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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed dense knots of dust and gas in our Milky Way Galaxy. This cosmic dust is a concentration of elements that are responsible for the formation of stars in our galaxy and throughout the universe. These dark, opaque knots of gas and dust are called "Bok globules," and they are absorbing light in the center of the nearby emission nebula and star-forming region, NGC 281. These images were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in October 2005. NGC 281 is located nearly 9,500 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia.

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    • By NASA
      5 min read
      NASA Launching Rockets Into Radio-Disrupting Clouds
      NASA is launching rockets from a remote Pacific island to study mysterious, high-altitude cloud-like structures that can disrupt critical communication systems. The mission, called Sporadic-E ElectroDynamics, or SEED, opens its three-week launch window from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on Friday, June 13.
      The atmospheric features SEED is studying are known as Sporadic-E layers, and they create a host of problems for radio communications. When they are present, air traffic controllers and marine radio users may pick up signals from unusually distant regions, mistaking them for nearby sources. Military operators using radar to see beyond the horizon may detect false targets — nicknamed “ghosts” — or receive garbled signals that are tricky to decipher. Sporadic-E layers are constantly forming, moving, and dissipating, so these disruptions can be difficult to anticipate.
      An animated illustration depicts Sporadic-E layers forming in the lower portions of the ionosphere, causing radio signals to reflect back to Earth before reaching higher layers of the ionosphere. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab Sporadic-E layers form in the ionosphere, a layer of Earth’s atmosphere that stretches from about 40 to 600 miles (60 to 1,000 kilometers) above sea level. Home to the International Space Station and most Earth-orbiting satellites, the ionosphere is also where we see the greatest impacts of space weather. Primarily driven by the Sun, space weather causes myriad problems for our communications with satellites and between ground systems. A better understanding of the ionosphere is key to keeping critical infrastructure running smoothly.
      The ionosphere is named for the charged particles, or ions, that reside there. Some of these ions come from meteors, which burn up in the atmosphere and leave traces of ionized iron, magnesium, calcium, sodium, and potassium suspended in the sky. These “heavy metals” are more massive than the ionosphere’s typical residents and tend to sink to lower altitudes, below 90 miles (140 kilometers). Occasionally, they clump together to create dense clusters known as Sporadic-E layers.
      The Perseids meteor shower peaks in mid-August. Meteors like these can deposit metals into Earth’s ionosphere that can help create cloud-like structures called Sporadic-E layers. NASA/Preston Dyches “These Sporadic-E layers are not visible to naked eye, and can only be seen by radars. In the radar plots, some layers appear like patchy and puffy clouds, while others spread out, similar to an overcast sky, which we call blanketing Sporadic-E layer” said Aroh Barjatya, the SEED mission’s principal investigator and a professor of engineering physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The SEED team includes scientists from Embry-Riddle, Boston College in Massachusetts, and Clemson University in South Carolina.
      “There’s a lot of interest in predicting these layers and understanding their dynamics because of how they interfere with communications,” Barjatya said.
      A Mystery at the Equator
      Scientists can explain Sporadic-E layers when they form at midlatitudes but not when they appear close to Earth’s equator — such as near Kwajalein Atoll, where the SEED mission will launch.
      In the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, Sporadic-E layers can be thought of as particle traffic jams.
      Think of ions in the atmosphere as miniature cars traveling single file in lanes defined by Earth’s magnetic field lines. These lanes connect Earth end to end — emerging near the South Pole, bowing around the equator, and plunging back into the North Pole.
      A conceptual animation shows Earth’s magnetic field. The blue lines radiating from Earth represent the magnetic field lines that charged particles travel along. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab At Earth’s midlatitudes, the field lines angle toward the ground, descending through atmospheric layers with varying wind speeds and directions. As the ions pass through these layers, they experience wind shear — turbulent gusts that cause their orderly line to clump together. These particle pileups form Sporadic-E layers.
      But near the magnetic equator, this explanation doesn’t work. There, Earth’s magnetic field lines run parallel to the surface and do not intersect atmospheric layers with differing winds, so Sporadic-E layers shouldn’t form. Yet, they do — though less frequently.
      “We’re launching from the closest place NASA can to the magnetic equator,” Barjatya said, “to study the physics that existing theory doesn’t fully explain.”
      Taking to the Skies
      To investigate, Barjatya developed SEED to study low-latitude Sporadic-E layers from the inside. The mission relies on sounding rockets — uncrewed suborbital spacecraft carrying scientific instruments. Their flights last only a few minutes but can be launched precisely at fleeting targets.
      Beginning the night of June 13, Barjatya and his team will monitor ALTAIR (ARPA Long-Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar), a high-powered, ground-based radar system at the launch site, for signs of developing Sporadic-E layers. When conditions are right, Barjatya will give the launch command. A few minutes later, the rocket will be in flight.
      The SEED science team and mission management team in front of the ARPA Long-Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar (ALTAIR). The SEED team will use ALTAIR to monitor the ionosphere for signs of Sporadic-E layers and time the launch. U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command On ascent, the rocket will release colorful vapor tracers. Ground-based cameras will track the tracers to measure wind patterns in three dimensions. Once inside the Sporadic-E layer, the rocket will deploy four subpayloads — miniature detectors that will measure particle density and magnetic field strength at multiple points. The data will be transmitted back to the ground as the rocket descends.
      On another night during the launch window, the team will launch a second, nearly identical rocket to collect additional data under potentially different conditions.
      Barjatya and his team will use the data to improve computer models of the ionosphere, aiming to explain how Sporadic-E layers form so close to the equator.
      “Sporadic-E layers are part of a much larger, more complicated physical system that is home to space-based assets we rely on every day,” Barjatya said. “This launch gets us closer to understanding another key piece of Earth’s interface to space.”
      By Miles Hatfield
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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      Details
      Last Updated Jun 12, 2025 Related Terms
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    • By European Space Agency
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    • By NASA
      ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sparkling cloudscape from one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbors, a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Located 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the Milky Way’s many small satellite galaxies.
      This view of dusty gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud is possible thanks to Hubble’s cameras, such as the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that collected the observations for this image. WFC3 holds a variety of filters, and each lets through specific wavelengths, or colors, of light. This image combines observations made with five different filters, including some that capture ultraviolet and infrared light that the human eye cannot see.
      The wispy gas clouds in this image resemble brightly colored cotton candy. When viewing such a vividly colored cosmic scene, it is natural to wonder whether the colors are ‘real’. After all, Hubble, with its 7.8-foot-wide (2.4 m) mirror and advanced scientific instruments, doesn’t bear resemblance to a typical camera! When image-processing specialists combine raw filtered data into a multi-colored image like this one, they assign a color to each filter. Visible-light observations typically correspond to the color that the filter allows through. Shorter wavelengths of light such as ultraviolet are usually assigned blue or purple, while longer wavelengths like infrared are typically red.
      This color scheme closely represents reality while adding new information from the portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans cannot see. However, there are endless possible color combinations that can be employed to achieve an especially aesthetically pleasing or scientifically insightful image.
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      Text credit: ESA/Hubble
      Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
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    • By NASA
      Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
      A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!
      Perseverance self portrait, acquired by the WATSON camera on Sol 1500 on Mars. The Bell Island borehole where the rover acquired a sample is visible in the workspace in front of the rover. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems
      To celebrate her 1,500th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the red planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm to take a selfie of the rover and the surrounding landscape. But when team members reviewed the photo, they were surprised to find that Perseverance had been photobombed!  
      As the rover sat at the “Pine Pond” workspace, located on the outer rim of Jezero crater, which it has been exploring for the past several months, the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) camera on the end of its arm was used to acquire a 59-image mosaic of the rover. This is the fifth “selfie” that Perseverance has acquired since landing on Mars in 2021. The rover’s robotic arm is not visible in the self portrait because — just like a selfie you would take with your own cellphone camera — rover operators make sure not to have the arm get “in the way” of the body of the rover. This is even easier to do on Mars because Perseverance needs to take 59 different images at slightly different arm positions to build up the selfie, and the elbow of the robotic arm is kept out of the way while the images are acquired. You can find more details about the Sol 1500 selfie here, and this YouTube video shows how the rover arm moves when these activities take place. 
      While snapping away, Perseverance was photobombed by a dust devil in the distance! These are relatively common phenomena both on Mars and in Earth’s desert regions, and form from rising and rotating columns of warm air, which gives the appearance of a dust tornado. Just like many other weather patterns, there is a peak “season” for dust-devil activity, and Jezero crater is in the peak of that season now (late northern spring).  The one seen in the selfie is fairly large, about 100 meters, or 328 feet, across. While Perseverance regularly monitors the horizon for dust-devil activity with Navcam movies, this is the first time the WATSON camera on the end of the robotic arm has ever captured an image of a dust devil! 
      The dark hole in front of the rover, surrounded by gray rock powder created during the drilling process, shows the location of Perseverance’s 26th sample. Nicknamed “Bell Island” after an island near Newfoundland, Canada, this rock sample contains small spherules, thought to have formed by volcanic eruptions or impacts early in Martian history. Later, this ancient rock was uplifted during the impact that formed Jezero crater. Now that the rover has successfully acquired the spherule sample the science team was searching for, Perseverance is leaving the area to explore new rock exposures. Last week, the rover arrived at an exposure of light-toned bedrock called “Copper Cove,” and the science team was interested to determine if this unit underlies or overlies the rock sequence explored earlier. After performing an abrasion to get a closer look at the chemistry and textures, the rover drove south to scout out more sites along the outer edge of the Jezero crater rim.    

      Learn more, and see more detailed views of Perseverance’s ‘Selfie With Dust Devil’

      Share








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      Percolating Clues: NASA Models New Way to Build Planetary Cores
      NASA’s Perseverance rover was traveling in the channel of an ancient river, Neretva Vallis, when it captured this view of an area of scientific interest nicknamed “Bright Angel” – the light-toned area in the distance at right. The area features light-toned rocky outcrops that may represent either ancient sediment that later filled the channel or possibly much older rock that was subsequently exposed by river erosion. NASA/JPL-Caltech A new NASA study reveals a surprising way planetary cores may have formed—one that could reshape how scientists understand the early evolution of rocky planets like Mars.
      Conducted by a team of early-career scientists and long-time researchers across the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the study offers the first direct experimental and geochemical evidence that molten sulfide, rather than metal, could percolate through solid rock and form a core—even before a planet’s silicate mantle begins to melt.
      For decades, scientists believed that forming a core required large-scale melting of a planetary body, followed by heavy metallic elements sinking to the center. This study introduces a new scenario—especially relevant for planets forming farther from the Sun, where sulfur and oxygen are more abundant than iron. In these volatile-rich environments, sulfur behaves like road salt on an icy street—it lowers the melting point by reacting with metallic iron to form iron-sulfide so that it may migrate and combine into a core. Until now, scientists didn’t know if sulfide could travel through solid rock under realistic planet formation conditions.
      Working on this project pushed us to be creative. It was exciting to see both data streams converge on the same story.
      Dr. Jake Setera
      ARES Scientist with Amentum
      The study results gave researchers a way to directly observe this process using high-resolution 3D imagery—confirming long-standing models about how core formation can occur through percolation, in which dense liquid sulfide travels through microscopic cracks in solid rock.
      “We could actually see in full 3D renderings how the sulfide melts were moving through the experimental sample, percolating in cracks between other minerals,” said Dr. Sam Crossley of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who led the project while a postdoctoral fellow with NASA Johnson’s ARES Division. “It confirmed our hypothesis—that in a planetary setting, these dense melts would migrate to the center of a body and form a core, even before the surrounding rock began to melt.”
      Recreating planetary formation conditions in the lab required not only experimental precision but also close collaboration among early-career scientists across ARES to develop new ways of observing and analyzing the results. The high-temperature experiments were first conducted in the experimental petrology lab, after which the resulting samples—or “run products”—were brought to NASA Johnson’s X-ray computed tomography (XCT) lab for imaging.
      A molten sulfide network (colored gold) percolates between silicate mineral grains in this cut-out of an XCT rendering—rendered are unmelted silicates in gray and sulfides in white. Credit: Crossley et al. 2025, Nature Communications X-ray scientist and study co-author Dr. Scott Eckley of Amentum at NASA Johnson used XCT to produce high-resolution 3D renderings—revealing melt pockets and flow pathways within the samples in microscopic detail. These visualizations offered insight into the physical behavior of materials during early core formation without destroying the sample.
      The 3D XCT visualizations initially confirmed that sulfide melts could percolate through solid rock under experimental conditions, but that alone could not confirm whether percolative core formation occurred over 4.5 billion years ago. For that, researchers turned to meteorites.
      “We took the next step and searched for forensic chemical evidence of sulfide percolation in meteorites,” Crossley said. “By partially melting synthetic sulfides infused with trace platinum-group metals, we were able to reproduce the same unusual chemical patterns found in oxygen-rich meteorites—providing strong evidence that sulfide percolation occurred under those conditions in the early solar system.”
      To understand the distribution of trace elements, study co-author Dr. Jake Setera, also of Amentum, developed a novel laser ablation technique to accurately measure platinum-group metals, which concentrate in sulfides and metals.
      “Working on this project pushed us to be creative,” Setera said. “To confirm what the 3D visualizations were showing us, we needed to develop an appropriate laser ablation method that could trace the platinum group-elements in these complex experimental samples. It was exciting to see both data streams converge on the same story.”
      When paired with Setera’s geochemical analysis, the data provided powerful, independent lines of evidence that molten sulfide had migrated and coalesced within a solid planetary interior. This dual confirmation marked the first direct demonstration of the process in a laboratory setting.
      Dr. Sam Crossley welds shut the glass tube of the experimental assembly. To prevent reaction with the atmosphere and precisely control oxygen and sulfur content, experiments needed to be sealed in a closed system under vacuum. Credit: Amentum/Dr. Brendan Anzures The study offers a new lens through which to interpret planetary geochemistry. Mars in particular shows signs of early core formation—but the timeline has puzzled scientists for years. The new results suggest that Mars’ core may have formed at an earlier stage, thanks to its sulfur-rich composition—potentially without requiring the full-scale melting that Earth experienced. This could help explain longstanding puzzles in Mars’ geochemical timeline and early differentiation.
      The results also raise new questions about how scientists date core formation events using radiogenic isotopes, such as hafnium and tungsten. If sulfur and oxygen are more abundant during a planet’s formation, certain elements may behave differently than expected—remaining in the mantle instead of the core and affecting the geochemical “clocks” used to estimate planetary timelines.
      This research advances our understanding of how planetary interiors can form under different chemical conditions—offering new possibilities for interpreting the evolution of rocky bodies like Mars. By combining experimental petrology, geochemical analysis, and 3D imaging, the team demonstrated how collaborative, multi-method approaches can uncover processes that were once only theoretical.
      Crossley led the research during his time as a McKay Postdoctoral Fellow—a program that recognizes outstanding early-career scientists within five years of earning their doctorate. Jointly offered by NASA’s ARES Division and the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, the fellowship supports innovative research in astromaterials science, including the origin and evolution of planetary bodies across the solar system.
      As NASA prepares for future missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, understanding how planetary interiors form is more important than ever. Studies like this one help scientists interpret remote data from spacecraft, analyze returned samples, and build better models of how our solar system came to be.
      For more information on NASA’s ARES division, visit: https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/
      Victoria Segovia
      NASA’s Johnson Space Center
      281-483-5111
      victoria.segovia@nasa.gov
      Share








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