Beauty in the Night

Billows of smoke and steam rise above Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida alongside space shuttle Discovery as it races toward space on the STS-128 mission.The STS-128 mission is the 30th International Space Station assembly flight and the 128th space shuttle flight. The 13-day mission will deliver more than 7 tons of supplies, science racks and equipment, as well as

Los Angeles Fire Images

Triple-digit temperatures, extremely low relative humidities, dense vegetation that has not burned in decades, and years of extended drought are all contributing to the explosive growth of wildfires throughout Southern California. The Station fire, which began Aug. 26, 2009, in La Canada/Flintridge, not far from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had reportedly burned 105,000 acres (164 square

NASA Takes You on a New Tour of the Cryosphere

Back in 2002, NASA created a film using satellite data that took viewers on a tour of Earth’s frozen regions. This year, NASA visualizers are taking viewers on a return trip to see how things have changed over the years."The Tour of the Cryosphere 2009" combines satellite imagery and state-of-the-art computer animation software to create a fact-filled and visually stunning tour that shows viewers

Return to Sender: MISSE-6 Comes Home After More Than a Year in Space

It's been eight years since the first Materials International Space Station Experiment, or MISSE, arrived at the orbiting laboratory. During that time, more than 4,000 materials samples have been placed outside the space station to test how they react to the harsh environment of space.The fourth set of test hardware in the experiment series -- MISSE-6A and 6B -- launched aboard space shuttle

Thousands of New Images Show Mars in High Resolution

Thousands of newly released images from more than 1,500 telescopic observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a wide range of gullies, dunes, craters, geological layering and other features on the Red Planet.The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the orbiter recorded these images from the month of April through early August of this year. The camera team at

What's Holding Antarctic Sea Ice Back From Melting?

Global temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are rising. Ice sheets in many areas of the world are retreating. Yet there’s something peculiar going on in the oceans around Antarctica: even as global air and ocean temperatures march upward, the extent of the sea ice around the southern continent isn’t decreasing. In fact, it's increasing.Sea ice at the other end of the world has been making

Satellites and Submarines Give the Skinny on Sea Ice Thickness

This summer, a group of scientists and students - as well as a Canadian senator, a writer, and a filmmaker - set out from Resolute Bay, Canada, on the icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. They were headed through the Northwest Passage, but instead of opening shipping lanes in the ice, they had gathered to open up new lines of thinking on Arctic science.Among the participants in the shipboard workshop