Space & Other Pretty Things

CubeSats Deployed Outside Station’s Kibo Lab Module via NASA http://ift.tt/2qBi60p

Floating spaceships

Goddamn it. 

Hail the Hexagon…

The full light of our sun allowed the Cassini spacecraft to capture this image of Saturn’s hexagonal polar jet stream, but the sun does not provide much warmth. In addition to being low in the sky (just like summer at Earth’s poles), the sun is nearly ten times as distant from Saturn as from Earth. This results in the sunlight being only about 1 percent as intense as at our planet. 

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 560,000 miles (900,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 33 miles (54 kilometers) per pixel.

More info: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21327/hail-the-hexagon

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

this one can go warp nine point nine.  NO WAIT, warp nine point nine NINE nine nine

Me

@0dongh

he screm

They're so leetle

Ejecting a floppy disk in space

A new discovery from NASA’s Cassini mission hints at potential life on Saturn’s Enceladus. 

Recent research from the Cassini mission, published in Science this week, has found new excitement on one of Saturn’s moons: plumes of vapor emerging from Enceladus contain large amounts of molecular hydrogen. More importantly, this hydrogen seems to be the product of hydrothermal activity in the moon’s ocean…and is a strong hint that the moon has conditions favorable to microbial life.

Scott Bolton, a co-investigator for the Cassini mission and co-author on the research, explains why the trail from hydrogen could lead to life, and his hopes for future missions to ocean worlds like Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa. Listen here to learn more.

I'm so happy to be working on missions looking for life. And the more we learn about our neighborhood, the more likely it seems we'll find life.

Secondary Craters in Bas Relief

This region of Mars has been sprayed with secondary craters from 10-kilometer Zunil Crater to the northwest. Secondary craters form from rocks ejected at high speed from the primary crater, which then impact the ground at sufficiently high speed to make huge numbers of much smaller craters over a large region. In this scene, however, the secondary crater ejecta has an unusual raised-relief appearance like bas-relief sculpture. How did that happen? One idea is that the region was covered with a layer of fine-grained materials like dust or pyroclastics about 1 to 2 meters thick when the Zunil impact occurred (about a million years ago), and the ejecta served to harden or otherwise protect the fine-grained layer from later erosion by the wind. 

Hiroyuki Satoh

also batman is a dinosaur, as he is in all his indisputably best conceptions

Indian-Americans raise $100,000 for Ian Grillot, the man who intervened in racist Kansas bar shooting

This isn’t what you think it is. It’s worth your time to give it a read.

This #MondayMailbag warmed even the Pedantic Astronomer’s heart! (Links added by me):

Diana’s tank top and leggings are from “tween brand” Justice, which is new to me but just jumped to the top of my “I’m Not Too Old For This, Right?” list. On a quick search I found a hair bow, sequin Saturn tee, and earrings, and I will most certainly be posting more soon!

To answer Diana’s questions: you have come to the right place for science-y accessories! For a budding engineer, @sci-chic leaps to mind (gears! stars! everything from our collaboration!) for fun jewelry, and their new subscription boxes provide themed surprises every month.

Second question: there is indeed clothing (and accessories, and more!) with solar cells, mostly for charging your phone, but also for storing and converting to heat on demand.

Diana, we cant wait to see what you discover and create!

–Emily