Any scientist can tell you that research is a time-consuming pursuit. In fact, it can take decades to show results, as the knowledge compounds and inspires additional studies. This building of information is what led to the Recombinant Attenuated Salmonella Vaccine or RASV investigation, which launched to the International Space Station on July 8, 2011. The investigation combines decades of expertise between two Arizona State University research teams. One team, led by Cheryl Nickerson, Ph.D. specializes...

NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on Sept. 7-8 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the twin lunar-bound GRAIL spacecraft aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch window opens at 5:37 a.m. PDT (8:37 a.m. EDT) on Sept. 8. The two GRAIL spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field, from...

Space shuttle Atlantis landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, wrapping up the final mission of NASA's space shuttle program. At 08:27:48 UT, just 21 minutes before the deorbit burn, astrophotographer Thierry Legault captured what might be the last picture of Atlantis in space--and it was a solar transit. For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News072111-atlantis-transit.html useful links: Ferrini Boots, boy suits, Alligator boots...

Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world's ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away. "The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water," said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's another demonstration...

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission reached a major milestone last week when it successfully completed its Mission Critical Design Review (CDR). MAVEN, scheduled for launch in late 2013, will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space through time, providing answers about Mars climate evolution. It will accomplish this by measuring the current rate of escape...

Flooding along the Missouri River continues as shown in recent Landsat satellite images of the Nebraska and Iowa border. Heavy rains and snowmelt have caused the river to remain above flood stage for an extended period. A Landsat 5 image of the area from May 5, 2011 shows normal flow. In contrast, a Landsat 7 image from July 17 depicts flood conditions in the same location. A national overview map of streamflow provided by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) WaterWatch graphically portrays...

Chefs across the globe may not know it yet, but their baker's yeast just left the kitchen and blasted off into low Earth orbit. Hitching a ride on the space shuttle Atlantis on July 8, 2011, the samples will be grown on the International Space Station as part of the Genotypic and Phenotypic Changes in Yeast Related to Selective Growth Pressures Unique to Microgravity or Micro-4 investigation. Capable of raising more than just breads, this useful organism will help researchers better understand...

New findings from NEOWISE, the asteroid- and comet-hunting portion of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, show that comet Hartley 2 leaves a pebbly trail as it laps the sun, dotted with grains as big as golf balls. Previously, NASA's EPOXI mission, which flew by the comet on Nov. 4, 2010, found golf ball- to basketball-sized fluffy ice particles streaming off comet Hartley 2. NEOWISE data show that the golf ball-sized chunks survive farther away from the comet than previously known,...

It's what Bill Patzert, a climatologist and oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., likes to call a "La Nada" – that puzzling period between cycles of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean when sea surface heights in the equatorial Pacific are near average. The comings and goings of El Niño and La Niña are part of a long-term, evolving state of global climate, for which measurements of sea surface height are a key indicator. For the...

On June 7, 2011, Earth-orbiting satellites detected a flash of X-rays coming from the western edge of the solar disk. Registering only "M" (for medium) on the Richter scale of solar flares, the blast at first appeared to be a run-of-the-mill eruption--that is, until researchers looked at the movies. "We'd never seen anything like it," says Alex Young, a solar physicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Half of the sun appeared to be blowing itself to bits." "In terms of raw power, this really...

Scientists, photographers and amateur cloud watchers have been looking up with wonderment and puzzlement at "hole punch" clouds for decades. Giant, open spaces appear in otherwise continuous cloud cover, presenting beautiful shapes but also an opportunity for scientific investigation. A new paper published last week in Science inquires into how the holes get punched – airplanes are the culprit – and into the potential for the phenomenon's link to increased precipitation around major airports. "It...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away. "For 21 years Hubble has been the premier space science observatory, astounding us with deeply beautiful imagery and enabling ground-breaking science across a wide spectrum of astronomical disciplines," said NASA Administrator...

Mission managers for NASA's Cassini spacecraft suspended operation of the Cassini plasma spectrometer instrument on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, after a series of voltage shifts on the spacecraft. They will determine when the instrument can resume collecting data. The Cassini spacecraft is designed to operate with a "balanced" voltage source to create a tolerance to short circuits. On May 1, a voltage shift occurred, most likely explained by a short circuit happening somewhere in the system. On...

There is at least one first involved with space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission, a flight notable for its lasts: the crew is taking the first iPhone into space to help with experiments aboard the International Space Station. A Houston company called Odyssey Space Research developed an application for the Apple smartphone that is meant to help the astronauts track their scientific results and perhaps one day aid navigation. The device will be housed inside a small research platform built...

Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD will pass only 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) above the Earth's surface on Monday June 27 at about 9:30 EDT. The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team observing from Socorro, New Mexico. This small asteroid, only 5-20 meters in diameter, is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun, but an orbital analysis indicates there is no chance it will actually strike Earth on Monday. If a rocky asteroid the size of 2011 MD were to enter...