NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and his wife, Alexis, lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns as part of NASA’s Day of Remembrance, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2015, at Arlington National Cemetery.  The wreaths were laid in memory of those men and women who lost their lives in the quest for space exploration.  Photo Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky via NASA http://ift.tt/1v57rc7

The sun sets behind Space Launch Complex 2 (SLC-2) with the Delta II rocket and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory protected by the service structure on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. SMAP is NASA’s first Earth-observing satellite designed to collect global observations of surface soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state. SMAP will provide high resolution global measurements of soil moisture from space. The data will be used to enhance scientists’ understanding of the processes that link Earth’s water, energy, and carbon cycles.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls via NASA http://ift.tt/1zyp1a3

The interaction of solar winds and Earth’s atmosphere produces northern lights, or auroras, that dance across the night sky and mesmerize the casual observer. However, to scientists this interaction is more than a light display. It produces many questions about the role it plays in Earth’s meteorological processes and the impact on the planet’s atmosphere.

To help answer some of these questions, NASA suborbital sounding rockets carrying university-developed experiments — the Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere Turbulence Experiment (M-TeX) and Mesospheric Inversion-layer Stratified Turbulence (MIST) — were launched into auroras from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. The experiments explore the Earth’s atmosphere’s response to auroral, radiation belt and solar energetic particles and associated effects on nitric oxide and ozone.

This composite shot of all four sounding rockets for the M-TeX and MIST experiments is made up of 30 second exposures. The rocket salvo began at 4:13 a.m. EST, Jan. 26, 2015. A fifth rocket carrying the Auroral Spatial Structures Probe remains ready on the launch pad. The launch window for this experiment runs through Jan. 27.

Image Credit: NASA/Jamie Adkins

> More: M-TeX and MIST Experiments Launched from Alaska via NASA http://ift.tt/1yL9zFf

Marking the 100th anniversary of the Rocky Mountain National Park on Jan. 26, 2015, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry Virts posted this photograph, taken from the International Space Station, to Twitter. Virts wrote, “Majestic peaks and trails! Happy 100th anniversary @RockyNPS So much beauty to behold in our @NatlParkService.”

Image Credit: NASA/Terry Virts via NASA http://ift.tt/1JtMz0Y

The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory explores the universe in X-rays, a high-energy form of light.  By studying X-ray data and comparing them with observations in other types of light, scientists can develop a better understanding of objects likes stars and galaxies that generate temperatures of millions of degrees and produce X-rays.

To recognize the start of IYL, the Chandra X-ray Center is releasing a set of images that combine data from telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of light. From a distant galaxy to the relatively nearby debris field of an exploded star, these images demonstrate the myriad ways that information about the universe is communicated to us through light.

In this image, an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0 is left behind after a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra, in blue. The outer edge of the explosion (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope.

> More: Chandra Celebrates the International Year of Light

Image Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO via NASA http://ift.tt/1zDbHk1

Located in the northwest corner of Greenland, Leidy Glacier is fed by ice from the Academy Glacier (upstream and inland). As Leidy approaches the sea, it is diverted around the tip of an island that separates the Olriks Fjord to the south and Academy Cove to the north. The resulting crisscross pattern is simply the result of ice flowing along the path of least resistance.

This view of the region pictured above was acquired August 7, 2012, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite. In April 2012, the feature caught the attention of a NASA pilot, who snapped this picture from the cockpit of a high-flying ER-2 aircraft during a research flight over the Greenland ice cap.

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Image Credit: NASA/Terra via NASA http://ift.tt/1xDQdxZ

An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it is rolled out to Launch Pad-0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014 in advance of a planned Wednesday, Jan. 8th, 1:32 p.m. EST launch, Wallops Island, Va.
The Antares will launch a Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences’ first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Among the cargo aboard Cygnus set to launch to the space station are science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware.
Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls via NASA http://ift.tt/1cGLobp

The sun shines through a truss-based radiator panel and a primary solar array panel on the Earth-orbiting International Space Station (ISS) in this photograph taken by an Expedition 38 crew member on Jan. 2, 2014.
The crew on the ISS is awaiting the first commercial resupply mission to the ISS by Orbital Sciences, Orbital-1. Orbital Sciences will proceed with a 1:07 p.m. EST launch attempt of the Orbital-1 cargo resupply mission to the ISS today, Thursday, Jan. 9.
Meanwhile, as more than 30 heads of space agencies from around the world gather in Washington Jan. 9-10 for an unprecedented summit on the future of space exploration, the Obama Administration has approved an extension of the ISS until at least 2024.
Join the conversation on Twitter by following #Orb1.
Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/1d2Qmng

The South Sandwich Islands, in the far southern Atlantic Ocean, are often shrouded with thick cloud, making it difficult to view the region from space. Sometimes, however, the use of false-color imagery can be used to reveal events that would otherwise be obscured under cloud cover.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over the South Sandwich Islands on April 19, 2014 and acquired this false-color image of the cloudy scene.
This false-color image uses a combination of non-visible (middle infrared and infrared) and visible (red) light captured in bands 7, 2, and 1, respectively, to distinguish clouds from snow and ice. Here the ice-covered islands appear bright turquoise, the clouds light turquoise and the water in the ocean appears deep black. Because the volcanic plume is a moist mixture of gas and ash, it reflects all three forms of light relatively well, so it appears nearly white.
In the north of this image, a thin plume of white rises from the volcano on Zavodovski island, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands and streams to the northeast. Further south, a wider white plume can be seen blowing across the Atlantic Ocean. This plume rises from the Mount Michael volcano, which is a young and frequently active stratovolcano located on Saunders Island, near the center of the South Sandwich Island chain.
The white plume from Mount Michael forms a chain of swirling eddies as it blows to the northeast. To the south, similar eddies can be seen behind three other islands. These are known as Von Kármán vortices. These vortices can form nearly anywhere that fluid flow is disturbed by an object. Because the atmosphere behaves like a fluid, when streaming air hits a blunt object, such as a mountain peak, the wind is forced around the object. The disturbance in the flow of the wind propagates downstream in a double row of vortices that alternate their direction of rotation, much like the eddies seen behind a pier in a river as water rushes past.
Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC via NASA http://ift.tt/1lyXA6p

The umbilical tower drops back from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket as it lifts off Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Launch, with NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-K or TDRS-K aboard, was at 8:48 p.m. EST on Jan. 30.

The TDRS-K spacecraft is part of the next-generation series in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, a constellation of space-based communication satellites providing tracking, telemetry, command and high-bandwidth data return services.

Photo credit: NASA/Tony Gray and Robert Murray via NASA http://ift.tt/U3Ho2B