The striking image above simulating global wind patterns was produced by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5), which is a system of integrated models that NASA runs over a supercomputer to study and predict climate and weather patterns on Earth. A high resolution version of the image can be found at NASA here. It is just one of a series of breathtaking simulations recently released from GEOS-5 modeling efforts.
High-resolution global atmospheric modeling provides a...
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Artificial Intelligence
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft in Orbit Around Mighty Jupiter
After an almost five-year journey to the solar system’s largest planet, NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit during a 35-minute engine burn. Confirmation that the burn had completed was received on Earth at 8:53 p.m. PDT (11:53 p.m. EDT) Monday, July 4.
“Independence Day always is something to celebrate, but today we can add to America’s birthday another reason to cheer -- Juno is at Jupiter,” said NASA administrator Charlie Bolden. “And what is more American than a NAS...
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NASA Light Technology Successfully Reduces Cancer Patients Painful Side Effects from Radiation and Chemotherapy
A NASA technology originally developed for plant growth experiments on space shuttle missions has successfully reduced the painful side effects resulting from chemotherapy and radiation treatment in bone marrow and stem cell transplant patients.
In a two-year clinical trial, cancer patients undergoing bone marrow or stem cell transplants were given a far red/near infrared Light Emitting Diode treatment called High Emissivity Aluminiferous Luminescent Substrate, or HEALS, to treat oral mucosit...
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NASA’s Nanotechnology-Based Biosensor Helps Detect Biohazards
NASA has developed a revolutionary nanotechnology-based biosensor that can detect trace amounts of specific bacteria, viruses and parasites. This biosensor will be used to help prevent the spread of potentially deadly biohazards in water, food and other contaminated sources.
NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California licensed the biosensor technology to Early Warning Inc., Troy, N.Y. Under a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, NASA and Early Warning jointly will develop biosenso...
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Nasa’s Nonvolatile Molecular Memory – miniaturized for ultra-high density, low power consumption media
Approaching the limits in miniaturization for ultra-high density, low power consumption media, this capability may enable orders of magnitude increases in on-board data storage capabilities that are compatible with space exploration system resource limitations of mass, power and volume.
Benefit
The increasing needs for on-board electronic memory will grow rapidly in order to keep pace with the requirements for subsystems involved in flight demonstration projects and deep space operations. Ex...
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NASA’s Game Changing Development Industry Day
The Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is hosting the Game Changing Technology Industry Day to engage the aerospace industry and identify potential areas of common interest and synergy with NASA. The objective of the meeting is to enhance industry awareness and understanding of the mid-level technology investments within the Game Changing Development portfolio.
The Game Changing Technology Industry Day will focus on 11 current technologies that are potential targets for commercial an...
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NASA’S SMAP Mission Kickstarts Global Soil Moisture Analyzing Operations
With the launch of Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, NASA has laid foundations for mapping global soil moisture and accurate weather predictions that can help us cope with the drastic weather irregularities. Now after completion of observatory, science operations have been commenced.
The team involved in the mission is ready to compare the collected data with the ground measurements regarding discrepancies of the nature of soil. This very activity will last for more than a year and...
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NASA’s Research To Understand How Space Travel Affects Blood Vessels
Ever rise quickly from the couch to get something from the kitchen and suddenly feel dizzy? With a low heart rate and relaxed muscles, the cardiovascular system does not immediately provide the resistance necessary to keep enough blood going to your head. Gravity wins, at least for a short time, before your heart and blood vessels can respond to the sudden change in position and correct the situation.
Images above: These figures show feed arteries and first-order arterioles from control...
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NASA’s research on impact on the immune system
Studies have shown that spending a long time in space has a negative impact on the immune system of crew members. Medical scientists are particularly concerned about disruption of the development of white blood cells which are our first line of defense against illness.
The BONEMAC investigation analyze some defense cells from mouse bone marrow, and find that their numbers increase a lot faster during space flight than on the ground. Space flight also has an impact on coagulation, or blood c...
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NASA – Newly Patented Technologies Available for Licensing!
Modified Surface Having Low Adhesion Properties to Mitigate Insect Residue Adhesion
Langley inventors have developed a method to reduce insect adhesion on metallic substrates, polymeric materials, engineering plastics, and other surfaces. The method topographically modifies a surface using laser ablation patterning followed by chemical modification of the surface. This innovation was originally developed to enhance aircraft laminar flow by preventing insect residue buildup, but the method provi...
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NASA’s flight deck technology for traffic, weather, and terrain information
Our efforts are to serve as a first step toward the goal of integrating traffic, weather, and terrain information. Theoretically, by providing the flight crew with a display that integrates information about hazards in the airspace, they may be able to fly as safely and efficiently on a cloudy day as they would be able to fly on a clear day.Our group has generated nine recommendations pertaining to weather information in the flight deck of commercial aircraft based on past ...
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Space cloths to help control odor
The International Space Station is a big, climate-controlled environment that houses six people at any given time. As you can probably imagine, these humans produce odors just like the rest of us. So how do NASA and other space agencies make the International Space Station a decent-smelling place to live for those stuck there for months at a time?
There is no washer or dryer on board the International Space Station; no cosmic laundromat waiting to take astronauts' quarters each Saturday morni...
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NASA’s zero gravity plane
A reduced-gravity aircraft is a type of fixed-wing aircraft that provides brief near-weightless environments for training astronauts, conducting research and making gravity-free movie shots.
Currently, NASA uses a modified C-9 plane to create simulations of a weightless environment, both for training purposes and to conduct weightlessness experiments (without the enormous costs of space travel). Until recently, only a select few had the privilege of experiencing these flights. Today, a compan...
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NASA’s High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) -See Earth LIVE 24×7
The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment places four commercially available HD cameras on the exterior of the space station and uses them to stream live video of Earth for viewing online. The cameras are enclosed in a temperature specific housing and are exposed to the harsh radiation of space. Analysis of the effect of space on the video quality, over the time HDEV is operational, may help engineers decide which cameras are the best types to use on future missions. High school studen...
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NASA’s First Steps Toward Drone Traffic Management
NASA recently successfully demonstrated rural operations of its unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) traffic management (UTM) concept, integrating operator platforms, vehicle performance and ground infrastructure. The next steps involve further validation through Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) test sites.
“UTM is designed to enable safe low-altitude civilian UAS operations by providing pilots information needed to maintain separation from other aircraft by reserving areas for specific route...
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NASA’s Zero Gravity Research Facility
The Zero Gravity Research Facility at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio is a unique facility designed to perform tests in a reduced gravity environment. It has successfully supported research for the United States manned spacecraft programs and numerous unmanned projects. The facility uses vertical drop tests in a vacuum chamber to investigate the behavior of components, systems, liquids, gases, and combustion in such circumstances.
The Zero Gravity Research Facility is NASA’s...
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Worlds lightest metal that is lighter than a feather
Metallic microlattice is a synthetic porous metallic material, consisting of an ultra-light metal foam. With a density as low as 0.9 kg/m3 (0.00561 lb/ft3), it is one of the lightest structural materials known to science.It was developed by a team of scientists from California-based HRL Laboratories, in collaboration with researchers at University of California, Irvine and Caltech, and was first announced in November 2011. The prototype samples were made from a nickel-phosphorus alloy.In 2012, t...
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Space Tourism
Space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. A number of startup companies have sprung up in recent years, such as Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace, hoping to create a sub-orbital space tourism industry.
Only through the exploration of the unknown can we continue to grow and evolve. Space is not only important for the future of transportation, commerce, and science; it’s also important for the future of imagination. We still know so little about space and ho...
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Moon Habitat
Plans are afoot to build a manned base on the Moon.
NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program is working on everything that will be needed to make the Moon a place where a crew of astronauts can live for months.
Explorers from Earth will have to build their own habitat, or home. Their home must protect them like no home on Earth would ever need to do.
There is no air on the Moon. And the temperature varies from 387 degrees Fahrenheit BELOW zero (-233 Celsius) at night to 253 deg...
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Lisa Pathfinder launches to test space ‘ripples’ technology
Europe has launched the Lisa Pathfinder satellite, an exquisite space physics experiment. It will test the technologies needed to detect gravitational waves, the warping of space-time produced by cataclysmic events in the cosmos. Having such a capability would make it possible to detect the merger of monster black holes, a marker for the growth of galaxies through time. Lisa Pathfinder went into orbit on a Vega rocket from French Guiana. The satellite is being sent in the direction of the Sun, t...
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VISTA pinpoints earliest giant galaxies
ESO’s VISTA survey telescope has spied a horde of previously hidden massive galaxies that existed when the Universe was in its infancy. By discovering and studying more of these galaxies than ever before, astronomers have, for the first time, found out exactly when such monster galaxies first appeared. Just counting the number of galaxies in a patch of sky provides a way to test astronomers’ theories of galaxy formation and evolution. However, such a simple task becomes increasingly hard as astr...
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Link between comet, asteroid showers & mass extinctions.
Dr Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution and Dr Michael Rampino of New York University offer new support linking the age of these craters with recurring mass extinctions of life, including the demise of the dinosaurs. Mass extinctions occurring over the past 260 million years were likely caused by comet and asteroid showers.
Specifically, they show a cyclical pattern over the studied period, with both impacts and extinction events taking place every 26 million years. This cycle has been linked...
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Astronomers measure ‘heartbeats’ of distant stars
In many ways stars are like living beings. They’re born, they live, they die and they even have a heartbeat. Using a novel technique, astronomers have detected thousands of stellar “pulses” in the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Their measurements offer a new way of determining a galaxy’s age. We tend to think of stars as stable and unchanging. However, late in life stars like the Sun undergo a significant transformation. They become very bright and swell up to an enormous size, swallowing any planets ...
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Mars to lose its largest moon, but gain a ring.
Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, is slowly falling toward the planet, but rather than smash into the surface, it likely will be shredded and the pieces strewn about the planet in a ring like the rings encircling Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Mars could gain a ring in 10-20 million years when its moon Phobos is torn to shreds by Mars gravity. Though inevitable, the demise of Phobos is not imminent. It will probably happen in 20 to 40 million years, leaving a ring that will persist for anywhere ...
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Pluto Ice Volcanoes
Pluto may have two ice volcanoes that spew water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, and methane onto the dwarf planet's surface, NASA announced today. The potential volcanoes were spied near Pluto's South Pole, in images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its July flyby. NASA scientists used the photos to measure the mountains, they are several miles high and tens of miles wide, with large holes in their summits. "On Earth that generally means one thing a volcano," said Oliver White, New Horizo...
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Hot Jupiter ‘Companions’ could shed light on planet formation.
The discovery of two exoplanet "companions" provides insight into the hot Jupiter solar system, discovered from data collected by the K2 mission. Out of the some 300 hot Jupiters that have been spotted over the past two decades, these new objects are the first close-in planets to be discovered. Discovery of two close-in planet companions sheds new light on planet formation. For the past 20 years, astronomers peered into the night sky, puzzled about a type of planet called hot Jupiters. As they a...
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The birth of a ‘baby planet’
Using a novel technique, scientists have observed a "baby planet" being formed nearly 450 light years away. When new planets absorb nearby gases and dust they get hot. A strange light is emitted as a result and that has allowed researchers to watch a distant exoplanet as it is being formed. The plant is circling a star dubbed LkCa 15 and was discovered by astronomers Adam Kraus and Michael Ireland using the Keck II telescope. Named LkCa 15b, and in orbit in a system with two other planets (aptly...
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Using Holography to better understand clouds.
Scientists have just made a breakthrough in understanding how clouds interact with the surrounding air by studying clouds in unprecedented detail. Raymond Shaw, a professor of physics at Michigan Tech, looks at the smallest part of clouds, droplets. To understand groups of droplets, Shaw and the NCAR team flew airplanes through fluffy, cottonball cumulus clouds in Wyoming and Colorado. Aboard the plane, the team took detailed 3-D images with an instrument called the Holographic Detector for Clou...
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Australian-designed suit worn on Space Station.
The brainchild of aerospace engineer, RMIT alumnus and senior research associate Dr James Waldie, the SkinSuit has been worn by an astronaut inside the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time. Denmark’s first astronaut, Andreas Mogensen, spent 10 days in the ISS last month and pulled on the SkinSuit to test its effectiveness in the weightless conditions. Inspired by the striking bodysuit worn by Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Waldie and his collaborators have spent more ...
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Oxygen found on Comet
For the first time ever, molecular oxygen has been found on a comet. Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, currently being orbited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, is the subject of a study published in Nature. According to ESA researchers, the oxygen present in the comet's surrounding gasses has likely been there since the formation of the comet. "It is the most surprising discovery we have made so far, because oxygen was not among the molecules expected in a cometary coma," the Un...
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