By Julie Cooper Each month in “Slice of History” we’ll be featuring a historical photo from the JPL Archives. See more historical photos and explore the JPL Archives at https://beacon.jpl.nasa.gov/. Cesium-Lithium Test System — Photograph Number 383-5651Ac As early as 1961, JPL’s Propulsion Division was working on a new type of power system for future [...]
By Erik Conway, writing for My Big Fat Planet Mars has been a grand scientific mystery ever since the first modern images were beamed back from the Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965. Those snapshots showed a moon-like, cratered surface — not what we expected. Scientists had assumed that Mars would have an Earth-like atmosphere, composed [...]
By Amy Mainzer With WISE, I roamed the skies — seeing everything from the closest asteroids to the most distant galaxies. When I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7, I remember reading the encyclopedia about Andromeda, Mars and Jupiter. After that, I spent a lot of my free time (and a fair amount of [...]
By Amber Jenkins I stumbled upon this video earlier today. It’s Isaac Asimov, famous science fiction writer and biochemist, talking about global warming — back in January 1989. If you change the coloring of the video, the facial hair style, and switch out Asimov for someone else, the video could pretty much have been made [...]
By Dr. David Diner Tiny airborne particles, or aerosols, can affect the appearance of the moon during a total lunar eclipse, sometimes giving it a reddish hue. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth is positioned between the sun and the moon. Although the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow, the lunar [...]
By Sami Asmar In addition to the awesome views they offer, lunar eclipses have always provided scientific clues about the moon’s shape, location and even surface composition. Although there will continue to be opportunities for observers to examine and reflect on fundamental concepts about the moon, such as its origin and interior structure, more modern [...]
By Amber Jenkins You might think from the amount of “climate science debate” that is given airtime in the U.S. media that it’s undiscovered territory. But it’s not. The science is very well established and goes back a long way. Global warming is not a new concept. The Victorians knew about it. John Tyndall (born [...]
By Amy Mainzer Over the course of the nine months we’ve been operating WISE, we’ve observed over 150,000 asteroids and comets of all different types. We had to pick all of these moving objects out of the hundreds of millions of sources observed all over the sky — so you can imagine that sifting through [...]
A guest blog written for My Big Fat Planet by Ed Begley Jr. I visit the NASA website and review the data. CO2: Up. Ocean and land temperature: Up. Sea level: Up. Polar ice: Down. Oops. But, as bizarre as this sounds … I find myself pulling for the climate change deniers. Wouldn’t it [...]
By Stephanie Granger Worldwide today, it is estimated that nearly 1.1 billion people live without access to adequate water supplies and about 2.6 billion people lack adequate water sanitation. Improved understanding of water processes at global and regional scales is essential for sustainability. Researchers at JPL recently launched the Western Water Resource Solutions website to [...]
