This Feb 3, 2023, enhanced-color image from Landsat 9 highlights a green and blue patchwork pattern in flooded rice fields in southwestern Louisiana. Raised levees used for water management form the grid pattern between the fields, which appear dark blue.

As it flowed through several southern states over tens of thousands of years, the Mississippi River left a valuable layer of fertile soil in its wake. This low-lying floodplain and the flat coastal prairies of Louisiana and Texas are now home to most of the rice farms in the United States. In 2021, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas—collectively known as the Rice Belt—produced about 73 percent of all rice in the United States. 

Image Credit: NASA

Source: www.nasa.gov

Rough-sawn cut surface of a cherry wood board

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Elementary school students eagerly raise their hands as Diana Trujillo, technical group supervisor for sequence planning and execution and tactical mission lead for the Mars Perseverance rover, speaks to them on March 13, 2023.

Born and raised in Colombia, Trujillo immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 17 to pursue her dream of working for NASA. She has held several roles for NASA and JPL, including Mars Curiosity rover mission lead, deputy project system engineer, and deputy team chief of engineering operations on Curiosity.

Trujillo has also been active in sharing the excitement and opportunities of STEM with the public. She co-created and hosted #JuntosPerseveramos, NASA’s first Spanish-language live broadcast of a planetary landing, for Perseverance’s arrival on Mars, which attracted millions of viewers worldwide.

Image Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

Source: www.nasa.gov

The SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft is seen as it lands with Crew-5 mission members aboard on Saturday, March 11, 2023. The crew returned in a parachute-assisted splashdown at 9:02 p.m. EST.

During the 156.5 days they spent aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 68, Crew-5 participated in several spacewalks to prepare the space station for solar arrays and conducted various experiments, including growing plants without soil and studying radiation exposure.

Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

Source: www.nasa.gov

The irregular spiral galaxy NGC 5486 hangs against a background of dim, distant galaxies in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The tenuous disk of the galaxy is threaded through with pink wisps of star formation, which stand out from the diffuse glow of the galaxy’s bright core. While this particular galaxy has indistinct, meandering spiral arms, it lies close to the much larger Pinwheel Galaxy, which is one of the best-known examples of a ‘grand design’ spiral galaxy with prominent and well-defined spiral arms. In 2006, Hubble captured an image of the Pinwheel Galaxy which was, at the time, the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy ever taken with Hubble.

NGC 5486 lies 110 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. This observation comes from a selection of Hubble images exploring debris left behind by Type II supernovae. As massive stars reach the end of their lives, they cast off huge amounts of gas and dust before ending their lives in titanic supernova explosions. NGC 5486 hosted a supernova in 2004, and astronomers used the keen vision of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to explore the aftermath in the hopes of learning more about these explosive events.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
301-286-1940

Source: www.nasa.gov

Jamesa Stokes' path to being an engineer at NASA started out on a completely different road.

While she loved and excelled at math and science, she was also passionate about studio art, her first major in college.  But knowing that science can also be a creative pursuit, she switched to physics and embarked on a journey to NASA when she reached grad school.

Stokes, who received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from Auburn University and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, was awarded a graduate fellowship to conduct research at NASA Glenn.  She later became a NASA intern and converted to a full-time Materials Research Engineer when she finished her Ph.D.

“Working at NASA means tackling the bigger problems we face for the benefit of society,” said Stokes.  “My job is to develop and understand how advanced materials behave in the extreme environments of space. It will help protect not only the lives of astronauts but also flight vehicles.”

Are you considering a STEM career?  Stokes says there are many ways to reach your goal.

“There is no required path to becoming a scientist or engineer nor is there one way a scientist or engineer is supposed to act or look,” she said.  “Never let anyone discourage you from pursuing what you like and remember that you can always be more than whatever societal conventions envision your future to be. Participate in STEM clubs and activities to figure out what makes you passionate about science and engineering.”

Image Description: Engineer Jamesa Stokes works in a special laboratory testing advanced materials to see how they behave in extreme space environments. Credits: Jef Janis, NASA Glenn Research Center

Source: www.nasa.gov

While the International Space Station orbited over the Gulf of Mexico on Sept. 19, 2022, NASA astronaut Bob Hines captured this image of South Padre Island, a barrier island along the coast of Texas. The island is part of the greater Padre Island, the longest barrier island in the world, which spans a length of 113 miles (182 kilometers).

Barrier islands along the Gulf and East coasts of North America play a critical role protecting the mainland from the damaging effects of storms. They bear the brunt of large storm surges and reduce flooding on the mainland.

Image Credit: NASA/Bob Hines

Source: www.nasa.gov

An American bald eagle occupies a nest near Kennedy Parkway North at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Feb. 8, 2023. Each year, eagles take up winter residence at the Florida spaceport, breeding and raising a new generation. The center shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, home to more than 1,500 species of plants and animals, and 15 federally listed species.

Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Source: www.nasa.gov

Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel

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A snapshot of the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is featured in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Tarantula Nebula is a large star-forming region of ionized hydrogen gas that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and its turbulent clouds of gas and dust appear to swirl between the region’s bright, newly formed stars.

The Tarantula Nebula is a familiar site for Hubble. It is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood and home to the hottest, most massive stars known. This makes it a perfect natural laboratory in which to test out theories of star formation and evolution, and Hubble has a rich variety of images of this region. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope also recently delved into this region, revealing thousands of never-before-seen young stars.

This new image combines data from two different observing proposals. The first was designed to explore the properties of the dust grains that exist in the void between stars that make up the dark clouds winding through this image. This proposal, which astronomers named Scylla, reveals how interstellar dust interacts with starlight in a variety of environments. It complements another Hubble program called Ulysses, which characterizes the stars. This image also incorporates data from an observing program studying star formation in conditions similar to the early universe, as well as cataloging the stars of the Tarantula Nebula for future science with Webb.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, E. Sabbi; Acknowledgment: Y. -H. Chu

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
301-286-1940

Source: www.nasa.gov

Della H. Raney was the first African American accepted into the Army Nurse Corps. In US and Canada, every February is Black History Month.

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Officials from NASA, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the Indian Embassy visit a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 3, 2023, to view the scientific instrument payload for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission.

The NISAR mission—a joint effort between NASA and ISRO—will measure changes to Earth's land ice surfaces down to fractions of an inch. Data collected by this satellite will help researchers monitor a wide range of changes critical to life on Earth in unprecedented detail.

Learn more about the visit and what NISAR will do.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Source: www.nasa.gov

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthplace, Atlanta, Georgia, is seen on January 20, 2013, in this image from the International Space Station as it flew approximately 240 miles above the city.

NASA honors Dr. King’s life and legacy by expanding mission equity, engaging in public service, and sharing knowledge for the benefit of all humanity.

Image Credit: NASA

Source: www.nasa.gov

The first Full Moon of 2023 is in the sky tonight opposite the Sun at 23:08 UTC. Big and beautiful, the Moon at its brightest phase should be easy to spot. Still, for quick reference images captured near the times of all the full moons of 2022 are aranged in this dedicated astro-imaging project from Sri Lanka, planet Earth. The day, month, and a traditional popular name for 2022's twelve full moons are given in the chart. The apparent size of each full moon depends on how close the full lunar phase is to perigee or apogee, the closest or farthest point in the Moon's elliptical orbit. Like the 2022 Wolf Moon at the 1 o'clock position, tonight's Full Moon occurs within a about two days of apogee. But unlike in 2022, the year 2023 will have 13 full moons that won't all fit nicely on the twelve hour clock.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

Adoration of the Magi, painted between 1440 and 1460 by the masters Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

There, that dot on the right, that's the largest rock known in our Solar System. It is larger than every known asteroid, moon, and comet nucleus. It is larger than any other local rocky planet. This rock is so large its gravity makes it into a large ball that holds heavy gases near its surface. (It used to be the largest known rock of any type until the recent discoveries of large dense planets orbiting other stars.) The Voyager 1 spacecraft took the featured picture -- famously called Pale Blue Dot -- of this giant space rock in 1990 from the outer Solar System. Today, this rock starts another orbit around its parent star, for roughly the 5 billionth time, spinning over 350 times during each trip. Happy Gregorian Calendar New Year to all inhabitants of this rock we call Earth.

Source: apod.nasa.gov

The James Webb Space Telescope spies the spiral galaxy NGC 7469, located 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus, in this image released on Dec. 21, 2022. This galaxy is very dusty, but Webb’s infrared vision can peer through to observe features like the intense ring of star formation close around its bright center.

Download the full-resolution image.

Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans

Source: www.nasa.gov

NASA is taking a leading role to help integrate new types of Advanced Air Mobility aircraft like air taxis and delivery drones into the sky, helping emerging markets to safely develop an air transportation system that moves people and cargo between places previously not served or underserved by aviation. NASA is working with private sector developers of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, like Moog Surefly, to study the levels of noise ​they make.

In this photo from summer 2022, the Moog Surefly vehicle hovers above an array of 28 ground-level microphones at Cincinnati Municipal Airport. The microphones picked up noise data, which researchers from our Glenn Research Center in Cleveland will analyze and share the data with Moog. Data from tests like the one seen here will be used to improve aircraft design and reduce noise impacts on communities where eVTOLs will take off, fly, and land.

Learn more about this acoustic hover test here.

Image Credit: NASA

Source: www.nasa.gov

A portion of the open cluster NGC 6530 appears as a roiling wall of smoke studded with stars in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 6530 is a collection of several thousand stars lying around 4,350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The cluster is set within the larger Lagoon Nebula, a gigantic interstellar cloud of gas and dust. Hubble has previously imaged the Lagoon Nebula several times, including these images released in 2010 and 2011. It is the nebula that gives this image its distinctly smoky appearance; clouds of interstellar gas and dust stretch from one side of the image to the other.

Astronomers investigated NGC 6530 using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. They scoured the region in the hope of finding new examples of proplyds, a particular class of illuminated protoplanetary discs surrounding newborn stars. The vast majority of known proplyds are found in only one region, the nearby Orion Nebula. This makes understanding their origin and lifetimes in other astronomical environments challenging.

Hubble’s ability to observe at near-infrared wavelengths – particularly with Wide Field Camera 3 – have made it an indispensable tool for understanding star birth and the origin of exoplanetary systems. The new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s unprecedented observational capabilities at infrared wavelengths will complement Hubble observations by allowing astronomers to peer through the dusty envelopes around newly born stars and investigate the faintest, earliest stages of star birth.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. De Marco; Acknowledgment: M.H. Özsaraç

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
301-286-1940

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Against an inky black backdrop, the blue swirls of spiral galaxy NGC 6956 stand out radiantly. NGC 6956 is a barred spiral galaxy, a common type of spiral galaxy with a bar-shaped structure of stars in its center. This galaxy exists 214 million light-years away in the constellation Delphinus.

Scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to image NGC 6956 to study its Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that brighten and dim at regular periods. Since the period of Cepheid variable stars is a function of their brightness, scientists can measure how bright these stars appear from Earth and compare it to their actual brightness to calculate their distance. As a result, these stars are extremely useful in determining the distance of cosmic objects, which is one of the hardest pieces of information to measure for extragalactic objects.

This galaxy also contains a Type Ia supernova, which is the explosion of a white dwarf star that was gradually accreting matter from a companion star. Like Cepheid variable stars, the brightness of these types of supernovae and how fast they dim over time enables scientists to calculate their distance. Scientists can use the measurements gleaned from Cepheid variable stars and Type 1a supernovae to refine our understanding of the rate of expansion of the universe, also known as the Hubble Constant.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jones (University of California – Santa Cruz); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
301-286-1940

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Bright at infrared wavelengths, this merging galaxy pair is some 500 million light-years away toward the constellation Delphinus. The cosmic mashup is seen against a background of even more distant galaxies, and occasional spiky foreground stars. But the galaxy merger itself spans about 100,000 light-years in this deep James Webb Space Telescope image. The image data is from Webb's Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). Their combined, sharp infrared view follows galactic scale restructuring in the dusty merger's wild jumble of intense star forming regions and distorted spiral arms

Source: apod.nasa.gov