With its blue skies, puffy white clouds, warm beaches and abundant life, planet Earth is a pretty special place.  A quick survey of the solar system reveals … nothing else like it. But how special is Earth, really? One way to find out is to look for other worlds like ours elsewhere in the galaxy.  Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler space telescope and other observatories have been doing just that.  In recent years they have been finding other planets increasingly similar to Earth—but still no...

Patrick Taylor, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, says that one of the main factors for the Arctic's rapid warming is how clouds interact with frozen seawater, known as sea ice. These interactions influence the Arctic’s albedo feedback, which is a term scientists use to describe changes in the amount of solar energy absorbed by the Earth due to changes in the Earth's albedo caused by increased greenhouse gases. The Earth's albedo is basically ...

NASA is preparing to launch its first mission to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth. The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and bring a sample back to Earth for intensive study. Launch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. E...

NASA Goddard Tech Transfer -  the GPM mission is the first to coordinate a network of international satellites (current and planned) to produce the next generation of data on global precipitation. The star of the mission is the GPM Core Observatory, launched in February of 2014. It carries an advanced radar/radiometer system and serves as a reference standard that will unify precipitation measurements from the constellation. To do this, technology had to be developed that could link the data fro...