This animation show the IBEX spacecraft being launched on a pegasus delivery system till it's on station near the Moon. ||

From concept to reality, that's the NASA way. Since the first directive to put a man on the moon, NASA has been on the cutting edge of technology and innovation and continues to turn the impossible into the possible everyday. ||

Footage of launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory from February 11, 2010 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. || SDO_Launch_Footage_640x360.00002_print.jpg (1024x576) [78.6 KB] || SDO_Launch_Footage_640x360_web.png (320x180) [158.0 KB] || SDO_Launch_Footage_640x360_thm.png (80x40) [15.5 KB] || SDO_Launch_Footage.mp4 (1280x720) [37.6 MB] || SDO_Launch_Footage_1280x720_prores.webmhd.webm (960x540) [36.2 MB] || SDO_Launch_Footage_640x360.mov (640x360) [17.5 MB] || SDO_Launch_Footage_1280x720_prores.mov (1280x720) [2.8 GB] ||

The Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission is part of NASA's Living With a Star Geospace program to explore fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system, in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects near the Earth and phenomena that could affect solar system exploration.RBSP is designed to help us understand the sun's influence on the Earth and near-Earth space by studying the planet's radiation belts on various scales of space and time.Understanding the radiation belt environment and its variability has extremely important practical applications in the areas of spacecraft operations, spacecraft and spacecraft system design, mission planning, and astronaut safety.RBSP is scheduled to launch no earlier than 4:08 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 23 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The twin probes will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.News conference panelists are:— Madhulika Guhathakurta, Living With a Star program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington— Mona Kessel, RBSP program scientist, NASA Headquarters— Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md.— Rick Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager, APL, Laurel, Md. ||

Scientists have recently gathered some of the strongest evidence to date to explain what makes the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface. The new observations show temperatures in the atmosphere so hot that only one current theory explains them: something called nanoflares – a constant peppering of impulsive bursts of heating, none of which can be individually detected — provide the mysterious extra heat. These new observations come from just six minutes worth of data from one of NASA's least expensive type of missions, a sounding rocket. The EUNIS mission, short for Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph, launched on April 23, 2013, gathering a new snapshot of data every 1.3 seconds to track the properties of material over a wide range of temperatures in the complex solar atmosphere. The unique capabilities of EUNIS enabled researchers to obtain these results. The spectrograph was able to clearly and unambiguously distinguish the observations representing the extremely hot material – emission lines showing light with a wavelength of 592.6 angstrom, where an angstrom is the size of an atom — from a very nearby light wavelength of 592.2 angstroms. ||

In March of 2015, an unprecedented NASA mission will launch to study a process so mysterious that no one has ever directly measured it in action. To create the first-ever 3-dimensional maps of this process, a process called magnetic reconnection, which occurs all over the universe, the Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission uses four separate spacecraft equipped with ultra high speed instruments. Launching four satellites into space simultaneously is a complicated process. In addition, each spacecraft has six booms that will unfold and extend in space once in orbit. A launch and deployment with so many moving parts must be meticulously planned. Watch the video to get a sneak preview of how MMS will make this journey: The four spacecraft are housed in a single rocket on their trip into space. One by one, each ejects out, before moving into a giant pyramid-shaped configuration. Next each spacecraft deploys its six booms. Once in orbit, MMS will fly through regions near Earth where this little-understood process of magnetic reconnection occurs. Magnetic reconnection happens in thin layers just miles thick, but can tap into enough power at times to create gigantic explosions many times the size of Earth. Reconnection happens when magnetic field lines explosively realign and release massive bursts of energy, while hurling particles out at nearly the speed of light in all directions. Magnetic reconnection powers eruptions on the sun and – closer to home – triggers the flow of material and energy from interplanetary space into near-Earth space. The MMS orbit will carry the four spacecraft through reconnection regions near Earth, using this nearby natural laboratory to better understand how reconnection occurs everywhere in space. For more information about MMS, visit: www.nasa.gov/mms ||

Complete transcript available.Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.Music credit: Game Show Sphere 01 by by Anselm Kreuzer || fluxropethumb.jpg (1920x1080) [87.3 KB] || fluxropethumb_searchweb.png (320x180) [79.1 KB] || fluxropethumb_thm.png (80x40) [5.7 KB] || YOUTUBE_1080-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_youtube_1080.mp4 (1920x1080) [193.2 MB] || APPLE_TV-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_appletv.m4v (1280x720) [69.6 MB] || LARGE_MP4-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_large.mp4 (1920x1080) [132.5 MB] || NASA_TV-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3.mpeg (1280x720) [440.3 MB] || YOUTUBE_HQ-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_youtube_hq.mov (1920x1080) [808.6 MB] || PRORES_B-ROLL-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_prores.mov (1280x720) [1.7 GB] || 11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3.mov (1920x1080) [3.3 GB] || 11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3.mp4 (1920x1080) [202.3 MB] || LARGE_MP4-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_large.webm (1920x1080) [15.6 MB] || APPLE_TV-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_appletv_subtitles.m4v (1280x720) [69.7 MB] || 11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3.en_US.srt [2.2 KB] || 11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3.en_US.vtt [2.2 KB] || NASA_PODCAST-11797_Shredding_a_Solar_EruptionV3_ipod_sm.mp4 (320x240) [20.9 MB] ||

NASA Launches Sounding Rockets to Study AuroraMusic credit: Trial by Gresby Race Nash [PRS] from Killer Tracks. || LARGE_MP4-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_large.00745_print.jpg (1024x682) [134.2 KB] || LARGE_MP4-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_large.00745_searchweb.png (320x180) [74.7 KB] || LARGE_MP4-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_large.00745_web.png (320x213) [92.8 KB] || LARGE_MP4-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_large.00745_thm.png (80x40) [5.3 KB] || 12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER.mov (1152x768) [579.8 MB] || PRORES_B-ROLL-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_prores.mov (1280x720) [590.8 MB] || APPLE_TV-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_appletv.m4v (1280x720) [41.0 MB] || NASA_TV-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER.mpeg (1280x720) [280.2 MB] || LARGE_MP4-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_large.mp4 (1152x768) [85.0 MB] || YOUTUBE_HQ-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_youtube_hq.mov (1152x768) [105.8 MB] || LARGE_MP4-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_large.webm (1152x768) [8.9 MB] || APPLE_TV-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_appletv_subtitles.m4v (1280x720) [41.1 MB] || soundingrockets-v14.en_US.srt [1.1 KB] || soundingrockets-v14.en_US.vtt [1.1 KB] || NASA_PODCAST-12598_SoundingRockets_MASTER_ipod_sm.mp4 (320x240) [14.1 MB] ||

Less than a lifetime ago, humankind just barely left the limits of Earth’s atmosphere. Who could have imagined that only 60 years later we would be touching the surface of the Sun, arriving at the most distant object humans have ever explored, and soon to be launching the world’s most powerful telescope to get a glimpse of the first galaxies born after the Big Bang? As NASA celebrates the 60th Anniversary of Explorer 1, the satellite that blazed the way for hundreds of missions to follow, some of the most ambitions explorations are yet to come. ||

The Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, will study the frontier of space: the dynamic zone high in our atmosphere where Earth weather and space weather meet. In fall 2018, the mission launches on an Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) Pegasus XL rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. ||