NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
July 30, 2025
Coronal Loops on the Sun
Our Sun frequently erupts in loops. Hot solar plasma jumps off the Sun's surface into prominences, with the most common type of prominence being a simple loop. The loop shape originates from the Sun's magnetic field, which is traced by spiraling electrons and protons. Many loops into the Sun's lower corona are large enough to envelop the Earth and are stable enough to last days. They commonly occur near active regions that also include dark sunspots. The featured panel shows four loops, each of which was captured near the Sun's edge during 2024 and 2025. The images were taken by a personal telescope in Mantova, Italy and in a very specific color of light emitted primarily by hydrogen. Some solar prominences suddenly break open and eject particles into the Solar System, setting up a space weather sequence that can affect the skies and wires of Earth.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-isro-satellite-lifts-off-to-track-earths-changing-surfaces/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/nisar/2025/07/30/signal-acquired-from-nasa-isros-nisar-earth-satellite/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waTmU9hyOqo
NASA-ISRO Satellite Lifts Off to Track Earth’s Changing Surfaces
July 30, 2025
he first-of-its kind satellite will provide actionable information in a range of areas, including disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and agricultural management.
Carrying an advanced radar system that will produce a dynamic, three-dimensional view of Earth in unprecedented detail, the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite has launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Jointly developed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and a critical part of the United States – India civil-space cooperation highlighted by President Trump and Prime Minister Modi earlier this year, the satellite can detect the movement of land and ice surfaces down to the centimeter.
The mission will help protect communities by providing unique, actionable information to decision-makers in a diverse range of areas, including disaster response, infrastructure monitoring, and agricultural management.
The satellite lifted off aboard an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle
(GSLV) rocket at 8:10 a.m. EDT (5:10 p.m. IST), Wednesday, July 30. The ISRO ground controllers began communicating with NISAR about 20 minutes after launch, at just after 8:29 a.m. EDT and confirmed it is operating as expected.
“Congratulations to the entire NISAR mission team on a successful launch that spanned across multiple time zones and continents in the first-ever partnership between NASA and ISRO on a mission of this sheer magnitude,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“Where moments are most critical, NISAR’s data will help ensure the health and safety of those impacted on Earth, as well as the infrastructure that supports them, for the benefit of all.”
From 464 miles (747 kilometers) above Earth, NISAR will use two advanced radar instruments to track changes in Earth’s forests and wetland ecosystems, monitor deformation and motion of the planet’s frozen surfaces, and detect the movement of Earth’s crust down to fractions of an inch — a key measurement in understanding how the land surface moves before, during, and after earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides.
“ISRO’s GSLV has precisely injected NISAR satellite into the intended orbit, 747 kilometers.
I am happy to inform that this is GSLV’s first mission to Sun-synchronous polar orbit. With this successful launch, we are at the threshold of fulfilling the immense scientific potential NASA and ISRO envisioned for the NISAR mission more than 10 years ago,” said ISRO Chairman V Narayanan. “The powerful capability of this radar mission will help us study Earth’s dynamic land and ice surfaces in greater detail than ever before.”
The mission’s two radars will monitor nearly all the planet’s land- and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days, including areas of the polar Southern Hemisphere rarely covered by other Earth-observing radar satellites.
The data NISAR collects also can help researchers assess how forests, wetlands, agricultural areas, and permafrost change over time.
“Observations from NISAR will provide new knowledge and tangible benefits for communities both in the U.S. and around the world,” said Karen St. Germain, director, Earth Science division at NASA Headquarters.
“This launch marks the beginning of a new way of seeing the surface of our planet so that we can understand and foresee natural disasters and other changes in our Earth system that affect lives and property.”
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The NISAR satellite is the first free-flying space mission to feature two radar instruments — an L-band system and an S-band system. Each system is sensitive to features of different sizes and specializes in detecting certain attributes.
The L-band radar excels at measuring soil moisture, forest biomass, and motion of land and ice surfaces, while S-band radar excels at monitoring agriculture, grassland ecosystems, and infrastructure movement.
Together, the radar instruments will enhance all of the satellite’s observations, making NISAR more capable than previous synthetic aperture radar missions.
Unlike optical sensors, NISAR will be able to “see” through clouds, making it possible to monitor the surface during storms, as well as in darkness and light.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California provided the L-band radar, and ISRO’s Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad developed the S-band radar.
The NISAR mission marks the first time the two agencies have co-developed hardware for an Earth-observing mission.
“We’re proud of the international team behind this remarkable satellite.
The mission’s measurements will be global but its applications deeply local, as people everywhere will use its data to plan for a resilient future,” said Dave Gallagher, director, NASA JPL, which manages the U.S. portion of the mission for NASA.
“At its core is synthetic aperture radar, a technology pioneered at NASA JPL that enables us to study Earth night and day, through all kinds of weather.”
Including L-band and S-band radars on one satellite is an evolution in SAR airborne and space-based missions that, for NASA, started in 1978 with the launch of Seasat.
In 2012, ISRO began launching SAR missions starting with Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-1), followed by RISAT-1A in 2022, to support a wide range of applications in India.
In the coming weeks, the spacecraft will begin a roughly 90-day commissioning phase during which it will deploy its 39-foot (12-meter) radar antenna reflector. This reflector will direct and receive microwave signals from the two radars.
By interpreting the differences between the two, researchers can discern characteristics about the surface below.
As NISAR passes over the same locations twice every 12 days, scientists can evaluate how those characteristics have changed over time to reveal new insights about Earth’s dynamic surfaces.
The NISAR mission is an equal collaboration between NASA and ISRO. Managed for the agency by Caltech, NASA JPL leads the U.S. component of the project and is providing the mission’s L-band SAR.
NASA also is providing the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem.
Space Applications Centre Ahmedabad, ISRO’s lead center for payload development, is providing the mission’s S-band SAR instrument and is responsible for its calibration, data processing, and development of science algorithms to address the scientific goals of the mission.
U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, which leads the ISRO components of the mission, is providing the spacecraft bus.
The launch vehicle is from ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, launch services are through ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and satellite operations are by ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network.
National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad is responsible for S-band data reception, operational products generation, and dissemination.
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Looking Forward to the Moon
Jul 30, 2025
On May 8, 2022, NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems’ Program Manager Shawn Quinn captured this crop of a full frame image of the Hadley–Apennine region of Earth’s Moon including the Apollo 15 landing site (very near the edge of the shadow of one of the lunar mountains in the area).
Building upon the pioneers from the Apollo Program, Artemis crews will plan to verify capabilities for humans to explore deep space and pave the way for long-term exploration and science on the lunar surface.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/looking-forward-to-the-moon/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/artemis/
Slice of History - Magellan Rendezvous
July 30, 2025
Magellan was the first space probe launched by a space shuttle and arrived in Venus’ orbit 35 years ago on 10 August.
Following the Challenger disaster in January 1986, Magellan, along with a roster of other spacecraft on the shuttle launch manifest, were delayed, rescheduling Magellan’s launch to 4 May 1989.
Assembled from spare parts left over from various prior missions, including Voyager, Galileo, Ulysses, and Mariner 9, Magellan was deployed from the payload bay of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, and an hour later, a two-stage Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) was fired to send the spacecraft on a trajectory to rendezvous with Venus.
After three en-route trajectory corrections, Magellan arrived in Venus orbit on this day, and six days later, the spacecraft suffered a communications outage, but over its lifetime returned 1200 gigabits of data, which far exceeded the 900 gigabits of data returned from all NASA planetary missions combined at the time.
In 1993, controllers commanded Magellan to drop into the outermost regions of the Venusian atmosphere, and that October, contact was lost as the spacecraft was commanded to plunge into the atmosphere to gather aerodynamic data.
Magellan burned up in the Venusian atmosphere about 10 hours later after one of the most successful deep space missions.
The memorabilia pictured here includes just some of the materials made to commemorate the great success of the Magellan mission. CL#25-0315
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/slice-of-history-magellan-rendezvous/
https://jpl-nasa.libguides.com/archives
>>23403043
Lone 'Space' Ranger?
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4614-4615: Driving Along the Boxwork
Jul 29, 2025
Earth planning date: Monday, July 28, 2025
Today was a pretty straightforward day of planning. Our drive over the weekend completed successfully, and we quickly confirmed that we are parked in a stable position.
Thus, we were able to unstow the rover's arm to poke around in our new workspace, which features a large sand-filled fracture.
Aside from all of the good geology work to be done, the view from our current location is quite spectacular.
We're still in the time of year where the atmosphere at Gale is reasonably dust-free (at least, compared to later in the year), allowing us to look all the way out to and beyond the Gale crater rim.
The upper slopes of Mount Sharp have also re-emerged to our east after spending months hidden behind the walls of Gediz Vallis.
There's a bit more sand and dust in this location than we've seen recently, so we can also see the trail left behind by the rover's wheels as we drove to this location (see the image above).
We're still deep in our examination of the boxwork structures that we're now driving through, so most of Curiosity's attention in this plan is focused much closer to the rover than any of the scenic vista surrounding us.
APXS, DRT, and MAHLI will all take a look at “Cañón de Palca,” some bedrock close to the large fracture in this workspace.
Mastcam and ChemCam RMI will image some boxwork ridges at “Caine,” and will also collaborate on imaging of the weekend's post-drive AEGIS target and a LIBS bedrock target “Doña Ines.”
Mastcam's solo activities include taking a look at some layering at “Paniri butte” and at MAHLI to examine a speck of dust that may have fallen on the lens.
We'll be driving away from this location along one of the boxwork ridges, which, at about 5 meters (about 16 feet) wide, is more than large enough to fit our car-sized rover.
Post-drive activities are largely focused on environmental monitoring, including Navcam line-of-sight and dust-devil surveys to look at dust, and several Navcam cloud movies.
As usual, ChemCam will also join the post-drive fun with an AEGIS observation. More environmental monitoring by REMS, RAD, and DAN fill out the remainder of this plan.
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/curiosity-blog-sols-4614-4615-driving-along-the-boxwork/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/science-updates/
Spheres in the Sand
Jul 29, 2025
It is not common for a rover to spot nearly perfect spheres in the soil beneath its wheels. Over two decades ago, the Opportunity rover famously discovered spherules made of hematite (nicknamed “blueberries”) near its landing site in Meridiani Planum.
More recently, the Perseverance rover has similarly encountered spherules embedded in bedrock and loosely scattered throughout the region informally called “Witch Hazel Hill.”
In a previous blog post, we described Perseverance’s investigations of a spherule-bearing outcrop at the “Hare Bay” abrasion patch, where the team later collected a core.
With the “Bell Island” sample added to the rover’s collection, the science team next decided to take a closer look at loose spherules in the area, which appear to have eroded out of the nearby bedrock.
On Sol 1555, while the United States was celebrating the Fourth of July with hotdogs and fireworks, Perseverance was hard at work studying spherule-rich regolith at the target “Rowsell Hill” using the proximity instruments on its robotic arm.
SHERLOC’s Autofocus and Context Imager and WATSON camera both captured high resolution pictures of the target (shown above), while PIXL measured the elemental makeup of the spherules and surrounding grains.
Despite their superficial similarity to Opportunity’s “blueberries”, the spherules at “Rowsell Hill” have a very different composition and likely origin.
In Meridiani Planum, the spherules were composed of the mineral hematite and were interpreted to have formed in groundwater-saturated sediments in Mars’ distant past.
By comparison, the spherules in “Rowsell Hill” have a basaltic composition and likely formed during a meteoroid impact or volcanic eruption.
When a meteoroid crashes into the surface of Mars, it can melt rock and send molten droplets spraying into the air.
Those droplets can then rapidly cool, solidifying into spherules that rain down on the surrounding area. Alternatively, the spherules may have formed from molten lava during a volcanic eruption.
With these new data in hand, the Perseverance science team continues to search for answers about where these spherules came from.
If they formed during an ancient impact, they may be able to tell us about the composition of the meteoroid and the importance of impact cratering in early Mars’s history.
If they instead formed during a volcanic eruption, they could preserve clues about past volcanism in the region around Jezero crater. Either way, these spherules are a remnant of an energetic and dynamic period in Mars’ history!
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/spheres-in-the-sand/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/science-updates/
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-firefly-for-new-artemis-science-tech-delivery-to-moon/
NASA Selects Firefly for New Artemis Science, Tech Delivery to Moon
Jul 29, 2025
NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, $176.7 million to deliver two rovers and three scientific instruments to the lunar surface as part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign to explore more of the Moon than ever before.
This delivery is the first time NASA will use multiple rovers and a variety of stationary instruments, in a collaborative effort with the CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and the University of Bern, to help us understand the chemical composition of the lunar South Pole region and discover the potential for using resources available in permanently shadowed regions of the Moon.
“Through CLPS, NASA is embracing a new era of lunar exploration, with commercial companies leading the way,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“These investigations will produce critical knowledge required for long-term sustainability and contribute to a deeper understanding of the lunar surface, allowing us to meet our scientific and exploration goals for the South Pole region of the Moon for the benefit of all.”
Under the new CLPS task order, Firefly is tasked with delivering end-to-end payload services to the lunar surface, with a period of performance from Tuesday to March 29, 2030.
The company’s lunar lander is targeted to land at the Moon’s South Pole region in 2029.
This is Firefly’s fifth task order award and fourth lunar mission through CLPS. Firefly’s first delivery successfully landed on the Moon’s near side in March 2025 with 10 NASA payloads.
The company’s second mission, targeting a launch in 2026, includes a lunar orbit drop-off of a satellite combined with a delivery to the lunar surface on the far side.
Firefly’s third lunar mission will target landing in the Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon in 2028, delivering six experiments to study that enigmatic lunar volcanic terrain.
“As NASA sends both humans and robots to further explore the Moon, CLPS deliveries to the lunar South Pole region will provide a better understanding of the exploration environment, accelerating progress toward establishing a long-term human presence on the Moon, as well as eventual human missions to Mars,” said Adam Schlesinger, manager of the CLPS initiative at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The rovers and instruments that are part of this newly awarded flight include:
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MoonRanger is an autonomous microrover that will explore the lunar surface. MoonRanger will collect images and telemetry data while demonstrating autonomous capabilities for lunar polar exploration.
Its onboard Neutron Spectrometer System instrument will study hydrogen-bearing volatiles and the composition of lunar regolith, or soil.
Lead development organizations: NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and Carnegie Mellon University and Astrobotic, both in Pittsburgh.
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Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies will use enhanced stereo imaging photogrammetry, active illumination, and ejecta impact detection sensors to capture the impact of the rocket exhaust plume on lunar regolith as the lander descends on the Moon’s surface.
The high-resolution stereo images will help predict lunar regolith erosion and ejecta characteristics, as bigger, heavier spacecraft and hardware are delivered to the Moon near each other in the future.
Lead development organization: NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
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Laser Retroreflector Array is an array of eight retroreflectors on an aluminum support structure that enables precision laser ranging, a measurement of the distance between the orbiting or landing spacecraft to the reflector on the lander.
The array is a passive optical instrument, which functions without power, and will serve as a permanent location marker on the Moon for decades to come.
Lead development organization: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
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A CSA Rover is designed to access and explore remote South Pole areas of interest, including permanently shadowed regions, and to survive at least one lunar night.
The CSA rover has stereo cameras, a neutron spectrometer, two imagers (visible to near-infrared), a radiation micro-dosimeter, and a NASA-contributed thermal imaging radiometer developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory.
These instruments will advance our understanding of the physical and chemical properties of the lunar surface, the geological history of the Moon, and potential resources such as water ice.
It will also improve our understanding of the environmental challenges that await future astronauts and their life support systems.
Lead development organization: CSA.
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Laser Ionization Mass Spectrometer is a mass spectrometer that will analyze the element and isotope composition of lunar regolith.
The instrument will utilize a Firefly-built robotic arm and Titanium shovel that will deploy to the lunar surface and support regolith excavation.
The system will then funnel the sample into its collection unit and use a pulsed laser beam to identify differences in chemistry compared to samples studied in the past, like those collected during the Apollo program.
Grain-by-grain analyses will provide a better understanding of the chemical complexity of the landing site and the surrounding area, offering insights into the evolution of the Moon.
Lead development organization: University of Bern in Switzerland.
Through the CLPS initiative, NASA purchases lunar landing and surface operations services from American companies.
The agency uses CLPS to send scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to advance capabilities for science, exploration, or commercial development of the Moon, and to support human exploration beyond to Mars.
By supporting a robust cadence of lunar deliveries, NASA will continue to enable a growing lunar economy while leveraging the entrepreneurial innovation of the commercial space industry.
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>President Trump is helping South Africans win the Information War!
should be this post