NASA After the Space Shuttle

[lkdood]

NASA After the Space Shuttle

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Rising from fire and smoke, NASA's Juno planetary probe, enclosed in its payload fairing, launches atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Leaving from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft will embark on a five-year journey to Jupiter. The solar-powered spacecraft will orbit Jupiter's poles 33 times to find out more about the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere and investigate the existence of a solid planetary core.

This animated sequence from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory AIA imager shows the evaporation of a sun-grazing comet as it disintegrated over about a 15-minute period. These observations made in extreme ultraviolet light show the comet's material interact with the corona of the Sun. The angle of the comet's orbit brought it across the front half of the Sun. It's not immediately obvious, but if you watch the movie closely, you'll see a line of light appear in the right just off the edge of the Sun and move across to the left. Given the intense heat and radiation, the comet simply evaporated away completely. The comet was probably a member of the Kreutz sun-grazer family.

The terminator of Mercury, shown here in color, is the line between light and dark, or day and night, seen here in an image from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft taken on June 7, 2011. On Mercury, three days are equivalent to two years, or in other words, the planet spins around its axis three times for every two orbits around the Sun. The first Mercury year of the MESSENGER mission ended on Monday, June 13, 2011.

A color image of Mercury's surface, seen by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft on June 26, 2011. Highlighted in this image are Basho, the dark-haloed crater at the top right of this scene, Kalidasa crater, the bright crater near the center, along with Tolstoj basin on the left, in beautiful color. Many different types of surface materials are found in this region, including crater rays, low reflectance material (LRM), and smooth plains within Tolstoj.

This NASA satellite image shows Typhoon Muifa near Taiwan on August 4, 2011.
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[lkdood]

This astronaut photograph taken on June 11, 2011 highlights the nighttime appearance of the southern Italian Peninsula. The toe and heel of Italy's "boot" are clearly defined by the lights of large cities such as Naples, Bari, and Brindisi, as well as numerous smaller cities and towns. The bordering Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Ionian Seas appear as dark regions to the east, west, and south. The city lights of Palermo and Catania, Sicily, are also visible. The International Space Station (ISS) was located over an area of Romania, close to the capital city of Bucharest (approximately 945 kilometers to the northeast) at the time this image was taken. Part of a solar panel array on a docked Russian spacecraft is visible in the foreground.
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[Miami-Vice]

Nice photos... Thanks for sharing!

 

[lkdood]

This unprecedented view of the space shuttle Atlantis, streaking through the Earth's atmosphere above clouds and city lights, on its way home, was photographed by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station on July 21, 2011. Airglow over Earth can be seen in the background.
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[lkdood]

Testing continues on the next generation of manned spacecraft. This is the third water landing test of the Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle (MPCV), conducted at the Hydro Impact Basin located at NASA Langley Research Center in August of 2011. This scenario represented the worst-case scenario for landing. The prediction had a 50% chance of the test article becoming inverted. The Orion Project Team collects valuable data regarding Crew Module stability.
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[chamil32]

hanks for sharing!

 

[lkdood]

Nearly two months after ash and steam began spewing from a fissure in Chile's Puyehue-Cordon Caulle Volcanic Complex, the volcano continued erupting. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image on July 31, 2011. A pale ash plume rises above erupting fissures, then fans out toward the north and east. The plume casts a shadow over the lava flow along the western (left) edge of the image. To the south of the plume, areas that have not been coated with lava sport instead a dendritic pattern of white snow and brown ash.
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[lkdood]

Technicians at Astrotech's payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, watch vigilantly as NASA's Juno spacecraft is tested for center of gravity, weighing and balancing on the rotation stand on June 16, 2011. Juno launched aboard United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5.
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[lkdood]

An Atlas V rocket with NASA's Juno spacecraft payload is seen the evening before its planned launch at Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, August 4, 2011.
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[lkdood]

NASA's Juno planetary probe, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-551 launch vehicle, races past the clouds over Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to begin its five-year journey to Jupiter. The Juno spacecraft will make a five-year, 400-million-mile voyage to Jupiter, orbit the planet, investigate its origin and evolution with eight instruments to probe its internal structure and gravity field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, map its powerful magnetic field and observe its intense auroras.
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[ransing]

ela thanxxx

 

[lkdood]

Crew members aboard the International Space Station capture an image of the Atlantic coast of the United States, including Cape Cod and Long Island, on June 27, 2011.
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[prasadana2]

wow orsum...

 

[lkdood]

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, named Curiosity, viewed on May 26, 2011, in Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The rover was shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on June 22, 2011. The mission is scheduled to launch between November 25 and December 18, 2011, and land the rover Curiosity on Mars in August 2012. Researchers will use tools on Curiosity to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life existed.
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[lkdood]

The heat shield for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is the largest ever built for a planetary mission. This image shows the heat shield being prepared at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, in April 2011.
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[lkdood]

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover (upper left, folded), is being prepared to be moved to a rotation fixture for testing. The spacecraft's backshell (right), will carry the parachute and several components used during later stages of entry, descent and landing. The backshell and the heat shield (previous image) combine to make a protective aeroshell for the rover. The module in the center is the Sky Crane, which will hold the rover inside the aeroshell, then, when it's very close to the Martian surface, it will fire its rockets, hovering, and slowly lower the rover to the ground.
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[rasikabanda]

pattaa

 

[lkdood]

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), one of three cameras to fly on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, launching in late 2011. MAHLI is a 2-megapixel RGB color CCD camera with a focusable macro lens mounted on an instrument-bearing turret on the end of Curiosity's robotic arm, with 8 GB non-volatile flash memory plus 128 MB volatile storage, and an ability to acquire 720p, ~7 Hz high-definition video. MAHLI's main job is to acquire color close-up images of rocks and surface materials in Curiosity's landing area.
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[lkdood]

NASA has selected Gale crater as the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. The mission's rover will be placed on the ground in a northern portion of the crater in August 2012. This view of Gale is a mosaic of observations made by the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Gale crater is 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a layered mountain rising about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor. The ellipse superimposed on this image indicates the intended landing area. The portion of the crater within the landing area has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments. The lower layers of the nearby mountain -- within driving distance for Curiosity -- contain minerals indicating a wet history.
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[mawella]

shaaaaaaa ela ela :X