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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, will return to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, with material from asteroid Bennu. When it arrives, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will release the sample capsule for a safe landing in the Utah desert. The primitive material from Bennu – rocks and dust collected from the asteroid’s surface in 2020 – will offer generations of scientists a window into the time when the Sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.

Explore the unusual eruption of 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located 236 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. A sudden reversal of the magnetic field around its million-solar-mass black hole may have triggered the outburst. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Music: "Water Dance" and "Alternate Worlds" from Universal Production Music

Inspired by the Renaissance vision of Leonardo da Vinci, NASA is presently preparing its scientific return to Venus’ atmosphere and surface with a mission known as the “Deep Atmosphere of Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging” (DAVINCI). The DAVINCI mission will “take the plunge” into Venus’ enigmatic history using an instrumented deep atmosphere probe spacecraft that will carry five instruments for measuring the chemistry and environments throughout the clouds and to the surface, while also conducting the first descent imaging of a mountain system on Venus known as Alpha Regio, which may represent an ancient continent. In addition, the DAVINCI mission includes two science flybys of Venus during which it will search for clues to mystery molecules in the upper cloud deck while also measuring the rock types in some of Venus highland regions. All of these new and unique measurements will make the ‘exoplanet next door’ into a key place for understanding Earth and Venus sized exoplanets that may have similar histories to our sister planet. DAVINCI will pave the way for a series of missions by NASA and ESA in the 2030’s by opening the frontier as it searches for clues to whether Venus harbored oceans and how its atmosphere-climate system evolved over billions of years. DAVINCI’s science will address questions about habitability and how it could be “lost” as rocky planets evolve over time. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight center leads the DAVINCI Mission as the PI institution.

New simulations carried out on the NASA Center for Climate Simulation’s Discover supercomputer show how weaker, low-luminosity jets produced by a galaxy's monster black hole interact with their galactic environment. Because these jets are more difficult to detect, the simulations help astronomers link these interactions to features they can observe, such as various gas motions and optical and X-ray emissions. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Cente

This data sonification of the star V838 Monocerotis, or V838 Mon, shows two Hubble images taken almost seven months apart. A pulse of light from the central star illuminates clouds of dust and gas surrounding V838 Mon. This star is located about 20,000 light-years away, at the outer edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. In this sonification, scientists mapped brightness to pitch and volume, and the surrounding stars are pitched to musical notes. Sonification credits: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

Welcome to one of the most active galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood, NGC 1569. This starburst galaxy creates stars at a rate 100 times faster than in our own galaxy, the Milky Way! Scientists represented information in this Hubble image with sound to create a beautiful sonification with a bottom to top scan. Brighter light is higher pitched and louder. The three color channels used to process this image are each given their own pitch range, with red representing lower pitches, green in medium pitches, and blue in high pitches. Sonification credits: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

When a new NASA space telescope opens its eyes in the mid 2020s, it will peer at the universe through some of the most sophisticated sunglasses ever designed. This multi-layered technology, the coronagraph instrument, might more rightly be called “starglasses”: a system of masks, prisms, detectors and even self-flexing mirrors built to block out the glare from distant stars — and reveal the planets in orbit around them. Normally, that glare is overwhelming, blotting out any chance of seeing orbiting planets. The star’s photons — particles of light — swamp those from the planet when they hit the telescope. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s coronagraph just completed a major milestone: a preliminary design review by NASA. The instrument has met all design, schedule and budget requirements, and can now proceed to the next phase, building hardware for flight. The Roman mission’s coronagraph is meant to demonstrate the power of increasingly advanced technology. As it captures light directly from large, gaseous exoplanets, and from disks of dust and gas surrounding other stars, it will point the way to the future: single pixel “images” of rocky planets the size of Earth. Then the light can be spread into a rainbow spectrum, revealing which gases are present in the planet’s atmosphere — perhaps oxygen, methane, carbon dioxide, and maybe even signs of life. The two flexible mirrors inside the coronagraph are key components. As light that has traveled tens of light-years from an exoplanet enters the telescope, thousands of actuators move like pistons, changing the shape of the mirrors in real time. The flexing of these “deformable mirrors” compensates for tiny flaws and changes in the telescope’s optics. Changes on the mirrors’ surfaces are so precise they can compensate for errors smaller than the width of a strand of DNA. These mirrors, in tandem with high-tech “masks,” another major advance, squelch the star’s diffraction as well – the bending of light waves around the edges of light-blocking elements inside the coronagraph. The result: blinding starlight is sharply dimmed, and faintly glowing, previously hidden planets appear. The star-dimming technology also could bring the clearest-ever images of distant star systems’ formative years — when they are still swaddled in disks of dust and gas as infant planets take shape inside. The instrument’s deformable mirrors and other advanced technology — known as “active wavefront control” — should mean a leap of 100 to 1,000 times the capability of previous coronagraphs.

The primary structure that will serve as the "bones" of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has moved into the big cleanroom at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Spacecraft bus, Roman's primary support element, will now be built upon this skeletal framework. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for exoplanets and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics.

Over the past few years, machine learning techniques have been increasingly used to analyze the vast amount of data collected by the Landsat mission, which has been circling the globe for over 50 years. The data has been used to classify different types of land cover, detect changes to landscapes over time, and map the impact of human activity on the environment. With the field constantly evolving, researchers are developing new deep learning models to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the analysis and extract even more information from the data. Here are just a few examples of how the combination of Landsat data and machine learning is providing a better understanding of our planet's past, present, and future.

In this final episode, head into the Outback to find the fallen rockets and learn what’s being discovered about the search for habitable environments. Music credits: “Algorithmic Agitation” by Jack Berman [PRS], Juno Morse [SUISA]; “Uluru (Ayers Rock Theme)” by Klaus Tropp [GEMA], Torsten Weber [GEMA]; “Epic Earth” by Andy Hopkins [PRS], Dean Mahoney [PRS], Jacob Nicholas Stonewall Jackson [PRS]; “Heading to the Red Centre” by Ian Paul Livingstone [PRS]; “Sahara Spirit” by Eric Heber Suffrin [SACEM]; “Decisive Dimension” by Samuel Wells Ecoff [ASCAP]; “Microscopic Musings” by Samuel Wells Ecoff [ASCAP] from Universal Production Music.

In this episode, we’ll answer that question and check in on the rockets as they make their final preparation to launch into space. Music credits: “Mountain Forest” by Andy Hopkins [PRS], Dean Mahoney [PRS], Jacob Nicholas Stonewall Jackson [PRS]; “Epic Earth” by Andy Hopkins [PRS], Dean Mahoney [PRS], Jacob Nicholas Stonewall Jackson [PRS]; “Connectivity” by Ty Unwin [PRS]; “Driving” by Paul Hartnoll [PRS]; “Glide Shot” by Paul Hartnoll [PRS] from Universal Production Music. Additional footage: Office of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory government, Equatorial Launch Australia

In this episode, the moment you’ve been waiting for. Time to launch some rockets. Music credits: “The City in the Clouds” by Laurent Dury [SACEM]; “Epic Earth” by Andy Hopkins [PRS], Dean Mahoney [PRS], Jacob Nicholas Stonewall Jackson [PRS]; “Nanofiber” by Andrew Michael Britton [PRS], David Stephen Goldsmith [PRS]; “Synth Flow” by Paul Hartnoll [PRS]; “Algorithmic Agitation” by Jack Berman [PRS], Juno Morse [SUISA]; “Street Glide” by Paul Hartnoll [PRS]; “Baba Bossa” by Benjamin William Castle [PRS], Danny Fromajio [PRS], Will Grove-White [PRS] from Universal Production Music. Additional footage: Office of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory government, Equatorial Launch Australia Additional graphics: Vecteezy.com

In this episode, Miles digs into the science behind the mission. What is UV light good for anyways? Music credits: “Neutral Thinking” by Nicolas Montazaud [SACEM]; “Epic Earth” by Andy Hopkins [PRS], Dean Mahoney [PRS], Jacob Nicholas Stonewall Jackson [PRS]; “Tightrope Walker” by Nicolas Montazaud [SACEM], “Natural Response” by Jonathan Elias [ASCAP], Sarah Trevino [ASCAP]; “Canny Koala” by Ian Paul Livingstone [PRS]; “The Final Piece” by Jonathan Elias [ASCAP], Sarah Trevino [ASCAP] from Universal Production Music. Additional footage: Office of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory government, Equatorial Launch Australia

from scratch. Music credits: “The Wilderness” by Benjamin James Parsons [PRS]; “Epic Earth” by Andy Hopkins [PRS], Dean Mahoney [PRS], Jacob Nicholas Stonewall Jackson [PRS]; ”Outback Sunset” by Randall Aaron Foat [ASCAP]; “Everlasting Armenian Hope” by Mathieu Fiset [SOCAN]; “Migration” by Giovanni Antonio Parricelli [PRS]; “Coastal Highways” by Ian Paul Livingstone [PRS] from Universal Production Music Additional footage: Office of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory government, Equatorial Launch Australia Additional graphics: motionarray.com

There are likely billions of planets in our galaxy. With over 5,000 already confirmed, how do we know which ones might hold life? Two NASA sounding rockets are launching from Australia to find out which stars make for habitable hosts. We’re following those rocket teams Down Under to show you what it takes to launch a rocket and make groundbreaking scientific measurements

Born from a swirling cloud of dust and gas some 4.6 billion years ago, our Sun seethes and boils like a living thing. It is the very center of our solar system, and large enough to encompass 1.3 million Earths. Explosions flash on its surface in colors of light beyond human vision and enormous loops of plasma stretch into space. The Sun’s influence extends out beyond the planets, creating a protective cocoon within the galaxy.

The White House recently challenged the stewards of the public lands of the United States, including the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, to produce the first ever national inventory of mature and old growth forests. The next phase of the project will be augmented by NASA laser altimetry data from an instrument on the International Space Station. The GEDI instrument can provide detailed information on tree height and forest biomass, not just in the U.S., but all around the globe. Read more at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/esnt/2023/nasa-teams-with-us-forest-service-to-tally-america-s-oldest-trees Music credit: "Rising through the Storm" by Peter Hall [PRS], Ninja Tune Production Music, UPM "Unraveling" by Maksim Tyutmanov [ PRS ], Atmosphere Music Ltd., UPM Additional video footage courtesy Laura Smith, Harvard University; the US Forest Service; and Pond5.

constellation Dorado. In 2020, scientists announced the discovery of the Earth-size, habitable-zone planet d, which is on a 37-day orbit, along with two other worlds. The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is about 90% Earth’s size and orbits the star every 10 days. TOI 700 c is over 2.5 times bigger than Earth and completes an orbit every 16 days. The planets are probably tidally locked, which means they spin only once per orbit such that one side always faces the star, just as one side of the Moon is always turned toward Earth. TOI 700 e, which may also be tidally locked, takes 28 days to orbit its star, placing planet e between planets c and d in the so-called optimistic habitable zone. Scientists define the optimistic habitable zone as the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. This area extends to either side of the conservative habitable zone, the range where researchers hypothesize liquid water could exist over most of the planet’s lifetime. TOI 700 d orbits in this region. Finding other systems with Earth-size worlds in this region helps planetary scientists learn more about the history of our own solar system.

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow. causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3.

On March 6, 2023, the Arctic sea ice pack appeared to reach its maximum extent for this winter, at 14.62 million square kilometers, or 5.64 million square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Fieldwork and satellites like NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite are monitoring the changing ice pack, and helping to predict how the ice will change in the future. Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface. It forms in both the Arctic and the Antarctic in each hemisphere’s winter; it retreats in the summer, but does not completely disappear. This floating ice has a profound influence on the polar environment, influencing ocean circulation, weather, and regional climate. Since 1979, satellites have provided a consistent continuous record of sea ice. Through 2015, the average monthly September extent of Arctic sea ice has declined by 13.4 percent per decade relative to the average from 1981 to 2010. Declines are occurring in every geographic area, in every month, and every season. Natural variability and rising temperatures linked to global warming appear to have played a role in this decline. The Arctic may be ice-free in summer before the end of this century.

The Hubble Space Telescope has taken over 1.5 million observations over the years. One of them is the breathtaking image of Eta Carinae. Eta Carinae was the site of a giant outburst about 150 years ago, when it became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Though the star released as much visible light as a supernova explosion, it survived the outburst. Somehow, the explosion produced two polar lobes and a large thin equatorial disk, all moving outward at about 1.5 million miles per hour. In this video, Dr. Keith Noll explains this breathtaking image and explains how important Hubble is to exploring the mysteries of the universe.

Understanding the Earth gives us the means to better protect it. Join NASA, as we monitor, study, and observe our planet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year— to learn more and to protect and improve life on Earth.