NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. -- Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard

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Hubble shatters cosmic distance record by measuring farthest galaxy ever seen! By pushing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits, an international team of astronomers has shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. This surprisingly bright infant galaxy, named GN-z11, is seen as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the Big Bang. GN-z11 is located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major. Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) #nasagoddard #hubble #galaxy #space (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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The California Current System This February 8, 2016 composite image reveals the complex distribution of phytoplankton in one of Earth's eastern boundary upwelling systems — the California Current. Recent work suggests that our warming climate my be increasing the intensity of upwelling in such regions with possible repercussions for the species that comprise those ecosystems. NASA's OceanColor Web is supported by the Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Our responsibilities include the collection, processing, calibration, validation, archive and distribution of ocean-related products from a large number of operational, satellite-based remote-sensing missions providing ocean color, sea surface temperature and sea surface salinity data to the international research community since 1996. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Suomin-NPP/VIIRS #California #nasagoddard #earth #ocean

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First Detection of Super-Earth Atmosphere For the first time astronomers were able to analyse the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the class known as super-Earths. Using data gathered with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and new analysis techniques, the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is revealed to have a dry atmosphere without any indications of water vapour. The results, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, indicate that the atmosphere consists mainly of hydrogen and helium. Caption: This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet 55 Cancri e as close-up. Due to its proximity to its parent star, the temperatures on the surface of the planet are thought to reach about 2000 degrees Celsius. Scientists were able to analyze the atmosphere of 55 Cancri e. It was the first time this was possible for a super-Earth exoplanet. Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser #nasagoddard #space #hubble #planet (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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This animation shows the assembly progress of the James Webb Space Telescope. From November 2015 to February 2016, its 18 primary mirror segments were assembled, with the use of a robotic arm, into one giant 6.5 meter diameter mirror. The mirror segments, made of beryllium, are actually coated with gold, which optimizes them for reflecting infrared light. (The mirrors were covered during installation in order to keep them protected.)

Being able to see infrared light let will let JWST see things that Hubble can't, like the first first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe.  JWST will also help us to learn more about how galaxies form and evolve, about planetary systems being born in clouds of dust and gas, and will characterize the atmospheres of planets around other stars.

A partnership between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, JWST will  launch from an ESA launch site in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018.  

Credit info: Animated gif: NASA/Alberto Conti, Gold Mirrors: Ball Aerospace, Completed mirror: NASA/Chris Gunn

More about the mirror assembly milestone: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-primary-mirror-fully-assembled

Visit JWST's website: http://jwst.nasa.gov

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It can't always be about space, right? Well, technically this still is about space...and the Super Bowl. Take a look at how NASA sees all the Super Bowl Championship Cities! Enjoy the game! #superbowl #nasagoddard #space (at NASA Goddard)

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The 18th and final primary mirror segment is installed on what will be the biggest and most powerful space telescope ever launched. The final mirror installation Wednesday at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland marks an important milestone in the assembly of the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. “Scientists and engineers have been working tirelessly to install these incredible, nearly perfect mirrors that will focus light from previously hidden realms of planetary atmospheres, star forming regions and the very beginnings of the Universe,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “With the mirrors finally complete, we are one step closer to the audacious observations that will unravel the mysteries of the Universe.” Using a robotic arm reminiscent of a claw machine, the team meticulously installed all of Webb's primary mirror segments onto the telescope structure. Each of the hexagonal-shaped mirror segments measures just over 4.2 feet (1.3 meters) across -- about the size of a coffee table -- and weighs approximately 88 pounds (40 kilograms). Once in space and fully deployed, the 18 primary mirror segments will work together as one large 21.3-foot diameter (6.5-meter) mirror. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Chris Gunn #nasagoddard #jwst #space #amazeballs (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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4 people are living in an isolated habitat for 30 days. Why? Science!

This 30 day mission will help our researchers learn how isolation and close quarters affect individual and group behavior. This study at our Johnson Space Center prepares us for long duration space missions, like a trip to an asteroid or even to Mars.

The Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA) that the crew members will be living in is one compact, science-making house. But unlike in a normal house, these inhabitants won’t go outside for 30 days. Their communication with the rest of planet Earth will also be very limited, and they won’t have any access to internet. So no checking social media kids!

The only people they will talk with regularly are mission control and each other.

The crew member selection process is based on a number of criteria, including the same criteria for astronaut selection.

What will they be doing?

Because this mission simulates a 715-day journey to a Near-Earth asteroid, the four crew members will complete activities similar to what would happen during an outbound transit, on location at the asteroid, and the return transit phases of a mission (just in a bit of an accelerated timeframe). This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control, there will be a delay on all communications ranging from 1 to 10 minutes each way. The crew will also perform virtual spacewalk missions once they reach their destination, where they will inspect the asteroid and collect samples from it. 

A few other details:

The crew follows a timeline that is similar to one used for the ISS crew.

They work 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday. This includes time for daily planning, conferences, meals and exercises.  

They will be growing and taking care of plants and brine shrimp, which they will analyze and document.

But beware! While we do all we can to avoid crises during missions, crews need to be able to respond in the event of an emergency. The HERA crew will conduct a couple of emergency scenario simulations, including one that will require them to maneuver through a debris field during the Earth-bound phase of the mission. 

Throughout the mission, researchers will gather information about cohabitation, teamwork, team cohesion, mood, performance and overall well-being. The crew members will be tracked by numerous devices that each capture different types of data.

Past HERA crew members wore a sensor that recorded heart rate, distance, motion and sound intensity. When crew members were working together, the sensor would also record their proximity as well, helping investigators learn about team cohesion.

Researchers also learned about how crew members react to stress by recording and analyzing verbal interactions and by analyzing “markers” in blood and saliva samples.

In total, this mission will include 19 individual investigations across key human research elements. From psychological to physiological experiments, the crew members will help prepare us for future missions.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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Hubble Space Telescope astronomers are finding that the old adage “what goes up must come down” even applies to an immense cloud of hydrogen gas outside our Milky Way galaxy. The invisible cloud is plummeting toward our galaxy at nearly 700,000 miles per hour. Though hundreds of enormous, high-velocity gas clouds whiz around the outskirts of our galaxy, this so-called “Smith Cloud” is unique because its trajectory is well known. New Hubble observations suggest it was launched from the outer regions of the galactic disk, around 70 million years ago. The cloud was discovered in the early 1960s by doctoral astronomy student Gail Smith, who detected the radio waves emitted by its hydrogen. This composite image shows the size and location of the Smith Cloud on the sky. The cloud appears in false-color, radio wavelengths as observed by the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The visible-light image of the background star field shows the cloud's location in the direction of the constellation Aquila. Credits: Saxton/Lockman/NRAO/AUI/NSF/Mellinger #nasagoddard #space #hubble #milkyway #galaxy (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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The oil refinery fires in Libya that were started by attacks on oil terminals in Libya in very early January continue. The stream of black smoke that emanates from the refinery has grown tremendously as the fires caused by the initial shelling have spread to giant storage tanks. These fires are reported to be raging in Sidra, on the coast between Sirte and Benghazi. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team #nasagoddard (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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NASA and NOAA satellites are tracking the large winter storm that is expected to bring heavy snowfall to the U.S. mid-Atlantic region on Jan. 22 and 23. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite snapped this image of the approaching blizzard around 2:35 a.m. EST on Jan. 22, 2016 using the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument's Day-Night band. Credit: NOAA/NASA #storm #winter #weather #nasagoddard

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Located 16 million light-years away this messy & obscure shaped galaxy is a true rebel — Most galaxies possess a majestic spiral or elliptical structure. About a quarter of galaxies, though, defy such conventional, rounded aesthetics, instead sporting a messy, indefinable shape. Known as irregular galaxies, this group includes NGC 5408, the galaxy that has been snapped here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. John Herschel recorded the existence of NGC 5408 in June 1834. Astronomers had long mistaken NGC 5408 for a planetary nebula, an expelled cloud of material from an aging star. Instead, bucking labels, NGC 5408 turned out to be an entire galaxy, located about 16 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). In yet another sign of NGC 5408 breaking convention, the galaxy is associated with an object known as an ultraluminous X-ray source, dubbed NGC 5408 X-1, one of the best studied of its class. These rare objects beam out prodigious amounts of energetic X-rays. Astrophysicists believe these sources to be strong candidates for intermediate-mass black holes. This hypothetical type of black hole has significantly less mass than the supermassive black holes found in galactic centers, which can have billions of times the mass of the sun, but have a good deal more mass than the black holes formed when giant stars collapse. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt #nasagoddard #hubble #space #rebel #galaxy (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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Resembling an opulent #diamond tapestry, this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows a glittering star cluster that contains a collection of some of the brightest stars seen in our Milky Way galaxy. Called Trumpler 14, it is located 8,000 light-years away in the Carina Nebula, a huge star-formation region. Because the cluster is only 500,000 years old, it has one of the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the entire Milky Way. The small, dark knot left of center is a nodule of gas laced with dust, and seen in silhouette. Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Maíz Apellániz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain) #nasagoddard #space #hubble #star

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Low pressure system over the south central United States. Captured by SNPP/VIIRS 01/20/2016 19:30 UTC. #nasagoddard #winter #storm #snow #winter

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The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is known as NGC 3597. It is the product of a collision between two good-sized galaxies, and is slowly evolving to become a giant elliptical galaxy. This type of galaxy has grown more and more common as the universe has evolved, with initially small galaxies merging and progressively building up into larger galactic structures over time. NGC 3597 is located approximately 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Crater (The Cup). Astronomers study NGC 3597 to learn more about how elliptical galaxies form — many ellipticals began their lives far earlier in the history of the universe. Older ellipticals are nicknamed “red and dead” by astronomers because these bloated galaxies are not anymore producing new, bluer stars, and are thus packed full of old and redder stellar populations. Before infirmity sets in, some freshly formed elliptical galaxies experience a final flush of youth, as is the case with NGC 3597. Galaxies smashing together pool their available gas and dust, triggering new rounds of star birth. Some of this material ends up in dense pockets initially called proto-globular clusters, dozens of which festoon NGC 3597. These pockets will go on to collapse and form fully-fledged globular clusters, large spheres that orbit the centers of galaxies like satellites, packed tightly full of millions of stars. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt #nasagoddard #Hubble #space (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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Astronomers have used data from three of NASA's Great Observatories to make the most detailed study yet of an extremely massive young galaxy cluster. This rare cluster, which is located 10 billion light years from Earth, weighs as much as 500 trillion Suns. This object has important implications for understanding how these megastructures formed and evolved early in the Universe. The galaxy cluster called IDCS J1426.5+3508 (IDCS 1426 for short), is so far away that the light detected is from when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age. It is the most massive galaxy cluster detected at such an early age. First discovered by the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2012, IDCS 1426 was observed using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Observatory to determine its distance. Observations from the Combined Array for Millimeter Wave Astronomy indicated it was extremely massive. New data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory confirm the galaxy cluster mass and show that about 90% of the mass of the cluster is in the form of dark matter, a mysterious substance detected so far only through its gravitational pull on normal matter composed of atoms. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Missouri/M.Brodwin et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: JPL/CalTech (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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Reading the ABCs from Space All 26 letters of the English alphabet are represented here using only satellite imagery and astronaut photography. See the full alphabet at go.nasa.gov/1mrIpAl Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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This image, constructed from more than six years of observations by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, is the first to show how the entire sky appears at energies between 50 billion (GeV) and 2 trillion electron volts (TeV). For comparison, the energy of visible light falls between about 2 and 3 electron volts. A diffuse glow fills the sky and is brightest in the middle of the map, along the central plane of our galaxy. The famous Fermi Bubbles, first detected in 2010, appear as red extensions north and south of the galactic center and are much more pronounced at these energies. Discrete gamma-ray sources include pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants within our galaxy, as well as distant galaxies called blazars powered by supermassive black holes. Labels show the highest-energy sources, all located within our galaxy and emitting gamma rays exceeding 1 TeV. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration #nasagoddard #GammaRay (at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)