telescope's Sunshield

12.03.12 - Engineers got a first-hand look at how the James Webb Space Telescope's sunshield would fold around the observatory while stored in the rocket..

NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples

12.03.12 - NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil.

Video Reveals 2012 Hurricane Season Rainfall

11.30.12 - This animation shows the TRMM satellite's space-based measurements of the total rainfall of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.

NASA's HS3 Hurricane Mission Ends for 2012

11.30.12 - NASA's 2012 HS3 mission came to an end Nov. 6 when an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flew a final data-collection mission in the North Pacific Ocean.

Hubble Spots a Peculiar Compact Blue Dwarf Galaxy

11.30.12 - The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured an impressive image of the irregular galaxy NGC 5253, the nearest of the compact blue dwarf galaxies.

A Multi-Wavelength View of Radio Galaxy Hercules A

11.29.12 - The combined imaging power of Hubble and Jansky VLA are shown in this image of spectacular jets powered by a super massive black hole.

Hubble Sees a Galaxy Hit a Bulls-eye

12.06.12 - Bright pink nebulae almost completely encircle a spiral galaxy in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 922.

Altimeter Built at Goddard Helped Identify Ice on Mercury

11.29.12 - A Goddard-built instrument on NASA's MESSENGER mission provided one of three new lines of evidence that water ice exists near the north pole of Mercury.

AAAS, NASA Announce 2012 Fellows

11.29.12 - Three NASA scientists have been named as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Swirling Storms on Saturn

11.28.12 - NASA's Cassini spots roiling storm clouds and a swirling vortex at Saturn's north pole.

Two Webb Mirror Segments Arrive at NASA

11.28.12 - The sole secondary mirror and a third primary mirror segment that will fly aboard the Webb telescope are now in a NASA clean room.

NASA's Cassini Sees Abrupt Turn in Titan's Atmosphere

11.28.12 - Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft tie a shift in seasonal sunlight to a wholesale reversal, at unexpected altitudes, in the circulation of the atmosphere of Titan.

NASA's TRMM Satellite Confirms 2010 Landslides

11.27.12 - A comparison of a new global catalog of rain-triggered landslides with rain data from TRMM shows 2010 was a devastating year for landslides.

Fast Forward to the Past

11.27.12 - It’s a digital world. Or is it? NASA technologist Jonathan Pellish isn’t convinced. In fact, he believes a computing technology of yesteryear could potentially revolutionize everything.

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Turns 15

11.27.12 - When it rains it pours, goes the saying, and for the last 15 years, tropical rainfall data has poured in, thanks to TRMM.

GOES-R Satellite Program Undergoes Successful Review

11.27.12 - The GOES-R Series Program, to replace and upgrade geostationary satellites tracking severe weather across the United States, received a favorable review of plans to launch beginning in 2015.

LDCM Exits Vacuum Chamber

11.26.12 - On Nov. 23, 2012, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) satellite concluded environmental testing in a thermal vacuum chamber.

Solar Minimum; Solar Maximum

11.26.12 - The sun goes through a natural solar cycle approximately every 11 years. The greatest number of sunspots in any given solar cycle is designated as 'solar maximum.' The lowest number is 'solar minimum.'

Anatomy of an IceBridge Mission

11.21.12 - An 11-hour Operation IceBridge mission over Antarctica is not a casual undertaking and takes months of pre-planning. John Sonntag describes what it's like.

2012 Antarctic Campaign Retrospective

11.26.12 - IceBridge completes their five-week field campaign to Antarctica and reflects upon the mission's successes and highlights.

Continuing Thanksgiving Eruptions On the Sun

11.24.12 - On Nov. 23, 2012, at 8:54 a.m. EST, the sun released an Earth-directed, slow-moving CME. This is the third Earth-directed CME since Nov. 20.

NASA Spacecraft Observe a Thanksgiving CME

11.22.12 - On Nov. 21, 2012, at 11:24 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME

IMAGER Launch Successful

11.21.12 - The NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket carrying the IMAGER payload was successfully launched Nov. 21, 2012.

Cassini Finds a Video Gamers' Paradise at Saturn

11.26.12 - NASA's Cassini spacecraft spots another "Pac-Man"-shaped feature, this time on Saturn's moon Tethys.

New NASA Video Serves 'COCOA' to Test Webb Telescope Component

11.21.12 - Not a cold-weather beverage, COCOA is a piece of equipment that will measure the accuracy of the Webb telescope's primary mirror.

NASA Nobel Laureate Q&A on Reddit

11.21.12 - Nobel laureate and Webb telescope Project Scientist John Mather will answer astrophysics questions on Reddit.com on Nov. 26 at 1 p.m. EST.

Hubble Eyes a Loose Spiral Galaxy

11.21.12 - Hubble spotted the spiral galaxy ESO 499-G37, seen here against a backdrop of distant galaxies, scattered with nearby stars.

NASA Spacecraft Observe Nov. 20 Solar Eruption

11.20.12 - On Nov. 20, 2012, at 7:09 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with a coronal mass ejection.

New: 2013 Phases of the Moon Animation Released

11.20.12 - A new animation highlighting the phases of the Moon has been released by the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Astronomers Directly Image Massive Star's 'Super-Jupiter'

11.19.12 - A "super-Jupiter" discovered around the bright star Kappa Andromedae might be massive enough to qualify as a type of star itself.

NASA Tech Prevents 'New Car Smell' From Harming Satellites

11.20.12 - Outgassing isn’t healthy for humans or satellite instruments but a NASA team has created a new way to protect those instruments from its ill effects.

Instrument Delivered for NASA's Upcoming Mars Mission

11.16.12 - A remote sensing instrument that will peer into the ultraviolet to offer clues to how Mars might have lost its atmosphere arrived at Lockheed Martin for integration into NASA's MAVEN spacecraft.

Hubble Traps Galactic Fireflies

11.16.12 - Galaxies glow like fireflies on a dark night in this Hubble image. The upper central galaxy is a gigantic elliptical galaxy designated 4C 73.08.

Double Trouble

11.16.12 - The Sun erupted with two prominence eruptions, one after the other over a four-hour period on Nov. 16, 2012, between the hours of 1 and 5 a.m. EST.

Great Observatories Find Candidate for Most Distant Object

11.15.12 - With Hubble and Spitzer and one of nature's own natural "zoom lenses" in space, astronomers have found the most distant galaxy seen in the universe.

NASA's Cure for a Common Phobia

11.15.12 - NASA has found a cure for a common phobia--the fear of asking 'stupid' questions. The cure is a rubber chicken named Camilla.

NASA Innovator Hunts for Extraterrestrial Amino Acids

11.15.12 - The hunt for the organic molecules that create proteins and enzymes critical for life here on Earth has largely happened in sophisticated terrestrial laboratories equipped with high-tech gadgetry needed to tease out their pre

Hinode Views Two Solar Eclipses

11.14.12 - The orbit of Hinode resulted in two eclipses on Nov. 13, 2012, near the time that a total eclipse was visible in Australia.

Almost Mars

11.14.12 - In the Grand Canyon, the interns of NASA Goddard's 2012 Lunar and Planetary Science Academy got to explore Mars without leaving Earth.

Rover's 'SAM' Lab Instrument Suite Tastes Soil

11.13.12 - A pinch of fine sand and dust became the first solid Martian sample deposited into the biggest instrument suite on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity: the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM.

Astrophysicist Set to Launch Rocket Experiment  →

10.25.12 - The IMAGER’s observing target is the distant “Pinwheel Galaxy” located about 25 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

Total Solar Eclipse Viewed from Australia

11.14.12 - On Nov. 13, 2012, a narrow corridor in the southern hemisphere experienced a total solar eclipse.

Sun Emits a Mid-level Flare

11.13.12 - On Nov. 12, 2012, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, an M6-class, peaking at 9:04 p.m. EST.

Total Eclipse of the Sun

11.13.12 - On the morning of Nov. 14, 2012 (Australia time), about an hour after sunrise, the Moon will pass directly in front of the sun. Scientists and sky watchers are converging on the northeast coast of Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef, for a total eclipse of the sun.

Business Wire Founder Speaks at Goddard's 20th New Tech. Reporting Program

11.09.12 - Lorry Lokey, founder of Business Wire, was the guest speaker at the 20th Annual New Technology Reporting Program held by NASA Goddard on Nov. 8.

Hubble Spots a Colorful Lenticular Galaxy

11.09.12 - Hubble captured a beautiful galaxy in a period of transition from life as a spiral galaxy to a less defined elliptical galaxy. As a lenticular galaxy, NGC 5010 has features of both spirals and ellipticals.

Sun Releases Slow Moving CME

11.09.12 - The sun released an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection at 10:24am EST on Nov. 9, 2012.

Honoring the Origins of Magnetospheric Science

11.09.12 - On Nov. 9, 2012, NASA announced that to honor the scientist who helped launch the field of magnetospheric science, the Radiation Belt Storm Probes will be renamed the Van Allen Probes.

Students from Maryland School for Blind Visit NASA

11.08.12 - October is National Disability Employment Awareness month, and students from the Maryland School for the Blind visited NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for a hands-on and audible learning experience.

NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP Satellite Returns First Year of Data

11.07.12 - Just one year ago, on Oct. 28, 2011, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite successfully blasted into orbit. Now it has completed its first year of returning Earth science data.

Firestation: Getting Ready for Launch

11.05.12 - An experiment to study the effects of lightning flashes on Earth's atmosphere has taken its first steps on its journey to space. The Firestation experiment has undergone numerous tests to make sure it's ready for flight.

Curiosity Rover Provides Clues to Martian Atmosphere Changes

11.02.12 - Curiosity's Goddard-built SAM instrument suite has taken significant steps toward understanding how Mars may have lost much of its original atmosphere.

Night-time View of Aurora

Overnight on October 4-5, 2012, a mass of energetic particles from the atmosphere of the Sun were flung out into space, a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection. Three days later, the storm from ...

Hubble Sees an Unexpected Population of Young-Looking Stars

11.02.12 - Hubble peered deep into the center of globular cluster NGC 6362, which contains a high concentration of stars with different colors.

A Next-Generation X-Ray Telescope Launches

11.01.12 - On November 2, a NASA mission called FOXSI was launched from White Sands, New Mexico to study nanoflares on the sun.

SAMPEX: A Space Weather Warrior

11.01.12 - NASA's first small explorer, SAMPEX, has studied the zoo of particles and cosmic rays surrounding Earth since 1992. In early Nov., 2012, the spacecraft's orbit will decay enough that SAMPEX will re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

Suomi NPP Satellite Captures Hurricane Sandy's Mid-Atlantic Blackout

11.01.12 - Suomi NPP captured a night-time view of New York City, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania that revealed the extent of the power outages caused from Hurricane Sandy's landfall on October 29.

'Just Right' Asteroid Belts May Be Life-Friendly

11.01.12 - Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they depend on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass.

Fermi Measures Ancient Starlight's Cosmic 'Fog'

11.01.12 - Fermi has helped make the most accurate measurement of starlight in the universe, establishing the total amount that has ever shone.

NASA/NOAA's Suomi NPP Captures Night-time View of Sandy's Landfall

As Hurricane Sandy made a historic landfall on the New Jersey coast during the night of Oct. 29, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA/NOAA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Part...

Dust's Warming Counters Half of its Cooling Effect

10.31.12 - Dust that routinely rises above the world’s deserts causes a more significant localized warming effect than previously thought, a new study based on NASA field research shows.

Dawn Sees "Young" Surface on Giant Asteroid

10.31.12 - Like a Hollywood starlet constantly retouching her makeup, the giant asteroid Vesta is constantly stirring its outermost layer to present a young face.

Sandy (Atlantic Ocean)

03.07.13 - Hurricane Sandy came ashore in northern New Jersey Oct. 29, 2012, and as the powerful storm made its way along the east coast it brought damage to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va.

Hubble Sees Violent Star Formation Episodes in Dwarf Galaxies

10.26.12 - NGC 3738, a starburst galaxy, is in the midst of a violent episode of star formation: converting reservoirs of hydrogen gas into stars.

STEREO Reaches Milestone At Sixth Anniversary

10.26.12 - On Sept. 1, 2012, the two STEREO spacecraft and Earth were almost exactly equidistant, each with a direct view of a different third of the sun.

NASA's Uncanny Amazing Webb Mirrors

The first two mirrors that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. on Sept. 17, 2012. In this photo, one of the two mirrors wa...

Saturn Burps After Large Storm

10.25.12 - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has tracked the aftermath of a rare massive storm on Saturn, one more forceful than scientists previously thought.

Doubted Exoplanet 'Back from the Dead'

10.25.12 - A second look at Hubble data is reanimating the claim that the nearby star Fomalhaut hosts a massive exoplanet.

Monster Galaxy May Have Been Stirred Up By Black-hole Mischief

10.25.12 - Astronomers using Hubble have obtained a remarkable new view of a whopper of an elliptical galaxy that may have been puffed up by the actions of one or more black holes in its core.

Cluster Reveals New Insights Into Solar Wind

10.24.12 - A new study based on data from ESA's Cluster mission shows that it is easier for the solar wind to penetrate Earth's magnetic environment, the magnetosphere, than had previously been thought.

Observing Earth's Ozone Layer

10.24.12 - Remember the ozone hole? A signature environmental concern of the 1980s has become a signature environmental success story. Scientists at NASA and NOAA keep a close eye on the state of the ozone.

Antarctic Ozone Hole 2nd Smallest in 20 Years

10.24.12 - A warmer lower Antarctic stratosphere led to the second-smallest ozone hole in 20 years, according to NASA and NOAA satellite measurements.

Active Region on the Sun Emits Another Flare

10.23.12 - The sun emitted a significant solar flare on Oct. 22, 2012, peaking at 11:17 p.m. EDT.

Quasar May Be Embedded in Unusually Dusty Galaxy

10.23.12 - So much dust shrouds one distant galaxy that its stars are entirely hidden, but the Webb telescope may be able to peer through the murk.

Opposite Behaviors? Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks, Antarctic Grows

10.23.12 - While the Arctic Ocean ice cap has diminished over the last three decades, the sea ice cover at the opposite pole of the planet has expanded.

Newly Named Sunspot AR1598 Releases M5 Class Solar Flare.

10.22.12 - Newly named sunspot AR1598 has release an M5 class solar flare. This is the same region that released an M9 flare on Oct. 20, 2012.

A New Set of Solar Fireworks

10.20.12 - The sun emitted a significant solar flare, an M9, peaking at 2:14 p.m. EDT on Oct. 20, 2012. The associated radio blackout, an R2, has subsided, reports NOAA.

NASA Chief Technologist Visits Goddard

10.19.12 - NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck visited on Oct. 15, 2012, to meet with some of the center’s most innovative technologists.

Hubble Sees Galaxy in a spin

10.19.12 - NGC 3344 is a glorious spiral galaxy around half the size of the Milky Way, which lies 25 million light-years distant.

Astronomers Uncover A Surprising Trend in Galaxy Evolution

10.19.12 - A study of hundreds of galaxies has revealed an unexpected pattern of change that extends back 8 billion years, or more than half the age of the universe.

Satellite Servicing Capabilities Being Developed

10.17.12 - NASA is developing the technology to build Earth-orbiting "service stations" capable of extending the life of Earth-orbiting satellites.

NASA Pursues Atom Optics to Detect the Imperceptible

10.18.12 - A pioneering technology capable of atomic-level precision is now being developed to detect what so far has remained imperceptible: gravitational waves or ripples in space-time caused by cataclysmic events.

NOAA's GOES-13 Returns to Full Operations, GOES-14 to Remain Orbital Spare

10.18.12 - The GOES-13 spacecraft, which had been taken out of service because of technical trouble in late September, will return to full operations on Thursday, Oct. 18, 2012.

Heliophysics Nugget: Gradient Sun

10.18.12 - Science and art techniques are often quite similar, indeed each area often helps improve techniques in the other. One such case is a technique known as a 'gradient filter' used to examine fine structures on the sun.

Goddard Kids Call Space Station

10.17.12 - What do Goddard four-year-old pre-schoolers, local middle school students and an amateur radio operator have in common? Unlike most Earthlings, they were able to place an out-of-this-world call to a resident aboard the International Space Station.

NASA's GPM Observatory Completes First Dry Run

10.17.12 - NASA's GPM Core Observatory satellite went through its first complete comprehensive performance test (CPT), beginning on Oct. 4, 2012 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

'Giant Erector Set' Supports Webb Telescope Test Component

A new photograph taken inside the giant clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., shows what looks like a giant Erector Set supporting a test component of the James Webb Spac...

Antarctic Rift Subject of International Attention

10.15.12 - The rift in Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier that was discovered by NASA's Operation IceBridge in 2011 has been monitored by researchers around the world.

Operation IceBridge Resumes Antarctic Flights

10.12.12 - Scientists and flight crew members with NASA's airborne mission to study Earth's polar ice are beginning another Antarctic campaign.

Colossal Binary's Clashing Winds

10.12.12 - An enormous binary star pair some 4,700 light-years away pounds its surroundings with intense outflows called stellar winds.

Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Max. Extent  →

10.11.12 - Two weeks after a record low sea ice minimum in the Arctic Ocean, the ice around Antarctica reached its annual winter maximum—and set a record for a new high.

Hubble Sees a Planetary Nebula in the Making

10.11.12 - Planetary nebulae — the expanding, glowing shells of gas coming from sun-like stars at the end of their lives — are some of the most fascinating objects in the night sky.

Hello, Knorr? It's the ISS Calling

10.09.12 - Scientists aboard NASA's SPURS ocean research cruise and an astronaut aboard the International Space Station shared notes on exploring space and the sea in a very long-distance phone call.

Nobel Laureate John Mather Tweet-chats at NASA

10.09.12 - Nobel Laureate John Mather responded to questions on Twitter during a tweet-chat on Tuesday, September 25, 2012.

Electromagnetic Interference/Capability (EMI/EMC) testing and structural dynamics testing completed for LDCM.

10.04.12 - Orbital Sciences Corporation recently completed Electromagnetic Interference/Capability (EMI/EMC) testing and structural dynamics testing of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) satellite.

Dr. Jaylee Mead, Goddard Astrophysicist and D.C. Area Philanthropist Dies

10.05.12 - On September 14, 2012, long-time Goddard employee (who had employee badge number 0010) and retiree Dr. Jaylee Mead, 83, died.

Aurora from Oct. 8, 2012 CME

10.08.12 - The CME release on Oct. 4, 2012 has generated a G2-level geomagnetic storm on Earth resulting in aurora in upper latitudes.

Satellite Sees Giant 'Fog Ring' in U.S. Southwest

10.05.12 - The GOES-14 satellite saw a ring of fog over the southwestern United States on Oct. 4.

Swift Discovers a New Black Hole in our Galaxy

10.05.12 - Swift recently detected the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole.

NASA to Upgrade Vital Communications Link

10.05.12 - Technicians and engineers are completing final system checks and spacecraft inspections on the first of NASA's third-generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS).

Getting NASA's SDO into Focus

10.05.12 - From Sept. 6 to Sept. 29, 2012, NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory moved into its semi-annual eclipse season. It takes a little work to re-focus right after the eclipse.

Hubble Sees Cosmic Riches

10.04.12 - This dazzling image shows the globular cluster Messier 69, or M 69 for short, as viewed through the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

HS3 Mission Thoroughly Investigates Long-Lived Hurricane Nadine

10.05.12 - NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel scientists had a fascinating tropical cyclone to study in long-lived Hurricane Nadine, making 5 flights over the storm.

Webb Telescope's 'Worm Holes' in the Clean Room

Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

This photo gives a "worms eye" view of a robot arm holding a surrogate or simulated mirror segment (black hexagonal shape) for NASA's James Webb Space Telesc...

Red Hot Solar Ballet

10.04.12 - NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this minor eruption on the sun on Oct 4, 2012 as it rises and falls with the grace and polished movement of a ballet dancer.

Students Invited to Connect with Earth Explorers

10.03.12 - NASA Earth explorers will take students on virtual trips around the world to inspire them to pursue science, technology, engineering and math careers.

Blanketing NASA's Webb Telescope's Science Instrument Electronics

10.02.12 - Engineers from Genesis Engineering Solutions perform a two day "blanket closeout" on the James Webb Space Telescope.

Landsat Images Land on U.S. Postal Stamps

10.01.12 - The Postal Service has released 15 stamps that depict America's diverse landscapes, including views from Landsat 7's perspective.

Hubble Portrays a Dusty Spiral Galaxy

09.28.12 - This week, we highlight the galaxy NGC 4183, seen here with a beautiful backdrop of distant galaxies and nearby stars.

NOAA's GOES-13 Weather Satellite Currently Has an Acting Back-Up

09.28.12 - NOAA's GOES-13 weather satellite has been temporarily replaced with a back-up GOES satellite as engineers work to fix the satellite's issues.

CME Causes Colorful Aurora

10.01.12 - The CME launched by the sun on Sept. 27 resulted in aurora dipping into the continental U.S. as far south as Maryland and Ohio on Sept. 30, 2012.

'Flashy' Secrets of Merging Black Holes

09.27.12 - Gravity waves predicted by Einstein have never been observed directly, but many scientists think that this discovery is just a few years away.

Landsat Satellites Find the 'Sweet Spot' for Crops

09.27.12 - Farmers are using maps created with free data from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat satellites that show locations that are good and not good for growing crops.

NASA Goddard's New Building Nears Completion

09.26.12 - The New Logistics facility at NASA Goddard, called Building 35, will replace aging Building 16W.

Cutting-Edge Technology Makes NASA's Hurricane Mission a Reality

09.25.12 - Scientists are currently flying state-of-the-art, autonomously operated instruments to gather difficult-to-obtain measurements of wind speeds, precipitation, and cloud structures in and around tropical storms.

LRO Explores the Moon in 3-D

09.25.12 - The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is acquiring stereo images of the moon that can be used to generate 3-D views of the moon's surface.

Hubble Assembles Farthest Universe View Ever

09.25.12 - Ten years' worth of data went into compiling the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, the deepest view of our universe ever created.

First-Issue Ceremony for 'Earthscapes' Stamps

09.24.12 - Two Landsat images appear on the upcoming "Earthscapes" stamps, which will be promoted at a free event Oct. 1 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

First Two Webb Telescope Flight Mirrors Delivered to NASA

09.24.12 - The first two of the 18 primary mirrors to fly aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope arrived at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Hubble Catches Glowing Gas and Dark Dust in a Side-On Spiral

09.21.12 - Hubble produced a sharp image of NGC 4634. Its disk slightly warped by ongoing interactions with a nearby galaxy, it shows clearly defined dust lanes and bright nebulae.

NASA's Solar Fleet Peers Into Coronal Cavities

09.20.12 - By understanding the morphology, density and temperature of coronal cavities scientists can better understand eruptions on the sun and the space weather that can disrupt technologies near Earth.

Wildfires in Washington State

09.20.12 - The summer of 2012 will unfortunately be known as the "Summer of Devastating Western Wildfires" and practically not one state out west was spared. Washington State has been hardest hit of late. This satellite image shows a rash of wildfires currently burning in the middle of the state.

Arctic Sea Ice Hits Smallest Extent In Satellite Era

09.19.12 - The floating, frozen sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean melted to a record low extent on Sept. 16, 2012, continuing a long-term trend that has seen the summer size of the ice cap shrink dramatically in the past three decades.

NASA Telescopes Spy Ultra-Distant Galaxy

09.19.12 - With the combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, as well as a cosmic magnification effect, astronomers have spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever seen.

Discovering the Ozone Hole: Q&A With Pawan Bhartia

09.17.12 - In 1977, Pawan Bhartia took a job at NASA that would lead to a role in the discovery and stabilization of the Antarctic ozone hole.

NASA Plane Helps Develop New Science Instruments

09.17.12 - Over the next few weeks, an ER-2 high altitude research aircraft will take part in the development of two future satellite instruments.

MetOp-B Launches with NASA Goddard-Developed Instruments

09.17.12 - A new European meteorological satellite soared into space Sept. 17 with five instruments developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Yes, the James Webb Space Telescope Mirrors 'Can'

The powerful primary mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to detect the light from distant galaxies. The manufacturer of those mirrors, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder...

Hubble Sees NGC 7090 — An actively star-forming galaxy

09.14.12 - This image portrays a beautiful view of the galaxy NGC 7090, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is viewed edge-on from the Earth.

The Gravity of Water  →

09.12.12 - Summer drought was easy to see in the southern United States in 2011. The lingering, subtle drought of winter was also visible to an unusual pair of satellites.

New 'Chorus' Recording By RBSP's EMFISIS Instrument

09.13.12 - Radio waves, recorded by RBSP's EMFISIS instrument, are at frequencies that are audible to the human ear and are emitted by the energetic particles in the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Hours After Launch, RBSP Takes First Science Steps

09.12.12 - Immediately after launch, RBSP entered a 60-day commissioning phase of operations, where all of the spacecrafts’ systems and instruments are activated, monitored, and made ready for the two-year primary science mission.

Webb Takes Viewers 'Beyond Visible Light'

09.12.12 - STScI created the new video called 'Infrared: Beyond the Visible,' to help explain the purpose and benefits of using infrared light in astronomy.

New RBSP Instrument Telemetry Provides 'Textbook' Excitement

09.12.12 - Just three days after launch, live data of the particles in the Van Allen radiation belts from the two RBSP spacecraft, provides full science data right out of the box.

NASA's Hurricane Mission Takes Flight

09.07.12 - NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight from California to Virginia

Hubble Watching Ancient Orbs

09.07.12 - This sparkling picture taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the center of globular cluster M 4. The power of Hubble has resolved the cluster into a multitude of glowing orbs, each a colossal nuclear furnace.

Odd Galaxy Couple on Space Voyage

09.05.12 - Two very different galaxies drift through space together in this Hubble image. The peculiar galaxy pair is called Arp 116.

SDO Enters Its Semiannual Eclipse Season

09.06.12 - Twice a year, for three weeks near the equinox, SDO moves into its eclipse season -- a time when Earth blocks its view of the sun for a period of time each day

Voyage to Explore Sea Saltiness, Climate Link

09.05.12 - A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to see how salinity variations are related to global rainfall shifts.

Mission to Study Magnetic Explosions Passes Review

09.05.12 - On August 31, 2012, NASA's MMS mission proved it was ready for its next steps by passing a Systems Integration Review, which deems a mission ready to integrate instruments onto the spacecraft.

NASA Announces Asteroid Naming Contest for Students

09.04.12 - Students worldwide have an opportunity to name an asteroid from which an upcoming NASA mission will return the first samples to Earth.

SDO Sees Massive Filament Eruption

09.04.12 - On September 1, 2012, a long, whip-like filament erupted on the sun. The eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, caused aurora near Earth on September 3.

Hubble Spotted a Supernova in NGC 5806

08.31.12 - Hubble sees a supernova explosion called SN 2004dg on the edge of NGC 5806, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It lies around 80 million light years from Earth.

RBSP Launches - Twin Probes in Orbit

08.30.12 - NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes are flying in Earth orbit after a successful liftoff this morning. The spacecraft are now at home in the Van Allen belts.

Walls of Lunar Crater May Hold Patchy Ice, LRO Radar Finds

08.30.12 - Small patches of ice could make up at most five to ten percent of material in walls of Shackleton crater.

ACE, Workhorse Of NASA's Heliophysics Fleet, Is 15

08.29.12 - ACE is a crucial component of NASA's heliophysics fleet, providing warning of incoming space weather. In 15 years, it has also helped map the ingredients and drivers of the vast sea of flowing particles surrounding Earth.

Night View of Hurricane Isaac

08.31.12 - Suomi NPP captured this view of Hurricane Isaac's clouds (lit by moonlight) and the cities near the Gulf Coast of the United States at 1:57 a.m. local time.

Suomi NPP Captures Russian, African Fires' Smoke

08.28.12 - Powerful fires currently scorching parts of Russia and Africa sent up plumes of smoke into the atmosphere, observed by Suomi NPP.

Tracking Shuttle Exhaust Reveals More Information About Atmospheric Winds

08.28.12 - Scientists tracked space shuttle exhaust plumes to study airflow in the upper atmosphere. The water vapor spread faster than expected and collected near the Arctic to form noctilucent clouds.

RBSP Launches - Twin Probes in Orbit

08.30.12 - NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes are flying in Earth orbit after a successful liftoff this morning. The spacecraft are now at home in the Van Allen belts.

Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks To New Low In Satellite Era

08.27.12 - The declining sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has melted down to its smallest size since satellite observations began in the late 1970s. The current size of the polar cap surpassed the previous record set in 2007.

Share Your Condolences on Neil Armstrong

09.11.12

NASA's IceBridge Seeking New View of Changing Sea Ice

08.27.12 - NASA's Operation IceBridge gathers data on changing Arctic sea ice, including new data that could be used in future seasonal sea ice forecasts.

RBSP Launch Postponed Until Aug. 30

08.25.12 - Due to tropical storm Isaac, the RBSP launch has been postponed until Thursday, Aug. 30. The Atlas V rocket has been rolled back from the pad to protect it from inclement weather.

Weather Scrubs RBSP Launch - Next Attempt Aug. 26

08.25.12 - Unfavorable weather conditions in and around Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida prompted launch managers to halt today's attempted launch.

Sun Has "Eureka!" Moment

08.24.12 - A series of CMEs on August 20, as seen by the SOHO satellite, produces one shaped remarkably like a incandescent light bulb.

RBSP Launch Rescheduled for Aug. 25

08.24.12 - Launch managers have scrubbed the planned liftoff of NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes due to an issue with Eastern Range beacon indications.

Hubble Captures a Collection of Ancient Stars

08.24.12 - Hubble captured the globular cluster Messier 56, located about 33,000 light years from the Earth in the constellation of Lyra.

Nodosaur Footprint Verified – Perhaps with Baby in Tow

08.23.12 - Not one, but two nodosaurs passed through the campus of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., between 110 and 112 million years ago.

The Webb Telescope's 'Golden Spider'

08.23.12 - What looks like a giant golden spider weaving a web of cables and cords, is actually ground support equipment for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Landsat Data Continuity Mission Environmental Testing is Underway

08.22.12 - Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) Observatory Electromagnetic Interference/Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMI/EMC) testing is underway at Orbital Sciences Corporation's Gilbert, Ariz., location.

The Faces Behind MIRI - Part 2

08.22.12 - This is a limited series of features to introduce some of the many scientists and engineers involved in the MIRI instrument that will fly aboard the James Webb Space Telescope.

RBSP Launch Delay, Now Set for Friday, Aug. 24

08.19.12 - The launch is rescheduled for Friday, Aug. 24 at 4:07am EDT, due to an anomalous engine condition identified during testing of another Atlas vehicle.

Emerging Sunspot Releases Mid-level Solar Flare

08.18.12 - An active region, just beginning to rotate into view, released an M5.6 class solar flare last night at 9:01pm EDT.

Canada's 'Dynamic Duo' for Webb Telescope

08.17.12 - A "Dynamic Duo" from Canada is the latest topic of the "Behind the Webb" series of videos, which highlights technology in NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

Hubble Sees a Lonely Galactic Island

08.17.12 - Many galaxies, like irregular dwarf DDO 190, are comparatively isolated, without close neighbors.

Tracking Electron Beams from the Sun

08.14.12 - Scientists used data from NASA's ACE mission to study jets of electrons streaming from the sun known as electron strahl. This aids understanding of the giant space weather system around Earth.

LRO Detects Helium in Moon's Atmosphere

08.15.12 - Scientists using LRO's spectrometer have observed helium in the tenuous atmosphere surrounding the moon.

Two Hurricane Global Hawks, Two Sets of Instruments

08.15.12 - HS3, will study hurricanes at the end of the summer, flying two high-altitude, long-duration unmanned aircraft with different instruments over the storms.

Public Briefing: Solar and Space Physics Decadal Survey

08.14.12 - The National Research Council's second decadal survey in solar and space physics is scheduled for release at 1pm EDT on August 15, 2012.

Hubble Watches Star Clusters on a Collision Course

08.16.12 - Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have caught two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging.

Heliophysics Nugget: Seeing Sprites

08.14.12 - In the summer of 2011, scientists recorded some of the best movies of sprites ever taken -- movies that can be used to study this poorly understood phenomenon and the forces that create them.

STEREO Observes One of the Fastest CMEs On Record

08.13.12 - On July 23, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the sun. NASA Goddard scientists clocked the giant cloud, known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, at speeds between 1,800 and 2,200 miles per second.

Second Flight Instrument Delivered for James Webb Space Telescope

08.13.12 - The second of four main instruments to fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has been delivered to NASA.

Space-Age Materials, One Atomic Layer at a Time

08.10.12 - A technologist at Goddard is experimenting with an emerging technology for defending sensitive spacecraft components from the high-velocity bombardments.

Hubble's Close Encounter with the Tarantula

08.10.12 - Turning its eye to the Tarantula Nebula, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this close-up of the outskirts of the main cloud of the Nebula.

One Half Million Mile Solar Filament

08.10.12 - SDO sees a very long, whip-like solar filament extending over half a million miles in a long arc above the sun’s surface. Part of the filament seems to break away, but its basic length and shape seem to have remained mostly intact.

Summer Storm Spins Over Arctic

08.09.12 - An unusually strong storm formed off the coast of Alaska on August 5 and tracked into the center of the Arctic Ocean.

NASA's New Way to Track Formaldehyde

08.09.12 - Urban pollution, such as formaldehyde, that winds up in Earth's upper atmosphere can wreak havoc on the ozone layer.

Watching a Train of Storminess in the Tropical Atlantic Ocean

8.09.12 - This NOAA GOES-13 satellite image from August 9 shows some very active tropics with four areas, like a train of storms, that forecasters are watching.

Mount Tongariro Erupts  →

08.08.12 - Late on Aug. 6, 2012, New Zealand’s Mount Tongariro erupted for the first time in 115 years.

Meteor Smoke Makes Strange Clouds

08.08.09 - A key ingredient for 'night shining clouds' comes from outer space. Scientists have detected bits of 'meteor smoke' imbedded in them.

NASA Global Hawk Pilots Face Challenges Flying Hurricane Missions

08.08.12 - NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, mission will be a complex one for the pilots flying NASA's Global Hawk aircraft from the ground.

Goddard Celebrates Curiosity’s Landing

08.07.12 - At 1:32 a.m. EDT the late-night landing event at Goddard Space Flight Center was flooded with shouts, applause and more than a few teary eyes at the announcement that the Curiosity rover had touched down safely on the surface of Mars.

Solar Scientists Receive 2012 NASA Honor Awards

08.07.12 - Heliophysicists Spiro Antiochos, James Klimchuk, Douglas Rowland, and the SDO Science Investigation Team received Agency Honor Awards to celebrate their unique contributions to NASA's mission.

Research Links Extreme Summer Heat Events to Global Warming

08.06.12 - A new statistical analysis by NASA scientists has found that Earth's land areas have become much more likely to experience an extreme summer heat wave than they were in the middle of the 20th century.

Hubble Sees a Ten Billion Year Stellar Dance

08.03.12 - The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster.

Star's 'Cry' Heralds New Era for Testing Relativity

08.02.12 - Researchers have observed a distinctive X-ray signal following a black hole's eruption that comes from matter on the verge of falling into it.

Dust Dominates Foreign Aerosol Imports to North America

08.02.12 - Scientists used satellites to measure for the first time from space the amount of tiny airborne particles entering North America, and concluded that dust, not pollution, is the main ingredient of the imported particles.

Q&A with Atmospheric Scientist Hongbin Yu

08.02.12 - Atmospheric scientist Hongbin Yu describes the implications of a new calculation showing that 64 million tons of dust, pollution and other particles survive a trans-ocean journey to arrive over North America each year.

Carbon-Eaters on the Black Sea  →

07.31.12 - The multitude of single-celled algae swirling in this image are most likely coccolithophores, one of Earth’s champions of carbon pumping.

Curiosity's First Daredevil Stunt

08.02.12 - Curiosity is equipped with an instrument that measures space radiation, which was turned on shortly after launch on Nov. 26, 2011. The instrument has been sending back data during its trip to Mars.

NASA Team to Demonstrate Miniaturized Spectrometer-on-a-Chip

08.02.12 - If a team of technologists succeeds, scientists in the future will make their discoveries with components that fit on a silicon wafer.

Goddard Gears Up for Curiosity's Mars Landing

08.02.12 - While the Curiosity rover hurtles toward the Martian surface on the night of August 5, people around the world -- and here at Goddard -- will eagerly await word of its safe arrival.

Scott Braun Discusses Upcoming Hurricane Campaign

08.01.12 - HS3 is a five-year mission specifically targeted to investigate hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean basin.

Goddard's Astrobiology Analytical Lab

08.01.12 - How did we get here? Are we alone? The answers may lie in carbonaceous meteorites.

Geothermal System Installed at Goddard's Building 25

08.01.12 - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is pleased to announce the start-up of a new geothermal system for Building 25's Network Testing and Training Facility.

NASA Goddard's Innovation Lab: Creating a Future

07.31.12 - For several years Matthew Showalter has utilized the unique talent and fresh thinking of interns from around the country to collaborate on a project he calls the Innovation Lab.

Sun Emits a Medium-Intensity Solar Flare

07.30.12 - The sun emitted a mid-level flare, peaking at 4:55 PM EDT on July 28, 2012. This flare is classified as a M6.2 flare. M-class flares are the weakest flares that can still cause some space weather effects near Earth.

Testing at Goddard: 'The Chamber of Horrors'

07.30.12 - The Environmental Test Engineering and Integration facility—affectionately nicknamed the “Chamber of Horrors”—ensures that every spacecraft is space-ready.

Webb Telescope Gets 'Golden Touch'

07.27.12 - "Golden Touch" video takes viewers behind the scenes with the scientists and engineers creating the Webb telescope's components.

Geotail: 20 Years in Space

07.27.12 - On July 24, 1992, a joint JAXA/NASA mission launched, becoming the vanguard for a set of coordinated missions to study Earth's magnetic environs.

Hubble Sees a Galaxy Festooned with Stellar Nurseries

07.27.12 - The galaxy NGC 4700 bears the signs of the vigorous birth of many new stars in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Nighttime Lights of London  →

07.26.12 - Millions will see London during the 2012 Olympics, but Suomi NPP has an entirely different perspective, as seen in this newly release image.

HS3 Mission Gets Support From Ames

07.26.12 - The Earth Science Project Office provides management for the Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel (HS3) mission flying this year.

X-ray Concept Inspired by Scotch® Tape

07.26.12 - The inspiration behind a NASA scientist's quest to build a specialized X-ray mirror comes from an unusual source: a roll of tape.

How Life Turned Left

07.25.12 - Life can't function with a mix of left- and right-handed amino acids; scientists want to know how life got set up with the left-handed ones.

DFS Launches Successfully

07.24.12 - The DFS rocket launched successfully on July 24, 2012 from White Sands, NM with nominal data from 3 of the 4 spectrometers aboard. It's primary goal is to significantly advance the state of the art in short wavelength observing solar spectrometers.

Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt

07.24.12 - For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations.

A Taste of Solar Maximum

07.23.12 - On July 14, 2012 a CME crashed into Earth's magnetic field and triggered the most sustained display of auroras in years, giving the world a taste of things to come when Solar Max arrives in 2013.

City 'Change Pairs' from Landsat

07.23.12 - The Landsat program has seen a literal world of changes in its 40 years of observing Earth. This interactive compares "before and after" views of some of those changes.

Landsat Top 10

07.23.12 - Landsat has been capturing change for 40 years. NASA and U.S. Geological Survey scientists chose 10 of the most significant images to showcase this mission's valuable returns.

Top Five 'Earth as Art' Winners

07.23.12 - Beyond the scientific information they supply, some Landsat images are simply striking to look at, presenting spectacular views of mountains, valleys, and islands as well as forests, grasslands, and agricultural patterns.

American Landscapes

07.23.12 - NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey selected six out of 172 submissions from the American public and created customized Landsat chronicles of changing local landscapes.

IRVE-3 Sounding Rocket Launches Successfully

07.23.12 - The launch from Wallops of an inflatable aeroshell/heat shield technology demonstrator sounding rocket was successful.

Students Competing In Chemistry Olympiad Visit Goddard

07.23.12 - Nearly 300 of the world's top chemistry students visited NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on July 23, 2012, as part of the International Chemistry Olympiad.

'Tree of Life' Still Stands After Derecho

07.20.12 - Goddard's "Tree of Life" took a pounding in the June 29 derecho, but the giant willow oak remains strong.

NASA Keeps its Cool in Derecho Aftermath

07.20.12 - Thanks to contingency operations, NASA Goddard was able to minimize the effects of the derecho that took power away from millions earlier this summer.

Hubble Has an Audience of Stellar Flashbulbs

07.20.12 - Hubble captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashes of the audience’s cameras.

The Faces Behind MIRI - Part 1

07.19.12 - This is a limited series of features to introduce some of the many scientists and engineers involved in the MIRI instrument that will fly aboard the James Webb Space Telescope.

Sun Sends Out Mid-Level Solar Flare

07.19.12 - The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare (M7.7) on July 19, 2012, beginning at 1:13 AM EDT and peaking at 1:58 AM.

Landsat Looks and Sees

07.19.12 - The Landsat program is the longest continuous global record of Earth observations from space -- ever.

More Ice Breaks off of Petermann Glacier  →

07.18.12 - A massive iceberg, or ice island, broke off of the Petermann Glacier in 2010. Nearly two years later, another chunk of ice has broken free.

Heliophysics Nugget: Riding the Plasma Wave

07.17.12 - Data from the WAVES instrument on NASA's Wind mission provide evidence for a type of plasma wave moving faster than theory predicted it could move. This suggests that a different process may be driving the waves.

Colorful Science Sheds Light on Solar Heating

07.19.12 - Nicki Viall creates images of the sun reminiscent of Van Gogh, with broad strokes of bright color splashed on a yellow background. The color of each pixel contains information about the history of heating on the sun.

Balloon-borne 'HEROES' Tapped for NASA Training Award

07.17.12 - An innovative NASA solar/space imaging project has received the agency's Hands-On Project Experience Training Opportunity award.

Landsat Data Continuity Mission Becomes an Observatory

07.16.12 - With two instruments now integrated into LDCM, the spacecraft is a complete observatory.

Experience Mars Rover's Landing from Goddard Visitor Center

07.16.12 - NOTE: This event's registration capacity has been reached. No new registrations will be accepted. Witness history from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Visitor Center on Aug. 6, 2012.

Explore Mars at the Goddard Visitor Center

07.16.12 - On July 28, 2012, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., just nine days before the Mars rover Curiosity touches down on the Red Planet, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Visitor Center will host an exploration event in anticipation of this interplanetary achievement.

Electric Atmosphere: Plasma Is Next NASA Science Target

07.18.12 - Two giant donuts of radiation surround Earth, trapped in a region known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts. NASA's RBSP mission will study the material, called plasma, in this mysterious region.

Suomi NPP Sees Western U.S. Blazes

07.13.12 - These images show how two of the most destructive fires in Colorado and New Mexico history grew over a 24-hour time period from June 9 to June 10.

Hubble Sees the Needle Galaxy, Edge-on and Up Close

07.13.12 - NGC 4565 has been nicknamed the Needle Galaxy because, when seen in full, it appears as a very narrow streak of light on the sky.

CME Arrival Results in Aurora Show

07.15.12 - The arrival of the CME associated with the July 12, 2012 X1.4 class flare, resulted in a geomagnetic storm that caused aurora to appear in lower latitudes than usual.

Hubble Discovers Fifth Moon Around Pluto

07.11.12 - A year after helping to discover a fourth moon around Pluto, Hubble has observed a fifth orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet.

Hubble Unmasks Ghost Galaxies

07.10.12 - Astronomers have puzzled over why some puny, extremely faint galaxies in our Milky Way galaxy's back yard contain so few stars. Hubble is helping solve the mystery of these star-starved galaxies.

Active Region 1515 Releases M6.9 Class Flare

07.09.12 - As it turns away from Earth, AR1515 releases an M6.9 class solar flare.

Sun Releases X1.1 Class Flare

07.07.12 - Anticipated for the past week, the sun finally releases an X1.1 class solar flare late on July 6.

Images in an Instant: Suomi NPP Begins Direct Broadcast

07.06.12 - Real-time data for everything from weather forecasts to disaster response is now being beamed to Earth from the nation’s newest Earth-observing satellite.

NASA Measures Aerosols from Western Fires  →

07.06.2012 - Wildfire smoke has affected large parts of the country, and aerosols have been especially thick over the Midwest.

HI-C Sounding Rocket Mission Launches Successfully

07.11.12 - The HI-C Sounding Rocket launched successfully on July 11, 2012. HI-C is the highest resolution solar telescope ever to observe the solar corona.

SUMI Sounding Rocket Mission Launches Successfully

07.05.12 - On July 5, NASA successfully launched SUMI, to study the intricate, constantly changing magnetic fields in the sun's chromosphere.

SUMI Rocket Launches Successfully

07.05.12 - UPDATE: SUMI sounding rocket launches successfully and data results look good.

Satellites Observe Powerful Summer Storm

07.05.12 - Satellites offer a unique viewpoint on June's "derecho" storm system, which left millions without electricity in the eastern United States.

Another M-class Flare from Sunspot 1515

07.05.12 - Today's M6.1 solar flare, originating from behemoth sunspot AR1515, is the twelfth M-class flare from that region in the last 3 days.

Scanning Webb’s Surrogate Eye

07.05.12 - Goddard engineers prepare to measure James Webb's Optical Telescope Element in super-cold, vacuum conditions that simulate space.

NASA Workshop Discusses How On-Orbit Robotic Satellite-Servicing Becomes Reality

07.05.12 - Many of the speakers and attendees at NASA’s Second International Workshop on On-Orbit Satellite Servicing are claiming satellite 'service stations' could be achievable in the next five years.

Independence Day Fireworks

07.04.12 - Even the sun joins in America's Fourth of July celebration, with an M5.3 solar flare.

Hubble Views a Cosmic Skyrocket

07.03.12 - Herbig-Haro 110 is a geyser of hot gas from a newborn star that splashes up against and ricochets off the dense core of a cloud of molecular hydrogen.

Young Star Flaunts X-ray Spots

07.03.12 - The outbursts of V1647 Ori are giving astronomers a glimpse of the extreme childhood of a sun-like star.

Solar Fireworks on July 2

07.03.12 - On July 2, 2012, an M5.6 class solar flare erupted from the sun, peaking at 6:52 AM EDT.

Hidden Portals in Earth's Magnetic Field

07.02.12 - A NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how to find X-points, places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun.

Hubble Sees Red Giant Blow a Bubble

07.06.12 - Camelopardalis, or U Cam for short, is a star nearing the end of its life. As it begins to run low on fuel, it is becoming unstable.

One Step Closer to Robotic Refueling Demonstrations

06.28.12 - NASA completed another successful round of Robotic Refueling Mission operations on the International Space Station.

Why June 30 is Getting an Extra Second

06.29.12 - How will you spend your bonus time on June 30?

Vapor of Stars

06.29.12 - Though this galaxy is tiny compared to our Milky Way, this "vapor" (formally DDO 82) still contains millions of stars.

NASA's 'Webb-Cam' Has Double Vision for MIRI's Arrival

06.29.12 - NASA's special "Webb-cam"now has "double vision," thanks to a second camera focused on the newly arrived MIRI instrument.

Hubble, Swift Detect First-Ever Changes in an Exoplanet Atmosphere

06.28.12 - Astronomers have made an unparalleled observation: significant changes in the atmosphere of a planet located beyond our solar system.

One Step Closer to Robotic Refueling Demonstrations on Space Station

06.28.12 - NASA completed another successful round of Robotic Refueling Mission operations on the International Space Station.

NASA Observes the Waldo Canyon Fire, Colo.

06.27.12 - These images show space- and ground-based views of the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, Colo.

Blog: Operation IceBridge Q&A  →

06.27.12 - Michael Studinger, project scientist for the Operation IceBridge mission, discusses NASA's Arctic and Antarctic airborne campaigns.

Japanese Science Cartoonist Visits NASA Goddard

06.28.12 - Goddard scientists work with many cool things on a daily basis, but few get the chance to be drawn into comic book characters.

Committee on Space Research Honors NASA's Neil Gehrels for Science Contributions

06.26.12 - The Committee on Space Research recently announced an award to NASA Astrophysicist Neil Gehrels for research in space science.

NASA's Hubble Spots Rare Gravitational Arc from Distant, Hefty Galaxy Cluster

06.26.12 - Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a puzzling arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies residing 10 billion light-years away.

Cassini Shows Why Jet Streams Cross-Cut Saturn

06.25.12 - Scientists studying images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have found that heat from within the planet powers the jet streams.

Now Everyone Can Build a Satellite Like NASA: Online!

06.25.12 - Would you like to build a satellite to peer into a black hole and uncover its secrets, now you can with a new online game from NASA.

NASA Satellite Sees Several Western U.S. Fires Blazing

06.22.12 - NASA's Aqua satellite picked up smoke and identified hot spots from fires in Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

Hubble Views the Globular Cluster M10

06.22.12 - Messier 10 is a ball of stars that lies about 15,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Bearer).

WMAP Team Awarded Gruber Cosmology Prize

06.22.12 - WMAP transformed the science of cosmology by establishing the age, geometry and contents of the universe to astonishing precision.

SDO/EVE Sounding Rocket Launches Successfully

06.23.12 - Based on the quicklook realtime data, all of the rocket EVE instrument channels appear to have made excellent solar EUV irradiance measurements.

Estimating Ice Content at Moon's South Pole

06.20.12 - Scientists mapped Shackleton crater with unprecedented detail using the laser altimeter on LRO and found evidence for ice.

Computer Graphics Group Showcases NASA Visuals

06.19.12 - An annual conference that presents and publishes the best in computer graphics and technical research chose a NASA excerpt as one of its select entries of 2012.

Most Quasars Live on Snacks, Not Large Meals

06.19.12 - Astronomers are uncovering an underlying population of fainter quasars that thrive in normal-looking spiral galaxies.

Landsat Sets Standard for World Forest Maps

06.18.12 - Countries like Brazil are using NASA satellite data to track and measure their forests in advance of a United Nations effort to reduce climate change.

Compact Blue Dwarf Can’t Hide from Hubble

06.15.12 - The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this view of the dwarf galaxy UGC 5497, which looks a bit like salt sprinkled on black velvet in this image.

First Flight Instrument Delivered for James Webb

06.14.12 - The first instrument that will fly aboard NASA's JWST has been delivered to Goddard. The Mid-Infrared Instrument will allow scientists to study cold and distant objects in greater detail.

2012 Noctilucent Cloud Season Begins

06.15.12 - They're Baaaack! The first noctilucent clouds for the 2012 season have been spotted.

UPDATE: Two CMEs Hit Earth’s Magnetosphere

06.18.12 - Two CMEs from AR 1504 on June 13-14, delivered a combined blow over the weekend and sparked bright aurora, with some appearing at lower latitudes than usual.

Chance Alignment Between Galaxies Mimics a Cosmic Collision

06.14.12 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a rare view of a pair of overlapping galaxies which look as if they are colliding, but they are actually separated by tens of millions of light-years.

Teachers Experience Arctic Research with IceBridge

06.13.12 - During the 2012 Arctic campaign, teachers from the United States, Denmark and Greenland joined IceBridge researchers as they surveyed Greenland's sea ice, ice sheet and glaciers.

High Park Fire, Colorado

Colorado's High Park Fire has already burned 41,140 acres or approximately 64 square miles and continues to burn and generate large amounts of smoke seen by NASA satellites.

The High Park ...

Spotting Ultrafine Loops in the Sun's Corona

06.12.12 - Scientists have for the first time observed especially narrow loops of solar material scattered on the sun's surface. These ultrafine loops may help with determining how temperatures rise throughout the corona.

Ocean Salinity Pathfinder Celebrates One Year in Orbit

06.11.12 - It's been a busy first year in space for Aquarius, NASA's pioneering instrument to measure ocean surface salinity from orbit.

Fermi Detects Solar Flare's Highest-Energy Light

06.11.12 - During a powerful solar blast on March 7, the Fermi telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on our sun.

Instrument Integration Begins on MMS Spacecraft

06.08.12 - Engineers have started integrating instruments on the first of four instrument decks in a newly fabricated cleanroom at Goddard.

'Earth As Art': A Contest to Celebrate 40 Years of Landsat

06.08.12 - To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Landsat, the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA would like your help in selecting the top five "Earth as Art" images.

Satellite Sees Smoke from Siberian Fires Reach the U.S. Coast

06.11.12 - Fires burning in Siberia recently sent smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into the U.S. and Canada.

Hubble Spots a Bright Spark in a Nearby Spiral Galaxy

06.08.12 - The orange star in the upper left of this Hubble image may have devoured one of its larger planets a few years back, causing it to flare brightly.

NASA Discovers Unprecedented Blooms of Ocean Plant Life

06.07.12 - Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rain forest in the middle of a desert.

Bird Rest Stops To Be Tracked by NASA Rain Radar

06.07.12 - Ground radar set up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia to validate satellite rain measurements will do double duty for The Nature Conservancy as a tool to track migratory birds.

Satellite Views of Md.'s Severe Weather

06.07.12 - On Friday, June 1, 2012 severe weather generated 9 weak tornadoes across Maryland, according to the National Weather Service.

James Webb Space Telescope’s Mirrors Get 'Shrouded'

06.06.12 - Earlier this year, NASA completed deep-freeze tests on the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors in a "shroud" at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Double-Satellite View of Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire

06.05.12 - NASA's Terra and Aqua recently captured visible images of the large Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire burning in western New Mexico.

RHESSI Uses Venus Transit to Improve Measurements of the Sun's Diameter

06.04.12 - During the Venus Transit on June 5-6, 2012, the RHESSI science team hopes to improve the accuracy of their measurements of the diameter of the sun, to provide the best measurement ever obtained.

Emerging Optics Technology to Fly on Microsatellite

06.04.12 - A kitchen gadget has partly inspired an emerging technology that could answer questions about our sun.

Hubble Sees a Celestial Swan and Butterfly

06.04.12 - Located just beyond the tail of Cygnus (The Swan), this butterfly-shaped cloud of glowing gas and dust is the wreckage of a star similar to the Sun.

The Mysterious Arc of Venus

06.04.12 - Astronomers hope to glimpse a "ring of fire" around Venus during its historic transit across the sun on June 5-6. The apparition, if it is seen, could help crack some of the deepest mysteries of the second planet.

NASA Sending Unmanned Aircraft Over Hurricanes

06.01.12 - Beginning this summer, NASA will send "severe storm sentinels" into stormy skies to gather information about hurricane formation and intensity changes.

ISS Transit of Venus

06.01.12 - Astronaut Don Pettit will photograph the June 5, 2012 Transit of Venus from the ISS. He and the Expedition 31 crew will be the first people in history to see a Venus transit from space.

NASA Science Grips Two Brothers

06.01.12 - Two principal researchers on several airborne sensors had more in common than conducting atmospheric research. Gerry and Andy Heymsfield are brothers.

X-ray 'Echoes' Map a Supermassive Black Hole's Environs

05.31.12 - An international team of astronomers using data from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite has identified a long-sought X-ray 'echo' that promises a new way to probe supersized black holes in distant galaxies.

Solar Particles Infiltrating the Atmosphere

05.31.12 - An M-class flare on May 17, 2012 shot out a burst of solar particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. When they collided with atoms in Earth's atmosphere they caused a ground level enhancement.

Milky Way Destined for Head-On Collision

05.31.12 - The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during an encounter with the Andromeda galaxy, predicted to happen 4 billion years from now.

Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire

This image of the Whitewater-Baldy fire, in western New Mexico, was taken on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 at 2000 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument...

SDO to Observe Venus Transit

06.01.12 - NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will be watching the June 5, 2012 Venus Transit to help calibrate its instruments as well as to learn more about Venus's atmosphere.

Building 45 Payloads for Balloon Mission

05.29.12 - Dartmouth scientists are building 45 payloads--each destined for a trip on a balloon around Antarctica as part of NASA'S BARREL mission.

Electric Moon Jolts the Solar Wind

05.30.12 - Spacecraft and computer simulations reveal the moon's extensive but invisible influence.

Bud (Eastern Pacific Ocean)

05.29.12 - Just before Tropical Storm Bud made landfall on the western coast of Mexico in the state of Jalisco, it was downgraded to a tropical depression.

Hubble Sees A Spiral Within a Spiral

05.25.12 - ESO 498-G5's spiral arms wind all the way into the center, so its core looks like a bit like a miniature spiral galaxy.

Tiny Planet-Finding Mirrors Borrow from Webb Telescope Playbook

05.23.12 - A team of scientists at Goddard is developing an instrument that would image and characterize planets beyond the solar system possibly from a high-altitude balloon.

The 2012 Transit of Venus

05.24.12 - On June 5th, 2012, Venus will pass across the face of the sun, producing a silhouette that no one alive today will likely see again.

Sunlight 'Nudges' Asteroid

05.24.12 - Scientists working on an upcoming asteroid sample return mission have measured their target's drift, caused by the subtle "push" of sunlight.

"My American Landscape" Contest: A Space Chronicle of Change

05.24.12 - NASA researchers are about to fly off on a campaign that will take them into the heart of thunderstorm country.

Goddard Delivers Magnetometers for Next Mission to Mars

05.21.12 - The pair of flux gate magnetometers measures the magnetic field at the location of the spacecraft. This instrument will help understand how the solar wind interacts with the planet’s atmosphere.

Hubble Spies Edge-on Beauty

05.18.12 - Hubble caught this close up of the northern half of NGC891, approximately 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Andromeda.

Days of 'Gizmo' Launches Return

05.17.12 - NASA technologists will get a chance next summer to relive the good old days when Agency engineers would affix space-age gizmos to rockets just to see if the contraptions worked.

Measuring Transient X-rays with Lobster Eyes

05.21.12 - A technology that mimics the structure of a lobster's eyes is now being applied to a new instrument that could help revolutionize X-ray astronomy and keep astronauts safe on the International Space Station.

Solar Eclipse, May 20, 2012

05.17.12 - On May 20-21, 2012 an annular eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor along Earth's northern Hemisphere.

Forest Recovering from Mt. St. Helens Explosion

05.17.12 - On May 18, 1980, Mt. St. Helens exploded. More than 30 years later, the landscape is still recovering.

Chat With John Mather on Twitter

Ask @NASAWebbTelescp and #JWST project scientist and Nobel Laureate John Mather your questions about #JWSTscience, May 17th at 2pm EDT.

A Supernova Cocoon Breakthrough

05.15.12 - Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory may help astronomers understand why some supernovas are much more powerful than others.

Mild Amazon Fire Season Forecast in 2012

05.10.12 - Amazon Basin forests are expected to be less vulnerable to wildfires this year, according to the first forecast from a new fire severity model.

IBEX Reveals Missing Boundary At Solar System Edge

05.10.12 - Scientists compile data from IBEX, Voyager, and computer models to show that the heliosphere just isn't moving fast enough to create a bow shock.

More Eruptions from Active Region 1476

05.17.12 - The sun erupted with an M-class flare that peaked at 9:47 PM EDT on May 17, 2012. A CME also burst from the sun at 9:48 PM EDT, traveling at over 930 miles per second.

TDRS-4 Mission Complete, Spacecraft Retired

05.08.12 - TDRS-4 recently completed almost 23 years of operations support and successfully completed end-of-mission de-orbit and decommissioning activities.

Hubble Sees the Eye of the Storm in Galaxy Cluster

05.04.12 - Zooming into the central part of a galaxy cluster — one of the largest structures of the Universe — is rather like looking at the eye of the storm.

Hubble to Use Moon as Mirror to See Venus Transit

05.04.12 - Hubble cannot look at the sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth's moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight that is filtered through Venus's atmosphere.

NASA Exhibits Inspire Maryland Day 2012 Explorers

05.03.12 - Representatives from Goddard's Office of Communications and the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate participated in the University of Maryland's annual spring open-house on April 28.

Lightning Signature Could Reveal Solar System's Origins

05.03.12 - A signature of lightning could be used to study atmospheres around other planets and shed light on how the solar system formed.

Plants Blooming, Leafing Earlier

05.02.12 - Plants are leafing and flowering sooner each year than predicted by controlled experiments designed to predict plant responses to rising temperatures.

Black Hole Guilty of Stellar Homicide

05.02.12 - Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close.

Goddard Symposium Continues Tradition of Forward Thinking

05.02.12 - This year's symposium held March 28-29 at the Greenbelt, Md. Marriott featured senior representation from NASA and leaders in aerospace policy.

Goddard Collaborates on MMS Instrument

04.30.12 - During the last week of March, 2012, researchers from Goddard, Marshall, SWRI and Japan came together to test a key instrument for the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission.

Wind Farm's Impact on Surface Temperature

04.30.12 - A Texas region containing four of the world's largest wind farms showed an increase in land surface temperature over 9 years.

Black Hole Outburst in Spiral Galaxy M83

04.30.12 - Chandra has discovered an extraordinary black hole outburst in spiral galaxy M83, located about 15 million light years from Earth.

Egg Nebula's 'Searchlight' Beams

04.27.12 - This Hubble image of the Egg Nebula shows one of the best views to date of the brief but dramatic end phase in a star's life.

Critical Webb Telescope Testing

04.12.12 - Instruments for the Webb telescope are undergoing testing in a giant vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA's Landsat Satellites See Texas Crop Circles

04.26.12 - A water-rich polka dot pattern takes over the traditional rectangular patchwork of fields in this time series animation of 40 years of Landsat images.

Warm Ocean Currents Cause Antarctic Ice Loss

04.25.12 - Warm ocean currents attacking the underside of ice shelves are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, based on data from ICESat.

On Top of the Smokies, All Covered in Light Rain

04.20.12 - The Southern Appalachians are one of the rainiest places in the United States, and scientists have discovered that much of it is difficult to detect light rain.

Webb Telescope Flight Backplane Section Complete

04.24.12 - The center section of the backplane structure that will fly on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been completed.

NASA Research Estimates How Long Titan's Chemical Factory Has Been in Business

04.24.12 - Titan's atmosphere is a complex factory that covers the moon's icy surface in soot and rains down lakes of liquid methane and ethane. However, its critical resource -- methane -- should not last long.

One Week of Ash from Mexico's Volcano

04.23.12 - NASA has animated imagery from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite to provide a week long look at the Popocatepetl Volcano's activity.

NASA Celebrates Earth Day 2012 in the Washington Area

04.12.12 - NASA took part in the celebration of Earth Day's 42nd anniversary on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from April 20 through April 22, 2012.

Live Music, NASA Science, American Indian Perspectives

04.20.12 - NASA's "Beautiful Earth" educational program combines interactive talks and hands-on workshops for students with live music.

SDO Highlights On Its Second Anniversary

04.20.12 - Since SDO's first light in April, 2010, instruments on the spacecraft have continually observed the ever-changing sun on quiet days and explosive ones: observing over 1000 solar outbursts since its launch.

Hubble Peeks inside a Stellar Cloud

04.20.12 - These bright stars shine through what looks like a haze in the night sky as part of a young stellar grouping in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Ash Cloud from Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano

04.20.12 - Mexico's Popocatepetl Volcano has re-awakened and has been emitting gas and ash.

Soffen Lecture Series: Worlds Around Other Stars and Progress Towards the Discovery of Another 'Earth'

On Thursday, May 10, NASA research scientist Dr. Avi Mandell will describe the exciting journey from the discovery of the first exo-planet orbiting a sun-like star up through NASA's current efforts to tease out the atmospheric structure and composition of the exotic menagerie of planets discovered to date. The free lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is strongly encouraged.

Hubble Spots Aurorae on the Planet Uranus

04.18.12 - These are among the first clear images, taken from the distance of Earth, to show aurorae on the planet Uranus.

Amateur Astronomers to Target Asteroids

04.18.12 - A new NASA outreach project will enlist the help of amateur astronomers to discover near-Earth objects and study their characteristics.

Create NASA Earth Video, Win Seats to a Launch

04.18.12 - The NASA Earth Day 2012 video contest closes to entries on May 31.

LRO Brings 'Earthrise' to Everyone

04.18.12 - Imagine being on a spacecraft flying backward with its small window facing down toward the moon. Suddenly, Earth rises over the lunar limb.

Webb Telescope Spinoffs Already Seen in Some Industries

04.18.12 - As with many technological advances, some of the James Webb Telescope innovations are benefitting humankind in many other industries.

Hubble's View of a Turbulent Star-Making Region

04.17.12 - Young stars are vying for attention in this image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the Tarantula Nebula.

Great Plains Tornado Outbreak Seen from Space

04.17.12 - NASA has just released an animation of visible and infrared satellite data showing the development and movement of the Great Plains tornado outbreak.

MAVEN's Propellant Tank Integrated

04.16.12 - MAVEN's large hydrazine propellant tank has been installed in the core structure of the spacecraft.

Giant Prominence Erupts

04.16.12 - On April 16, 2012 a giant prominence erupted from the left/east side of the sun in association with an M1.7 class solar flare.

Public Invited to Two Free Earth Day 2012 Events at NASA Goddard

04.16.12 - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is hosting two free events on April 18 in celebration of Earth Day's forty-second anniversary.

NASA's Swift Monitors Departing Comet Garradd

04.13.12 - Outbound comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd) provided a nice show for skywatchers last year. Now, it's the target of an ongoing investigation.

Hubble Sees Messier 70: Tight and Bright

04.13.12 - Having so many shining stars piled atop one another makes globular clusters a popular target for amateur skywatchers and scientists.

Award-winning Videos Showcase Tech 'Transformers'

04.13.12 - Winners of the OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest show there's more to NASA spinoff technology than meets the eye.

Teamwork: IBEX and TWINS Observe a Solar Storm

04.12.12 - On April 5, 2010, the sun spewed a two million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles toward Earth; two NASA Heliophysics System Observatory Missions observed the storm from complementary viewpoints.

NASA Views Our Perpetual Ocean

04.09.12 - Tens of thousands of ocean currents are captured in this scientific visualization created by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

NASA Sees New Salt in an Ancient Sea

04.06.12 - The expansion of massive salt evaporation projects on the Dead Sea are clearly visible in this time series of images taken by Landsat satellites operated by NASA and the USGS.

A Spiral Galaxy in Hydra

04.06.12 - This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 4980, a spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Hydra.

Mysteries of the Sun . . . Explained in Video

04.06.12 - NASA has released five new videos called "Mysteries of the Sun" that describe the science of the sun and its effects on the solar system and Earth.

SDO/STEREO Spot Something New On the Sun

04.09.12 - Scientists find giant plumes on the sun, newly named "coronal cells" that are over 18,000 miles across, looking like candlesticks on a birthday cake, and might help explain coronal holes.

SDO Goes For a Spin

04.05.12 - Twice a year engineers perform a 360 degree roll of the SDO spacecraft about the spacecraft-sun line. This roll maneuver allows the team to remove the instrument optical distortions from the solar limb.

Texas Storm System in 3-D

04.05.12 - NASA's TRMM satellite gathered data above the Texas storm system on April 3, providing a 3-D view of rain intensity and vertical distribution.

GOES Satellite Movie Tracked Tornadic Texas Trouble

04.04.12 - A powerful weather system moved through eastern Texas and dropped at least 15 tornadoes in the Dallas suburbs. This animation of GOES-13 satellite data shows the storms.

Handover of Japan-built Radar to NASA

04.03.12 - On March 30, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency officially handed off a new satellite instrument to NASA.

Fermi Provides Dark Matter Insights

04.02.12 - An analysis of two years' worth of data from Fermi is helping narrow down the list of what dark matter could be.

Q&A: Studying How Debris Influences Glaciers

04.02.12 - NASA glaciologist Kimberly Casey has visited six remote glaciers around the world to study what satellites can tell us about particulate pollution on glaciers, and how these particulates impact glacier melting rates.

Hubble Spies Edge-on Spiral Galaxy

03.30.12 - NGC 2683 is a spiral galaxy seen almost edge-on, giving it the shape of a classic science fiction spaceship.

NASA Sees Fields of Green Spring up in Saudi Arabia

03.29.12 - Saudi Arabia is drilling for a resource possibly more precious than oil by tapping hidden reserves of water in the Syrian Desert.

'The MIRI Has Two Faces'

03.29.12 - A new video takes viewers behind the scenes of the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA's Hurricane Twitter Exceeds 200,000 Followers

03.27.12 - NASA's Hurricane Twitter, which posts the web site's updates, exceeded 200,000 followers recently - a landmark that just a few NASA Twitter accounts have reached.

Successful ATREX Launch From Wallops

03.27.12 - The first rocket was launched at 4:58 a.m. EDT and each subsequent rocket was launched 80 seconds apart with each releasing a chemical tracer.

Icy Moons through Cassini's Eyes

03.28.12 - NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully flies by Saturnian moons.

NASA Space Network to Begin New Design Phase

03.27.12 - The Space Network Ground Segment Sustainment effort successfully completed its latest review, allowing it to proceed to the next phase.

Cargo Ship Carries Investigations to the Space Station

03.23.12 - When the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship arrives at the Space Station on March 28, it will be packed with supplies.

Hubble Sees Glittering Jewels of Messier 9

03.23.12 - This ball of stars is too faint to see with the naked eye, yet Hubble can see over 250,000 individual stars shining in it.

Beaming Success for Station Fans

03.23.12 - Did you ever use a flashlight to send a Morse code message to your neighbor at night as a kid?

Celebrate NanoDays at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center

NanoDays activities, beginning March 24, are part of a nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering.

Science Nugget: Modeling Extreme Space Weather

03.22.12 - Analysis by Goddard scientists provide basic guidelines to help model some of the largest, most damaging geomagnetically induced currents -- damaging currents in power grids caused by solar storms.

Satellite Sees Earthquake Region in Southwestern Mexico

03.20.12 - Just after a major earthquake occurred in southwestern Mexico on March 20,2012, NASA produced a satellite view of the region from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite.

Dawn Sees New Surface Features on Giant Asteroid

03.21.12 - NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.

NASA GPM Satellite's Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar Arrives at Goddard

03.20.12 - The Dual-frequency Precipitation Radararrived on Friday, March 16 and was unloaded today at Goddard.

Swift Narrows Down Hosts of Important Supernova Class

03.20.12 - Studies using X-ray and ultraviolet observations from NASA's Swift satellite are providing new insights into the elusive origins of an important class of exploding star, called Type Ia supernovas.

Soffen: Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

On Thursday, April 12, NASA Astrobiologist Dr. Daniel Glavin will look at questions about the nature of life in the universe. The free lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is strongly encouraged.

Japan Shares Space Station SMILES

03.19.12 - Did you panic when you heard in recent news that two massive solar flares from the Sun were hitting Earth's atmosphere?

Penguins, Polar Bears, and Laser Beams from Space: NASA Science at the Poles

On Thursday, March 8, 2012, NASA cyrospheric scientist Tom Neumann will give a presentation on NASA science in the polar regions, including the next-generation laser altimeter ICESat-2. The free lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is strongly encouraged.

Cassini Sees Saturn Stressing out Enceladus

03.19.12 - Direct observations linking the tidal pull of Saturn to jets on the moon Enceladus are among the highlights of NASA's Cassini mission discussed at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Infrared Satellite Data Indicates Severe Weather For South Central U.S.

03.19.12 - Infrared and microwave satellite imagery from NASA show a weather system that has potential to bring severe weather to the south central U.S. over the next several days.

Crafting the Webb Telescope's Technology

03.15.12 - Creation of the James Webb Space Telescope was possible as a result of imagining and developing the industrial machines that made it a reality.

Quasars Acting as Gravitational Lenses

03.15.12 - Quasars, which act as gravitational lenses, amplify and distort images of galaxies aligned behind them.

How 2012 Snow Stacks Up

03.14.12 - The relatively mild winter of 2012 has many people asking, "Where's the snow?" These maps show the answer.

New LRO Videos: Moon's Evolution, Take a Tour

03.14.12 - Celebrating 1,000 days in orbit, the LRO team released two new videos.

IceBridge 2012 Arctic Campaign Takes to the Skies

03.15.12 - Researchers and flight crew with NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in polar ice, begin the 2012 Arctic campaign.

Updated App Takes Users Across Universe

03.13.12 - NASA Visualization Explorer delivers new opportunities to explore research on the sun, planetary bodies, Earth and the universe to your iPad.

NASA, CSA Advance Satellite Servicing

03.12.12 - Robotic Refueling Mission on the ISS demonstrated remotely controlled robots and specialized tools performing precise satellite-servicing tasks.

Stellar Voyage of a Butterfly-like Planetary Nebula

03.16.12 - The breathtaking butterfly-like planetary nebula NGC 6881 is visible here in an image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Big Sunspot Remains Active

03.13.12 - On March 13, 2012, the sun erupted with an M7.9-class flare from the same region that has been producing flares and coronal mass ejections all week.

Cassini Spies Wave Rattling Jet Stream on Jupiter

03.13.12 - New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet's jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth's atmosphere.

Lifting Space Astronomy out of the 'Fog'

03.12.12 - This mission would put a space telescope outside a vast dust cloud that interfers with infrared, optical and ultraviolet observations.

Cassini Captures New Images of Icy Moon

03.12.12 - Saturn's moon Rhea appears in glorious detail in new images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft

Astronomical Database Named for Sen. Mikulski

04.06.12 - The archive is named in honor of the United States Senator from Maryland for her career-long achievements and for becoming the longest-serving woman in U.S. Congressional history.

Hubble Image of Galaxies' El Dorado

03.09.12 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the galaxy NGC 1483. NGC 1483 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the southern constellation of Dorado.

Moderate Geomagnetic Storm at Earth

03.12.12 - Geomagnetic storms at Earth are currently at a rating of G2 (moderate) on a scale of G1 to G5.

NASA's RXTE Captures Thermonuclear Behavior

03.09.12 - A neutron star near the center of our galaxy erupted with hundreds of X-ray bursts, powered by thermonuclear explosions on the star's surface.

Storms From the Sun

03.08.12 - An explanation of potential near-Earth space reactions to various solar events, like flares or coronal mass ejections.

Apollo 16: What Young Really Means on the Moon

03.08.12 - One of the main goals of the Apollo 16 mission was to explore and sample a young bright-rayed crater aptly named North Ray crater.

Geomagnetic Storm Strength Increases

03.09.12 - Geomagnetic storms due to CMEs earlier in the week have increased in strength, and are now rated a G3 on a scale from G1 to G5.

Second Biggest Flare Of the Solar Cycle

03.07.12 - The sun erupted with one of the largest solar flares of this solar cycle on March 6, 2012 at 7PM EST, an X5.4.

What Doesn't Stay in Vegas?

03.07.12 - What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas: Las Vegas itself has undergone a massive growth spurt over the past several years.

NASA Studies March 3 Severe Weather Outbreak

03.07.12 - A NASA satellite used infrared and microwave "vision" to analyze the storm system that created the March 3 severe weather outbreak in the U.S.

Bright Is The New Black: New York Roofs Go Cool

03.07.12 - A new study found that the covering roofs of New York City buildings can drastically cut the sweltering phenomenon called the 'urban heat island.'

Study the Sun During Solar Week - March 19-23, 2012

03.08.12 - Solar Week provides a week-long series of web-based educational activities for classrooms about our magnetic variable star, the sun, and its interactions with Earth and the solar system.

Refueling Mission Begins With Space Station Robotics

03.07.12 - NASA's highly anticipated Robotic Refueling Mission began operations on the International Space Station March 7-9, 2012.

NASA Jet Stream Study Will Light up The Night Sky

03.07.12 - NASA will launch five sounding rockets in approx. five minutes to study high-altitude winds and their connection to the electrical current patterns around Earth.

Apollo 11: 'A Stark Beauty All Its Own'

03.07.12 - This image of the Apollo 11 landing site captured from just 24 km (15 miles) above the surface provides LRO's best look yet at humanity’s first venture to another world.

Apollo 12: Pinpoint Landing on the Ocean of Storms

03.06.12 - This image shows the remnants of not one, but two missions to the moon.

Active Region on the Sun Spits Out Three Flares

03.05.12 - On March 2, 2012 a new active region on the sun, region 1429, rotated into view. Since arriving, it has let loose two M-class flares on March 2 and 4 and one X1 class flare this morning.

Apollo 15: Follow the Tracks

03.05.12 - This new LRO image taken from low altitude shows Apollo 15 hardware and tracks in more detail than seen before.

Space Weather: Explosions on Venus

03.05.12 - A recent study has found clear evidence on Venus for a type of space weather outburst quite common at Earth, called a hot flow anomaly (HFA). These HFA surges can cause the solar wind to reverse its flow and flood backward.

NASA Researchers on the Snow Patrol

03.02.12 - Consistent measurements are the next step for understanding snow's role in weather patterns and its influence on global climate and water cycles.

Severe Weather Seen by NASA Satellite

03.02.12 - Another powerful weather system is moving through the central and eastern U.S., generating more severe weather.

Antlia Dwarf Galaxy Peppers the Sky with Stars

03.02.12 - The myriad faint stars that comprise the Antlia Dwarf galaxy are more than 4 million light-years from Earth.

Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation

03.02.12 - This composite image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520.

Nichelle Nichols 'Treks' to Goddard

03.02.12 - Hundreds of scientists and engineers (even the occasional astronaut) pass through Goddard's gates every day. One of science fiction's most famous astronauts joined the mix on February 29.

GPM Microwave Imager Instrument Arrives at Goddard

03.01.12 - The Global Precipitation Measurement Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument has arrived at Goddard for integration into NASA's upcoming Earth science spacecraft.

Satellite Movie Shows Movement of Violent Weather System

03.01.12 - An animation of GOES-13 satellite imagery shows the movement of the front that triggered severe storms and tornadoes in several states February 29, 2012.

Thickest Parts of Arctic Ice Melting Faster

02.29.12 - A new NASA study revealed that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the floating ice cap that covers the Arctic Ocean.

Ultra-fast Outflows Help Monster Black Holes Shape Their Galaxies

02.27.12 - A curious correlation between the mass of a galaxy's central black hole and the velocity of stars in a vast, roughly spherical structure known as its bulge has puzzled astronomers for years.

Beautiful Aurora Result From Active Solar Weekend

02.27.12 - The weak CME on February 26, 2012 did produce some amazing aurora for high latitude observers.

Andromeda Galaxy Pops Up Ultraluminous X-ray Sources

02.24.12 - Researchers using multiple NASA space observatories have been studying an object known as an ultraluminous X-ray source in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

Preview of a Forthcoming Supernova

02.24.12 - In 1843, Eta Carinae was the second-brightest star in the night sky. By the 20th century, it was invisible to the naked eye.

Curiosity, The Stunt Double

02.24.12 - Curiosity, the mini-Cooper-sized rover, is playing the role of stunt double for NASA astronauts, as it monitors radiation levels on its journey to Mars.

Suomi Ozone Suite Continues More Than 30 Years of Data

02.23.12 - A new satellite instrument suite is now sending back detailed information about the health of the Earth's ozone layer, the shield that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life's Components

03.09.12 - Evidence that there is more than one way to make some components of life increases the likelihood that life emerged elsewhere in the Universe.

NuSTAR Mirrors Baked in Glass Kitchen

02.23.12 - Astrophysicist Will Zhang has experimented with a new technique for efficiently manufacturing super-thin, low-cost curved telescope mirror segments.

NASA Pinning Down "Here" Better Than Ever

02.23.12 - NASA is helping to lead an international effort to upgrade the four systems that supply crucial location information in pinpointing where "here" is.

Partial Solar Eclipse from Space

02.22.12 - The Moon moves between the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite and the Sun, producing a partial solar eclipse from space.

The Many Moods of Titan

02.23.12 - Recent data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft show a shifting, Earth-like environment at Saturn's moon Titan.

NASA Satellite Finds Earth's Clouds are Getting Lower

02.21.12 - A new university study using data from NASA's Terra spacecraft finds Earth's clouds got about one percent lower on average during the first decade of the 2000s.

Hubble Discovers Waterworld Planet

02.21.12 - Even stars that appear static are subject to change -- some because the gas disc from their death throes periodically obscure their brilliance.

NASA Map Sees Earth's Trees in a New Light

02.17.12 - A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth's forests.

A Black Hole and a Cannibal Galaxy

02.16.12 - This edge-on galaxy, called ESO 243-49, is home to a mid-sized black hole that may have been stripped off of a cannibalized dwarf galaxy.

A Sheep in Wolf-Rayet's Clothing

02.17.12 - Even stars that appear static are subject to change -- some because the gas disc from their death throes periodically obscure their brilliance.

The Legacy of the Megaflood

02.16.12 - The 60-mile-long Grand Coulee, the largest of the stair-step canyons in eastern Washington, gives the Channeled Scablands its character.

'Honeycombs' and Hexacopters Help Tell Story of Mars

02.16.12 - Formations in the Channeled Scablands help scientists understand the forces that shape planets. NASA interns are applying those lessons to Mars.

Landsat Infrared Sensor Arrives at Orbital

02.14.12 - A new NASA satellite instrument that makes a quantum leap forward in detector technology has arrived at Orbital Sciences Corp. in Gilbert, Ariz.

'Titan Through Time' Public Lecture: Dr. Ralph Lorenz - Titan in History and Popular Culture

On Tuesday, Apr. 3, 2012, Dr. Ralph Lorenz will discuss Saturn's intriguing moon Titan. The free lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is strongly encouraged.

NASA Scientist Leads Student Phytoplankton Study

02.10.12 - NASA scientist Tiffany Moisan thrives on studying the ocean and has a passion for educating and inspiring students in ocean sciences.

Transforming Galaxies

02.10.12 - Markarian 779 has a distorted appearance because it is likely the product of a recent galactic merger between two spirals.

Deconstructing a Mystery: What Caused Snowmageddon?

02.09.12 - Snowmageddon, as the winter of early 2010 was dubbed, entered the history books as the snowiest winter on record for the U.S. East Coast.

The Sun As Art

02.06.12 - A new interactive NASA art exhibit opens February 9 at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore that will showcase stunning images of the sun.

Spaceborne Precipitation Radar Ships from Japan to U.S.

02.08.12 - Construction of a new instrument designed to take 3-D measurements of the shapes, sizes and other physical characteristics of both raindrops and snowflakes, is complete; it will be shipped from Japan to Goddard.

Infrared Sounder on NASA's Suomi NPP Starts its Mission

02.08.12 - A powerful new infrared instrument, flying on NASA's newest polar-orbiting satellite has started sending its data back to Earth.

Young Stars at Home in Ancient Cluster

02.08.12 - Looking like a hoard of gems fit for an emperor's collection, this deep sky object called NGC 6752 is in fact far more worthy of admiration.

RHESSI Celebrates 10 Years and 40,000 X-Ray Flares

02.08.12 - Ten years since its launch, RHESSI has observed more than 40,000 X-ray flares, helped craft a model of how solar eruptions form, and fueled additional serendipitous science papers on such things as the shape of the sun.

Jacob Bleacher Gives Free Talk at Library of Congress: "NASA’s Desert RATS"

02.07.12 - NASA scientist Jacob Bleacher will discuss “NASA’s Desert RATS” at 11:30 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 14 in Washington, DC.

Hubble Observes NGC 1073

02.06.12 - Hubble has imaged the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster).

VIIRS Eastern Hemisphere Image - Behind the Scenes

02.02.12 - NASA scientists created a companion image to the wildly popular 'Blue Marble' released Jan. 25, 2012.

Hubble Zooms in on a Magnified Galaxy

02.02.12 - Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, Hubble got a uniquely close-up look at the brightest "magnified" galaxy yet discovered.

'First Light' Taken by NASA's Newest CERES Instrument

02.01.12 - The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System instrument had its 'first light' moment aboard the Suomi NPP satellite.

Goddard Marks African-American History Month: 2012

To mark African-American History Month and Engineers Week, Goddard will host a webcast (Feb. 22, 1 p.m. EST) for K-12 teachers and students.

NASA's GCPEX Mission: What We Don't Know about Snow

01.31.12 - Scientists have shown that it is possible to detect and measure snow from space, but much remains unknown about snow.

The Interstellar Material Beyond our Solar System

01.31.12 - It's an alien environment out there: the material in the galactic wind doesn't look like the same stuff our solar system is made of.

Earth's Energy Budget 'Out of Balance'

01.30.12 - Greenhouse gases generated by human activity, not changes in solar activity, are the primary force driving global warming, according to a new NASA study.

THEMIS Sees a Great Electron Escape

01.30.12 - Filled with electrons and charged particles, the radiation belts regularly swell and shrink, but no one is quite sure how. A new study sheds light on how those radiation particles escape.

X1.8 Solar Flare and CME - 01.27.12

01.27.12 - Sunspot 1402 fires a parting shot as it rotates around the edge of the sun -- an X1.8 class solar flare and CME.

Space Weather Center Adding 'Ensemble Forecasting' Capability

01.27.12 - The sun is beginning to stir. By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the Goddard team charged with tracking its moods will have deployed a greatly enhanced forecasting capability.

'White Spike' of Clouds Bringing U.S. Severe Weather

01.26.12 - Severe weather is expected to impact the southeastern U.S. today, January 26.

Detecting Detrimental Change in Coral Reefs

01.26.12 - An ocean ecologist finds a way to utilize Landsat to evaluate global changes to the fragile coral reefs.

NPP Renamed in Honor of Satellite Pioneer

01.25.12 - NASA renamed its newest Earth-observing satellite to honor the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin recognized widely as "the father of satellite meteorology."

Classifying Solar Eruptions

01.24.12 - NOAA has devised categories for solar flares and storms. The biggest flares are known as 'X-class flares' based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to their strength.

Vesta Likely Cold and Dark Enough for Ice

01.25.12 - Roughly half of the giant asteroid Vesta is expected to be so cold, with so little sunlight, that water ice could have survived there for billions of years.

01.23.12: M8.7 Solar Flare and Earth Directed CME-UPDATED

01.25.12 - The sun erupted late on January 22, 2012 with an M8.7 class flare, an earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME).

2011: 9th-Warmest Year on Record

01.19.12 - The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists.

Catching a Comet Death on Camera

01.19.12 - On July 6, 2011, a comet was caught doing something never seen before: die a scorching death as it flew too close to the sun. The chance to watch it first-hand amazed even the most seasoned comet watchers.

01.19.2012-Long Duration M3.2 Class Solar Flare and CME

01.19.12 - After a two month respite from Earth-directed solar events, the Sun sends an M3.2 class flare and CME our way.

SDO Helps Measure Magnetic Fields on the Sun's Surface

01.18.12 - A subset of data that helps map out the sun's magnetic fields was recently released from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Gerald Soffen Lecture Series: Dr. Michelle Thaller - The Dark Universe

On Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, Dr. Michelle Thaller will discuss observations that have caused astronomers to completely rethink how the universe is put together. The free lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is required.

Airborne Campaign to Measure Falling Snow

01.12.12 - NASA's DC-8 research plane will begin six weeks of flights over Canada next week in support of a difficult task of the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission -- measuring snowfall from space.

Spacecraft Cleanroom Goes Green

01.13.12 - MMS mission requirements lead to construction of a new 'Green' cleanroom, where the four identical spacecraft will be assembled and integrated.

Hubble Zooms in on Double Nucleus in Andromeda Galaxy

01.11.12 - A new Hubble Space Telescope image centers on the 100-million-solar-mass black hole at the hub of the neighboring spiral Andromeda galaxy, the only galaxy outside the Milky Way visible to the naked eye.

Hubble Finds Rare Ultra-Blue Stars

01.11.12 - Peering deep inside the hub of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, Hubble has uncovered a large, rare population of hot, bright stars.

Hubble Solves Mystery on Source of Supernova in Nearby Galaxy

01.11.12 - The decades-long search for Type Ia supernovae progenitors has taken on special importance due to their use in measuring the acceleration of the universe.

Fermi Explores New Energy Extremes

01.10.12 - After three years in space, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now extending its view of the high-energy sky into what to date has been largely unexplored territory.

Study Shows Health, Food Security Benefits From Climate Change Actions

01.12.12 - A new study by NASA highlights air pollution control measures that, if implemented, could slow the pace of global warming, improve health and boost agricultural production.

RXTE Helps Pinpoint Black Hole's 'Bullets'

01.10.12 - An international team of astronomers has identified the moment when a black hole in our galaxy launched super-fast knots of gas into space.

NASA's Hubble Breaks New Ground with Distant Supernova Discovery

01.11.12 - Three images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal the emergence of an exploding star, called a supernova.

'James Webb': A Year of Achievement and Success

01.09.12 - The James Webb Space Telescope marked a year of significant progress in 2011 as it continues to come together as NASA's next generation space telescope.

SAVE Award Winner Meets President

01.10.12 - The 2011 winner of the White House SAVE award, NASA Goddard's Matthew Ritsko, accepted his award on Jan. 9, 2012, from President Obama.

Hubble Pinpoints Farthest Protocluster of Galaxies Ever Seen

01.10.12 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the most distant grouping of a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development ever observed in the early universe.

Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Completes Mission Operations

01.09.12 - After 16 years in space, RXTE has made its last observation. The satellite provided unprecedented views into the extreme environments around white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes.

SOHO "Pick of the Week" Hits Impressive Milestone

01.04.12 - In late November, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) online 'Pick of the Week' reached an impressive milestone: its 500th edition.

NASA Working to Improve Air Quality Knowledge

01.10.13 - Residents in Calif.'s San Joaquin Valley will see some unusual air traffic over their region in January and February of 2013 -- two NASA aircraft measuring air pollution.

Hinode to Support Ground-based Eclipse Observations

11.13.12 - On Nov. 13, 2012, parts of Earth will experience a total solar eclipse. The JAXA NASA Hinode mission will coordinate its observations with those from the ground, to produce combined, scientifically interesting data.

Got Salt? NASA's Salt Mapper Toasts First Birthday

06.13.12 - To mark its first birthday, a new interactive feature lets you get up close and personal with NASA’s Aquarius mission to study ocean salinity and some of its 'salt sleuths.'

RBSP Arrives at Kennedy Space Center

05.02.12 - NASA's twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes arrived May 1, 2012 at the KSC, where launch is scheduled for an August to begin their mission to study the extremes of space weather.

STEREO Far Side Sun Voted Top 2011 NASA Triumph

03.16.12 - Public votes STEREO mission as NASA's biggest accomplishment of 2011.

Goddard Women Highlighted at MD Women's Heritage Center

12.27.11 - The women of NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are going to be highlighted in a new book for an exhibit at the Maryland Women's Heritage Center.

ISS Captures Unprecedented View of Comet

12.22.11 - International Space Station Commander Dan Burbank captured spectacular imagery of Comet Lovejoy on Dec. 21.

2012: Shadow of the Dark Rift

12.21.11 - A cosmic alignment of the sun, Earth, and the center of our galaxy on the winter solstice happens every year without event, and poses no danger in 2012.

Cryogenic Testing Completed for Webb Telescope Mirrors

12.21.11 - Cryogenic testing is complete for the final six primary mirror segments and a secondary mirror that will fly on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

NORAD and Satellite Technology Help Santa Deliver

12.19.11 - To better assure prompt deliveries and safe flights for Santa and others, higher technology systems are increasingly being used to support the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Gerald Soffen Lecture Series: Dr. Holly Gilbert - Unlocking the Secrets of the Sun

On Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, Dr. Holly Gilbert will discuss the amazing strides scientists have made in understanding the inner workings of our sun over the last 50 years. The lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is required.

Comet Lovejoy Plunges into the Sun and Survives

12.16.11 - An armada of spacecraft witnessed something that many experts thought impossible. Comet Lovejoy flew through the hot atmosphere of the sun and emerged intact.

Goddard Year In Review: People

12.19.11 - None of Goddard's amazing scientific discoveries and technological achievements would be possible without the human element.

Participating Scientists Selected for Mars, Saturn Missions

12.15.11 - Five scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have been selected as participating scientists for NASA's Curiosity and Cassini missions.

RXTE Detects 'Heartbeat' of Smallest Black Hole Candidate

12.15.11 - An international team of astronomers has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole using data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer.

Webb Telescope Receives COCOA this Winter

12.15.11 - Engineers working on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are bringing out the COCOA, but it's not going to help them keep warm.

Curiosity and the Solar Storm

12.14.11 - Curiosity, launched on Nov. 26 on the Mars Science Laboratory, has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars using an instrument called the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) that monitors high-energy atomic and subatomic particles.

Goddard Year In Review: Earth Science

12.16.11 - These stories, images and videos represent some of Goddard's 2011 Earth science highlights.

2012: Fear No Supernova

12.16.11 - Given the vastness of space and the long times between supernovae, astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.

Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel

12.06.11 - NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope presents a festive holiday greeting in the form of a soaring, celestial snow angel.

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@LRO_NASA Surpasses 100k Twitter Followers

12.14.11 - NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has acquired more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. LRO joined Twitter on May 29, 2008.

Goddard Year In Review: Astrophysics

12.15.11 - These stories, images and videos represent some of Goddard's 2011 astrophysics highlights.

RBSP Ready for Space Environment Tests

12.14.11 - NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) will soon enter a challenging series of tests to certify they are ready for their August 2012 launch and two-year mission in Earth's orbit.

Comet Lovejoy -- Many Views

12.19.11 - Another view of Comet Lovejoy's solar approach taken by Hinode.

Goddard Year In Review: Technology

12.14.11 - These stories, images and videos represent some of the 2011 highlights from Goddard in terms of technology developments.

NASA Developing Comet Harpoon

12.13.11 - What's the best way to collect a sample from a comet? NASA engineers think a harpoon may be the answer.

Goddard Year In Review: Heliophysics

12.12.11 - These stories, images and videos represent some of the 2011 highlights from Goddard in the field of heliophysics, the study of the sun and its interactions with Earth and other bodies.

Tycho's Star Shines in Gamma-rays

12.13.11 - Fermi has revealed gamma-rays in the remains of a supernova first seen in 1572.

Goddard Year In Review: Planetary Science

12.13.11 - These stories, images and videos represent some of the 2011 highlights from Goddard in the field of planetary science.

Climate History Hints at Potential Rapid Changes

12.08.11 - New research into Earth's climate history suggests there is potential for rapid climate changes this century if global warming is not abated.

Study Shows More Shrubbery in a Warming World

12.08.11 - The study, focusing on Quebec, is one of the first to present a detailed view of how warmer temperatures are influencing plant distribution and density in northern areas of North America.

LRO to Observe 2011's Final Lunar Eclipse

12.09.11 - LRO will get a moon-based perspective on the final lunar eclipse of 2011, which occurs on December 10.

Ten Successful Years of Mapping the Middle Atmosphere

12.07.11 - TIMED has collected data over almost an entire solar cycle, which lasts about 11 years, creating a new picture of Earth's environment as well as how it responds to changes in the sun.

Landsat satellites Track Yellowstone's Underground Heat

12.07.11 - Heat pouring off an ancient (and still active) volcano fuels Yellowstone's famous hot springs, mud pots, terraces and geysers, including Old Faithful.

Hubble Racks Up 10,000 Science Papers

12.06.11 - NASA's Hubble Space Telescope becomes one of the most prolific astronomical endeavors in history after racking up 10,000 scientific papers.

Solar Storms Could 'Sandblast' the Moon

12.06.11 - A typical two-day solar storm could strip hundreds of tons of material from the moon.

Satellite Data Shows that Kirtland’s Warblers Prefer Forests After Fire

12.07.11 - A new study using data from a NASA-built Landsat shows that Kirtland's warblers like to live in young forests and often forests that have been on fire.

Ancient Dry Spells Offer Clues on Future Drought

12.05.11 - Scientists have unearthed new evidence about ancient droughts that suggest the future could bring even more serious water shortages.

NASA Confirms Sharp Pollution Decline

12.01.11 - Scientists have confirmed major reductions in the eastern United States of an air pollutant generated by coal power plants: sulfur dioxide.

Texas Drought Visible in New Groundwater Maps

11.30.11 - Record-breaking drought in Texas has reduced groundwater levels in much of the state to the lowest levels seen in more than 60 years.

Pole Reversal Happens All The (Geologic) Time

11.30.11 - Earth's magnetic field has flipped its polarity many times over the millennia -- but this causes no dramatic effects, and will not lead to problems in 2012.

Swift Finds a Gamma-Ray Burst With a Dual Personality

11.30.11 - A peculiar cosmic explosion seen by the Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was either a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home

Lightning-made Waves Leak Into Space

11.28.11 - Lightning bursts create electromagnetic waves that circle around Earth creating a low frequency wave called Schumann resonance. These have now been detected in space and can be used to study our atmosphere.

In Cygnus, Fermi Reveals A Cosmic-ray Cocoon

11.28.11 - Fermi's Large Area Telescope penetrates the dust of the Milky Way's Great Rift to reveal one of our galaxy's richest-known stellar construction zones.

An Educational ECHO, 'FIRST' Heard by NASA

11.23.11 - Take five NASA employees, add a year-long leadership program, 30 enthusiastic children, homemade rockets, moon buggies, video games, and six hours on a Saturday. What is the result?

NPP'S VIIRS Instrument Returns First Image Data

11.22.11 - The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, NPP, acquired its first measurements on Nov. 21, 2011.

Hubble Finds Stellar Life and Death

11.22.11 - A new Hubble image shows a collection of hundreds of thousands of stars in a dwarf galaxy neighbor of the Milky Way.

Gerald Soffen Lecture Series: Dr. Tim Livengood - The Accidental Observatory

On Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011, planetary astrophysicist Dr. Tim Livengood will use the Deep Impact mission as an example to describe how scientists and engineers work together to add new tasks to spacecraft already in space. The lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is required.

All Systems Go For Next Comm. Spacecraft

11.21.11 - The most recent evaluations of NASA's TDRS project confirmed all systems go for a third generation upgrade of the orbiting communications network.

NASA Worker Wins 2011 Presidential SAVE Award

11.21.11 - A financial manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center won the 2011 Presidential SAVE award.

TRMM Sees Deadly Tornadic Thunderstorms in Southeastern U.S.

11.18.11 - Tornadoes are expected to accompany severe storms in the spring and fall seasons. On Nov. 16 TRMM kept watch as tornadoes occurred with a long line of thunderstorms in the Southeastern U.S.

Goddard Warfighter Mission, Expanding Human Boundaries

11.18.11 - This mission, established in support of the Operation Warfighter (OWF) program, allows service members to expand employment opportunities and discover new career paths while adjusting to daily life after military service.

New NASA Missions to Investigate How Mars Turned Hostile

11.18.11 - Two new NASA missions, one that will roam the surface and another that will orbit the planet and dip briefly into its upper atmosphere, will try to discover what transformed Mars into its current uninhabitable state.

Assembly Stand Completed for NASA's Webb Telescope Flight Optics

11.17.11 - The giant steel frame, now at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will be used to assemble the mirrors and instruments of the Webb telescope.

Galaxies: The Ultimate Recyclers

11.17.11 - New Hubble observations are expanding astronomers' understanding of how galaxies recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements.

Using Satellites to Sustain 7 Billion People

11.16.11 - With seven billion people now living on Earth, the expanding demand for resources is exerting unprecedented pressure on global resources, especially forests, water and food.

New Hi-Res Lunar Map from LRO

11.16.11 - The new topographic map -- the highest resolution ever created -- shows surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon.

2011 NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Video Contest

11.15.11 - NASA is now accepting submissions for the NASA OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Video Contest, which aims to raise awareness of how NASA technology benefits the public.

Supervolcanoes: Not a Threat For 2012

11.15.11 - Throughout Earth's 4.5-billion-year lifetime massive supervolcanoes have erupted. However, despite the claims of those who fear 2012,there’s no evidence that such a supereruption is imminent.

FASTSAT Paints Detailed View of Region Near Earth

11.14.11 - FASTSAT has painted a detailed picture of the dynamic region around Earth, showing a host of interrelated phenomena -- such as electric currents and outflowing particles occurring together.

Ocean Temperatures Can Predict Amazon Fire Season Severity

11.10.11 - Researchers created a model to predict the severity and geographic distribution of fires in the Amazon rain forest and the rest of South America months in advance.

NPP Satellite Acquires First Moisture Measurements

11.10.11 - The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder on board NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, NPP, acquired its first low-atmosphere moisture measurements on November 8, 2011.

NASA's Hubble Observes Young Dwarf Galaxies Bursting With Stars

11.10.11 - Using its near-infrared vision to peer 9 billion years back in time, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered an extraordinary population of young dwarf galaxies brimming with star formation.

NASA's Swift Catches Asteroid Flyby

11.10.11 - As asteroid 2005 YU55 swept past Earth in the early morning hours of Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011, Swift monitored the fast-moving space rock.

2012: Killer Solar Flares Are a Physical Impossibility

11.10.11 - Some people speculate gigantic natural disasters that will destroy Earth as we know it on December 21, 2012 -- but a killer solar flare is a physical impossibility.

Launch of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover, Featuring SAM!

11.10.11 - The launch window for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover opens on Friday, November 25th at 10:25 a.m. ET. Join us from 9:00–11:30 a.m. at the Goddard Visitor Center for a launch event featuring the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), an instrument suite on Curiosity built right here at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Potential New NASA Mission Would Reveal the Hearts of Undead Stars

11.09.11 - The heavy heart of a neutron star holds matter on the edge of oblivion. A proposed NASA mission will discover what's inside.

New NASA Material Redefines 'Dark'

11.08.11 - NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs more than 99 percent of the light that hits it, across multiple wavelengths.

A 360 Degree View of an X-class Flare and A CME

11.04.11 - The sun sent out two different kinds of solar activity on November 3, 2011 in different directions: an X.19 solar flare and a particularly bright CME.

NASA Airborne Mission Maps Remote, Deteriorating Glaciers

11.03.11 - As the only large-scale, ongoing survey of the elevation of Antarctica's ice sheet, IceBridge is beginning to return its own record of the continent's changing ice cover.

Fermi Finds Youngest Millisecond Pulsar

11.03.11 - This surprisingly powerful pulsar challenges existing theories about how these objects form.

Hinode's First Light . . . and Five More Years

11.01.11 - Five years after its instruments turned on, Hinode has provided some of the highest resolution images of the sun the world had ever seen -- as well as help solve such mysteries as why the sun's atmosphere is a thousand times hotter than its surface.

Watching the Birth of an Iceberg

11.01.11 - NASA's Operation IceBridge makes the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress at Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica.

Halloween Weekend Snow Paints a Ghostly Picture in the U.S. Northeast

10.31.11 - A late October snowstorm from a Nor'easter blanketed the eastern U.S. from West Virginia to Maine and broke records the weekend before Halloween Monday

NASA Studies Ways to Make 'Tractor Beams' Real

10.31.11 - A team of NASA scientists has won funding to study how this sci-fi technology (moving objects with laser light) could be brought into reality.

A Crack in the Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf  →

10.27.11 - NASA's IceBridge team has seen a large -- and unexpected -- crack running across Pine Island Glacier, one of the largest and fastest-moving glaciers in Antarctica.

TIRS Instrument Completes First Round of Thermal Vacuum Testing

11.01.11 - The Thermal Infrared Sensor that will fly on the next Landsat satellite completed its first round of thermal vacuum testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Solar Cycle Primer

10.27.11 - The number of sunspots on the sun increase and decrease over time in a regular, approximately 11-year cycle. More sunspots mean increased solar activity, when great blooms of radiation and particles blast off the sun.

STEREO Celebrates Five Years

10.25.11 - On Oct. 25, 2006 STEREO launched to do something never done before: see the entire sun simultaneously.

Beautiful Red Aurora

10.25.11 - A coronal mass ejection (CME) shot off the sun late in the evening of October 21 and hit Earth on October 24 at about 2 PM ET causing red aurora in the U.S.

Scientist Receives First Climate Communications Award

10.24.11 - Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, received the Climate Communications Prize from AGU.

Gerald Soffen Lecture Series: Dr. Jane Rigby - Why Space Telescopes Are Amazing

On Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011, astrophysicist Jane Rigby will discuss the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Explore how this team of observatories works together to answer important questions: How do stars form? Is there really dark matter? Is the universe expanding? The lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is required.

Significant Antarctic Ozone Hole Remains

10.20.11 - This year's Antarctic ozone hole, which yawns wide every Southern Hemisphere spring, was the ninth largest on record.

Ozone Depletion a Bigger Deal Down Under

10.20.11 - The Earth's thinning ozone layer is synonymous with a singing and dancing seagull named Sid -- at least it is in New Zealand and Australia.

Global Precipitation Satellite Takes a Ride

10.19.11 - In the clean room at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the GPM mission's Core satellite is steadily taking shape.

A Look Back at a Decade of Fires

10.19.11 - For more than a decade, instruments on NASA satellites have revolutionized what scientists know about fire's role in land cover change, ecosystem processes, and the global carbon cycle.

NASA Releases Visual Tour of Earth's Fires

10.19.11 - NASA has released a series of new satellite data visualizations that show tens of millions of fires detected worldwide from space since 2002.

Students Invited to Study the Sun During Solar Week

10.19.11 - Solar Week provides a week-long series of web-based educational activities for classrooms about our magnetic variable star, the sun, and its interactions with Earth and the solar system.

Star's Dusty Disk May Host Planets

10.19.11 - Spiral arm-like structures in the disk of gas and dust around a sun-like star may provide clues to the presence of as-yet-unseen planets.

Firestation in Space to Open Firehose of Lightning Data

10.17.11 - Heliophysicist Doug Rowland has secured a 2013 flight opportunity to the ISS for Firestation, a pint-sized instrument studying lightning in Earth's upper atmosphere, and must prepare for a veritable "fire hose" of data.

Tropical Systems Bring Heavy Rain to Mexico and Central America

10.14.11 - Within just the past week, the East Pacific has seen a resurgence in tropical activity with the formation of three tropical systems

Ambitious Hubble Survey Obtaining New Dark Matter Census

10.13.11 - A Hubble survey of 25 galactic clusters reveals the most comprehensive data to date on the distribution dark matter by observing the visual distortion or lensing due to invisible matter in the clusters.

Giant-Sized Webb Space Telescope Model to 'Land' in Baltimore

10.12.11 - Baltimore's Maryland Science Center is going to be the "landing site" for the life-sized full-scale model of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, and it's free for all to see.

New Earth-Observing Satellite Preps for Launch

10.12.11 - NASA is planning an Oct. 27 launch of the first Earth-observing satellite to measure both global climate changes and key weather variables.

Fermi Scientist Earns 2012 Panofsky Prize  →

10.12.11 - Dr. Bill Atwood was awarded the prestigious prize for his work on the design, construction and use of Fermi's Large Area Telescope.

ESA To Collaborate with NASA on Solar Science Mission

10.06.11 - On October 4, 2011, the European Space Agency announced it's two next science missions, including Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft geared to study the powerful influence of the sun.

Planets Found in Decade-Old Hubble Data

10.06.11 - A painstaking re-analysis of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1998 has uncovered two extrasolar planets that went undetected at the time.

Arctic Sea Ice Hits 2nd-Lowest Level

10.04.11 - Last month the extent of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean declined to the second-lowest extent on record, narrowly avoiding a new low.

Incoming Comet; Outgoing CME

10.04.11 - On October 2, 2011, an exceptionally bright comet headed toward the sun and disintegrated; moments later a large coronal mass ejection (CME) blew off the other side of the sun.

Nikolaos Paschalidis: Miniaturized Details and the Big Picture

10.04.11 - A profile of Nikolaos Paschalidis, who is in charge of coordinating science and technology advancement efforts of NASA Goddard's Heliophysics division. He builds tiny chips for spacecraft, and thinks big about the future.

Hubble Space Telescope Contributes to Nobel Prize in Physics

10.04.11 - Observations made by Hubble of a special type of supernovae contributed to research on the expansion of the universe that was honored with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

NASA Leads Study of Unprecedented Arctic Ozone Loss

10.02.11 - A NASA-led study looks at unprecedented depletion of Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring, caused by prolonged, extremely low temperatures.

Announcement of New Heliophysics Director

09.30.11 - Dr. Barbara Giles has accepted the position of Director for NASA's Science Mission Directorate Heliophysics Division.

Space Telescopes Reveal Secrets of Turbulent Black Hole

09.29.11 - A fleet of spacecraft including the Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered unprecedented details in the surroundings of a black hole.

Gerald Soffen Lecture Series: Dr. Michael Mumma

Join us at the Goddard Visitor Center for the inauguration of the Gerald Soffen Lecture Series on Thursday, October 13. Michael J. Mumma of the Solar System Exploration Division at Goddard Space Flight Center’s Center for Astrobiology will be kicking off the series with a lecture on "The Search for Life on Mars." The lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m., and registration in advance is required.

MAVEN Mission Primary Structure Complete

09.26.11 - Lockheed Martin completed building the primary structure of the MAVEN spacecraft at its Space Systems Company facility near Denver.

Study: Venus Weather Not Boring After All

09.27.11 - Weather on Venus has a reputation for being consistently bad. New research reveals it may just be bad.

Geomagnetic Storm Subsiding

09.27.11 - The severe geomagnetic storm that began yesterday when a CME hit Earth's magnetic field is subsiding.

A Solar Flare and a CME

09.22.11 - Our increasingly active Sun produced a large CME yesterday evening and an X1.4 class flare this morning. This increased solar activity is a normal byproduct as the sun approaches solar max.

Aquarius Yields NASA's First Map of Ocean Salinity

09.22.11 - NASA's new Aquarius instrument has produced its first global map of the salinity of the ocean surface, providing an early glimpse of the mission's anticipated discoveries.

NASA to Demonstrate Communications Via Laser Beam

09.22.11 - It currently takes 90 minutes to transmit high-resolution images from Mars, but NASA would like to dramatically reduce that time to just minutes

Six CMEs in 24 Hours

09.20.11 - The sun let loose with at least six coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from 7 PM ET on September 18, 2011 until 1 PM on September 19. One may impact Earth and spark aurora tomorrow.

Tests Under way on the Sunshield for NASA's Webb Telescope

09.19.11 - NASA is testing an element of the sunshield that will protect the James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors and instruments during its mission to observe the most distant objects in the universe.

Low-Mass Galaxies Can Harbor Supermassive Black Holes

09.15.11 - Using the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers have found supermassive black holes growing in surprisingly small galaxies.

During Shuttle Era, Goddard Provided The Critical Path

09.16.11 - From the time a space shuttle launched until its landing at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA Goddard's space communication networks provided the constant link necessary for every mission.

Webb Telescope Completes Mirror-Coating Milestone

09.13.11 - The James Webb Space Telescopes mirrors have completed their coating process which allows the Webb telescope's "infrared eyes" to observe extremely faint objects in infrared light.

Solar Activity Subsiding - Auroras Ablaze

09.12.11 - After last week's flurry of strong flares from sunspot 1283, solar activity is subsiding as this sunspot rotates over the sun's western limb. Aurora from last week's solar activity will be dancing in the sky for the next several day.

Sunspot 1283 Is Bristling With Flares-UPDATED

09.08.11 - The first of what will likely be several CME hits occurred this morning sparking a strong geomagnetic storm. Additional hits will occur over the weekend.

Fermi Highlights Cosmic Mysteries

09.09.11 - If Fermi's catalog of the universe were a recipe, the two major ingredients would be active galaxies and pure mystery.

X2.1 Solar Flare and CME

09.07.11 - Sunspot 1283 erupted with another flare yesterday that peaked at 6:20 PM ET. This was an X2.1 class flare, some four times stronger than the earlier flare.

Cruising the Chesapeake for Water and Air Quality

09.08.11 - A NASA-led team of scientists took to the Chesapeake Bay this summer to determine how to study water and air quality in coastal regions from space.

SDO Spots a Late Phase in Solar Flares

09.07.11 - Fifteen percent of the flares have a distinct "late phase flare" some minutes to hours later that has never before been observed. This late phase of the flare pumps much more energy out into space than previously realized.

New Images Offer Sharper View of Apollo Sites

09.06.11 - NASA's LRO captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites.

M5.3 Solar Flare Eruption-CME

09.06.11 - At 9:35 PM ET on Labor Day, the sun emitted an Earth-directed M5.3 class flare as measured by the GOES satellite.

Satellite Observes Record Highs in the Great Plains

08.31.11 - As temperatures soared across the Great Plains this July, NASA satellites observed the unusual weather from above.

Next Earth-Observing Satellite Arrives at Launch Site

08.31.11 - On Tuesday, Aug. 30, NASA's next climate science satellite arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to begin preparations for an October launch.

Hubble Sees Supersonic Jets from Young Stars

08.31.11 - New movies created from years of Hubble still images provide new details about the stellar birthing process, showing energetic jets of glowing gas ejected from young stars.

East Coast Shakes from Va.-Based Quake

08.24.11 - The U.S. East Coast shook from an unusually strong earthquake for the area on Aug. 23, 2011, centered near Mineral, Va., about 40 miles from Richmond.

How A Distant Black Hole Devoured A Star

08.24.11 - Two studies in the Aug. 25 issue of Nature provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth.

NASA Selects Goddard Proposal for Tech. Mission

08.22.11 - NASA selected three proposals today (one of which is from Goddard) to transform space communications, deep space navigation and in-space propulsion capabilities.

Webb Instrument Completes Cryo Testing in U.K.

08.18.11 - The Webb telescope's MIRI instrument will examine the first light in the universe and the formation of planets around other stars.

Space Storm Tracked from Sun to Earth

08.18.11 - For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet.

Hubble Offers a Dazzling 'Necklace'

08.11.11 - A giant cosmic necklace glows brightly in Hubble's latest image.

Take a Virtual Tour of NASA Goddard

08.11.11 - If you would like to know what happens behind that gates of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., you can now get a virtual tour of the facilities and learn about the amazing science and technology that happen at the center.

Smoke from Va.'s Lateral West Fire

Today, the GOES-13 satellite captured a visible image of the thick brown smoke streaming from the Lateral West Fire burning in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (GDSBWR) in southeastern ...

Sun Unleashes X6.9 Class Flare

08.09.11 - On Aug. 9, 2011, the sun unleashed an X6.9 class flare. Though not Earth directed, we may experience radio and communications blackouts.

Tohoku Tsunami Created Icebergs In Antarctica

08.08.11 - Scientists observed for the first time the power of an earthquake and tsunami to break off large icebergs a hemisphere away.

NPP Completes Comprehensive Testing

08.08.11 - NPP has successfully completed its most comprehensive end-to-end compatibility test of the actual satellite and all five scientific instruments.

DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space

08.08.11 - NASA-funded research has discovered that some of the basic building blocks of life may have been brought to a young Earth by meteorites.

The WINCS Factory

08.03.11 - Fred Herrero realized that to understand Earth's upper atmosphere, he would need an armada of satellites gathering simultaneous measurements.

NPP Runs the Gauntlet of Environmental Testing

08.02.11 - Testing to evaluate whether a satellite is ready for space occurs at several levels. Some individual parts and each individual instrument from the satellite go through three types of testing.

Friday Night M9.3 Light

08.01.11 - Active solar region 1261 let loose with a short-lived M9.3 flare on Friday Night. No Earth directed affects are expected.

NASA’s Low-Flying Air-Quality Campaign Concludes Phase I

07.29.11 - Motorists in the Baltimore-Washington area have one less thing to keep an eye on as of July 30. NASA’s most recent air quality field study has concluded.

SOHO Watches a Comet Fading Away

07.28.11 - SOHO and EPOXI combined forces to provide observations on Comet Hartley 2 -- which appears to be an irregular comet, belching chunks of ice and losing water at a surprisingly fast pace.

Webb Telescope Technologies Helping Human Eyes

07.28.11 - While construction of the Webb Telescope, which has the most advanced infrared vision of any observatory, is underway, its technologies are proving useful to human eye health.

Smoke Gets in Your Skies

07.27.11 - An image showing smoke over the Chesapeake Bay drifting north from wildfires in N.C. and Ga. as viewed by the HSRL aboard NASA Langley’s UC-12 aircraft.

SDO Spots Extra Energy in the Sun's Corona

07.27.11 - Ripples in the sun's magnetic field called Alfven waves have been shown to carry more energy than previously thought, possibly enough to drive the intense heating of the corona and to speed the solar wind to 1.5 million mph.

NASA Movies Show Evolution of U.S. 2011 Heat Wave  →

07.27.11 - The continuing heat wave in the United States in July 2011 has broken temperature records in many locations, killed dozens and seen nearly half of all Americans under heat advisories at its peak.

Last Picture of Atlantis in Space

07.21.11 - Astrophotographer Thierry Legault captured what might be the last picture of Atlantis in space--and it was a solar transit.

MAVEN Mission Completes Major Milestone

07.22.11 - The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission reached a major milestone last week when it successfully completed its Mission Critical Design Review

Landsat Satellites Track Continued Missouri River Flooding

07.20.11 - Flooding along the Missouri River continues as shown in recent Landsat satellite images of the Nebraska and Iowa border.

Hubble Discovers Another Moon Around Pluto

07.20.11 - Hubble Space Telescope's keen vision has found yet another moon (the fourth) orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto.

Being "Secondary" is Important for a Webb Telescope Mirror

07.19.11 - 'Secondary' may not sound as important as 'primary' but when it comes to the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope a secondary mirror plays a critical role in ensuring the telescope gathers information from the cosmos.

Goddard Watches Atlantis's Return

07.21.11 - Atlantis touched down the morning of July 21, 2011, signaling the end of the space shuttle era, a program with 135 launches over 30 years and conceptual roots dating back to the Nixon administration.

Second ARTEMIS Spacecraft Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit

07.17.11 - The second of the two ARTEMIS spacecraft entered lunar orbit Sunday morning.

Sounding Rockets Study Atmospheric Currents

07.06.11 - This July, scientists will launch four rockets from NASA Wallops Flight Facility to study how space winds and charged particles affect the way each other move, causing dynamo currents through the lower atmosphere.

Launch Postponed - Next Attempt 2012

07.15.11 - NASA is postponing the launch of two suborbital sounding rockets from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on July 15 to no earlier than 2012.

New Ways to Measure Magnetism Around the Sun

07.14.11 - NASA researchers have made use of old mathematical techniques and new insights on how CMEs travel.

Hubble's Neptune Anniversary Pictures

07.12.11 - Neptune has completed its first full orbit since it was discovered nearly 165 years ago. Hubble commemorated the event with "anniversary pictures."

Dark Fireworks on the Sun

07.11.11 - NASA has just released new high-resolution videos of the solar event recorded by SDO on June 7, 2011.

Three Active Volcanoes in NASA Imagery

07.08.11 - NASA has just released satellite images showing activity this week from volcanoes in the countries of Eritrea, Chile and Indonesia.

Goddard's Role in Final Flight of Atlantis

07.08.11 - Though Atlantis has embarked on its final flight, work is just beginning for staff at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Sungrazer Comet In Front of the Sun

07.07.11 - For the first time ever, SDO has captured a movie of a comet streaking directly in front of the sun.

Herschel Helps Solve Mystery of Cosmic Dust Origins

07.07.11 - New observations from the infrared Herschel Space Observatory reveal that an exploding star expelled the equivalent of between 160,000 and 230,000 Earth masses of fresh dust.

Peek at Saturn Through Telescopes at NASA Goddard

07.07.11 - The visitor center at NASA Goddard will be open the evening of July 12, 2011, for guests to learn about Saturn and gaze at the ringed planet through telescopes. (RSVP required.)

NASA's Hubble Makes One Millionth Science Observation

07.05.11 - On July 4, 2011, Hubble logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away.

MicroSpec to Capture Youthful View of Universe

06.30.11 - Scientists hope to fill in some of the empty pages of the universe's photo album with the help of an instrument not much thicker than a human hair.

Sunrise View of Tycho Peak

06.30.11 - On June 10, 2011, LRO captured a dramatic sunrise view of Tycho crater.

Gamma-rays from Stellar 'Odd Couple'

06.29.11 - Every 3.4 years, a pair of mismatched stars in the southern constellation Crux whisk past each other, shooting out extreme forms of light each time.

Final Polishing Complete on Remaining Webb Mirrors

06.29.11 - Mirrors are a critical part of a telescope. The quality is crucial, so completion of mirror polishing represents a major milestone.

Images of the P-3B Aircraft's Visit to Baltimore

06.28.11 - The 117-foot P-3B NASA research aircraft on the tarmac at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Tuesday, June 28, 2011, in Baltimore, Md.

First ARTEMIS Spacecraft Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit

06.28.11 - The first of the two ARTEMIS spacecraft entered lunar orbit this morning. ARTEMIS was the first mission to orbit the moon's Lagrangian points and this is the first ever attempt to move from the Lagrangian into lunar orbit.

NASA Aircraft to Study Air Pollution

06.28.11 - NASA's launching a new mission in summer 2011 to gather data on air pollution and expand our understanding of how it affects us.

ARTEMIS Spacecraft Prepare for Lunar Orbit

06.23.11 - It took one and a half years, over 90 orbit maneuvers, many gravitational boosts and little fuel to move two spacecraft from their orbits around Earth to their new home around the moon.

Getting Ready for the Next Big Solar Storm

06.22.11 - In Sept. 1859 the sun unleashed one of the most powerful storms in centuries. This week, officials have gathered in Washington DC to ask themselves a simple question: What if it happens again?

Paving the Way for Space-Based Air Pollution Sensors

06.23.11 - NASA is diagnosing the air we breathe this summer. The low-altitude P-3B aircraft will be viewable along the I-95/Balt.-Wash. Pkwy during the mission.

Solstice Flare and CME - UPDATE

06.24.11 - NOAA forecasters declare a 30-35% chance of geomagnetic storms during the next 24 hours due to a fast-moving stream of solar wind, combined with the CME expected to arrive on June 24, 2011.

LRO Shows Moon as Never Before

06.21.11 - LRO has forever changed our view of the moon, literally bringing it into sharper focus and showing us the whole globe in unprecedented detail.

GOES Releases 2-Week Movie of Chilean Volcanic Eruption

06.16.11 - The NASA/NOAA GOES satellite Project released a satellite animation of two-weeks of eruptions from the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano in Chile.

NASA's Swift Sees Star Gobbled Up by Black Hole

06.17.11 - Swift discovered a series of powerful X-ray blasts coming from a source in the constellation Draco.

Webb Telescope Completes 1st Round of Cryogenic Mirror Test

06.16.11 - The first six of 18 segments that will form NASA's James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror completed final cryogenic testing this week.

Landsat Helps Fight Largest Fire in Arizona History

06.16.11 - Arizona's largest fire in history continues to burn and Landsat data is being used to plan firefighting containment strategies and mitigation efforts.

Firestorm of Star Birth in Centaurus A

06.16.11 - Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble’s panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust.

Hyperactive Comet Hartley 2

06.16.11 - Observations from EPOXI show that a little comet called Hartley 2 spews out more water than most other comets its size.

Chilean Volcano Ash Tracked Around the World

06.15.11 - Several NASA satellites have tracked the ash plume from the eruption of Puyehue-Cordón Caulle around the world.

Climate Change, Sea Levels and Barrier Islands

06.15.11 - What do a changing climate and rising sea levels mean for thousands of small islands that hug the coasts of the world's landmasses?

Pandora’s Cluster — Clash of the Titans

06.22.11 - Pandora's Cluster appears to be the result of a simultaneous pile-up of at least four separate, smaller galaxy clusters about 350 million years ago.

Goddard Hosts Indiana Students and Teachers

06.14.11 - Teachers and students from the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and Indian Creek High School visited Goddard last week.

New Insights On How Solar Minimums Affect Earth

06.14.11 - In 2008, the sun experienced its longest and weakest solar minimum in the modern age.

NASA's 'Age of Aquarius' Dawns With California Launch

06.10.11 - NASA's 'Age of Aquarius' dawned Friday with the launch of an international satellite carrying the agency-built Aquarius instrument that will measure the saltiness of Earth's oceans to advance our understanding of the global water cycle and improve climate forecasts.

Landsat Satellite Images Compare Before and After Mass. Tornado

06.10.11 - Landsat 5 satellite images showing the area between Springfield and Sturbridge, Mass. before and after the tornado on June 1, 2011

Nearby Galaxy Boasts Two Monster Black Holes

06.10.11 - NASA satellites have found a second super-sized black hole at the heart of an unusual nearby galaxy already known to be sporting one.

STEREO Sees Complete Far Side

06.10.11 - The is the first complete image of the solar far side, the half of the sun invisible from Earth.

Two-Satellite View of Chilean Volcano

06.09.11 - Two NASA satellites unique views of the eruption of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle volcano in Chile this week.

Aquarius/SAC-D Launch Mission Status Update

06.09.11 - The Aquarius/SAC-D observatory has successfully separated from its rocket, ground controllers have acquired its signal, and its solar arrays have been deployed.

LRO to Take Extreme Close-up of Eclipse

06.13.11 - The June 15 lunar eclipse won't be visible in North America, but LRO will get to see it from less than 50 miles above the moon's surface.

Asteroid Served Up "Custom Orders" of Life's Ingredients

06.09.11 - Some asteroids may have been "factories" capable of churning out life's ingredients, but one appears to have been less like a rigid assembly line and more like a flexible diner that doesn't mind making changes to the menu.

NASA's