News & Features
Follow mission news or learn about exciting new discoveries from NASA centers and research partners.
Cassini Spies Wave Rattling Jet Stream on Jupiter
March 14, 2012
New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet's jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth's atmosphere and influences the weather.
Big Sunspot Remains Active
March 14, 2012
On March 13, 2012, the sun erupted with an M7.9-class flare that peaked at 1:41 p.m. EDT. This flare was from the same active region, No. 1429, that has been producing flares and coronal mass ejections all week.
NASA's RXTE Captures Thermonuclear Behavior
March 12, 2012
A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. In October 2010, a neutron star near the center of our galaxy erupted with hundreds of X-ray bursts that were powered by a barrage of thermonuclear explosions on the star's surface. NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) captured the month-long fusillade in extreme detail. Using this data, an international team of astronomers has been able to bridge a long-standing gap between theory and observation.
Sunspot 1429 Not Done Yet
March 12, 2012
his image was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on March 10, 2012 at 12:29PM EST in the 304 Angstrom wavelength. An active region on the sun, seen above as the bright spot to the right, has been moving across the face of the sun from left to right since March 2, 2012.
Apollo 12: Pinpoint Landing on the Ocean of Storms
March 7, 2012
This image shows the remnants of not one, but two missions to the moon. Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean demonstrated that a precision lunar landing with the Apollo system was possible, enabling all of the targeted landings that followed.
Active Region on the Sun Spits Out Three Flares
March 7, 2012
On March 2, 2012 a new active region on the sun, region 1429, rotated into view. It has let loose two M-class flares and one X-class so far. The M-class flares erupted on March 2 and on March 4. The third flare, rated an X1, peaked at 10:30 ET on March 4.
Comet Quest
March 6, 2012
We are excited to announce another free NASA iPhone/iPad game created by the Space Place team. Learn about comets and the Rosetta mission while playing the fast-moving, immersive action game “Comet Quest.” It’s like the real Rosetta mission, but with you in control of the spacecraft: First, drop the comet lander carefully onto the nucleus; observe and record gas jets, craters, cracks, and other happenings; dodge and dart around ice chunks flying off the nucleus; and, in your sparetime, communicate with the lander and with Earth. Find it at the Apple app store at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/comet-quest/id504786625?mt=8&ls=1
Engineers Tuck NuSTAR in its Nose Cone
March 5, 2012
Antlia Dwarf Galaxy Peppers the Sky with Stars
March 5, 2012
The myriad faint stars that comprise the Antlia Dwarf galaxy are more than four million light-years from Earth, but this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image offers such clarity that they could be mistaken for much closer stars in our own Milky Way. This very faint and sparsely populated small galaxy was only discovered in 1997.
Camera on NASA Mars Odyssey Tops Decade of Discovery
March 1, 2012
Ten years ago, on Feb. 19, 2002, the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), a multi-band camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, began scientific operations at the Red Planet. Since then the camera has circled Mars nearly 45,000 times and taken more than half a million images at infrared and visible wavelengths.