Comet ISON STEREO solar pass

Update: Comet ISON beyond the Sun

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists – Last Thursday, while many gathered with loved ones for Thanksgiving, a frozen ball of ice and rock was hurtling towards the Sun reaching speeds of 225 miles/second [360 kilometers/second]. A fleet of solar-observing spacecraft had their instruments aligned, and experts were on hand to watch what unfolded. We wondered […]

SOHO images Comet Ison's aproach to the sun Nov 2013

Comet ISON approaches the Sun

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists – Our patch of universe has a visitor from afar. Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), or Comet ISON, has astronomers across the world training telescopes and eager eyes on outer space. Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office, watches for objects whose orbits come close to Earth. He says ISON […]

NASA Seasat satellite

Looking back in time at the world’s oceans

A time capsule of satellite imagery of the earth will become available to scientists this month. On June 28, digital imagery from more than three decades ago will be released by the Alaska Satellite Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, NASA’s processor and distributor for this type of data. The images reveal […]

BARREL balloon launch Antarctica

BARREL mission balloons fly high

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists Balloons are far from the first things that come to mind when you hear scientific discovery, but measurements taken by a fleet of eight-story-tall balloons released earlier this year are helping scientists make new discoveries about our planet. The 20 balloons lofted into the pristine cold air above Antarctica this […]

Aurora Borealis purple red blue green Arctic

After a lifetime of study, aurora still a mystery

Ned Rozell for UAFGI – Sometimes, after idling in the sky for hours as a greenish glow, the aurora catches fire, erupting toward the magnetic north pole in magnificent chaos that can last for three hours. “Substorms,” as space physicists call them, can happen two or three times each night. The man who came up […]

Science Kids at the Exploration Station

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists After snapping a few photos with the full-size inflatable model of the Curiosity rover, I went directly to the Discovery Dome, an inflatable planetarium. “We Choose Space!” was playing, a planetary show about human space exploration. A 360° panorama of the moon greeted me, an astronaut to one side, the […]

My Teacher the Android Space Girl

Laura Nielsen for Frontier Scientists I met her in space. Ok, that’s not true. I met Cindi at the AGU Exploration Station, San Francisco, an annual free science event for families and teachers where kids can get hands-on science. I’d never met a space android girl before… what did she do up in space? What […]

Space Weather Predictions

by Laura Nielsen for FrontierScientists. We know that space weather can play havok with technology. Space weather has real effects on human society, technology, and our economy. How do we ready ourselves to deal with it? This rubber chicken can help. The chicken is Camilla Corona SDO, the mascot for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). […]

Earth Exploration, Space Exploration

  By Laura Nielsen for FrontierScientists.   “Earth really is our home.” Astronaut Drew Feustel was part of STS125’s mission repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. His flight team had trained three years and flown into space, where they witnessed 16 sunrises and sunsets every day. They’d made five spacewalks over five days, each walk lasting 6 […]