The vintage Super Guppy aircraft is quite a story in and of itself.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is just about ready to turn up the heat. The spacecraft’s heat shield arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Wednesday night aboard the agency’s Super Guppy aircraft.

The heat shield, the largest of its kind ever built, is to be unloaded Thursday and is scheduled for installation on the Orion crew module in March, in preparation for Orion’s first flight test in September 2014.

The heat shield completion and delivery to Kennedy, where Orion is being prepared, is a major step toward Exploration Flight Test-1 next year,” said Dan Dumbacher, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development in Washington. “Sending Orion into space for the first time is going to give us crucial data to improve our design decisions and develop Orion to send humans on future missions to an asteroid and Mars.”

More: Heat Shield for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Arrives at Kennedy Space Center

NASA is the crown jewel of governmental agencies and a central player in the betterment of mankind.

The importance of NASA in the advancement of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, geography, and oceanography cannot be overstated.

I urge President Obama to lobby Congress to provide the American people a method to allocate a portion of their tax dollars to the direct funding of NASA. A simple checkbox, similar to how individuals can fund the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, should be added to all IRS tax forms.

More: Create a Direct Funding Mechanism for NASA on Tax Forms Similar to the Presidential Campaign Fund.

On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn’s shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings — and, in the background, our home planet, Earth. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Full image and caption

NASA has released a natural-color image of Saturn from space, the first in which Saturn, its moons and rings, and Earth, Venus and Mars, all are visible.

The new panoramic mosaic of the majestic Saturn system taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which shows the view as it would be seen by human eyes, was unveiled at the Newseum in Washington on Tuesday.

Cassini’s imaging team processed 141 wide-angle images to create the panorama. The image sweeps 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometers) across Saturn and its inner ring system, including all of Saturn’s rings out to the E ring, which is Saturn’s second outermost ring. For perspective, the distance between Earth and our moon would fit comfortably inside the span of the E ring.

“In this one magnificent view, Cassini has delivered to us a universe of marvels,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini’s imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. “And it did so on a day people all over the world, in unison, smiled in celebration at the sheer joy of being alive on a pale blue dot.”

More: NASA Cassini Spacecraft Provides New View of Saturn and Earth

Here’s an excellent reason why we shouldn’t de-fund NASA. This is an important discovery, sure its not the holy grail of astronomy, extraterrestrial life. However, this is still an important discovery. I’m glad NASA was able to come back after the government shutdown ended, otherwise we wouldn’t be making as many discoveries about our Universe, and at this point who knows, we may still find microbial life on Titan, although it would have to be radically different than life on Earth, since all water there would be frozen solid, and it would be too cold for us to survive. That said its the only body in the solar system besides Earth that has a liquid on its surface.

Cassini Find: “Salt Flats” Surround Titan’s Northern Lakes - Read More about this over At IO9

picture originally posted over at Io9

We now have a better picture than ever of what the incredible landscapes of Saturn’s moon Titan look like. On the wet north pole of the moon, there are many enormous lakes — and newly-analyzed images from Cassini spacecraft reveal that they’re surrounded by dramatic salt flats.

For the first time, NASA has publicly confirmed what many people have suspected and speculated: On August 25, 2012, the Voyager 1 probe exited the Sun’s little bubble in space and began an exciting new journey into the interstellar medium. CNN has more here.

CNN) — At the edge of the heliosphere, you wouldn’t know by looking whether you left the cradle of humanity behind and floated out into interstellar space. You would just see unfathomably empty space, no matter which side of the invisible line you were on.
But scientists now have strong evidence that NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has crossed this important border, making history as the first human-made object to leave the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary separating the solar system’s sun, planets and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy.
“In leaving the heliosphere and setting sail on the cosmic seas between the stars, Voyager has joined other historic journeys of exploration: The first circumnavigation of the Earth, the first steps on the Moon,” said Ed Stone, chief scientist on the Voyager mission. “That’s the kind of event this is, as we leave behind our solar bubble.”
A new study in the journal Science suggests that the probe entered the interstellar medium around August 25, 2012. You may have heard other reports that Voyager 1 has made the historic crossing before, but Thursday was the first time NASA announced it.

YouTube

If I say “meet me 28 miles from here,” that doesn’t seem very far, right? You could take a taxi, a bus; if pushed you might even make it on a bike.

But what if the 28 miles is not on a road or a highway, but straight up, 150,000 feet — that’s high. So high, we’re out of the life zone. Up in the silence.

This video, created by NASA and sound designed by the amazing folks at Skywalker Sound, lets you rise those 150,000 feet on a solid rocket booster, and then, after helping the space shuttle shoot into orbit, you (and the booster) tumble straight back to Earth.

It’s about two minutes up, then four minutes down, starting in lazy loops through the empty (except for the metal groaning) upper atmosphere; then the Earth’s surface swings with the arc of our fall, the atmosphere thickens, you hear wind, see inky, smoky moments, bursts of flame, winds start whistling by, groaning gets louder, clouds appear below like distant pillows, which we swoosh through and, after ejecting something, there’s a snap, parachutes suddenly appear and we drop, then splash into, under and out of the sea, only to watch something else toppling out of the sky nearby.

More: What It’s Like to Drop 150,000 Feet Straight Down : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR

Vimeo

Waltz Around Saturn with this video showing highlights from Cassini’s exploration of the giant planet, its magnificent rings, and fascinating family of moons.

(WARNING: this video may not be suitable for people with photosensitive epilepsy)

The video is dedicated to the memory of Margherita Hack, astrophysicist and popular science writer (2013)
She made me love the stars

music Shostakovich - Jazz Suite No.2: VI. Waltz 2 - Armonie Symphony Orchestra (thanks to Erica Alberti for suggestion)
image from Cassini-Huygens spacecraft mission to the Saturn system by NASA and European Space Agency
edit Fabio Di Donato

This video shows a selection from more than 200.000 pictures taken by the Cassini Spacecraft around Saturn’s Rings in a period between 2004 and 2012, published through the Planetary Data System between June 2005 and June 2013 - If you want to know more about the mission please visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

RAW images were processed to PNG thanks to the Vicar-to-PNG procedure provided by Jessica McKellar

Friday, July 19th 2013 @ 2:27 p.m. Earth will be captured in a photo taken by NASA’s Cassini Mission to Saturn. This video partecipates to the ?#?WaveAtSaturn? and #DayEarthSmiled events
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Thanks to Miura Trabucco for constantly reviewing my works and always suggesting the right thing (and for the title :-)

Articles talking about this video (thank you! :)
universetoday.com
earthsky.org
lecosmographe.com
universoyciencia.wordpress.com
endandit.nl
uzaybilim.net
scienz1.blogspot.it
blogs.scientificamerican.com
smithsonianmag.com
theverge.com
gizmodo.com

- NASA has selected 12 proposals, including two from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for study under Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, which aims to turn science fiction into fact.

The selected proposals include a wide range of imaginative concepts, including 3-D printing of biomaterials, such as arrays of cells; using galactic rays to map the insides of asteroids; and an “eternal flight” platform that could hover in Earth’s atmosphere, potentially providing better imaging, Wi-Fi, power generation and other applications.

“NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program invites innovators everywhere — industry, academia, NASA centers, other agencies — to propose bold, visionary ideas,” said Michael Gazarik, NASA’s associate administrator for space technology in Washington. “We’re working together to transform the future of aerospace while investigating new technologies that may one day benefit our new technology economy and our lives here on Earth.”

More: NASA Advanced Technology Concepts Selected for Study - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Like the fury of a raging sea, this anniversary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17. This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation. The release of this image commemorates the thirteenth anniversary of Hubble’s launch on 24 April 1990. The wave-like patterns of gas have been sculpted and illuminated by a torrent of ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars (which lie outside the picture to the upper left).

The glow of these patterns highlights the 3D structure of the gases. The ultraviolet radiation is carving and heating the surfaces of cold hydrogen gas clouds. The warmed surfaces glow orange and red in this image. The intense heat and pressure cause some material to stream away from the surface, creating the glowing veil of even hotter green-coloured gas that masks background structures. The pressure on the tips of the waves may trigger new star formation within them. The image, roughly 3 light-years across, was taken on 29-30 May 1999, with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The colours in the image represent various gases. Red represents sulphur; green, hydrogen; and blue, oxygen.

Image: European Space Agency, NASA, and J. Hester (Arizona State University)

More: Wired Space Photo of the Day - Wired Science

NASA’s next Mars rover should recover rock samples for eventual return to Earth, a space agency report recommends, part of an effort to find signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.

The Mars 2020 Science Definition Team report released Tuesday sets out the goals for NASA’s next planned rover, set to arrive in the next decade on Mars.

“Had life ever been there and did it leave a mark?” said report chairman Jack Mustard of Brown University in Providence, R.I. “We are looking where life could have once been on Mars.”

NASA now operates two rovers on Mars, the nuclear-battery-powered Curiosity rover, a $2.5 billion mobile chemistry lab launched in 2011, and the Opportunity rover, one of two $800 million geology explorers launched in 2003. The Mars 2020 rover would copy the Curiosity rover but carry different instruments, ones aimed at detecting “biosignatures” of past life on Mars, rather than chemistry tools. Instead of the heavy drill used by Curiosity, the new rover would rely on lighter coring-samplers to collect 31 samples for return to Earth.

More: NASA’s Next Mars Mission Would Sniff Out ‘Biosignatures’