NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe – IMAP – has completed a key milestone in mission development. After rigorous review, IMAP has passed what is known as Key Decision Point C, or KDP-C, which marks the mission's progression from formulation to implementation.
By Mara Johnson-Groh NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Plasma – a fourth state of matter after solid, liquid, and gas where particles have split into charged ions and electrons – is the most common form of matter in the universe. It's somewhat rare on Earth, but it makes up 99% of the matter in the …
The Sun emitted a significant solar flare peaking at 10:29 a.m. EDT on July 3, 2021. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however …
By Shawnee Traylor, PhD student in the joint Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution program in Chemical Oceanography / NORTHERN ATLANTIC OCEAN / Satellites have undoubtedly opened up new ways for scientists to study the ocean, giving us global coverage of the surface of the ocean without ever having to step foot …
By Laetitia Drago, PhD student at Sorbonne Université / NORTHERN ATLANTIC OCEAN / As a child, I used to spend my summers on the rocks near the water in Villefranche-sur-mer, France, my hands busy with a bucket and a small net. I was fascinated by the organisms surrounding me both on the rocks and in …
By Mikayla Cote, Master's student at the University of Rhode Island / UNITED KINGDOM / After flying to the United Kingdom, the EXPORTS scientists were in quarantine for two weeks prior to embarking on a month-long research cruise. While there was still some last-minute work to be done before departure, for most of us this …
By Diana Fontaine, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography / NORTHERN ATLANTIC OCEAN / We have about one more week of full science fun left in the North Atlantic NASA EXPORTS campaign. It has certainly been a wild ride at sea given that we've experienced about four storms to …
By Delfina Navarro-Estrada and Shannon Burns, oceanography graduate students at the University of South Florida / NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN / In the sunlit portion of the ocean exist single-celled microscopic organisms called phytoplankton. They are called the ‘grass of the sea' because these tiny plants and algae perform many of the same ecological functions as …
By Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution /NORTHERN ATLANTIC OCEAN/ For those of us who grew up watching Gilligan's Island, we all know the fateful story of the "three-hour tour." Well, as this oceanographer knows, that TV storm is not that different from the weather we are facing out here in the North Atlantic on …
Scientists using data from NASA's Parker Solar Probe released a new collection of research papers in a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on June 2, 2021.
