Category: space.com

A new self-portrait by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity shows the dusty robot hard at work on the slopes of a towering Red Planet mountain. 

Curiosity took the selfie on Jan. 23 from Vera Rubin Ridge, a site about 1,000 vertical feet (300 meters) up the flanks of Mount Sharp. This massif rises about 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky from the center of Gale Crater; its peak is obscured by Curiosity’s head-like mast in the new photo.

Curiosity landed on the floor of the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale in August 2012 and has been working its way up through Mount Sharp’s foothills since September 2014. [10 Awesome Space Robot Selfies]

“The mountain’s base provides access to layers formed over millions of years,” NASA officials wrote in a description of the selfie, which was released Wednesday (Jan. 31). “These layers formed in the presence of water — likely due to a lake or lakes where sediments accumulated, which formed these layers inside Gale Crater.”

Curiosity has been exploring Vera Rubin Ridge for several months now. Over the next few weeks, the mission team plans to drive the rover up the slope directly behind it in the photo, to check out some clay-rich deposits, NASA officials said.

The selfie is a mosaic composed of dozens of photos captured by Curiosity’s Mars Hands Lens Imager, which sits at the end of the rover’s 7-foot-long (2.1 m) robotic arm. This flexible arm wasn’t in any of the shots that make up the selfie, which explains why the photo looks like something a Martian friend of Curiosity’s could have taken. (NASA has explained all of this before.)

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Fans of the Horsehead and Crab nebulas, take note: There’s another giant galactic animal on the scene.

Two interacting galaxies about 23 million light-years from Earth look just like a penguin and its treasured egg in a spectacular new image that combines data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.

The penguin is NGC 2336, which was probably once a fairly conventional spiral galaxy that looked a lot like our own Milky Way, NASA officials said. [Strange Nebula Shapes: What do YOU See in These Pictures?]

“Rich with newly formed hot stars, seen in visible light from Hubble as bluish filaments, its shape has now been twisted and distorted as it responds to the gravitational tugs of its neighbor,” the officials wrote today (Feb. 1) in a description of the newly released photo. “Strands of gas mixed with dust stand out as red filaments detected at longer wavelengths of infrared light seen by Spitzer.”

That neighbor is the “egg,” a galaxy known as NGC 2937. There’s no discernible star formation going on in NGC 2937, whose uniform greenish glow is produced by relatively old stars, NASA officials said. 

Eventually, the penguin and the egg will join to form a single galaxy. Such mergers are common and important steps in the evolution of large galaxies. Our own Milky Way, for example, will merge with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years, scientists say.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

It’s an extreme version of trash into treasure: New research finds that microbes can transform poop into fuel for edible bacteria.

The process could be one way to provide food for astronauts on deep-space missions, while also solving the intractable problem of what to do with those astronauts’ waste. [How to Use the Bathroom in Space]

“It’s a little strange, but the concept would be a little bit like Marmite or Vegemite where you’re eating a smear of ‘microbial goo,’” lead study author Christopher House, a geoscientist at Penn State who led the study, said in a statement.

The study was published in November in the journal Life Sciences in Space Research.

Recycled waste

The new method is rather unappetizing, but workable: Waste is pumped into a system of cylinders that act as microbial reactors, allowing hand-picked microbes to break down urine and feces via anaerobic (oxygen-free) digestion. The components extracted by the microbes then go into a sort of microbial farm, where they’re used to feed the growth of a different group of bacteria that humans can eat. [7 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space]

More specifically, the researchers used methane from recycled pee and poop to grow Methylococcus capsulatus, a bacterium that is already used on Earth as animal feed. The bacteria grown by House and his team were 52 percent protein and 36 percent fat.

The researchers also tested systems designed to prevent the growth of dangerous microbes among the edible bacteria. They created very basic, or alkaline, microbe farms with a pH of 11 on the 14-point scale. In this environment, they were able to grow Halomonas desiderata, a bacterium with 15 percent protein content and 7 percent fat content. It’s unclear whether these relatively low levels would make the bacteria unsuitable for food, the researchers wrote. In another experiment, the researchers raised the temperature of their microbe farm to 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius) to discourage pathogens and successfully grew the heat-tolerant bacterium Thermus aquaticus. Those microbes were 61 percent protein and 16 percent fat, they found.

Uses for poop

Over 13 hours, the research team was able to remove between 49 percent and 59 percent of solids from the waste stream, which is faster than traditional waste management, House said. The food production happened quickly, too.

“It’s faster than growing tomatoes or potatoes,” House said.

Poop is a problem in space. On the International Space Station, astronaut urine gets filtered and recycled into drinking water, according to NASA, but poop gets jettisoned with other trash to be incinerated in Earth’s atmosphere.

The foundation Inspiration Mars, which aimed to send a man and a woman on a Mars flyby in January 2018, reportedly planned to use astronaut feces to line the walls of the spacecraft, creating a shield against dangerous cosmic radiation. But funding for Inspiration Mars never materialized, and the foundation’s former website is now defunct.

The poop-to-microbial-food system still needs fine-tuning before it could work aboard a real spacecraft, House said. The team tested the components separately, but now must come up with a way to integrate them into one system.

Original article on Live Science.

Two cosmonauts took a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Feb. 2) to tackle a long-awaited upgrade to the communications system on the Russian side of the orbiting laboratory. They also set a new record for the longest Russian spacewalk, after spending 8 hours and 13 minutes working outside the station.

Clad in their Russian Orlan spacesuits, Expedition 54 Cmdr. Alexander Misurkin and flight engineer Anton Shkaplerov opened the hatch of the Pirs airlock at 10:35 a.m. EST (1535 GMT), officially marking the start of their spacewalk. 

“It is Groundhog Day … and as cosmonauts have emerged from the Pirs docking compartment, ultimately they’ll see their shadow … thus earning 6 more hours of spacewalk activity,” NASA TV commentator Rob Navias said during a live webcast of the spacewalk as the cosmonaut emerged from the airlock. [Space Station Photos: Expedition 54 Crew in Orbit] 

An old electronics box drifts through space after Russian cosmonauts tossed it away from the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Feb. 2, 2018.

Credit: NASA TV

The cosmonauts spent the day replacing an electronics box for a high-gain communications antenna outside the Zvezda service module. Instead of holding on to the outdated piece of equipment, the cosmonauts tossed the original electronics box overboard, dooming it to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The old box was idle on the station for 17 years as Russia struggled to get its new Luch satellite networks up and running in the middle of a funding crisis.

When the Russian space agency Roscosmos launched the antenna and its original box in 2000, the equipment was supposed to enable communication between the ISS and a new suite of Luch satellites that had yet to be launched. But it took over a decade for Roscosmos to launch any new Luch satellites.

By that time, the antenna’s electronics — made in the 1990s — were obsolete and incompatible with new satellite technology. In order to work, the antenna needed updated electronics.

“This will upgrade the performance telemetry and high-data-rate capability on the Russian segment of the ISS and make it similar to the data rate seen in the U.S. Ku band communications system on the U.S. segment,” which uses NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, Navias said.

Spacewalker Alexander Misurkin jettisoned, or tossed, an old electronics box removed from the station into space. It will eventually re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. https://t.co/yuOTrZ4Jut pic.twitter.com/pWFkcKQeOa

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) February 2, 2018

Removing the old electronics box was a bit of a hassle for today’s spacewalkers, as the device was not meant to be serviced or replaced in orbit, Navias said. Flight controllers anticipated that the cosmonauts would have a hard time handling small bolts, cables and electrical connections, as those were not designed to be handled by spacewalkers wearing bulky EVA gloves.

Jettisoned junk

Instead of storing the old box somewhere on the station, as spacewalkers often do, the cosmonauts jettisoned the outdated piece of equipment. To ensure the debris wouldn’t hit the ISS, they tossed it behind the station. The box weighs 60 lbs. (27 kilograms) and is about the size of a carry-on suitcase.

But that box wasn’t the only thing the cosmonauts intentionally dropped over the Earth; after wiping down their spacesuits in the last few minutes of the spacewalk, they also jettisoned two towels. They did this to prevent any “foreign debris” from getting inside the space station, Navias said.

The jettisoned electronics box floats away from the International Space Station. It will eventually fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

Credit: NASA TV

Their biggest obstacle took them by surprise about 7 hours into the spacewalk, when the high-gain antenna failed to deploy. Ground controllers had moved the antenna into the launch configuration — meaning it was folded up — to prepare for today’s spacewalk. But when they sent the command for the antenna to unfold back into its operational configuration, it got stuck.

Misurkin and Shkaplerov spent several minutes wrestling with the antenna to fix the jammed equipment. With a little elbow grease, they managed to deploy the antenna. However, it ended up deploying into the wrong position, pointing 180 degrees away from where it should have been pointing. Despite its askew position, the antenna “is operating and in good shape,” Navias said. Roscosmos plans to investigate the issue to determine what, if anything, needs to be done.

Record-setting spacewalk

After fumbling around with the antenna and electronics box set them behind schedule, the cosmonauts ended up breaking the record for the longest Russian spacewalk in history. They beat the previous record by just 5 minutes. That record was set by Expedition 38 cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanski on Dec. 27, 2013. 

This was the second spacewalk at the ISS this year and the 207th in all. Misurkin has now completed four spacewalks in his cosmonaut career and has accrued 28 hours and 14 minutes of total spacewalking time. This was Shkaplerov’s second spacewalk, and he has now accrued 14 hours and 28 minutes.

Cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin (left) and Anton Shkaplerov are pictured in their Russian Orlan spacesuits during a fit check on Jan. 31, 2018.

Credit: NASA

On Feb. 15, two of the cosmonauts’ Expedition 54 crewmates will take another spacewalk. NASA astronaut Scott Tingle and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai will head out of the space station to continue working on one of two latching end effectors (LEE) or “hands” on the Canadarm2 robotic arm. (This spacewalk was rescheduled from Jan. 29.)

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The midpoint of the 89-day interval that runs from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox occurs this weekend — a natural “halftime for winter.” Here’s what to watch for in the night sky.

The days that marked the four major divisions of the year were once called “quarter days”; they originally marked the equinoxes and solstices, and each fit readily into the rhythm of the ways people farmed. In our 12-month calendar, the time span from an equinox to a solstice (or vice versa) lasted three months — a “season,” so to speak. 

And then there were the “cross quarter days,” which marked the midpoint between a solstice and an equinox. One such day is observed each year on Feb. 2 and is known asCandlemas. The first of the four cross quarter days of the year or the middle of the winter season, it comes halfway between the December solstice and the March equinox. [Night Sky, January 2018: What You Can See This Month]

According to Almanac.com, “Candlemas acquired its English name from the candles lit that day in churches to celebrate the presentation of the Christ Child in the temple of Jerusalem.”

But in actuality, winter’s midpoint this year does not occur on Candlemas but rather on the following day, Feb. 3. The halfway point comes on Saturday at 11:21 p.m. EST (0421 on Sunday GMT) — and perhaps because it occurs on Super Bowl weekend this year, we could call it “winter halftime.”

Improvement comes slowly

Although the altitude of the sun has been climbing and the length of daylight has been increasing since the winter solstice on Dec. 21, any changes up to this point have been relatively subtle. On the first day of winter in New York City, for example, sunset occurred at 4:32 p.m. local time, and the length of daylight (from sunrise to sunset) reached a minimum of 9 hours and 15 minutes. 

But on Saturday, winter halftime, the sun sets at 5:16 p.m. in New York, with only 57 additional minutes of daylight having accumulated since Dec. 21. That’s not very good news if you’re not a fan of cold and snowy weather (and by now, you’re probably Febru-weary of it all).

However, in the second half of winter, the effects of the northward shift of the sun’s direct rays, or its increase in declination, starts becoming much more noticeable. In fact, by the time equinox day arrives, March 20 at 12:15 p.m. EST (1715 GMT), the length of daylight will have increased by almost 2 hours since Feb. 3. 

And because daylight saving time returns on the second Sunday in March (the 11th), by March 20, New Yorkers will see the sun setting after 7 in the evening (7:08 p.m.) for the first time since Sept. 18.

But what about the groundhog?

Of course, here in the United States, we know Feb. 2 not as Candlemas, but as Groundhog Day, the day  we learn whether winter will persist for another six weeks (until the vernal equinox) or we will see an early spring. The “official” pronouncement comes from Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog and took place at about 7:30 a.m. EST (1230 GMT) at Gobbler’s Knob, just outside Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 

According to legend, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather. If he does not see his shadow, there will be an early spring. This year, the groundhog forecast six more weeks of winter.

There is a distinct connection between Groundhog Day and Candlemas. Candlemas’ alternate name was Brigantia, which references the Celtic female deity of light, because the sun is halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. 

According to a history of Groundhog Day in The Telegraph, “When German settlers arrived in the 1700s, they brought the celebration of Candlemas with them. German tradition holds that if the sun comes out on Candlemas, the hedgehog will see its shadow and six more weeks of winter will follow. If no shadow is seen, legend says spring will come early. The German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition but used a groundhog rather than a hedgehog.”

Something shady here . . .

As a broadcast meteorologist, however, I should point out that Phil and his handlers don’t seem to play by the rule book. For one thing, according to Stormfax.com, Phil has managed to see his shadow 103 times since 1887. 

Last year, for instance, skies were overcast with light snow falling. Yet somehow Phil saw his shadow. And in 2016, skies were clear and sunny, but Phil failed to see his shadow for only the 18th time in his illustrious career — a career, incidentally, in which his accuracy amounts to only about 39 percent.

Personally, I don’t put much stock in Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast. To me, it’s nothing but hogwash.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer’s Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for Fios1 News in Rye Brook, New York. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

A new study of a rare basaltic meteorites called angrites suggests that volatiles, which are elements with relatively low boiling points such as water, could have been brought to our planet by meteorites during the first two million years of the Solar System. 

Since elements such as water and carbon are essential ingredients to life on Earth, researchers are keen to know when they arrived on our planet.

“We’re looking at as many meteorite parent bodies as possible right now to figure out where they were in the early Solar System and how much water they had,” says Adam Sarafian, a recent doctoral graduate in the department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We’re trying to build a map of the very early inner Solar System. Where was the water, where was it going and where did it come from?” [Opal-Studded Meteorite Hints at Origins of Earth’s Water]

Sarafian is the lead author of a paper describing the findings of the angrite study in the journal Geochimica and Cosmochimica Acta.

The story of water

Angrite meteorites formed in the inner Solar System extremely early, roughly 4.56 billion years ago. At that point, the Earth was likely still just 20 percent of its current size, while Mars, which formed more quickly, was probably close to its current size. Scientists aren’t sure how quickly Mercury and Venus were formed.

During this time, the inner Solar System was a hot and dry place. Protoplanets and asteroids had molten surfaces and, when in magma, even an element such as carbon, which has a boiling point of 4,800 degrees Celsius (8672 degrees Fahrenheit), is considered to be a volatile. It has therefore been unclear when delicate, low-boiling-point elements such as water came aboard, particularly as the hydrogen required to make water molecules would have been boiled away by the high temperatures.

“Was hydrogen basically devoid in these rocks and in the early Inner Solar System?” asked Sarafian. 

Sarafian and his colleagues measured a common mineral in basaltic meteorites, called olivine, for the volatile elements hydrogen, carbon, fluorine and chlorine. Since basalt is formed during the cooling of igneous (molten) rock, converting the volatile element content of olivine easily translates to the composition of the basaltic melt. 

“Once we know the melt composition, we can then calculate what a planetary body’s water content was,” Sarafian said.

The team discovered that the parent asteroid of angrites likely had about 20 percent of the Earth’s current water content. While the percentage is low by modern terms, this amount of water in the early Solar System indicates that water was fairly abundant 4.56 billion years ago, even when the inner Solar System was still hot. (Researchers have not yet identified the specific asteroid that birthed all angrites, but the search is ongoing.) [Images: Meteors, Asteroids and Comets]

The angrite parent body was likely similar in size to the asteroid Vesta, which has been studied up close by NASA’s Dawn mission. Vesta is roughly 525 kilometers (326 miles) in diameter.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/DLR/IDA

The origin of Earth’s water

Different sources of water in the Solar System are commonly compared to Earth’s water by measuring the ratio of the hydrogen isotope deuterium to hydrogen (D to H). While this specific study did not measure that ratio, a study Sarafian published earlier in 2017 in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A showed that the angrite parent body’s water matches the Earth’s water composition perfectly. This suggests that both the water found in angrites and early Earth’s water came from the same source. 

“It’s a fairly simple assumption to say that Earth’s water at least started accreting to Earth extremely early, before the planet was even fully formed,” says Sarafian. “This means that when the planet cooled enough so that liquid water could be stable at the surface, there was already water here.”

By the time Earth was fully-formed 4.54 billion years ago, Mars already had a 20-million-year head start as a stable mass with water and other volatiles on its surface, such as carbon, fluorine, and chlorine, adds Sarafian. Other research has shown abundant evidence of water on Mars’ surface in the ancient past, through features including ancient river beds and minerals formed in water, such as hematite.

Sarafian’s team also estimated how big the angrite parent body was, using the water and carbon content found in angrites. Water and carbon content is pressure dependent, so by estimating the pressure the researchers could then deduce the size. The angrite asteroid was likely about as big as the asteroid Vesta, which is roughly 525 kilometers (326 miles) in diameter. Earth is about 25 times larger in diameter than Vesta.

Sarafian’s work was supported by the NASA Harriett G. Jenkins Graduate Fellowship Program, which included spending three months each year at the NASA Johnson Space Center working with Antarctic meteorite curator Dr. Kevin Righter (who also will analyze samples from asteroid Bennu collected by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx). 

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program. This version of the story published on Space.com. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.

“Please Stand By” — the new movie that shows a young woman running away from home to take part in a “Star Trek” script contest — was conceived as a sort of love letter to the 51-year-old Trek franchise, according to the film’s director. The movie premiered last Friday (Jan. 26).

Shortly after getting the script (written by Michael Golamco, a lifelong Trek fan), director Ben Lewin called a friend whose daughter has autism, a condition that protagonist Wendy, played by Dakota Fanning, also has in the movie. Lewin mentioned the project he was working on. “As soon as I mentioned ‘Star Trek,’ I got this, ‘Oh, yes,’” Lewin told Space.com. The friend could see why Wendy would be a Trekkie.

“I think it’s the appeal of that simple morality [of “Star Trek”]; everyone else is the alien, not us,” Lewin said. The movie shows Wendy’s sympathy for the character Spock, a half-Vulcan alien, half-human who, like Wendy, struggles with expressing emotion. While Lewin said the analogy isn’t perfect, he said Spock could almost be seen as a hero with autism. [‘Please Stand By’ Is a Fun Commentary on ‘Star Trek’]

Exploring the Trek frontier

Lewin made sure to include members of the autism community during the research and filming. In fact, members of Wendy’s group home in the film are, in real life, people who have the condition, Lewin said. He also made time for lots of “Star Trek” research, including a marathon viewing of the original series (1966-1969).

And that “Star Trek” dedication shows. For example, there’s a scene in the movie shot at the Vasquez Rocks, where Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) battled the Gorn (Bobby Clark) in the original series (TOS) episode “Arena.” Spacesuits seen in “Please Stand By” resemble those the crew wore in the TOS’s “The Tholian Web.”

The name of the character Scottie (Toni Collette) in “Please Stand By” was also supposed to be a subtle reference to TOS character Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (James Doohan) in TOS, Lewin confirmed. And Trekkies can be assured that a key scene with Klingon dialogue had a grammar expert just off camera, coaching the actors syllable by syllable.

One Trek reference was a bit of a coincidence, though. Fans of the new Trek movies will easily identify Alice Eve (Wendy’s sister in “Please Stand By”), who played Carol Marcus in “Star Trek: Into Darkness” (2013). Lewin said that wasn’t why he cast her, though. “I cast Alice because she is a terrific actress, and she really wanted to do that part,” Lewin said.

Director Ben Lewin talks to Dakota Fanning on the set of “Please Stand By” (2018).

Credit: Director Ben Lewin and Dakota Fanning

Dakota’s devotion

Dakota Fanning, despite her young age, has been involved in acting for most of her 23 years. Besides playing a memorable role as the young girl Rachel in “War of the Worlds” (2005), Fanning was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award at the tender age of 8 for her role as Lucy Dawson in “I Am Sam” (2001). As a teenager, Fanning also played Jane in the “Twilight” films.

“Dakota really studies the script, and I don’t know how many times she does it, but that’s the blueprint for her character,” Lewin said. “It becomes instinctive, as opposed to technical, or trying to mimic something. She wasn’t Wendy, the girl with autism. She was just Wendy.”

Fanning was selected for the role a year before the rest of the cast was chosen, allowing Lewin to remain in contact with Fanning as her character was developed. He said Fanning’s representation was meant as just one person’s experience of autism; other people with the condition would present differently. “If anything, though, what we found was common [among people with autism] was that sense of isolation … and that yearning for connection and for independence,” Lewin said. [The 10 Best ‘Star Trek’ Episodes (Including All Network Series)]

Collette, who played Wendy’s therapist, had played the mother of a child with autism in another film (“The Black Balloon,” 2008), so Lewin said the actress already had an understanding of the condition.

Despite the film’s serious themes, it has some lighter moments as well. Comedian Patton Oswalt makes a cameo as a police officer who speaks Klingon. Lewin described the scene as pivotal to the film, because during the scene, Wendy is in an unfamiliar and threatening environment and needs to figure out whether this police officer was “a friend, or enemy, or what.”

Lewin added that he hopes the movie finds a home among the young, geeky audience that enjoys “Star Trek.” If you fall in love with Wendy’s character, he said, he’ll be happy. 

“Please Stand By” opened in select theaters on Jan. 26; it can also be found on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and other on-demand services.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

NASA is well known for observating space, but the agency also has a strong hand in monitoring Earth. NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) is a collection of satellites designed to monitor and understand key components of the climate system and their interactions over an extended period.

“NASA and other space agencies had launched satellites to study [Earth] before,” the agency said in a press release after EOS had operated for a decade and a half. “But the past 15 years have produced a more comprehensive look at Earth from space than any other period in history. At a time when our planet is undergoing critically important changes, this global view offers not only stunning imagery but also vitally important information about how Earth is changing.”

History

From its birth, NASA has focused not only on getting into space but on the Earth we launch from. In 1960, the agency launched its first weather satellite, TIROS 1. Although it operated for only 78 days, it demonstrated the feasibility of monitoring Earth’s weather and clouds from space. Several subsequent satellites continued to study Earth over the years, probing different aspects of the planets.

Planning for the EOS mission began in the early 1980s, according to NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Reference Handbook. EOS was recognized as part of the Presidential Initiative Mission to Planet Earth in 1990, receiving its new start (and funding) from Congress. The program’s initial guidelines stressed the need to ensure continuity of observations for at least 15 years, though some instruments may fly only once.

In June 1992, the National Space Policy Council issued National Space Policy Directive 7. The document directed NASA to implement the restructured EOS program as part of an overall space-based global change observation system.

“Scientific research shows that the Earth has changed over time, and continues to change,” says the EOS Handbook, which was published in 1993. “Human activity has altered the condition of the Earth by reconfiguring the landscape, by changing the composition of the global atmosphere, and by stressing the biosphere in countless ways. There are strong indications that natural change is being accelerated by human intervention.”

The satellites

EOS is made up of 26 satellites that have orbited or continue to orbit the planet since the program began.

The first of these satellites was launched on Dec. 18, 1999. Terra (originally known as EOS-1) was designed for a five-year mission life, but continues to orbit today. In 2017, dwindling fuel supplies led scientists to begin discussing whether to use the last of the resources to maintain Terra’s current equator-crossing time, which will lead to an additional three years of continuous climate quality data, or to use some of the fuel to lower the orbit, sending Terra plunging into the atmosphere sooner.

“A major impact of lowering Terra’s orbit is a change in its crossing time,” NASA’s Terra website says. According to the website, a body of scientists acquainted with Terra’s instruments concluded that a “change in the crossing-time would mark the end of Terra’s ‘climate quality’ data record for trend analysis.”

A satellite called Aqua launched on May 4, 2002. Named for the large amount of information it collects about water in Earth’s system, Aqua gathers information from a stream of about 89 gigabytes of data each day. These variables include almost all elements of the water cycle and involve water in its liquid, solid and vapor forms. Although it was only designed to last for six years, Aqua is still in space today.

Aura launched on July 15, 2004. The satellite’s four instruments study the atmosphere’s chemistry and dynamics. Its measurements help investigate questions about ozone trends, air-quality changes, and their linkage to climate change. Designed with a six-year life, Aura also continues to operate today.

Together, Terra, Aqua and Aura are often called the three flagship satellites of EOS. Today, EOS is made up of 18 Earth-observing satellites that have revolutionized our ability to observe our planet from space. The satellites not only monitor climate changes on Earth but also things like wildfires in California and tropical storms.

In 2016, NASA announced its plan to launch a suite of small satellites into Earth’s orbit to study weather patterns and climate change.

“Small satellites have several advantages,” said Ellen Stofan, then-chief scientist at NASA Headquarters during a teleconference. “They reduce the risk and cost of demonstrating precursor technologies and infusing them into larger flight projects. They’re used for flight testing and demonstrating new proof-of-concept components. And they enable affordable distributive science observation systems using constellations or swarms of small satellites to achieve broad coverage.”

Completed missions

• Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor Satellite (ACRIMSAT)
• Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS)
• Atmospheric Laboratory of Applications and Science (ATLAS-1)
• Challenge Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP)
• Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat)
• Jason-1
• Radar Satellite (RADARSAT)
• Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS)
• SeaWinds on the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite II (ADEOS II) (SeaWinds)
• Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)
• Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C (SIR-C)
• Stratospheric Aerosal and Gas Experiment-III Meteor-3M (SAGE-III)
• TOPEX/Poseidon (TOPEX)
• Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer-Earth Probe (TOMS-EP)
• Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS)

Current or extended missions

• Aqua
• Aura
• Landsat 7
• Landsat 8
• Ocean Surface topography Mission/Jason-2 (OSTM/Jason-2)
• Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT)
• Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE)
• Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on ISS (SAGE III-ISS)
• Terra

Future missions

Additional resources

Fifteen years after the space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven were lost returning home from a 16-day mission, pieces of the winged orbiter are still being found and the debris is now being used by NASA to educate and inspire a new generation of space workers.

On Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia broke apart during its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere after sustaining damage during its launch. A strike from a piece of insulating foam that fell off the shuttle’s external fuel tank left a hole in the orbiter’s left wing leading edge that went unaddressed during the flight. On Columbia’s return, hot plasma entered through the hole and tore the wing apart. The resulting loss of control led to Columbia’s disintegration over the state of Texas.

The tragedy claimed the seven lives of the STS-107 crew, including commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, mission specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Michael Anderson and Israeli payload specialist Ilan Ramon. [Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster Explained (Infographic)]

To learn what happened, NASA joined with other federal agencies, as well as state, county and local authorities, for what became the largest ground search in United States history. After recovering the remains of the astronauts, attention turned to the melted and mangled fragments of the orbiter that were strewn over miles of forest- and swamp-covered land.

Some 84,500 pieces of Columbia were located, identified and ultimately delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they were first used in a reconstruction of the vehicle to help investigators determine the cause of the disaster. They were then moved into an archive located on the 16th floor of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the same facility where Columbia had been prepared for its 28 launches.

From the day it was founded, the Columbia Research and Preservation Office was established to conserve the debris and support loans of the material to government, academic and scientific organizations to further the research on how to build safer components for future spacecraft and further knowledge about the effects of re-entry.

But in the last couple of years, the program has grown to fulfill another mission — to teach and inspire.

Lessons learned

“It’s a brand new program,” said Michael Ciannilli, who has served for years as the project manager for the Columbia Research and Preservation Office and now leads the new Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program, or ACCLLP. “The program’s mission is to innovatively and effectively share the lessons of the past to make the future more successful.”

The ACCLLP encompasses NASA’s lessons learned from Columbia with those from its earlier spaceflight disasters: the Apollo 1 launch pad fire that claimed three astronauts’ lives in 1967 and the 1986 loss of the shuttle Challenger with seven STS-51L crew members 73 seconds into flight. The new program also looks at the agency’s near losses, like Apollo 13, and some of its successes, like STS-1, the first launch of the space shuttle in 1981.

“The world is so different than it was 15 years ago, and so we are trying to take those lessons before they are lost to history and say, ‘here is the mistakes we made in the past, here’s what we learned from those, here’s the great things we did in the past, you may want to share some of those with your workforce to build upon, and together we will be more successful.’ It’s the mission statement for what we’re trying to do,” Ciannilli told collectSPACE in an interview.

In addition to the ACCLLP organizing periodic panels and discussions about the fallen missions, the program is also expanding the prior Columbia office to become a place for learning.

“One aspect of it is greatly increasing the tours inside the Columbia room,” Ciannilli said. “Where before employees might tour the artifacts for 20 minutes, now it is a full hour or longer discussion, getting deep into Columbia.”

And where before the room had a somewhat clinical look, with tile floors and metal racks, renovations are making the space more conducive to learning, with wooden floors and furniture, museum-like pedestals and multimedia displays.

“It’s going to have much more of a learning center feel. Still with Columbia and the artifacts, but they will be shown with reverence, respect and with a strong sense of feeling for a learning center,” Ciannilli explained.

Though the room is closed to the general public and media (press were only allowed in once, on Feb. 1, 2004, when it formally opened), expanded access is being made to more than just NASA employees.

“We’ve been reaching out to NASA folks, contractor folks, having SpaceX and Blue Origin, and the other [commercial spaceflight] companies come over, getting their teams over to see and hear the stories of our lessons,” said Ciannilli. “We are also reaching out to academia with MIT, Columbia University and others, bringing their students down.”

Debris from the fallen space shuttle Columbia as seen in May 2003 during a reconstruction effort as part of the accident investigation. The debris was later moved into the Columbia Preservation and Research Office in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Credit: NASA

Active archive

Though the Columbia Research and Preservation Office is no longer an independent entity within NASA, having been folded into the ACCLLP, it is still being called upon to serve its original purpose.

“One was delivered last week,” said Ciannilli of a possible piece of Columbia.

“A suspected piece, right, so that’s a piece of inquiry, so to speak. It has to go through testing to see if it is or not.”

Ciannilli estimates that there have been a couple hundred pieces of Columbia turned in since the investigation ended in August 2003. The largest piece was a round aluminum tank that held cryogenic hydrogen for Columbia’s fuel cells that was discovered in 2011 when a drought exposed it on the bed of Lake Nacogdoches in Texas.

The most recent confirmed piece was found in last spring. Ciannilli fields about two to three reports each month, but many of those turn out to be something other than debris.

Research is also continuing. To date, NASA has made 63 loans of Columbia material for studies into boundary-layer effects and to improve re-entry and spacecraft technology. A 64th loan, to the U.S. Air Force, is currently in work.

“We have actually got the largest loan in the history of the program that is out right now,” Ciannilli told collectSPACE.com. “It’s still in progress at the University of Texas El Paso, and one of our former astronauts still is involved with that. He’s one of the key researchers in it and it’s actually over half a ton of material, so it’s our largest loan.”

To date, three graduate students have based dissertations on subjects related to the debris, using Columbia as their research vehicle to earn their Ph.D.

NASA Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, center, leads a panel discussion during an Apollo, Challenger, Columbia Lessons Learned Program (ACCLLP) employee event.

Credit: Kim Shiflett/NASA

Leading a bright path forward

“There are some beautiful rays of light that have come out of it. To see now Columbia educating a new generation of young people, people getting advanced degrees because of Columbia, advancing science because of Columbia, that is what really inspires,” said Ciannilli.

When I see NASCAR drivers or submarine commanders come through the room, or engineers with Blue Origin — Jeff Bezos, himself, he’s been in there — when I see them impacted by Columbia, and the crew, their story can help all of us do better and be more successful.”

Ciannilli said he sees this as a “beautiful new chapter” led by the STS-107 astronauts.

“I really truly mean that — they are leading — their story is leading a bright path forward, and hopefully a safer one as well,” he said. “I see these folks every day coming through and I see how they’re changed; when they leave the room they’re slightly different.”

“It’s because of Columbia — and because of the crew — that leaves them a little bit different.”

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