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By NASA
In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and expand, possibly engulfing Earth. These end stages of a star’s life can be utterly beautiful – as is the case with this planetary nebula called the Helix Nebula. Astronomers study these objects by looking at all kinds of light.X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand This image of the Helix Nebula, released on March 4, 2025, shows a potentially destructive white dwarf at the nebula’s center: this star may have destroyed a planet. This has never been seen before – and could explain a mysterious X-ray signal that astronomers have detected from the nebula for over 40 years.
This view combines X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (magenta), optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (orange, light blue), infrared data from the European Southern Observatory VISTA telescope (gold, dark blue), and ultraviolet data from GALEX (purple) of the Helix Nebula. Data from Chandra indicates that this white dwarf has destroyed a very closely orbiting planet.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand
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By European Space Agency
The first image from a new Italian Earth observation satellite mission was published today: a high-resolution image of a strip of the Italian peninsular showing the city of Rome at a resolution of 2.66 metres. This is three times higher than the resolution currently available for systematic acquisition over Italy.
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By European Space Agency
The European Space Agency is releasing the first catalogue of astronomical data from the Euclid space telescope, including three new enormous image mosaics with zoom-ins. Follow the reveal live on Wednesday 19 March at 11:00 BST / 12:00 CET.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Science Activation 2025 Aviation Weather Mission:… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 2 min read
2025 Aviation Weather Mission: Civil Air Patrol Cadets Help Scientists Study the Atmosphere with GLOBE Clouds
The Science Activation Program’s NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) is working alongside the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) to launch the 2025 Aviation Weather Mission. The mission will engage cadets (students ages 11-20) and senior members to collect aviation-relevant observations including airport conditions, Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Cloud observations, commercial aircraft information (including registration number and altitude), and satellite collocations provided by the NASA GLOBE Clouds team at NASA Langley Research Center. This mission results from a highly successful collaboration between NESEC and CAP as cadets and senior members collected cloud, air temperature, and land cover observations during the partial and total solar eclipses in 2023 and 2024, engaging over 400 teams with over 3,000 cadets and over 1,000 senior members in every state, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico.
The 2025 Aviation Weather Mission will take place from April through July 2025, collecting observations over two 4-hour periods while practicing additional skills, such as flight tracking, orienteering, and data management. So far, over 3,000 cadets in 46 wings (states) have signed up to participate.
Science Activation recently showed support for this mission through a letter of collaboration sent to CAP Major General Regena Aye in early February. NASA GLOBE Clouds and GLOBE Observer are part of the NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC), which is led by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AE28A. NESEC is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Cadets from the Virginia wing making cloud observations as they prepare for the 2025 Aviation Weather Mission. Share
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Last Updated Mar 04, 2025 Editor NASA Climate Editorial Team Location NASA Langley Research Center Related Terms
Science Activation Clouds Opportunities For Students to Get Involved Weather and Atmospheric Dynamics Explore More
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By NASA
An image of a coastal marshland combines aerial and satellite views in a technique similar to hyperspectral imaging. Combining data from multiple sources gives scientists information that can support environmental management.John Moisan When it comes to making real-time decisions about unfamiliar data – say, choosing a path to hike up a mountain you’ve never scaled before – existing artificial intelligence and machine learning tech doesn’t come close to measuring up to human skill. That’s why NASA scientist John Moisan is developing an AI “eye.”
Oceanographer John MoisanNASA Moisan, an oceanographer at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Virginia, said AI will direct his A-Eye, a movable sensor. After analyzing images his AI would not just find known patterns in new data, but also steer the sensor to observe and discover new features or biological processes.
“A truly intelligent machine needs to be able to recognize when it is faced with something truly new and worthy of further observation,” Moisan said. “Most AI applications are mapping applications trained with familiar data to recognize patterns in new data. How do you teach a machine to recognize something it doesn’t understand, stop and say ‘What was that? Let’s take a closer look.’ That’s discovery.”
Finding and identifying new patterns in complex data is still the domain of human scientists, and how humans see plays a large part, said Goddard AI expert James MacKinnon. Scientists analyze large data sets by looking at visualizations that can help bring out relationships between different variables within the data.
Infrared images like this one from a marsh area on the Maryland/Virginia Eastern Shore coastal barrier and back bay regions reveal clues to scientists about plant health, photosynthesis, and other conditions that affect vegetation and ecosystems.John Moisan It’s another story to train a computer to look at large data streams in real time to see those connections, MacKinnon said. Especially when looking for correlations and inter-relationships in the data that the computer hasn’t been trained to identify.
Moisan intends first to set his A-Eye on interpreting images from Earth’s complex aquatic and coastal regions. He expects to reach that goal this year, training the AI using observations from prior flights over the Delmarva Peninsula. Follow-up funding would help him complete the optical pointing goal.
“How do you pick out things that matter in a scan?” Moisan asked. “I want to be able to quickly point the A-Eye at something swept up in the scan, so that from a remote area we can get whatever we need to understand the environmental scene.”
Moisan’s on-board AI would scan the collected data in real-time to search for significant features, then steer an optical sensor to collect more detailed data in infrared and other frequencies.
Thinking machines may be set to play a larger role in future exploration of our universe. Sophisticated computers taught to recognize chemical signatures that could indicate life processes, or landscape features like lava flows or craters, might offer to increase the value of science data returned from lunar or deep-space exploration.
Today’s state-of-the-art AI is not quite ready to make mission-critical decisions, MacKinnon said.
“You need some way to take a perception of a scene and turn that into a decision and that’s really hard,” he said. “The scary thing, to a scientist, is to throw away data that could be valuable. An AI might prioritize what data to send first or have an algorithm that can call attention to anomalies, but at the end of the day, it’s going to be a scientist looking at that data that results in discoveries.”
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Last Updated Feb 10, 2025 Related Terms
Goddard Space Flight Center Artificial Intelligence (AI) Goddard Technology People of Goddard Technology Wallops Flight Facility Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA
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