Technicians and engineers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California mate the Pegasus XL rocket with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, solar observatory to the Orbital Sciences L-1011 carrier aircraft.

The launch of NASA’s IRIS mission has been delayed one day to 10:27 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 27. Live NASA Television launch coverage begins at 9 p.m.

IRIS will open a new window of discovery by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the chromospheres and transition region into the sun’s corona using spectrometry and imaging. The IRIS mission will observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a largely unexplored region of the solar atmosphere. The interface region, located between the sun’s visible surface and upper atmosphere, is where most of the sun’s ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth’s climate.

Image Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin via NASA http://ift.tt/1aefUxg

Jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies can transport huge amounts of energy across great distances. 3C353 is a wide, double-lobed source where the galaxy is the tiny point in the center and giant plumes of radiation can be seen in X-rays from Chandra (purple) and radio data from the Very Large Array (orange).
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Tokyo Institute of Technology/J.Kataoka et al, Radio: NRAO/VLA
 
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› Chandra on Flickr via NASA http://ift.tt/17wXt7A

A Japanese H-IIA rocket carrying the NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory rolls out to launch pad 1 at the Tanegashima Space Center, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014, Tanegashima, Japan. Once launched, the GPM spacecraft will collect information that unifies data from an international network of existing and future satellites to map global rainfall and snowfall every three hours.
The rocket is scheduled to lift off during a launch window that opens at 1:37 p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 27 (3:37 a.m., Friday, Feb. 28 Japan time).
GPM is an international satellite mission to provide next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours. The GPM Core Observatory satellite carries advanced instruments that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space. The data they provide will be used to unify precipitation measurements made by an international network of partner satellites to quantify when, where, and how much it rains or snows around the world.
The GPM mission will help advance our understanding of Earth’s water and energy cycles, improve the forecasting of extreme events that cause natural disasters, and extend current capabilities of using satellite precipitation information to directly benefit society.
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Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls via NASA http://ift.tt/1dEhKW3

The American flag patch pictured here is from the left arm on Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 suit. This image was taken in April 2006 at the National Air and Space Museum’s Garber Facility in Suitland, Md.

NASA astronauts Leroy Chiao, Edward Michael Fincke and Greg Chamitoff have all voted while aboard the International Space Station thanks to a bill passed in 1997 by Texas legislatures. The bill sets up a technical procedure for astronauts – nearly all of whom live in Houston – to vote from space.

Current station Commander Suni Williams, a Florida resident, voted via absentee ballot before departing for her duties as part of Expedition 32 on the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/RdtFkv

A stream of plasma burst out from the sun, but since it lacked enough force to break away, most of it fell back into the sun (May 27, 2014). The video, seen in a combination of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, covers a little over two hours. This eruption was minor and such events occur almost every day on the sun and suggest the kind of dynamic activity being driven by powerful magnetic forces near the sun’s surface.
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Image credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory via NASA http://ift.tt/1vu9bYg

In northwest Australia, the Great Sandy Desert holds great geological interest as a zone of active sand dune movement. While a variety of dune forms appear across the region, this astronaut photograph features numerous linear dunes (about 25 meters high) separated in a roughly regular fashion (0.5 to 1.5 kilometers apart). The dunes are aligned to the prevailing winds that generated them, which typically blow from east to west. Where linear dunes converge, dune confluences point downwind. When you fly over such dune fields-either in an airplane or the International Space Station-the fire scars stand out. Where thin vegetation has been burned, the dunes appear red from the underlying sand; dunes appear darker where the vegetation remains.

Astronaut photograph ISS035-E-9454 was acquired on March 25, 2013, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 400 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 35 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed.

Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/16ImN3K

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, Expedition 36 flight engineer, uses a digital still camera during a session of extravehicular activity (EVA) as work continues on the International Space Station. A little more than one hour into the spacewalk on July 16, 2013, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano (out of frame) reported water floating behind his head inside his helmet. The water was not an immediate health hazard for Parmitano, but Mission Control decided to end the spacewalk early.
Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/18kVCzh

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Mars-bound spacecraft, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.
Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls via NASA http://ift.tt/HWZSwc

A powerful storm passed over New Zealand’s South Island in March 2014 and brought gale-force winds, torrential rains, and flooding to the city of Christchurch. A total of 74 millimeters (3 inches) of rain fell on March 4-5, according to MetService, New Zealand’s national meteorological service. More than 100 homes flooded and more than 4,000 lost power around the country’s third most populous city. Skies had cleared enough by March 6, 2014, for the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to acquire this image showing the aftermath.
Coastal communities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the risk of damage and danger from flooding. NASA and NOAA are together launching a new opportunity for citizens to work with us on the very important topic of coastal flooding. This coastal flooding challenge is part of NASA’s third International Space Apps Challenge – a two-day global mass collaboration event on April 12-13, 2014. During these two days, citizens around the world are invited to engage directly with NASA to develop awe-inspiring software, hardware, and data visualizations. Last year’s event involved more than 9,000 global participants in 83 locations. This year will introduce more than 60 robust challenges clustered in five themes: asteroids, Earth watch, human spaceflight, robotics, and space technology. The Coastal Inundation In Your Community challenge is one of four climate-related challenges using data provided by NASA, NOAA and EPA.
> 2014 International Space Apps Challenge: Coastal Inundation in Your Community
> NASA Invites Citizens to Collaborate on Coastal Flooding Challenge
Image Credit: NASA – Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC via NASA http://ift.tt/PTSAOh

The Helios-A solar probe launched on Dec. 10, 1974 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

As it looped around the Sun in an orbit that took it from Earth’s orbit (1 AU from the Sun) to about 0.3 AU from the Sun and back again, Helios-A studied the solar wind, magnetic and electric fields, cosmic rays, and dust in interplanetary space. It flew within 47 million km of the Sun at a speed of 238,000 km per hour, the closest any human-made object had been. Its data indicated the presence of 15 times more micrometeorites close to the Sun than there are near Earth.

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