Science – Page 16

Jules Verne ATV performs swan song in fiery display over Pacific

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The International Space Station did a little house cleaning recently, and it decided that the Jules Verne ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) was just taking up too much space in the garage (not that the ISS actually has a garage). So the European Space Agency worked out a way to take it to the dump, and in this case the dump was actually a spectacular fiery death over the Pacific ocean, caught by a NASA DC-8 observation plane.

The Jules Verne had been hanging around the station since last march, where it delivered around six tons of cargo as well as a little orbital boost to the ISS. But you have to take a stand against clutter somewhere, so the last act of the Jules Verne ATV was to serve as entertainment/garbage run, and the video shows the swan song. Watching the video and imagining what the space station had to dispose of, I think they might need to either address the diet of the astronauts at some point or find a better way to dispose of left over celebratory fireworks (not that they would work in space in the first place ).

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A Perfect Storm of Turbulent Gases

Greg Chaffins

NASA Picture of the Day (click picture for larger image)

"Resembling the fury of a raging sea, this image actually shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen gas and small amounts of other elements such as oxygen and sulfur.

The photograph, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, captures a small region within M17, a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The image was released to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of Hubble's launch.

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 accentuates the three-dimensional 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. The intense heat and pressure cause some material to stream away from those surfaces, creating the glowing veil of even hotter greenish gas that masks background structures. The pressure on the tips of the waves may trigger new star formation within them. "

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU)

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Utopian Plain

Greg Chaffins

NASA Picture of the Day

"A boulder-strewn field of red rocks stretches across the horizon in this self-portrait of Viking 2 on Mars' Utopian Plain.

Fine particles of red dust have settled on spacecraft's surfaces. The same dust is responsible for Mars' salmon-colored sky as the particles hang, suspended in the atmosphere. Color calibration charts for the cameras are mounted at three locations on the spacecraft. The circular structure atop the craft is the high-gain antenna, which is pointed toward Earth. Viking 2 landed Sept. 3,1976, some 4,600 miles from the twin Viking 1 craft, which touched down on July 20."

Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Great Southern Land

Greg Chaffins

NASA Picture of the Day

"This sweeping mosaic of Saturn's moon Enceladus provides broad regional context for the ultra-sharp, close-up views NASA's Cassini spacecraft acquired minutes earlier, during its flyby on Aug. 11, 2008.

This false-color mosaic shows that coarse-grained and solid ice are concentrated along valley floors and walls, as well as along the upraised flanks of the "tiger stripe" fractures, which may be covered with plume fallout that landed not far from the sources. Elsewhere on Enceladus, this coarse water ice is concentrated within outcrops along cliff faces and at the top of ridges. The sinuous boundary of scarps and ridges that encircles the south polar terrain at about 55 degrees south latitude is conspicuous. Much of the coarse-grained or solid ice along this boundary may be blocky rubble that has crumbled off of cliff faces as a result of ongoing seismic activity. This mosaic complements the imaging coverage acquired during Cassini's July 2005 flyby of Enceladus."

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute