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    • By NASA
      2 min read
      Jovian Vortex Hunters Spun Up Over New Paper
      Jumping Jupiter! The results are in, storm chasers! Thanks to your help over the last two years the Jovian Vortex Hunter project has published a catalog of 7222 vortices, which you can download here. Each vortex is an enormous swirling windstorm in Jupiter’s atmosphere–terrifying yet beautiful to behold.
      The vortices are labeled by color (“white” is most common, then “dark”, then “red”).
      The catalog reveals distributions of vortex sizes, aspect ratios, and locations on the planet. For example, your work showed that white and dark vortices are preferentially found near the poles. These distributions help researchers derive general parameters about Jupiter’s atmosphere that can give us insights about its internal processes and the atmospheres of other planets.
      Over 5,000 of you helped build this catalog by performing over a million classifications of images of Jupiter from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno mission. The details of the catalog are now published in this paper in the Planetary Science Journal. You can also learn more about this amazing volunteer effort in a video you can find on the Jovian Vortex Hunter Results webpage.Thanks to your efforts, The Jovian Vortex Hunter project is out of data. But you can work with JunoCam data in a different way by participating in NASA’s JunoCam citizen science project.
      A set of really cool vortices–spinning storms–found by Jovian Vortex Hunters. Data from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno mission.
      Facebook logo @DoNASAScience @DoNASAScience Share








      Details
      Last Updated Dec 17, 2024 Editor Bill Keeter Related Terms
      Citizen Science Planetary Science Division View the full article
    • By USH
      Since late November 2024 there is something is going on and no one has the answer to why there are ongoing incursions of unidentified drones over U.S. and U.K. military bases, nuclear installations and areas such as New Jersey and Manchester Airport.

      For example, over the past 72 hours, again there have been numerous reports of large, car-sized drones or UFOs seen in the US (New Jersey, Arizona, North Carolina, Texas) and the UK too. 

      These drones often flying in formations displaying advanced capabilities such as coordination, range, endurance, and the ability to evade detection and interception. Despite multiple sightings, none have been recovered or identified, and no physical descriptions or origins have been confirmed. 
      Key details: 
      Activity: The drones have penetrated restricted airspace repeatedly, often in swarms of a dozen or more. 
      Capabilities: The drones exhibit advanced coordination and endurance, suggesting sophisticated technology.  
      Response: The U.S. Air Force acknowledges the incursions but states that they have not disrupted operations. Investigations are ongoing in collaboration with U.K. authorities. 
      Speculation: Potential origins range from Russia or China to commercial or recreational sources. However, their behavior and capabilities seem to exceed typical drone technology. Even there is speculation about an upcoming false flag alien/UFO invasion.
      Government Inaction: Criticism is directed at the Pentagon and other authorities for not addressing the issue or taking action to remove the objects, especially given their proximity to critical infrastructure. 
      The FBI and other authorities are reportedly focused on potential UFO or drone activities, particularly on or around December 3rd, which some claim was predicted to be significant by an individual known for accurately forecasting the 2003 Indonesian tsunami. 
      Media Suppression: Reports indicate that some footage and discussions about the sightings have been censored or removed. 
      Historical Context: The events resemble past UFO sightings at military installations, such as the 1975 U.S. military base incursions, where objects displayed extraordinary flight capabilities and eluded interception. 
      The situation remains unresolved, raising questions about the drones' origins, purpose, and implications for military security. 
      Whether they are advanced foreign drones or something more extraordinary, the lack of evidence and official explanations fuels speculation whether these sightings represent a security threat. 
      More information is awaited from ongoing investigations and official responses. 

      Several links/discussions of reported drone/UFO sightings: 
      Manchester Airport UFO sighting from inside the cockpit plus Clear shot of Airport UAP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zkZ3x1T0QU 
      Drones? UFOs? What's flying over the UK Bases? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy4feLBNQq8 
      UFO Invasion?! "They're the size of cars spotted over New Jersey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBLa6lUi5fg 
      Drone/ UFO sighting over the Duke Nuclear Power Plant https://x.com/digijordan/status/1862721088544772434View the full article
    • By Space Force
      Over the past two years, the first U.S. space service component has tripled in size, established a 24/7 space watch cell and executed three Tier 1 Combatant Command exercises.

      View the full article
    • By NASA
      5 min read
      Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
      Use your mouse to explore this 360-degree view of Gediz Vallis channel, a region of Mars that NASA’s Curiosity rover surveyed before heading west to new adventures. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The rover captured a 360-degree panorama before leaving Gediz Vallis channel, a feature it’s been exploring for the past year.
      NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing for the next leg of its journey, a monthslong trek to a formation called the boxwork, a set of weblike patterns on Mars’ surface that stretches for miles. It will soon leave behind Gediz Vallis channel, an area wrapped in mystery. How the channel formed so late during a transition to a drier climate is one big question for the science team. Another mystery is the field of white sulfur stones the rover discovered over the summer.
      Curiosity imaged the stones, along with features from inside the channel, in a 360-degree panorama before driving up to the western edge of the channel at the end of September.
      The rover is searching for evidence that ancient Mars had the right ingredients to support microbial life, if any formed billions of years ago, when the Red Planet held lakes and rivers. Located in the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain, Gediz Vallis channel may help tell a related story: what the area was like as water was disappearing on Mars. Although older layers on the mountain had already formed in a dry climate, the channel suggests that water occasionally coursed through the area as the climate was changing.
      Scientists are still piecing together the processes that formed various features within the channel, including the debris mound nicknamed “Pinnacle Ridge,” visible in the new 360-degree panorama. It appears that rivers, wet debris flows, and dry avalanches all left their mark. The science team is now constructing a timeline of events from Curiosity’s observations.
      NASA’s Curiosity captured this panorama using its Mastcam while heading west away from Gediz Vallis channel on Nov. 2, 2024, the 4,352nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The Mars rover’s tracks across the rocky terrain are visible at right.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The science team is also trying to answer some big questions about the sprawling field of sulfur stones. Images of the area from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) showed what looked like an unremarkable patch of light-colored terrain. It turns out that the sulfur stones were too small for MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) to see, and Curiosity’s team was intrigued to find them when the rover reached the patch. They were even more surprised after Curiosity rolled over one of the stones, crushing it to reveal yellow crystals inside.
      Science instruments on the rover confirmed the stone was pure sulfur — something no mission has seen before on Mars. The team doesn’t have a ready explanation for why the sulfur formed there; on Earth, it’s associated with volcanoes and hot springs, and no evidence exists on Mount Sharp pointing to either of those causes.
      “We looked at the sulfur field from every angle — from the top and the side — and looked for anything mixed with the sulfur that might give us clues as to how it formed. We’ve gathered a ton of data, and now we have a fun puzzle to solve,” said Curiosity’s project scientist Ashwin Vasavada at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
      NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this last look at a field of bright white sulfur stones on Oct. 11, before leaving Gediz Vallis channel. The field was where the rover made the first discovery of pure sulfur on Mars. Scientists are still unsure exactly why theses rocks formed here. Spiderwebs on Mars
      Curiosity, which has traveled about 20 miles (33 kilometers) since landing in 2012, is now driving along the western edge of Gediz Vallis channel, gathering a few more panoramas to document the region before making tracks to the boxwork.
      Viewed by MRO, the boxwork looks like spiderwebs stretching across the surface. It’s believed to have formed when minerals carried by Mount Sharp’s last pulses of water settled into fractures in surface rock and then hardened. As portions of the rock eroded away, what remained were the minerals that had cemented themselves in the fractures, leaving the weblike boxwork.
      On Earth, boxwork formations have been seen on cliffsides and in caves. But Mount Sharp’s boxwork structures stand apart from those both because they formed as water was disappearing from Mars and because they’re so extensive, spanning an area of 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers).  
      Scientists think that ancient groundwater formed this weblike pattern of ridges, called boxwork, that were captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Dec. 10, 2006. The agency’s Curiosity rover will study ridges similar to these up close in 2025.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona This weblike crystalline structure called boxwork is found in the ceiling of the Elk’s Room, part of Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing for a journey to a boxwork formation that stretches for miles on Mars’ surface. “These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through,” said Kirsten Siebach of Rice University in Houston, a Curiosity scientist studying the region. “Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment. That makes this an exciting place to explore.”
      More About Curiosity
      Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
      The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.), in Boulder, Colorado. JPL manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
      For more about these missions:
      science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity
      science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
      News Media Contacts
      Andrew Good
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      818-393-2433
      andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
      Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
      NASA Headquarters, Washington
      202-358-1600
      karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
      2024-160
      Share
      Details
      Last Updated Nov 18, 2024 Related Terms
      Curiosity (Rover) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Explore More
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    • By NASA
      In the unforgiving lunar environment, the possibility of an astronaut crewmember becoming incapacitated due to unforeseen circumstances (injury, medical emergency, or a mission-related accident) is a critical concern, starting with the upcoming Artemis III mission, where two astronaut crewmembers will explore the Lunar South Pole. The Moon’s surface is littered with rocks ranging from 0.15 to 20 meters in diameter and craters spanning 1 to 30 meters wide, making navigation challenging even under optimal conditions. The low gravity, unique lighting conditions, extreme temperatures, and availability of only one person to perform the rescue, further complicate any rescue efforts. Among the critical concerns is the safety of astronauts during Extravehicular Activities (EVAs). If an astronaut crewmember becomes incapacitated during a mission, the ability to return them safely and promptly to the human landing system is essential. A single crew member should be able to transport an incapacitated crew member distances up to 2 km and a slope of up to 20 degrees on the lunar terrain without the assistance of a lunar rover. This pressing issue opens the door for innovative solutions. We are looking for a cutting-edge design that is low in mass and easy to deploy, enabling one astronaut crewmember to safely transport their suited (343 kg (~755lb)) and fully incapacitated partner back to the human landing system. The solution must perform effectively in the Moon’s extreme South Pole environment and operate independently of a lunar rover. Your creativity and expertise could bridge this critical gap, enhancing the safety measures for future lunar explorers. By addressing this challenge, you have the opportunity to contribute to the next “giant leap” in human space exploration.
      Award: $45,000 in total prizes
      Open Date: November 14, 2024
      Close Date: January 23, 2025
      For more information, visit: https://www.herox.com/NASASouthPoleSafety
      View the full article
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