How do you study the topography of an asteroid millions of miles away? Map it with a robotic cartographer!
NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will launch in September 2016 and travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. But before the science team can select a sample site, it needs to know a little something about the asteroid's topography.
For the better part of a week, a persistent, mid-level area of low pressure has been tapping into warm, moist air to produce stormy weather in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, and satellite data of rainfall was collected and calculated at NASA.
Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to 2 billion years of its early history, according to computer modeling of the planet's ancient climate by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
The findings, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, were obtained with a model similar to the type used to predict future climate change on Earth.
Physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded in detecting a time-resolved supernova signal in the Earth's microfossil record. As the group of Prof. Shawn Bishop could show, the supernova signal was first detectable at a time starting about 2.7 Million years ago. According to the researcher's analyses, our solar system spent one Million years to transit trough the remnants of a supernova.
Three years ago, the Federal Trade Commission dimmed hopes for the Brightest Flashlight app for Android, slapping its developer with charges of consumer deception. Why? The app was transmitting users' locations and device IDs to third parties without telling the users or getting their permission.
Permissions, though, are only a small part of the Android- app privacy story.
WASHINGTON, DC -- Liquid methane-filled canyons hundreds of meters deep with walls as steep as ski slopes etch the surface of Titan, researchers report in a new study. The new findings provide the first direct evidence of these features on Saturn's largest moon, and could give scientists insights into Titan's origins and similar geologic processes on Earth, according to the study's authors.
Messier 18 was discovered and catalogued in 1764 by Charles Messier -- for whom the Messier Objects are named -- during his search for comet-like objects [1]. It lies within the Milky Way, approximately 4600 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius, and consists of many sibling stars loosely bound together in what is known as an open cluster.
There are several large fires burning on Portugal's Madeira Island and mainland and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of the smoke generated from them.
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite. VIIRS imagery identified smoke on Aug. 9 at 8:55 a.m. EDT (12:55 UTC). Actively burning areas are outlined in red.
Madeira is an archipelago of four islands located off the northwest coast of Africa. They are an autonomous region of Portugal.
NASA's RapidScat instrument provided measurements of sustained wind speeds as Tropical Storm Omais was moving past Japan.
The RapidScat instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station measures Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction over open waters. On Aug. 8 RapidScat measured surface winds on the western side of Tropical Storm Omais that were affecting central Japan.
RapidScat measured maximum sustained winds between 56 mph/25 meters per second/90 kph and 67 mph (30 meters per second/108 kph).
FINDINGS
Bisphenol S, a chemical used to manufacture polycarbonate water bottles and many other products such as epoxy glues and cash receipts, is an increasingly common replacement for bisphenol A, the of which was discontinued because of concerns about its harmful effects on the reproductive system. In a new study, UCLA researchers have found that BPS is just as harmful to the reproductive system as the chemical it replaced. BPS damages a woman's eggs and at lower doses than BPA.
Hurricane Earl began as a tropical wave that was tracked by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) from the African coast to the Caribbean Sea. The tropical wave drenched the Dominican Republic, where it was blamed for the deaths of six people. Southwest of Jamaica on Aug. 2, 2016, the tropical wave developed a closed circulation, and Earl was upgraded to a tropical storm.
The health systems of six Latin American and Caribbean countries have made substantial progress toward universal coverage -- providing free or subsidized healthcare to the majority of their populations -- but continue to face challenges managing more complex health needs such as those related to cardiovascular disease, cancer, stroke and depression, a new study from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the Inter-American Development Bank finds.
Some of the most abundant particles in the universe are the so-called ghost particles, neutrinos, which travel through virtually anything on their journey through the universe. Researchers have identified three types of neutrinos, but they have been searching for one more type, an even more ghostlike sterile neutrino, which would explain mysterious phenomena like dark matter. After analysing thousands of neutrinos in the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute can now confirm that there is no evidence for the existence of sterile neutrinos.
Friday 12 August sees the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower. This year, as well as the normal peak on the night of 12/13 August, meteor scientists are predicting additional enhanced activity in the shower the night before, as the Earth passes through a dense clump of cometary debris.
About 7 percent of all Danish children are born prematurely. This is of significant im-portance not only to the child's development, but it also affects the mother's body that - unexpectedly - has to produce the necessary nutrition for the newborn baby.