A SHOT IN THE DARK Chasing the aurora from the world's northernmost rocket range Part II I • II • III • IV • V • VI • VII At 3:45 am, the van rumbled over a snow-covered road away from the team's dormitories. The launchpad was a ten-minute ride outside the town limits. Ny-Ålesund's boundaries are marked with triangle-shaped signs, outlined in …
A SHOT IN THE DARK Chasing the aurora from the world's northernmost rocket range In the tiny Arctic town of Ny-Ålesund, where polar bears outnumber people, winter means three months without sunlight. The unending darkness is ideal for those who seek a strange breed of northern lights, normally obscured by daylight. When these unusual auroras …
On Nov. 12, 2019, NASA's Parker Solar Probe team released scientific data collected during the spacecraft's first two solar orbits.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter spacecraft arrived at the Launch and Landing Facility, formerly known as the Shuttle Landing Facility, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard an Antonov cargo plane from Munich, Germany, on Nov. 1. Upon arrival at the Florida spaceport, the spacecraft was offloaded and transported to the Astrotech Space Operations facility in nearby Titusville, where it will spend the next few months undergoing final preparations, tests and checkouts for liftoff.
Where Did that Electron Come From? Tracking Charged Particles into Earth's Atmosphere with ELFIN By Mara Johnson-Groh NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center On September 2, 2019 — after a year of quiet conditions in space since its September 2018 launch — a NASA CubeSat the size of a large toaster flew straight through a solar …
by Kate Ramsayer Operation IceBridge took off on the first flight of its final polar campaign Thursday, with a route designed to measure the ice in a region of Antarctica the mission had not yet explored. IceBridge has been gathering data on Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice for 10 years. It …
by Dan Slayback, NASA Research Scientist aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans / KINGDOM OF TONGA / What a week! Having just finished an expedition to Earth's newest landmass, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) in the Kingdom of Tonga a few days ago, I thought I'd write a few thoughts on this latest expedition to Earth's …
By Katie Orndahl /YUKON AND NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, CANADA/ I spent my summer searching for arctic spirits: barren-ground caribou who are, somehow, both omnipresent and elusive. My journey, it turns out, would trace the migration route of the Porcupine caribou herd, linking boreal forest and arctic tundra ecosystems unlike any other northern mammal. The wild landscape …
By Emily B. Hite /NUKU'ALOFA, TONGA/ Under the moonlight of Friday, October 11, 2019, I eagerly trekked across Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) with a team from Sea Education Association (SEA) and NASA to complete one final mission: to measure temperatures around the perimeter of the volcano's crater lake. To our delight, our thermal imaging …
By Natalia Chiapperi & Carlin Schildge /HUNGA TONGA-HUNGA HA'APAI, KINGDOM OF TONGA/ As we begin to wrap up our time here at HTHH, the data collection slowed down and we found some free time to enjoy the beauty and seclusion of the island. The day started late, with an 8:40 wake-up call, the latest we've …
