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    Behind the Lens at New Horizons’ Pluto Flyby

    Members of the Composition team compare their three independent analyses of the spectrum, which showed the very first detection of water ice.

    Today's blog is from Henry Throop, a New Horizons science team member and senior research scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in Mumbai, India. In a previous blog post, I wrote about software the New Horizons team used to image Pluto. Here, I'm going to talk about my work photographing the team itself. We knew …

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    Imaging the Encounter of a Lifetime

    Mission science team

    Jorge Núñez, a planetary scientist and engineer from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), is the deputy systems engineer of the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument on New Horizons. He studies the geology and composition of planetary surfaces using a variety of remote-sensing techniques. When not working on New Horizons or analyzing …

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    Super Balloon Takes Flight From New Zealand

    Unpacking the balloon

    NASA's super pressure balloon took flight from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, at 7:35 p.m. Monday, May 16 (in EDT), on a flight aiming for long-duration at mid-latitudes. Video and pictures from the launch operation follow.

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    Up, Up, and Away! NASA Launches Globetrotting Super Balloon

    Groundtrack

    WANAKA, New Zealand – NASA successfully launched a super pressure balloon (SPB) from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, at 11:35 a.m. Tuesday, May 17, (7:35 p.m. EDT Monday, May 16) on a potentially record-breaking, around-the-world test flight. The purpose of the flight is to test and validate the SPB technology with the goal of long-duration flight …

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    Super Pressure Balloon Launch Attempt Underway

    A scientific balloon is to the right, and appears as a plastic, upside down teardrop. A tube attached to the top of the balloon leads down to the ground. A crane to the left holds a large payload structure with many solar panels.

    NASA is targeting 7 p.m., Monday, May 16, (11 a.m., Tuesday, May 17, in New Zealand) to launch its super pressure balloon on a globetrotting, potentially 100-day test flight launching from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand. This is the fifth launch attempt for the balloon team. The launch can be tracked in the following ways: · …

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    Setting a Course for the World’s Largest Plankton Bloom

    The research vessel Atlantis in port. Credit: Michael Starobin/NASA

    by Stephanie Schollaert Uz / Woods Hole, MA / Stephanie Schollaert Uz, PhD, is an ocean scientist working in the Ocean Ecology Lab at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Her research interests include the response of ocean biology to physics. She also coordinates communications for the future NASA ocean color satellite PACE, …

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    A Picture of Pluto is Worth a Thousand Words

    Topographic profile, taken from a preliminary digital terrain model, with crater dimension marked

    Today's blog is from Veronica Bray, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. She specializes in comparing the surfaces of planetary bodies across the solar system, especially through the study of impact craters. A spacecraft flies to Pluto, amazing images of this alien disk are sent back to Earth for us …

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    Weather postpones fourth super pressure balloon launch attempt

    This image depicts the ASTHROS mission in flight in over Antarctica. The mission’s launch vehicle, an American football-stadium sized stratospheric balloon, and telescope payload fly in the stratosphere. Clouds and Antarctic land are visible below the mission, while the  vast expanse of outer space stretches above the mission.

    Mother Nature continues to flex her muscles and throw us some jabs down in New Zealand; NASA's scheduled super pressure balloon (SPB) launch attempt for today, May 6 (May 7 in New Zealand) has been postponed again due to poor weather. "The high pressure system that was looking like it would help keep low-level winds down has dissipated …

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    A Visit to Taehwa Research Forest

    Forest from above

    by Emily Schaller / OSAN AIR BASE, SOUTH KOREA / Driving up a winding, bumpy road through a peaceful forest with tall pine trees towering over us, it was easy to forget that the megacity of Seoul was only 25 miles away. This serene spot is the location of theTaehwa Mountain Forest Research site, one …

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