OrbitalHub

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s asteroid-hunting NEOWISE survey uses infrared to detect and characterize asteroids and comets. Since the mission was restarted in December 2013, NEOWISE has observed or detected more than 29,000 asteroids in infrared light, of which 788 were near-Earth objects.

The orbits of Mercury, Venus and Mars are shown in blue. Earth’s orbit is in teal. Green dots represent near-Earth objects. Gray dots represent all other asteroids which are mainly in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Yellow squares represent comets. The survey depicted in the animation covers the period from December 13, 2013 to December 13, 2017.”

Video Credit: NASA

NASA Goddard dixit:

“On April 24, 2018, the Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 28th year in orbit. Even after all these years, Hubble continues to expand humanity’s knowledge of the universe. These are a few science achievements from Hubble’s latest year in orbit.”

Video Credit: NASA Goddard

NASA dixit:

“NASA’s Juno mission has provided the first view of the dynamo, or engine, powering Jupiter’s magnetic field. The new global portrait reveals unexpected irregularities and regions of surprising magnetic field intensity. Red areas show where magnetic field lines emerge from the planet, while blue areas show where they return. As Juno continues its mission, it will improve our understanding of Jupiter’s complex magnetic environment.”

Video Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA dixit:

“In this animation the viewer is taken low over Jupiter’s north pole to illustrate the 3-D aspects of the region’s central cyclone and the eight cyclones that encircle it. The movie utilizes imagery derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno mission during its fourth pass over the massive planet. Infrared cameras are used to sense the temperature of Jupiter’s atmosphere and provide insight into how the powerful cyclones at Jupiter’s poles work. In the animation, the yellow areas are warmer (or deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere) and the dark areas are colder (or higher up in Jupiter’s atmosphere). In this picture the highest “brightness temperature” is around 260K (about -13°C) and the lowest around 190K (about -83°C). The “brightness temperature” is a measurement of the radiance, at 5 µm, traveling upward from the top of the atmosphere towards Juno, expressed in units of temperature.”

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

NASA dixit:

“TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is NASA’s newest exoplanet mission. Led by MIT, TESS will find thousands of new planets orbiting nearby stars. During its two year survey, TESS will watch a wide variety of stars, looking for signs of planets ranging from Earth-size to larger than Jupiter.

Each of TESS’s cameras has a 16.8-megapixel sensor covering a square 24 degrees wide — large enough to contain an entire constellation. TESS has four of these cameras arranged to view a long strip of the sky called an observation sector. TESS will watch each observation sector for about 27 days before rotating to the next. It will cover the southern sky in its first year, and then begin scanning the north.

TESS will study 85 percent of the sky — an area 350 times greater than what NASA’s Kepler mission first observed — making TESS the first exoplanet mission to survey nearly the entire sky. Because TESS’s observation sectors overlap, it will have an area near the pole under constant observation. This region is easily monitored by the James Webb Space Telescope, which allows the two missions to work together to first find, and then carefully study exoplanets.”

Music Credit: “Drive to Succeed” from Killer Tracks

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA dixit:

“Psyche is both the name of an asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter — and the name of a NASA space mission to visit that asteroid, led by Arizona State University. Join the Psyche team to explore why this mission was selected for NASA’s Discovery Program, how we’ll get to the asteroid, what we hope to learn from Psyche, and the importance of scientific discovery.”

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State Univ./Peter Rubin/SSL