Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
ERS-2 reenters Earth’s atmosphere over Pacific Ocean
-
Similar Topics
-
By USH
Some time ago, while visiting the Grand Canyon in Arizona, a photographer captured several short video clips of the landscape. In one of those clips, an unusual anomaly was discovered.
The original footage is only 1.9 seconds long, but within that moment, something remarkable was caught on camera. An unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) flashed across the frame, visible for less than a second, only noticeable when the video was paused and analyzed frame by frame.
The object was moving at an astonishing speed, covering an estimated two to three miles in under a second, far beyond the capabilities of any conventional aircraft, drone, or helicopter.
This isn’t the first time such anomalous flying objects have been observed. Their characteristics defy comparison with known aerial technology.
Some skeptics have proposed that the object might have been a rock thrown into the canyon from behind the camera. However, that explanation seems unlikely. Most people can only throw objects at speeds of 10 to 20 meters per second (approximately 22 to 45 mph). The velocity of this object far exceeded that range, and its near-invisibility in the unedited video suggests it was moving much faster.
View the full article
-
By NASA
For the first time, scientists can observe temperature changes in the Sun’s outer atmosphere thanks to new technology introduced by NASA’s CODEX instrument. This animated, color-coded heat map shows temperature changes over the course of a couple days, where red indicates hotter regions and purple indicates cooler ones. NASA/KASI/INAF/CODEX Key Points:
NASA’s CODEX investigation captured images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, showcasing new aspects of its gusty, uneven flow. The CODEX instrument, located on the International Space Station, is a coronagraph — a scientific tool that creates an artificial eclipse with physical disks — that measures the speed and temperature of solar wind using special filters. These first-of-their-kind measurements will help scientists improve models of space weather and better understand the Sun’s impact on Earth. Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s CODEX (Coronal Diagnostic Experiment) investigation have successfully evaluated the instrument’s first images, revealing the speed and temperature of material flowing out from the Sun. These images, shared at a press event Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, illustrate the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is not a homogenous, steady flow of material, but an area with sputtering gusts of hot plasma. These images will help scientists improve their understanding of how the Sun impacts Earth and our technology in space.
“We really never had the ability to do this kind of science before,” said Jeffrey Newmark, a heliophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the principal investigator for CODEX. “The right kind of filters, the right size instrumentation — all the right things fell into place. These are brand new observations that have never been seen before, and we think there’s a lot of really interesting science to be done with it.”
The Sun continuously radiates material in the form of the solar wind. The Sun’s magnetic field shapes this material, sometimes creating flowing, ray-like formations called coronal streamers. In this view from NASA’s CODEX instrument, large dark spots block much of the bright light from the Sun. Blocking this light allows the instrument’s sensitive equipment to capture the faint light of the Sun’s outer atmosphere. NASA/KASI/INAF/CODEX NASA’s CODEX is a solar coronagraph, an instrument often employed to study the Sun’s faint corona, or outer atmosphere, by blocking the bright face of the Sun. The instrument, which is installed on the International Space Station, creates artificial eclipses using a series of circular pieces of material called occulting disks at the end of a long telescope-like tube. The occulting disks are about the size of a tennis ball and are held in place by three metal arms.
Scientists often use coronagraphs to study visible light from the corona, revealing dynamic features, such as solar storms, that shape the weather in space, potentially impacting Earth and beyond.
NASA missions use coronagraphs to study the Sun in various ways, but that doesn’t mean they all see the same thing. Coronagraphs on the joint NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission look at visible light from the solar corona with both a wide field of view and a smaller one. The CODEX instrument’s field of view is somewhere in the middle, but looks at blue light to understand temperature and speed variations in the background solar wind.
In this composite image of overlapping solar observations, the center and left panels show the field-of-view coverage of the different coronagraphs with overlays and are labeled with observation ranges in solar radii. The third panel shows a zoomed-in, color-coded portion of the larger CODEX image. It highlights the temperature ratios in that portion of the solar corona using CODEX 405.0 and 393.5 nm filters. NASA/ESA/SOHO/KASI/INAF/CODEX “The CODEX instrument is doing something new,” said Newmark. “Previous coronagraph experiments have measured the density of material in the corona, but CODEX is measuring the temperature and speed of material in the slowly varying solar wind flowing out from the Sun.”
These new measurements allow scientists to better characterize the energy at the source of the solar wind.
The CODEX instrument uses four narrow-band filters — two for temperature and two for speed — to capture solar wind data. “By comparing the brightness of the images in each of these filters, we can tell the temperature and speed of the coronal solar wind,” said Newmark.
Understanding the speed and temperature of the solar wind helps scientists build a more accurate picture of the Sun, which is necessary for modeling and predicting the Sun’s behaviors.
“The CODEX instrument will impact space weather modeling by providing constraints for modelers to use in the future,” said Newmark. “We’re excited for what’s to come.”
by NASA Science Editorial Team
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md
CODEX is a collaboration between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) with additional contribution from Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 10, 2025 Related Terms
Heliophysics Coronagraph Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Division Space Weather The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
After an extraordinary six-week voyage from northern Norway, the iconic Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl has docked in Nice, France, concluding ESA’s 2025 Advanced Ocean Training course. Braving everything from wild storms to calm near-freezing seas, students aboard mastered techniques for collecting ocean measurements and harnessed satellite data to unlock insights into our blue planet.
Led by experts, this real-world expedition offered more than education – it sparked curiosity and a deeper commitment to understanding and protecting our oceans.
View the full article
-
By Space Force
U.S. Space Force Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, USSF Indo-Pacific commander, emphasized the critical role of space capabilities in ensuring stability across the Indo-Pacific region at Australian Space Summit 2025 on May 27-28.
View the full article
-
By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 4 min read
Sols 4549-4552: Keeping Busy Over the Long Weekend
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on May 23, 2025 — Sol 4548, or Martian day 4,548 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 07:17:19 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Earth planning date: Friday, May 23, 2025
In Wednesday’s mission update, Alex mentioned that this past Monday’s plan included a “marathon” drive of 45 meters (148 feet). Today, we found ourselves almost 70 meters (230 feet) from where we were on Wednesday. This was our longest drive since the truly enormous 97-meter (318-foot) drive back on sol 3744.
Today’s plan looks a little different from our usual weekend plans. Because of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday on Monday, the team will next assemble on Tuesday, so an extra sol had to be appended to the weekend plan. This extra sol is mostly being used for our next drive (about 42 meters or 138 feet), which means that all of the science that we have planned today can be done “targeted,” i.e., we know exactly where the rover is. As a result, we can use the instruments on our arm to poke at specific targets close to the rover, rather than filling our science time exclusively with remote sensing activities of farther-away features.
The rover’s power needs are continuing to dominate planning. Although we passed aphelion (the farthest distance Mars is from the Sun) a bit over a month ago and so are now getting closer to the Sun, we’re just about a week away from winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. This is the time of year when Gale Crater receives the least amount of light from the Sun, leading to particularly cold temperatures even during the day, and thus more power being needed to keep the rover and its instruments warm. On the bright side, being at the coldest time of the year means that we have only warmer sols to look forward to!
Given the need to keep strictly to our allotted power budget, everyone did a phenomenal job finding optimizations to ensure that we could fit as much science into this plan as possible. All together, we have over four hours of our usual targeted and remote sensing activities, as well as over 12 hours of overnight APXS integrations.
Mastcam is spending much of its time today looking off in the distance, particularly focusing on the potential boxwork structures that we’re driving towards. These structures get two dedicated mosaics, totaling 42 images between the two of them. Mastcam will also observe “Mishe Mokwa” (a small butte about 15 meters, or 49 feet, to our south) and some bedrock troughs in our workspace, and will take two tau observations to characterize the amount of dust in the atmosphere.
ChemCam has just one solo imaging-only observation in this plan: an RMI mosaic of Texoli butte off to our east. ChemCam will be collaborating with APXS to take some passive spectral observations (i.e., no LIBS) to measure the composition of the atmosphere. Mastcam and ChemCam will also be working together on observations of LIBS activities. This plan includes an extravagant three LIBS, on “Orocopia Mountains,” “Dripping Springs,” and “Mountain Center.” Both Mastcam and ChemCam also have a set of “dark” observations intended to characterize the performance of the instruments with no light on their sensors, something that’s very important for properly calibrating their measurements.
Our single set of arm activities includes APXS, DRT, and MAHLI activities on “Camino Del Mar” and “Mount Baden-Powell,” both of which are bedrock targets in our workspace.
Of course, I can’t forget to mention the collection of Navcam observations that we have in this plan to monitor the environment. These include a 360-degree survey looking for dust devils, two line-of-sight activities to measure the amount of dust in the air within Gale, and three cloud movies. As always, we’ve also got a typical collection of REMS, RAD, and DAN activities throughout.
Share
Details
Last Updated May 27, 2025 Related Terms
Blogs Explore More
2 min read Sols 4547-4548: Taking in the View After a Long Drive
Article
5 days ago
2 min read Sol 4546: Martian Jenga
Article
5 days ago
5 min read Sols 4543-4545: Leaving the Ridge for the Ridges
Article
7 days ago
Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
All Mars Resources
Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…
Rover Basics
Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…
Mars Exploration: Science Goals
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.