Ask Kuiper

Kuiper is traveling the universe and will be returning soon!

What makes helicopters so noisy while in the air?

What makes helicopters so noisy while in the air?

DLR German Aerospace Center, Corporate…

What has hubble discovered recently?

What has hubble discovered recently?

Jan. 7, 2014

RELEASE 14-006

AAS Meeting Highlights Several New…

What is the Kuiper Belt?

Published on Dec 10, 2012

One of the first projects for the Discovery telescope is to study the Kuiper Belt, a region outside of the planets of the Solar System.

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Subscribe to Discovery TV for more great space clips: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c…

How Was The Earth Made?

Published on Dec 26, 2013

How The Earth Was Made – Birth of the Earth – Documentary

How many universes are there?

In the first of a new TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem to have no answers.

NASA and JAXA Announce Launch Date for Global Precipitation Satellite

NASA and JAXA Announce Launch Date for Global Precipitation Satellite Dec. 26, 2013

Artist concept…

OCO-2 Observatory Conducts Environmental Tests http://wp.me/s44sUK-1910

ESA Highlights 2013

Copyright ESA

2013 has been a year of firsts, farewells and astonishing findings. It began with ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano training for the Volare Mission in Russia’s Star City and it ended with Gaia, ESA’s billion-star surveyor, lifting off from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou. But a lot more has happened in between!

ESA Preview 2014

Copyright ESA

Copyright ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

PHOBOS 360 Dec. 20, 2013

The innermost moon of Mars, Phobos, is seen here in full 360 degree glory. The images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express at various times throughout the mission’s 10 years.

The moon’s parallel sets of grooves are perhaps the most striking feature, along with the giant 9 km-wide Stickney impact crater that dominates one face of the 27 x 22 x 18 km moon.

The origin of the moon’s grooves is a subject of much debate. One idea assumes that the crater chains are associated with impact events on the moon itself.

Another idea suggests they result from Phobos moving through streams of debris thrown up from impacts 6000 km away on the surface of Mars, with each ‘family’ of grooves corresponding to a different impact event.

Astronauts Complete First in Series of Spacewalks

Astronauts Complete First in Series of Spacewalks On Sunday, Dec. 22, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins tweeted this photo of Saturday’s spacewalk, saying, “Wow… can’t believe that is me yesterday. Wish I could…

Einstein’s Rings and the Fabric of Space

Published on Dec 9, 2013

This video is adapted from an intriguing episode of Hubblecast. nature’s telescopes. It explores a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. The gravitational force of a galaxy, full of stars, gas, dark matter, and dust, is so enormous that it affects the region it sits in and distorts the very fabric of the surrounding space.

It isn’t only galaxies that do this. Any object that has mass distorts the space around it with its gravity, from large galaxy clusters down to individual stars. In space, light travels invariably along straight lines. But what is a straight line? Well, it is the shortest distance between two points. But in a curved space, the shortest distance between two points may not look particularly straight to us.

Now what that means is that when light passes very near by a massive object that curves the space around it, the light ray is bent. As a result, this massive object, or rather the curved space around it produced by its gravity, acts like a lens; a gravitational lens that deflects light into our telescopes that would have otherwise never made it there.

This deflection means that distant and faint objects can suddenly be seen peeking from around the edge of a nearer “lens” — although they may look quite different than expected.

We see distant galaxies that have been “lensed” as arcs on the sky around their lenses. For example, the arc around this galaxy cluster is not a photographic error, but a second more distant galaxy — deformed, but visible.

What Curiosity is Discovering on the Road to Mt. Sharp

Published on Nov 26, 2013

Join the scientists who manage Curiosity’s journey to Mt. Sharp in reveling in its ongoing discoveries. Find out what the rover is looking for, how it’s navigating the rocky terrain, and what ultimately the journey means to its human patrons. It’s one of the most sophisticated, and inspiring, missions ever undertaken to another planet. Video from NASA/JPL.

Cosmic Journeys: Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Galaxy

Published on Nov 5, 2013

Enjoy this updated, expanded version of our Cosmic Journeys episode. Feel the pull of the largest object in our galaxy, a supermassive black hole. Astronomers are discovering its properties by probing the objects that are buzzing around it at mind-boggling speeds.

From a distance, our galaxy would look like a flat spiral, some 100,000 light years across, with pockets of gas, clouds of dust, and about 400 billion stars rotating around the galaxys center. Thick dust and blinding starlight have long obscured our vision into the mysterious inner regions of the galactic center. And yet, the clues have been piling up, that something important, something strange is going on in there. Astronomers tracking stars in the center of the galaxy have found the best proof to date that black holes exist. Now, they are shooting for the first direct image of a black hole.