Severe solar storm could supercharge auroras across US, impact power grids, NOAA warns

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Get ready, aurora chasers: There’s a good chance you’ll be able to catch a nice light show by the end of the week! Forecasters with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) are highlighting the potential for a severe geomagnetic storm on Thursday (Oct. 10) and Friday (Oct. 11). That storm is likely to be in the G4 class — the second-highest level on the SWPC’s geomagnetic storm scale, which takes into account both severity and potential impacts.   Indeed, the SWPC has issued a…

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Sols 4327-4328: On the Road Again

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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read Sols 4327-4328: On the Road Again This image was…

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Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS photobombs SOHO spacecraft during powerful solar flare (video)

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Nothing makes a photo more interesting than an unexpected guest appearing in the background. And how cool would it be if the photobomber were a comet? That’s exactly what happened to the sun-studying Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, a joint effort of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, beginning on Oct. 7. Typically, scientists use the view from SOHO’s Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument to monitor the sun’s activity and determine if a coronal mass ejection (CME) accompanies a solar flare from active sunspot regions. Coronographs block…

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NASA Astronauts, Leadership Visit Children’s Hospital, Cancer Moonshot Event

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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell pose with Eli Toribio and Rhydian Daniels at the University of California, San Francisco Bakar Cancer Hospital. Patients gathered to meet the astronauts and learn more about human spaceflight and NASA’s cancer research efforts. NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of…

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Official ‘Star Trek’ magazine ends an impressive 30-year run in December

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As the old proverb goes, “all good things must come to an end,” and so it is with Titan Publications’ “Star Trek Explorer” magazine, which will deliver its final issue (Star Trek Explorer #14) on Dec. 4, 2024 after 30 years of covering Paramount’s popular sci-fi franchise as their official publication. London-based publisher Titan, the firm that also produces a full lineup of comics, graphic novels, and pop culture books, started publishing the deluxe monthly “Star Trek Magazine” in 1995, prior to its rebranding as “Star Trek Explorer” in 2021.…

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Artemis I Radiation Measurements Validate Orion Safety for Astronauts

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On flight day 13, Orion reached its maximum distance from Earth during the Artemis I mission when it was 268,563 miles away from our home planet. Orion has now traveled farther than any other spacecraft built for humans. Credit: NASA NASA’s Orion spacecraft is designed to keep astronauts safe in deep space, protecting them from the unforgiving environment far from Earth. During the uncrewed Artemis I mission, researchers from NASA, along with several collaborators, flew payloads onboard Orion to measure potential radiation exposure to astronauts. Radiation measurements were taken inside…

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Lead Astromaterial Curation Engineer Salvador Martinez III

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“It took years but it felt like all of the sudden, I was here and everything, the entire time, was preparing me for my role on the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now, I share a place in history next to a Curation team full of the most talented, intelligent and hard-working individuals in the world and all that we have accomplished is, and will be, a part of NASA forever.” —Salvador Martinez III, Lead Astromaterial Curation Engineer, Jacobs Technology, NASA’s Johnson Space Center

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How Do Astronauts Get in Shape? – New “Ask SME” from NASA eClips

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Learn Home How Do Astronauts Get in… Astronauts Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science   2 min read How Do Astronauts Get in Shape? – New “Ask SME” from NASA eClips The NASA Science Activation program’s NASA eClips project, led by the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), aims to increase Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) literacy and inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists by providing effective web-based, standards-aligned, in-school and out-of-school learning and teaching resources through the lens…

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NASA, Collaborators Announce a New Student Lunar Autonomy Challenge! 

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3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This video shows NASA’s IPEx Excavator in a digital simulation environment. Credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Space is hard, but it’s not all hardware.   The new Lunar Autonomy Challenge invites teams of students from U.S. colleges and universities to test their software development skills. Working entirely in virtual simulations of the Moon’s surface, teams will develop an autonomous agent using software that can accomplish pre-defined tasks without help from humans. These agents will be used to navigate…

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Record-breaking ancient spinning galaxy challenges cosmic evolution theories

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The most distant and thus earliest rotating disk galaxy ever spotted has surprised astronomers and could challenge our theories of galactic evolution. Not only does it seemingly exist too early in the cosmos to be strongly spinning, the galaxy also shows hints of spiral arms similar to highly evolved “modern” galaxies like our own Milky Way. The galaxy, designated REBELS-25, is seen as it was just 700 million years after the Big Bang, at a time when astronomers expect galaxies to have been small and messy. Living up to its…

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