Spacecraft and Celestial Bodies

Artistic concepts illustrating NASA spacecraft in space, exploring brown dwarfs, Saturn, and the heliosphere's outer layers.

A New View of Saturn - Black and White

This pair of graphs shows about one-fourth of a Martian year's record of temperatures (in degrees Celsius) measured by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity rover.

Soviet ballistic missile developments. Courtesy of Soviet Military Power, 1984. PHOTO No. 122, page 106. Country: Unknown

Electromagnetic spectrum, illustration

This chart depicts the electromagnetic spectrum, highlighting the X-ray portion. NASA's NuSTAR and ESA's XMM-Newton telescope complement each other by seeing different colors of X-ray light.

This frame from a movie, composed of images taken by NASA's New Horizons, shows Pluto as it rotates about its axis. The images were taken May 28-June 3, 2015, from distances ranging from approximately 56 million kilometers to 48.5 million kilometers.

Water-Signature Mineral Found by Spirit

These images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show numerous large-scale features on Pluto's surface. When various large, dark and bright regions appear near limbs, they give Pluto a distinct, but false, non-spherical appearance.

By pushing NASAs Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major. Read more a href= http //go.nasa.gov/1oSqHad rel= nofollow go.nasa.gov/1oSqHad /a

This graph shows the temperature differences in the oldest light in the universe, called the cosmic microwave background, detected by ESA's Planck at different distances apart on the sky.

Images of asteroid 2007 PA8 have been generated with data collected by NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar. The images of 2007 PA8 reveal possible craters, boulders, an irregular, asymmetric shape, and very slow rotation.

Photovoltaics, yield

Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer has led to revisions in the estimated population of near-Earth asteroids. The most accurate survey to date has allowed new estimates of the total numbers of objects in different size categories.

This plot of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals vast reservoirs of hot gas in a galaxy about a billion light-years away called 3C 326 North.

Five axis three magnetic bearing control code (waves on a computer monitor), i.e. wavelengths.

Kidney scintigraphy. Gamma scan of the kidney to check the vesico-ureteric reflux. The cystic function is normal here.

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON was photographed on April 10, 2013, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 394 million miles from Earth.Even at that great distance the comet is already active as sunlight warms the surface and causes frozen volatiles to boil off. Astronomers used such early images to try to measure the size of the nucleus, in order to predict whether the comet would stay intact when it slingshots around the sun -- at 700,000 miles above the sun's surface -- on Nov. 28, 2013.The comet's dusty coma, or head of the comet, is approximately 3,100 miles across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 57,000 miles, far beyond Hubble's field of view.This image was taken in visible light. The blue false color was added to bring out details in the comet structure.

Calcium and Magnesium in Mercury's Exosphere

Mineral Tells Tale of Watery Past

Laser Altimeter Profiles Across Amazonis Planitia

Mercury Flyby 3 Reveals a Highly Diminished Sodium Tail

This graphic shows the variation of radiation dose measured by the Radiation Assessment Detector on NASA's Curiosity rover over about 50 sols, or Martian days, on Mars.

The places where the red line on this graph extends higher than the blue line show detection of metals added to the Martian atmosphere from dust particles released by a passing comet on Oct. 19, 2014. The graphed data are from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft.

'Bounce' and Shergotty Share Common Ground

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) image of Space Shuttle Pressure Flow using Virtual Wind Tunnel

Hematite Deposits at Opportunity Landing Site

A semiconductor's usefulness is determined by how atoms are ordered within the crystal's underlying three-dimensional structure. While this mercury telluride and cadmium telluride alloy sample mixes completely in Earth -based laboratories, convective flows prevent them from mixing uniformly. In space, the ingredients mix more homogenously, resulting in a superior product.

Electromagnetic spectrum

This image from NASA's NEAR Shoemaker is of processed data showing Eros from slightly different perspectives is combined as anaglyphs or stereo pairs. 3D glasses are necessary to view this image.

At the end of 2018, the cosmic ray subsystem (CRS) aboard NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft provided evidence that Voyager 2 had left the heliosphere (the plasma bubble the Sun blows around itself). There were steep drops in the rate at which particles that originate inside the heliosphere hit the instrument's radiation detector. At the same time, there were significant increases in the rate at which particles that originate outside our heliosphere (also known as galactic cosmic rays) hit the detector. The graphs show data from Voyager 2's CRS, which averages the number of particle hits over a six-hour block of time. CRS detects both lower-energy particles that originate inside the heliosphere (greater than 0.5 MeV) and higher-energy particles that originate farther out in the galaxy (greater than 70 MeV).

This graph depicts the increased signal quality possible with optical fibers made from ZBLAN, a family of heavy-metal fluoride glasses (fluorine combined zirconium, barium, lanthanum, aluminum, and sodium) as compared to silica fibers. NASA is conducting research on pulling ZBLAN fibers in the low-g environment of space to prevent crystallization that limits ZBLAN's usefulness in optical fiber-based communications. In the graph, a line closer to the black theoretical maximum line is better.

Solar-Panel Dust Accumulation and Cleanings

Sleep apnea seen on an EEG (electroencephalogram).

Vintage Photograph. Nova Herculis as it appeared in 1951.

Graph depicting Electrostatic Levitator (ESL) heating and cooling cycle to achieve undercooling of liquid metals. The ESL uses static electricity to suspend an object (about 3-4 mm in diameter) inside a vacuum chamber while a laser heats the sample until it melts. This lets scientists record a wide range of physical properties without the sample contracting the container or any instruments, conditions that would alter the readings. The electrostatic Levitator is one of several tools used in NASA's microgravity matierials sciences program.

The Critical Viscosity of Xenon Experiment (CVX-2) on the STS-107 Research 1 mission in 2002 will measure the viscous behavior of xenon, a heavy inert gas used in flash lamps and ion rocket engines, at its critical point. Shear thirning will cause a normally viscous fluid -- such as pie filling or whipped cream -- to deform and flow more readily under high shear conditions. In shear thinning, a pocket of fluid will deform and move one edge forward, as depicted here.

Earth's internal structure, illustration

This graph based on data from the RAD instrument onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft shows the flux of energetic particles (vertical axis) as a function of the estimated energy deposited in water (horizontal axis).

Sixty-One Martian Days of Weather Monitoring

Earth's internal structure, illustration

DNA analysis

These graphs compare data from identical instruments onboard NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft as they each exited the heliosphere. Voyager 1 exited in 2012, and Voyager 2 exited in 2018. The cosmic ray subsystem (CRS) measures the rate of energetic particles hitting the radiation detector on the instrument. The top graph shows high energy particles (called cosmic rays) that originate outside the heliosphere. The CRS instruments on both spacecraft observed similar, but not identical, increases in the cosmic ray rate as they both crossed the heliopause (the outer edge of the heliosphere). The lower graph shows slightly lower energy particles that originate inside the heliosphere. Both spacecraft detected a similar but not identical decrease in these lower energy particles when they crossed the heliopause and immediately after.

This stereoscopic image pair is a perspective view that shows the western part of the city of Pasadena, California, looking north toward the San Gabriel Mountains. Portions of the cities of Altadena and La Canada Flintridge are also shown.

Regions - Images Relating to the Discover-AQ Program - images and video clips relating to the Discover-AQ Program. Discover-AQ stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from COlumn and VERtically resolved observations relevant to Air Quality , Environmental Protection Agency

Kepler data has increased by 20 percent and now totals 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars; dramatic increases are seen in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which was used to map the mineral and ice properties over the surfaces of the Jovian moons, producing global spectral images for small selected regions on the satellites in 1996-97.

This graph, or spectrum, from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, charts light from a faraway galaxy located 10 billion light years from Earth. It tracks mid-infrared light from an extremely luminous galaxy when the universe was only 1/4 of its current age.

Barnacle

Like a human working in a radiation environment, NASA's Curiosity rover carries its own version of a dosimeter to measure radiation from outer space and the sun. This graphic shows the flux of radiation detected the rover's Radiation Assessment Detector.

Chlorine Clues

Micrograys are unit of measurement for absorbed radiation dose. The vertical axis is in micrograys per day. The RAD instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover monitors the natural radiation environment at the surface of Mars.

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, taken in infrared light, have helped to reveal that a small asteroid called 2011 MD is made-up of two-thirds empty space.

A Fruitful Journey

Graphics (McAlister) Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate 3D Laser Velocimeter for Rotor Flow Studies Focusing of Laser Beam into Single-Mode Fiber Composite.

The sounds and colorful spectrogram in this still image and video represent data collected by the Radio and Plasma Wave Science, or RPWS, instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, as it crossed through Saturn's D ring on May 28, 2017. This was the first of four passes through the inner edge of the D ring during the 22 orbits of Cassini's final mission phase, called the Grand Finale. During this ring plane crossing, the spacecraft was oriented so that its large high-gain antenna was used as a shield to protect more sensitive components from possible ring-particle impacts. The three 33-foot-long (10-meter-long) RPWS antennas were exposed to the particle environment during the pass. As tiny, dust-sized particles strike Cassini and the RPWS antennas, the particles are vaporized into tiny clouds of plasma, or electrically excited gas. These tiny explosions make a small electrical signal (a voltage impulse) that RPWS can detect. Researchers on the RPWS team convert the data into visible and a

These artist's concepts show some of the best known objects found outside Neptune's orbit. Included are Pluto and fellow plutinos, Kuiper Belt Objects, and an Oort Cloud object.

This global digital map of Saturn's moon Titan was created using images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft's imaging science subsystem (ISS). Because of the scattering of light by Titan's dense atmosphere, no topographic shading is visible here.

This graphic shows the daily variations in Martian radiation and atmospheric pressure as measured by NASA's Curiosity rover. As pressure increases, the total radiation dose decreases.

This chart presents data that the Waves investigation on NASA's Juno spacecraft recorded as the spacecraft crossed the bow shock just outside of Jupiter's magnetosphere on July 24, 2016.

Mineral Spectra from Nili Fossae, Mars

Data from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft's Martian radiation environment experiment show that the radiation dose equivalent at Mars is two to three times greater than that aboard the International Space Station.

The potential for investigating combustion at the limits of flammability, and the implications for spacecraft fire safety, led to the Structures Of Flame Balls At Low Lewis-number (SOFBALL) experiment flown twice aboard the Space Shuttle in 1997. The success there led to reflight on STS-107 Research 1 mission plarned for 2002. Theory does not always predict behavior, thus the need for experiments. Three different published chemical reaction models (lines) for hydrogen-airflame balls proved to be quite different from what was observed (dots) during SOFBALL tests in space. The principal investigator is Dr. Paul Ronney of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Glenn Research in Cleveland, OH, manages the project.

Spirit, Too, Finds Hematite

Moons of Saturn compartive sizes.

Various Landscapes and Features on Europa

A massive star (left), which has created elements as heavy as iron in its interior, blows up in a tremendous explosion (middle), scattering its outer layers in a structure called a supernova remnant (right).

Properties of a wave, illustration

Illustration of the body clock. The brain secretes melatonin (sleep hormone) which increases as light diminishes.

This image shows laser plasmas in a test lab at Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., under typical atmospheric pressures on Earth and Mars. A plasma is an ionized, glowing gas.

This graph shows the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Mars, as measured by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station on NASA's Curiosity rover. Pressure is a measure of the amount of air in the whole column of atmosphere sitting above the rover.

A Rainbow of Martian Elements

Moons of Jupiter compartive sizes.

Eberswalde Crater, a Finalist Not Selected as Landing Site for Curiosity

Enceladus: The Plot Thickens

30 Years of Sea Level Rise. Over the past 30 years, global average sea level has risen a total of 3.6 inches (9.1 centimeters), as indicated in this graphic, which is based on sea level measurements (in blue) from five successive satellites starting with the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon mission in 1993. The solid red line shows the trajectory of sea level rise from 1993 to 2022, while the dotted red line shows the increase sea level into the future. Researchers can take the solid red line and calculate the rate of sea level rise, which was 0.08 inches (0.20 centimeters) per year in 1993 and doubled to 0.17 inches (0.44 centimeters) per year by 2022. The dotted red line shows that by 2040, sea levels may rise by an additional 3.66 inches (9.3 cm) above 2022 levels. The trajectory shown in the solid and dotted red line is based on work by the NASA Sea Level Change Team and the Ocean Surface Topography Science Team. https //photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25775

Body Mass Index in lbs und ft, in Body Mass Index in lbs and ft, in Copyright: xZoonar.com/BorisxZerwannx 6988351

This graph of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope demonstrates that the dust around a nearby star called HD 69830 (upper line) has a very similar composition to that of Comet Hale-Bopp.

The First Simultaneous Observations of Neutral and Ionized Calcium

This illustration shows the unusual orbit of planet Kepler-413b around a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars. The planet's 66-day orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the binary stars' orbit.

NASA's CloudSat spacecraft overpassed Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012 just as Sandy was approaching the Atlantic coastline. Sandy contained estimated maximum sustained winds of 90 miles per hour (78 knots).

Models for the seasonal variation in atmospheric density on Mars between summer (low density) and winter (higher density) predict that air density will be high enough in late March for NASA's Mars Ingenuity Helicopter to return to its original RPM. Since September, the helicopter's rotors have been operating an increased RPM of 2,700 - up from 2,537 RPM during Ingenuity's first 13 flights. The Ingenuity team will use observations from Perseverance's weather station, MEDA, to confirm the true air density on Mars before making the change.

MPF Lander Measured Surface Pressure

Observations of the total solar irradiance made with the ACRIM3 instrument on NASA's ACRIMSAT satellite on June 5 and 6, 2012, tracked the effect of the transit of Venus, which lasted about six hours.

NEAR Shoemaker's Path

This graphic depicts the passage of asteroid 2014 DX110 past Earth on March 5, 2014. The asteroid's closest approach was at a distance equivalent to about nine-tenths of the distance between Earth and the moon.

This image provides an example of the type of data collected by the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover.

This illustration based on results from Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the locations and interactions of volatiles on Mars.

MPF Lander Measured Surface Pressure

Laser Altimeter Profiles Across Martian Volcanoes

Gas chromatography chromatogram example with one main component, 2d vector, eps 8

A rock in the Sheepbed mudstone deposit in the Yellowknife Bay area inside Gale Crater is the first rock on Mars ever to be dated by laboratory analysis of its ingredients.

Illustration showing comparative surface warship surface-to-air missile launchers. "Soviet Military Power," 1983, Page 60. Country: Unknown

Body mass index chart, illustration

This series of pie charts shows similarities and differences in the mineral compositions of mudstones at 10 sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected rock-powder samples and analyzed them with the rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument.

Healthy heartbeat rhythm, illustration

This graphic shows the radiation dose equivalent as measured by NASA's Mars Odyssey and by instruments aboard the International Space Station, for the 11-month period from April 2002 through February 2003.

Radiation Environment at Mars and Earth

Soviet military production facilities - growth of floorspace. Courtesy of Soviet Military Power, 1984. PHOTO No. 92, page 91. Country: Unknown

A chart depicting the modernization of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile warhead mix between 1985 and the mid 1990's. Country: Unknown

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