NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has release a YouTube video it says shows how Mars may have looked 4 billion years ago.
When the Red Planet was young, it appears to have had a thick atmosphere that was warm enough to support oceans of liquid water -- a critical ingredient for life -- and the YouTube video shows how the planet could have appeared at the time, the space agency said Wednesday.
Beginning with a flyover of a martian lake, rapidly moving clouds suggest the passage of time and the shift from a warm and wet to a cold and dry climate.
As millions of years fly by the lakes dry up, while the atmosphere gradually transitions from Earth-like blue skies to the dusty pink and tan hues seen on Mars today.
NASA's YouTube "tour" of Mars comes as it prepares to launch its MAVEN spacecraft that will study the planet's atmosphere.
The launch is set for Nov. 18 from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
As the 1.7-mile-long asteroid 1998 QE2 began its relatively close flyby of Earth, telescope images were provided during a live broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, seen on NASA Television and nasa.gov.
Among the insight provided from asteroid experts at JPL and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, which used radar to track and image the asteroid -- a discovery that QE2 has an orbiting moon about 600 meters wide.
The program also featured NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, who discussed the agency's role in keeping the planet safe from asteroids and other Near Earth Objects.
The May 31 QE2 fly-by -- some 3-point-6 million miles from Earth is asteroid's the closest approach to our planet for at least the next two centuries.
Also, Garver at Asteroid "Hang Out", MSL's RAD (iation) Measurements, Lightfoot visits Centers, Space Tech Town Hall, IceBridge completes 2013 mission, Grunsfeld visit to Ames and more!
NASA Johnson Style is a volunteer outreach video project created by the students of NASA's Johnson Space Center.
It was created as an educational parody of Psy's Gangnam Style. The lyrics and scenes in the video have been re-imagined in order to inform the public about the amazing work going on at NASA and the Johnson Space Center.
Special thanks to astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Mike Massimino and Clay Anderson.
Special thanks to Mr. Mike Coats, Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and all supporting senior staff members.
The Huygens probe, brought to Saturn's moon Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, bounced, slid, and wobbled to rest in the 10 seconds after it touched down on Titan.
The first 10 seconds of Huygens' touchdown on Titan in January 2005 are relived in this animation.
The motion was reconstructed by combining accelerometer data from the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument and the Surface Science Package with photometry data from the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer.
After descending through the thick atmosphere, the probe landed on the moon's surface, creating a hole around 12 cm deep.
It then bounced out onto a flat surface and slid 30-40 cm to its final resting place, before wobbling back and forth at least five times.
Vibrations in the probe's instruments were recorded for nearly 10 seconds after impact.
A team of three adventurers headed by freelance photographer Geoff Mackley braved its way to Ambrym Island, Vanuatu, where they made their way to Marum Volcano’s lava lake back in September 2010.
To capture the footage, the crew had to descend nearly 1,700 feet into the volcano. What follows is an amazing feat of nature gushing forth from the molten rock.
According to Mackley, the team came within 100 feet of the lava — the closest ever approach in that volcano.
Without special equipment, “it was possible to stand the heat for only 6 seconds” Mackley noted on his website.
But check out the guy in the protective suit standing near the lava lake’s roiling, spewing edge; he was able to bear the lava’s full sweltering 2100° F heat for nearly 40 minutes.
This image was targeted to look at lava flows in east Daedalia Planum. The flows here have different brightnesses (reflectivity) which may indicate different compositions. (Audio by Tre Gibbs. Enhanced colour images are approx. 1 km across). http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_017347_1585
A video clip of a bullet-shaped UFO was uploaded on Tuesday to YouTube, but viewers are left to interpret the filmed sighting, as the uploader did not post a description.
The clip's first frame hinted the location could be somewhere in the woods, or a remote area. The camera holder then looked up the sky, and the strange-looking flying object was seen. Aside from its unusual shape, the UFOs chemtrail also puzzled viewers.
The title of the clip is written in Turkish characters. But there is no absolutely certainty that the video was taken in Turkey.
However, a glance at the flying object would show a really unusual shape of an aircraft. The stream of vapor smoke it left on its trail made the sighting even more peculiar.
"But one look at the object is enough to say that it is unlike any airplane, jet or helicopter ever filmed before," Examiner.com reported.
Unfortunately, no one could get a closer look on the silver-colored subject. Zooming in would only break the image because it requires a cutting-edge camera for film viewing.
Without distinct wings, rotor blades, and flashing navigational lights, the "bullet video" shows nothing less than a legitimate unidentified flying object.
It seemed the aircraft was being propelled by some kind of an engine. As to the manner of flight operation, it seemed there is an entirely different method for the bullet UFO.
No explanation has come up on the bullet UFO just yet. Are the aliens on to some 'Earthling' things?
MSL, which is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet the night of Aug. 5, is a car-sized nuclear-powered rover designed to search for signs of life on Mars, past or present.
It is the largest robot that engineers can currently land on the Martian surface and its descent from space includes a complex list of events that have to happen perfectly to ensure success.
After entering the top of the Martian atmosphere, MSL will use its heat shield to slow down to slightly above Mach 2.
It will then deploy the largest supersonic parachute ever used on an interplanetary mission to get to landing speed.
Once the parachute is jettisoned, the spacecraft will fire up rockets and slow down even further.
A UFO-like platform will gingerly lower the rover down on wires until, about 25 feet above the surface of Mars, MSL will be placed on the ground, hopefully ready to roll.
Once it has brought it quarry to the ground, the platform will fly off and crash far from the rover to prevent any damage.
“This is the hardest NASA robotic mission ever attempted,” said John Gruntzfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, during a JPL press conference on July 16.
n the game, now available at the Xbox Live Marketplace, players use the Kinect to take control of the spacecraft, moving their body to drive the rover as it descends to the Martian surface.
People can attempt to pilot the rover’s shell through the top of the atmosphere, deploy the parachutes at the right time, and carefully lower the rover down on the sky crane.
Though players can crash the rover as often as they want, NASA officials will have to go through the events in real life fairly soon.
The hair-raising seven-minute sequence has got engineers and scientists at JPL nervous. Any one of the events in the landing sequence has the potential to cause a fatal problem, said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars exploration program.
But they are confident that they have checked and rechecked every system and the only thing left to do is wait and see if it all works as planned.
Even after the seven minutes of terror, it could take five to ten minutes before officials back on Earth know if the sequence worked because communications satellites around Mars might not be in the right configuration to beam back the news right away.
If you don’t have access to an Xbox or want to drive the rover around on the ground after your picture-perfect landing, NASA currently has a game in beta testing called Explore Mars: Curiosity that lets you take the helm of the robot once on the surface.
Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers landed safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan near the town of Dzhezkazgan on July 1, 2012, after bidding farewell to the Expedition 32 crew and undocking their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft from the International Space Station.
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