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On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.
This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.
Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.
The James Webb Space Telescope has just completed a successful first year of science. Let’s celebrate by seeing the birth of Sun-like stars in this brand-new image from the Webb telescope!
This is a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. At 390 light-years away, it's the closest star-forming region to Earth. There are around 50 young stars here, all of them similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. Huge red bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right. These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world. In contrast, the star S1 has carved out a glowing cave of dust in the lower half of the image. It is the only star in the image that is significantly more massive than the Sun.
Thanks to Webb’s sensitive instruments, we get to witness moments like this at the beginning of a star’s life. One year in, Webb’s science mission is only just getting started. The second year of observations has already been selected, with plans to build on an exciting first year that exceeded expectations. Here’s to many more years of scientific discovery with Webb.
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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)
See the Universe in a New Way with the Webb Space Telescope's First Images
Are you ready to see unprecedented, detailed views of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made? Scroll down to see the first full-color images and data from Webb. Unfold the universe with us. ✨
Carina Nebula
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars, called the Cosmic Cliffs, is the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb can peer through cosmic dust—thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability. Protostellar jets clearly shoot out from some of these young stars in this new image.
Southern Ring Nebula
The Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula: it’s an expanding cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. In this new image, the nebula’s second, dimmer star is brought into full view, as well as the gas and dust it’s throwing out around it. (The brighter star is in its own stage of stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.) These kinds of details will help us better understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. Finally, you might notice points of light in the background. Those aren’t stars—they’re distant galaxies.
Stephan’s Quintet
Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies near each other, was discovered in 1877 and is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This new image brings the galaxy group from the silver screen to your screen in an enormous mosaic that is Webb’s largest image to date. The mosaic covers about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter; it contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. Never-before-seen details are on display: sparkling clusters of millions of young stars, fresh star births, sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars, and huge shock waves paint a dramatic picture of galactic interactions.
WASP-96 b
WASP-96 b is a giant, mostly gas planet outside our solar system, discovered in 2014. Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system as the planet moved across the star. The light curve confirmed previous observations, but the transmission spectrum revealed new properties of the planet: an unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds in the atmosphere. This discovery marks a giant leap forward in the quest to find potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.
Webb's First Deep Field
This image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, looks 4.6 billion years into the past. Looking at infrared wavelengths beyond Hubble’s deepest fields, Webb’s sharp near-infrared view reveals thousands of galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared—in the most detailed view of the early universe to date. We can now see tiny, faint structures we’ve never seen before, like star clusters and diffuse features and soon, we’ll begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.
These images and data are just the beginning of what the observatory will find. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
See the Closest Ever Images of the Sun
Solar Orbiter just released its first scientific data — including the closest images ever taken of the Sun.
Launched on February 9, 2020, Solar Orbiter is a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, designed to study the Sun up close. Solar Orbiter completed its first close pass of the Sun on June 15, flying within 48 million miles of the Sun’s surface.
This is already closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft has taken pictures (our Parker Solar Probe mission has flown closer, but it doesn’t take pictures of the Sun). And over the next seven years, Solar Orbiter will inch even closer to the Sun while tilting its orbit above the plane of the planets, to peek at the Sun’s north and south poles, which have never been imaged before.
Here’s some of what Solar Orbiter has seen so far.
The Sun up close
Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager, or EUI, sees the Sun in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light that are invisible to our eyes.
EUI captured images showing “campfires” dotting the Sun. These miniature bright spots are over a million times smaller than normal solar flares. They may be the nanoflares, or tiny explosions, long thought to help heat the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, to its temperature 300 times hotter than the Sun’s surface. It will take more data to know for sure, but one thing’s certain: In EUI’s images, these campfires are all over the Sun.
The Polar and Helioseismic Imager, or PHI, maps the Sun’s magnetic field in a variety of ways. These images show several of the measurements PHI makes, including the magnetic field strength and direction and the speed of flow of solar material.
PHI will have its heyday later in the mission, as Solar Orbiter gradually tilts its orbit to 24 degrees above the plane of the planets, giving it a never-before-seen view of the poles. But its first images reveal the busy magnetic field on the solar surface.
Studying space
Solar Orbiter’s instruments don’t just focus on the Sun itself — it also carries instruments that study the space around the Sun and surrounding the spacecraft.
The Solar and Heliospheric Imager, or SoloHi, looks out the side of the Solar Orbiter spacecraft to see the solar wind, dust, and cosmic rays that fill the space between the Sun and the planets. SoloHi captured the relatively faint light reflecting off interplanetary dust known as the zodiacal light, the bright blob of light in the right of the image. Compared to the Sun, the zodiacal light is extremely dim – to see it, SoloHi had to reduce incoming sunlight by a trillion times. The straight bright feature on the very edge of the image is a baffle illuminated by reflections from the spacecraft’s solar array.
This first data release highlights Solar Orbiter’s images, but its in situ instruments also revealed some of their first measurements. The Solar Wind Analyser, or SWA instrument, made the first dedicated measurements of heavy ions — carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron — in the solar wind from the inner heliosphere.
Read more about Solar Orbiter’s first data and see all the images on ESA’s website.
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Taking Solar Science to New Heights
We're on the verge of launching a new spacecraft to the Sun to take the first-ever images of the Sun's north and south poles!
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Solar Orbiter is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. After it launches — as soon as Feb. 9 — it will use Earth's and Venus's gravity to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane — the swath of space, roughly aligned with the Sun’s equator, where all the planets orbit. From there, Solar Orbiter's bird’s eye view will give it the first-ever look at the Sun's poles.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
The Sun plays a central role in shaping space around us. Its massive magnetic field stretches far beyond Pluto, paving a superhighway for charged solar particles known as the solar wind. When bursts of solar wind hit Earth, they can spark space weather storms that interfere with our GPS and communications satellites — at their worst, they can even threaten astronauts.
To prepare for potential solar storms, scientists monitor the Sun’s magnetic field. But from our perspective near Earth and from other satellites roughly aligned with Earth's orbit, we can only see a sidelong view of the Sun's poles. It’s a bit like trying to study Mount Everest’s summit from the base of the mountain.
Solar Orbiter will study the Sun's magnetic field at the poles using a combination of in situ instruments — which study the environment right around the spacecraft — and cameras that look at the Sun, its atmosphere and outflowing material in different types of light. Scientists hope this new view will help us understand not only the Sun's day-to-day activity, but also its roughly 11-year activity cycles, thought to be tied to large-scales changes in the Sun's magnetic field.
Solar Orbiter will fly within the orbit of Mercury — closer to our star than any Sun-facing cameras have ever gone — so the spacecraft relies on cutting-edge technology to beat the heat.
Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Solar Orbiter has a custom-designed titanium heat shield with a calcium phosphate coating that withstands temperatures more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit — 13 times the solar heating that spacecraft face in Earth orbit. Five of the cameras look at the Sun through peepholes in that heat shield; one observes the solar wind out the side.
Over the mission’s seven-year lifetime, Solar Orbiter will reach an inclination of 24 degrees above the Sun’s equator, increasing to 33 degrees with an additional three years of extended mission operations. At closest approach the spacecraft will pass within 26 million miles of the Sun.
Solar Orbiter will be our second major mission to the inner solar system in recent years, following on August 2018’s launch of Parker Solar Probe. Parker has completed four close solar passes and will fly within 4 million miles of the Sun at closest approach.
Solar Orbiter (green) and Parker Solar Probe (blue) will study the Sun in tandem.
The two spacecraft will work together: As Parker samples solar particles up close, Solar Orbiter will capture imagery from farther away, contextualizing the observations. The two spacecraft will also occasionally align to measure the same magnetic field lines or streams of solar wind at different times.
Watch the launch
The booster of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that will launch the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is lifted into the vertical position at the Vertical Integration Facility near Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Jan. 6, 2020. Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
Solar Orbiter is scheduled to launch on Feb. 9, 2020, during a two-hour window that opens at 11:03 p.m. EST. The spacecraft will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Launch coverage begins at 10:30 p.m. EST on Feb. 9 at nasa.gov/live. Stay up to date with mission at nasa.gov/solarorbiter!
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3 … 2 … 1… ALOHA!
Sometimes in space, you have to set your clocks to island time and gather for a good Hawaiian shirt day. In this 2001 #TBT, Expedition Two and STS-100 crew members gather for a group photo with a pre-set digital still camera.
Clockwise from the 12 o'clock point in the circle are Kent V. Rominger, Yuri V. Lonchakov, Yury V. Usachev, Umberto Guidoni, James S. Voss, Jeffrey S. Ashby, Scott E. Parazynski, John L. Phillips and Chris A. Hadfield, with Susan J. Helms at center. Usachev, Helms and Voss are members of three Expedition Two crew, with the other seven serving as the STS-100 crew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Usachev and Lonchakov represent Rosaviakosmos; Guidoni is associated with the European Space Agency (ESA); and Hadfield is from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
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The International Space Station Through the Eyes of Little Earth!
Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above our planet at 17,500mph. Accompanying their mission is a zero-g indicator, informally known as “Little Earth”.
Greetings fellow Earthlings! Curious about my first week on the International Space Station? What does a normal day look like when you’re living and working hundreds of miles above Earth? Take a look at some photos from my first week, when I was still learning the ropes from my new roommates!
Welcome Ceremony
Talk about a warm welcome! I arrived on March 3, 2019 when the SpaceX Crew Dragon docked to the Space Station for the first time. This historic mission marked the first time a commercially built American spacecraft intended for human spaceflight docked to the orbital lab. Though un-crewed, Dragon was carrying two very important passengers – my space travel companion Ripley and myself, Astronaut Little Earth. During my three-day introduction to the station, two Expedition 59 astronauts, Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques, taught me what it takes to be a Space Station crew member!
Earth Watching
First thing’s first – the VIEW. After the traditional hatch opening welcome ceremony, I was off to the Cupola Observational Module. Designed for the observation of operations outside the station, this module’s six side windows also provide spectacular views of our Mother Earth! My roommate Anne McClain introduced me to the beautiful vantage point of space. Clearly, I was a little star-struck.
Space Suit Sizing
Next, it was time to get to work – lending a hand with Anne McClain’s space suit sizing. Did you know you actually grow in zero gravity? Astronaut McClain has grown two inches on her current mission in space. Crew members must account for this change in growth to know if different components need to be switched out of their individual spacesuit for a better fit. When pressurized and filled with oxygen, the spacesuits become stiff objects around the astronauts inside, making it critical they fit comfortably. These spacesuits are essentially mini spacecraft that provide protection and a means of survival for the astronauts as they venture outside the space station and into the harsh environment of space.
Space Coffee!
One Café Latte, please! I was thrilled to find out that even in space, the morning begins with a pick me up. Due to microgravity, liquids tend to get sticky and cling to the wall of cups, making these plastic pouches and straws necessary for consumption. Astronauts in 2015 got an upgrade to their morning cup of joe thanks to SpaceX, Lavazza and the Italian Space Agency. Named the ISSpresso, a microgravity coffee maker has brought authentic Italian espresso with zero-G coffee cups onto the International Space Station.
Emergency Mask Donning
Fueled up and ready for the day, my next agenda item was emergency preparedness practice. There is no 9-1-1 in space, and three events that could pose a dangerous threat to the Space Station include a fire, a depressurization event or an ammonia breakout. Here, Canadian Astronaut David Saint-Jacques and I practiced emergency mask donning in the unlikely event of an ammonia leak into the station’s atmosphere.
Preventative Maintenance
From astronaut to astro-plumber, I traded my mask for goggles with Astronaut Anne McClain during a briefing on plumbing routine maintenance. Because the International Space Station never returns to Earth, the crew is trained to regularly inspect, replace and clean parts inside the station.
Daily Exercise
Talk about staying healthy! After a busy day, Astronaut McClain and I continued to hit the ground running, literally. Crew members are required to work out daily for about two hours to help keep their heart, bones and muscles strong in zero gravity. The harness McClain is wearing is very much like a backpacking harness, designed to evenly distribute weight across her upper body and is attached to a system of bungees and cords. Depending on the tension in these attachments, a specific load of pressure is applied to her body onto the machine.
Strength Training in Zero-G
Watch out, deadlift going on. Running isn’t the only gym exercise they have onboard; strength training is also incorporated into the daily exercise regime.
Robotics Operations: Canadarm2
You can look, just don’t touch they told me. Whoops. This was a definite highlight, my Canadarm 2 briefing. That black nob by my hand is the translational hand controller. It operates the up and down function of the 57.7-foot-long robotic arm. The Canadarm2 lends a literal helping hand with many station functions, using a “hand” known as a Latching End Effector to perform tasks such as in orbit maintenance, moving supplies and performing “cosmic catches”.
Crew Group Dinner
Whew, you work up a big appetite working on the Space Station. Ending the day, I was introduced to a crew favorite, group dinner! Astronauts and cosmonauts from around the world come together on the orbital lab and bring with them a variety of cultures and ... food! Though each country is responsible for feeding its own members, when on board the astronauts can share as they please. A new friend of mine, Paxi from the European Space Agency, welcomed my visit and we split a delicious space-shrimp cocktail.
And that’s a wrap to a busy first week aboard the International Space Station! Learn more about what it means to live and work aboard the International Space Station, and click here to see if you have what it takes to become a NASA Astronaut. Until next time!
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When galaxies collide — a common event in the universe — a fresh burst of star formation typically takes place as gas clouds mash together. At this point, the galaxy has a blue hue, but the color does not mean it is cold: it is a result of the intense heat of newly formed blue–white stars. Those stars do not last long, and after a few billion years the reddish hues of aging, smaller stars dominate an elliptical galaxy's spectrum.
Our Hubble Space Telescope (@NASAHubble) caught sight of a soft, diffuse-looking galaxy, perhaps the aftermath of a long-ago galactic collision when two spiral galaxies, each perhaps much like the Milky Way, swirled together for millions of years.
In such mergers, the original galaxies are often stretched and pulled apart as they wrap around a common center of gravity. After a few back-and-forths, this starry tempest settles down into a new, round object. The now subdued celestial body is technically known as an elliptical galaxy.
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Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Finalists for a Future Mission to Explore the Solar System
We’ve selected two finalists for a robotic mission that is planned to launch in the mid-2020s! Following a competitive peer review process, these two concepts were chosen from 12 proposals that were submitted in April under a New Frontiers program announcement opportunity.
What are they?
In no particular order…
CAESAR
CAESAR, or the Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return mission seeks to return a sample from 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko – the comet that was successfully explored by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft – to determine its origin and history.
This mission would acquire a sample from the nucleus of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and return it safely to Earth.
Comets are made up of materials from ancient stars, interstellar clouds and the birth of our solar system, so the CAESAR sample could reveal how these materials contributed to the early Earth, including the origins of the Earth's oceans, and of life.
Dragonfly
A drone-like rotorcraft would be sent to explore the prebiotic chemistry and habitability of dozens of sites on Saturn’s moon Titan – one of the so-called ocean worlds in our solar system.
Unique among these Ocean Worlds, Titan has a surface rich in organic compounds and diverse environments, including those where carbon and nitrogen have interacted with water and energy.
Dragonfly would be a dual-quadcopter lander that would take advantage of the environment on Titan to fly to multiple locations, some hundreds of miles apart, to sample materials and determine surface composition to investigate Titan's organic chemistry and habitability, monitor atmospheric and surface conditions, image landforms to investigate geological processes, and perform seismic studies.
What’s Next?
The CAESAR and Dragonfly missions will receive funding through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature the concepts. It is planned that from these, one investigation will be chosen in the spring of 2019 to continue into subsequent mission phases.
That mission would be the fourth mission in the New Frontiers portfolio, which conducts principal investigator (PI)-led planetary science missions under a development cost cap of approximately $850 million. Its predecessors are the New Horizons mission to Pluto and a Kuiper Belt object, the Juno mission to Jupiter and OSIRIS-REx, which will rendezvous with and return a sample of the asteroid Bennu.
Key Technologies
We also announced that two mission concepts were chosen to receive technology development funds to prepare them for future mission opportunities.
The Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability (ELSAH) mission concept will receive funds to enable life detection measurements by developing cost-effective techniques to limit spacecraft contamination on cost-capped missions.
The Venus In situ Composition Investigations (VICI) mission concept will further develop the VEMCam instrument to operate under harsh conditions on Venus. The instrument uses lasers on a lander to measure the mineralogy and elemental composition of rocks on the surface of Venus.
The call for these mission concepts occurred in April and was limited to six mission themes: comet surface sample return, lunar south pole-Aitken Basin sample return, ocean worlds, Saturn probe, Trojan asteroid tour and rendezvous and Venus insitu explorer.
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"A classic that I never get tired of: the orange solar panel in front of the blue–white background and the curvature of Earth" wrote astronaut Thomas Pesquet (@thom_astro) of the European Space Agency from aboard the International Space Station.
The space station serves as the world's leading laboratory for conducting cutting-edge microgravity research, and is the primary platform for technology development and testing in space to enable human and robotic exploration of destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including Mars.
Credit: NASA/ESA
Aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency snapped this photo and wrote, 'The view at night recently has been simply magnificent: few clouds, intense #aurora. I can't look away from the windows.'
The dancing lights of the aurora provide stunning views, but also capture the imagination of scientists who study incoming energy and particles from the sun. Aurora are one effect of such energetic particles, which can speed out from the sun both in a steady stream called the solar wind and due to giant eruptions known as coronal mass ejections or CMEs. Credit: NASA/ESA
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Spacewalk complete and new astronaut record set! Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson of NASA successfully reconnected cables and electrical connections on an adapter-3 that will provide the pressurized interface between the station and the second of two international docking adapters to be delivered to the complex to support the dockings of U.S. commercial crew spacecraft in the future. The duo were also tasked with installing four thermal protection shields on the Tranquility module of the International Space Station.
Having completed her eighth spacewalk, Whitson now holds the record for the most spacewalks and accumulated time spacewalking by a female astronaut. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 1,243 hours and 42 minutes outside the station during 199 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory.
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of ESA posted this image and wrote, ' Shane and Peggy on their way to their first #spacewalk tasks.'
Credit: ESA/NASA
Studying Circadian Rhythms and Sleep in Space
Do you remember the last time you stayed awake all night? Maybe you had a major exam, or flew across the ocean. How did you feel the following day? The time at which you would normally feel sleepy was probably different from usual. Your eyes “told” you that it was day, time for work or school. Your brain or muscles disagreed. They “told” you that it was middle of the night, and that you should sleep.
Changing when you sleep, or being in areas where daytime and nighttime are “off-schedule”, affects your circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm exists in humans as a roughly 24-hour clock that prompts us to sleep or wake.
The European Space Agency’s experiment, Circadian Rhythms, investigates the role of this “biological clock” and its changes during spaceflight. Researchers hypothesize that a non-24-hour cycle of light and dark affects crew members’ circadian rhythms. Understanding the effects of life in space on astronauts’ circadian rhythms may help improve performance and health for future crew members.
Researchers collect data on astronaut’s circadian rhythms by using a “double-sensor,” which measures the temperature at the core of the body. The crew attaches one sensor to their head, and the other to their chest.
Based on results from this research, future crew members could more accurately adjust their sleep, work and physical activity scheduled to accommodate natural circadian cycles, which could improve productivity and health.
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Solar System: Things to Know This Week
From the people who work for us, to ESA’s ExoMars, to phases of the moon, learn more about the solar system.
1. NASA Is More Than Astronauts
Our employees engage in a very wide range of work, and they come from a variety of backgrounds. To meet some of them and learn how they came to work for us, follow the #NASAProud tag on social media.
+ Learn about job opportunities and why NASA employees love working there + Get to know the people who explore the solar system
2. ExoMars Is Cleared for Landing
A joint project between the European Space Agency and Russia's Roscosmos space agency, ExoMars 2016 will enter orbit around the Red Planet on Oct. 19. The mission includes the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing demonstrator. TGO will make a detailed inventory of Mars' atmospheric gases, looking especially for rare gases like methane to help determine whether that methane stems from a geological or biological source. The orbiter also carries a pair of transmitters provided by NASA. The Schiaparelli lander separated from TGO on Oct. 16, entering the atmosphere for a six-minute descent to a region in Meridiani Planum, not far from NASA's Opportunity rover. Schiaparelli will test landing technologies in preparation for future missions, including a heatshield, parachute, propulsion system and a crushable structure.
+ Go along for the ride
3. This Just in From Jupiter
Mission managers for our Juno mission to Jupiter have decided to postpone the burn of its main rocket motor originally scheduled for Oct. 19. Engineers want to carefully examine telemetry from a pair of sticky helium valves before the maneuver, which will reduce the time it takes Juno to orbit Jupiter from about 53 days to 14 days. The next opportunity for the burn would be during its close flyby of Jupiter on Dec. 11. Meanwhile, the spacecraft is still gathering data about Jupiter, and Juno will still swing close by the giant planet on Oct. 19.
+ Read more
4. It's Just a Phase
The moon was full on Oct. 16. This month's full moon is sometimes called the Harvest Moon or Hunter's Moon.
+ See a video showing all of this year's lunar + Learn what causes the moon's phases
5. Free to Ride
Did you know that NASA offers several other fascinating (and free) online experiences, all based on actual data from real missions. Here are a few to explore:
+ Mars Trek + Vesta Trek + Lunaserv Global Explorer + Deep Space Network (DSN) Now + Spacecraft 3D app
Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.
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