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Bursting at the Seams

February 23rd, 2010 |

Author: admin

Plumes shoot from Enceladus

› Full resolution jpeg (369 Kb)
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed “tiger stripes” near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.

More than 30 individual jets of different sizes can be seen in this image and more than 20 of them had not been identified before. At least one jet spouting prominently in previous images now appears less powerful.

This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew past Enceladus and through the jets on Nov. 21, 2009. (For other images captured during the same flyby, see PIA11686 and PIA11687). Imaging the jets over time will allow Cassini scientists to study the consistency of their activity.

The south pole of the moon lies near the limb in the top left quadrant of the mosaic, near the large jet that is second from left. Lit terrain seen here is on the leading hemisphere of Enceladus (504 kilometers, 313 miles across).

Cassini scientists continue to study the question of whether reservoirs of liquid water exist beneath the surface of the moon. See PIA11114 and PIA08386 to learn more.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 14,000 kilometers (9,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 145 degrees. Image scale is 81 meters (267 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

› Full resolution jpeg (369 Kb)

Source :

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11688.html

Posted in Nasa, Space |

Tags: Enceladus, fissures, Nasa, Saturn |

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Space shuttles (slightly used) — now on sale!

January 17th, 2010 |

Author: admin

SpaceShuttleForSale WASHINGTON — With more than 100 million miles apiece on the odometer, NASA’s Endeavour and Atlantis space shuttles are well-used — but lovingly cared for.

And now they’re on sale.

NASA announced Friday that it was slashing the price for the orbiters to $28.8 million apiece to help encourage buyers from schools and museums to snap them up once the agency retires the shuttle fleet at the end of the year. In December 2008, NASA put the per-shuttle price at $42 million.

“Our intent is to have them displayed in the United States and have them shown to as many citizens as possible,” said NASA spokesman Michael Curie, who said it was unlikely that oil tycoons or dot-com billionaires would win the bid for that reason.

‘The intent is not for NASA to make money,” Curie said.

He said the original price tag was higher because NASA wanted prospective buyers — rather than the agency itself — to pay to make the orbiters safe for display. NASA now plans to do that work and cut the price as a result.

Willing buyers, however, still are responsible for shipping and handling.

About 20 prospective buyers have expressed interest so far, Curie said, and customers have until Feb. 19 to submit their bids. If everything goes smoothly, NASA expects the two orbiters could be in place by July 2011.

The National Air and Space Museum already has laid claim to Discovery, the third and final orbiter in the shuttle fleet. It already has the test shuttle Enterprise — which never flew into space — on display, and Curie said NASA could help the museum unload Enterprise to another prospective buyer if officials wanted to and if there was interest.

“But that’s a lot of ifs,” Curie said.

Kennedy Space Center has said it wants one of the orbiters for display at its visitor’s center.

Source:

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2010/01/space-shuttles-slightly-used-now-on-sale.html

Posted in Nasa, Space |

Tags: Naas, sale, Space, Space Shuttle |

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Newest US weather satellite captures Hurricane Bill in a “full-disk” view of the Earth.

August 19th, 2009 |

Author: admin

Remote-sensing scientists call a satellite image that captures an entire hemisphere of the Earth in one view a “full-disk” image. The delivery of the first full-disk image from a newly launched weather satellite is an exciting milestone in the mission. It provides scientists and engineers with incontrovertible evidence that a new satellite—as well as the communications systems needed to deliver the images back to Earth—is ready to do its job.

On August 17, 2009, at 1:31 p.m. EST, the latest NASA/NOAA geostationary weather satellite, called GOES-14, returned its first full-disk thermal infrared (IR) image, showing radiation with a wavelength of 10.7 micrometers emanating from Earth. Infrared images are useful because they provide information about temperatures. A wavelength of 10.7 micrometers is 15 times longer than the longest wavelength of light (red) that people can see, but scientists can turn the data into a picture by having a computer display cold temperatures as bright white and hot temperatures as black. The hottest (blackest) features in the scene are land surfaces; the coldest (whitest) features in the scene are clouds.