SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Sunday, March 30, 2014

ADRIFT IN ORION'S STELLAR NURSERY..."

FROM: NASA

This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun. As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane traveling at supersonic speed. The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori's cosmic bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across. The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula's hot central star cluster, the Trapezium, located off the upper left corner of the picture. In three dimensions, LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge. The beautiful picture is part of a large mosaic view of the complex stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of fluid shapes associated with star formation. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Expedition 39 40 Launches to the International Space Station

Monday, March 24, 2014

Estrellas y burbujas

U.S. EXTENDS BEST WISHES TO PEOPLE OF GREECE ON THEIR 193RD INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY

FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

On the Occasion of Greek National Day

Press Statement

John Kerry
Secretary of State

Washington, DC

March 21, 2014

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I extend best wishes to the people of Greece on the 193rd anniversary of your independence on March 25.
My home of Massachusetts is host to one of the largest Greek-American communities in the United States. During my time in statewide political office, I served beside a proud Greek-American, former Governor Michael S. Dukakis. When I joined the United States Senate, I succeeded another equally proud Greek-American, Paul Tsongas.

My experience has been enriched through my visits to Greece, and I was happy to welcome Foreign Minister Venizelos to the State Department last year.

From the ancient Greek thinkers, whose ideas and principles inspired America’s Founding Fathers, to the modern Hellenic Republic, the bonds between us are strong and continue to grow.

The United States stands in solidarity with Greece as a NATO ally, and we look forward to deepening our security partnership in the years to come.

Beyond our strong bilateral relationship, our people share important values and cultural ties. We will continue to encourage the commercial, educational, and exchange opportunities that serve as the foundation of our friendship.

We applaud Greece’s leadership of the EU Council Presidency, and we are committed to working together to ensure a more secure and prosperous future for Greeks and Americans alike.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Earth from Space

THE COLORFUL PLANET EARTH

FROM: NASA
On Aug. 3, 2004, NASA’s Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft began a seven-year journey, spiraling through the inner solar system to Mercury.

One year after launch, the spacecraft zipped around Earth, getting an orbit correction from Earth’s gravity and getting a chance to test its instruments by observing its home planet. This image is a view of South America and portions of North America and Africa from the Mercury Dual Imaging System’s wide-angle camera aboard MESSENGER. The wide-angle camera records light at eleven different wavelengths, including visible and infrared light. Combining blue, red, and green light results in a true-color image from the observations. The image substitutes infrared light for blue light in the three-band combination. The resulting image is crisper than the natural color version because our atmosphere scatters blue light. Infrared light, however, passes through the atmosphere with relatively little scattering and allows a clearer view. That wavelength substitution makes plants appear red. Why? Plants reflect near-infrared light more strongly than either red or green, and in this band combination, near-infrared is assigned to look red. Apart from getting a clearer image, the substitution reveals more information than natural color. Healthy plants reflect more near-infrared light than stressed plants, so bright red indicates dense, growing foliage. For this reason, biologists and ecologists occasionally use infrared cameras to photograph forests.

Why is that Forest Red and that Cloud Blue? How to Interpret a False-Color Satellite Image Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington Caption: Holli Riebeek.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Countdown to launch

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Recyclage van water in de ruimte

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Measuring a Distant Black Hole's Spin

Sunday, March 16, 2014

ICE RETREATS AT THE MARTIAN DUNES DURING MARTIAN SPRING

FROM: NASA
Mars’ northern-most sand dunes are beginning to emerge from their winter cover of seasonal carbon dioxide (dry) ice. Dark, bare south-facing slopes are soaking up the warmth of the sun. The steep lee sides of the dunes are also ice-free along the crest, allowing sand to slide down the dune. Dark splotches are places where ice cracked earlier in spring, releasing sand. Soon the dunes will be completely bare and all signs of spring activity will be gone.

This image was acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 16, 2014. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. > More information and image products Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona Caption: Candy Hansen.

STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.