Topic: Solar Wind

NASA answers the question, “Is There an Atmosphere on the Moon?”

April 15, 2013 |

Written by Brian Day
NASA’s Ames Research Center

Moffett Field, CA – Until recently, most everyone accepted the conventional wisdom that the moon has virtually no atmosphere.

Just as the discovery of water on the moon transformed our textbook knowledge of Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor, recent studies confirm that our moon does indeed have an atmosphere consisting of some unusual gases, including sodium and potassium, which are not found in the atmospheres of Earth, Mars or Venus.

It’s an infinitesimal amount of air when compared to Earth’s atmosphere.

The Lunar Atmospheric Composition Experiment (LACE) deployment during the Apollo 17 mission. (Image credit: NASA)

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NASA’s MAVEN mission to study Mars upper atomosphere

March 27, 2013 |

Written by Claire De Saravia
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – When the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission begins its journey to the Red Planet in 2013, it will carry a sensitive magnetic-field instrument built and tested by a team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

Scheduled for launch in late 2013, MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.

The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space through time, providing answers about Mars’ climate evolution.

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NASA studies the movement of Moon Dust

March 25, 2013 |

Written by Nancy Neal-Jones / Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – Electrically charged lunar dust near shadowed craters can get lofted above the surface and jump over the shadowed region, bouncing back and forth between sunlit areas on opposite sides, according to new calculations by NASA scientists.

The research is being led by Michael Collier at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, as part of the Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team in partnership with the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), managed at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.

This is a view from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft across the north rim of Cabeus crater. The leaping dust behavior may be observed on the moon in places like this where sunlit areas are close to shaded regions. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

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NASA’s Solar Probe Wind data reveals Energy Source for the Solar Wind

March 11, 2013 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Using data from an aging NASA spacecraft, researchers have found signs of an energy source in the solar wind that has caught the attention of fusion researchers. NASA will be able to test the theory later this decade when it sends a new probe into the sun for a closer look.

The discovery was made by a group of astronomers trying to solve a decades-old mystery: What heats and accelerates the solar wind?

An artist’s concept of the Wind spacecraft sampling the solar wind. Justin Kasper’s science result is inset.

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NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist developes Math Equations to help understand the movement of the Solar Wind

February 24, 2013 |

Written by Karen C. Fox
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – Many areas of scientific research — Earth’s weather, ocean currents, the outpouring of magnetic energy from the sun — require mapping out the large scale features of a complex system and its intricate details simultaneously.

Describing such systems accurately, relies on numerous kinds of input, beginning with observations of the system, incorporating mathematical equations to approximate those observations, running computer simulations to attempt to replicate observations, and cycling back through all the steps to refine and improve the models until they jibe with what’s seen.

A constant stream of particles and electromagnetic waves streams from the sun toward Earth, which is surrounded by a protective bubble called the magnetosphere. A scientist at NASA Goddard has recently devised, for the first time, a set of equations that can help describe waves in the solar wind known as Alfven waves. (Credit: European Space Agency (ESA) )

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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detects Cosmic Particles being accelerated

February 20, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the acceleration that takes place around distant supernovas.

Since we can’t travel out to the far-off stellar explosions right now, the shockwave that forms from the flow of solar wind around Saturn’s magnetic field provides a rare laboratory for scientists with the Cassini mission — a partnership involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — to observe this phenomenon up-close.

This artist’s impression by the European Space Agency shows NASA’s Cassini spacecraft exploring the magnetic environment of Saturn. (Image credit: ESA)

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NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft enters New Region of our Solar System on it’s way to Interstellar Space

December 5, 2012 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space.

Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun’s magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines.

This artist’s concept shows plasma flows around NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft as it approaches interstellar space. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL)

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Astronomers observe Red Giant destroying one of it’s Planets, Could our Sun do the same to the Earth

October 27, 2012 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – An international team of astronomers has caught a star in the act of devouring one of its planets. BD+48 740, a red giant they observed using the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, appears to have the fumes of a scorched planet in its atmosphere. This is consistent with a rocky world, recently destroyed.

Could the same thing happen to Earth?

Yes indeed, says Alex Wolszczan, a member of the research team from Penn State University: “A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system when the sun becomes a red giant some five billion years from now.”

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NASA’s ARTEMIS mission reveals the Moon’s effect on the Solar Wind

May 31, 2012 |

Written by Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – With the moon as the most prominent object in the night sky and a major source of an invisible pull that creates ocean tides, many ancient cultures thought it could also affect our health or state of mind – the word “lunacy” has its origin in this belief.

Now, a powerful combination of spacecraft and computer simulations is revealing that the moon does indeed have a far-reaching, invisible influence – not on us, but on the Sun, or more specifically, the solar wind.

This is a view of the moon transiting, or passing in front of, the Sun as seen from the STEREO-B spacecraft on Feb. 25th, 2007. The Sun is in false color, and the moon appears as a black disk on the upper right. NASA's STEREO mission consists of two spacecraft launched in October, 2006 to study solar storms. (Credit: NASA)

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NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecrafts spot something new on the Sun

April 10, 2012 |

Written by Karen C. Fox
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – One day in the fall of 2011, Neil Sheeley, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did what he always does – look through the daily images of the sun from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

But on this day he saw something he’d never noticed before: a pattern of cells with bright centers and dark boundaries occurring in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. These cells looked somewhat like a cell pattern that occurs on the sun’s surface — similar to the bubbles that rise to the top of boiling water — but it was a surprise to find this pattern higher up in the corona, which is normally dominated by bright loops and dark coronal holes.

The changes of a coronal cell region as solar rotation carries it across the solar disk as seen with NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft. The camera is fixed on the region (panning with it) and shows the plumes changing to cells and back to plumes again -- based on the observatory's perspective -- during the interval June 7th-14th, 2011. (Credit: NASA/STEREO/NRL)

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