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The raised arcs, lines, dots, and other markings in this 17-by-11-inch Hubble Space Telescope image of the Carina Nebula highlight important features in the giant gas cloud, allowing visually impaired people to feel what they cannot see and form a picture of the nebula in their minds. › Larger image The Hubble Space Telescope's dramatic glimpse of the Carina Nebula, a gigantic cloud of dust and gas bustling with star-making activity, is a glorious feast for the eyes. Energetic young stars...

The JPL-mentored winning team "Beach Bots" from Hermosa Beach, Calif., is shown here in blue next to the "The Pink Team" from the area around Cocoa Beach, Florida. The teams are operating their robots remotely. › Larger viewFifty-eight teams from Southern California, Florida, Massachusetts and Chile competed in the Los Angeles regional FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics competition this past weekend, March 27 and 28. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,...

Every year, hurricanes and droughts wreak havoc on human lives and property around the world. And according to a pair of new NASA-funded studies, migratory birds also experience severe impacts to their habitats and populations from these events. While this may not seem like a revelation, the researchers were surprised to find that migratory bird species located as far as 60 miles (100 kilometers) from a hurricane’s path had experienced a long-term loss in population. Those populations took...

A composite image from NASA's Chandra (blue) and Spitzer (green and red-yellow) space telescopes shows the dusty remains of a collapsed star, a supernova remnant called G54.1+0.3. › Full image and captionA new image from NASA's Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes shows the dusty remains of a collapsed star. The dust is flying past and engulfing a nearby family of stars. "Scientists think the stars in the image are part of a stellar cluster in which a supernova exploded," said Tea Temin...

This figure illustrates the unexpected and bizarre pattern of daytime temperatures found on Saturn's small inner moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles, in diameter). › Full image and caption › View related images The highest-resolution-yet temperature map and images of Saturn's icy moon Mimas obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal surprising patterns on the surface of the small moon, including unexpected hot regions that resemble "Pac-Man" eating a dot, and striking bands of ...

Houston. It was the first word from the moon, and the city has served as the home of Mission Control and the nation’s human spaceflight program for more than 40 years. But even though Houston has been the home of NASA's astronaut corps for decades, the city has never had a hometown astronaut -- until now. Shannon Walker, born and raised in Houston, will become the city’s first native to fly in space when she launches to the International Space Station in June. Walker, along with astronaut...

A lunar habitat module, paper that captures sound as energy and a drug delivery system for use in space. What do these inventions have in common? They’re all concepts being developed for commercialization by high school students competing in the Conrad Foundation’s Innovation Summit. The summit is being held April 8-10, 2010 at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. The "Spirit of Innovation" award is in honor of the late Charles 'Pete' Conrad, a highly decorated naval aviator...

Close From left to right are Shannon W. Lucid, Margaret Rhea Seddon, Kathryn D. Sullivan, Judith A. Resnik, Anna L. Fisher, and Sally K. Ride. NASA selected all six women as their first female astronaut candidates in January 1978, allowing them to enroll in a training program that they completed in August 1979. View my blog's last three great articles... Preparing Discovery for Flight Opportunity Surpasses 20 Kilometers of Total Drivi... NASA Study Finds Atlantic 'Conveyor Belt' Not Slo...

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity today surpassed 20 kilometers (12.43 miles) of total driving since it landed on Mars 74 months ago. The drive taking the rover past that total covered 67 meters (220 feet) southward as part of the rover's long-term trek toward Endeavour Crater to the southeast. It was on the 2,191st Martian day, or sol, of the mission and brought Opportunity's total odometry to 20.0433 kilometers. To reach Endeavour, the healthy but aging rover will need to drive...

Illustration depicting the overturning circulation of the global ocean. Throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the circulation carries warm waters (red arrows) northward near the surface and cold deep waters (blue arrows) southward. › Larger image New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over...

A new international study finds that ice losses from Greenland's ice sheet, which have been increasing over the past decade in its southern region, are now spreading rapidly up its northwest coast. The researchers, including Isabella Velicogna, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, compared data from the JPL-built and managed Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission with continuous GPS measurements made from...

NASA's commitment to provide aeronautical research opportunities to U.S. universities has led to another success, this time through an inventive student who earned his Ph.D. by creating a tiny sensor that beats anything seen in 20 years. Vijay Chandrasekharan is a research associate and doctoral candidate at the University of Florida, where he produced a micro-electronic sensor that measures the amount of shear stress created when turbulent air flows over a surface. The sensor already has...

During the first two weeks of February 2010, the GOES-12 weather satellite observed a record-setting series of "Nor'easter" snow storms which blanketed the mid-Atlantic coast in two blizzards. Washington, D.C. normally averages only 16 inches of snow per year, but this year most of the season's snowfall arrived over several days and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-12 captured the storms. NASA's GOES Project created a movie of GOES satellite data from February...

A virtual "Workshop Without Walls" conference hosted last week by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) drew more than 170 registrants from 21 states and 16 foreign countries. Entitled "The Organic Continuum from the Interstellar Medium to the Early Earth," the two-day workshop held March 11-12, 2010 was organized by George Cody, leader of the NAI's Carnegie Institution of Washington team and Doug Whittet, leader of the NAI’s team at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. Among...

Thirteen-year-old Ajay Ramesh and 12-year-old Prithvi Aiyaswamy, two seventh grade boys from Chaboya Middle School, San Jose, Calif., were so excited about their visit to the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., that they could barely sleep the night before their visit. "I sort of slept. I was really excited," Ramesh recalled. The sleepy-eyed students were prepared to conduct an experiment studying the effects of airflow resistance or "drag" of automobiles...

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, one of the original moonwalkers, is now working on other moves as a contestant on the show “Dancing with the Stars.” He’s been rehearsing his steps for more than five hours per day. "My primary motivation for joining the show is to help bring NASA and the U.S. human spaceflight program to the front of popular consciousness. Until there's a spectacular success or failure, the space program is not on everyone's lips," Aldrin says. "’Dancing with the Stars’ has...

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, has a new capability to make its own choices about whether to make additional observations of rocks that it spots on arrival at a new location. Software uploaded this winter is the latest example of NASA taking advantage of the twin Mars rovers' unanticipated longevity for real Martian test drives of advances made in robotic autonomy for future missions. Now, Opportunity's computer can examine images that the rover...