#PPOD: The astromaterials curation team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston has completed the disassembly of the OSIRIS-REx sampler head to reveal the remainder of the asteroid Bennu sample inside. On Jan. 10, they successfully removed two stubborn fasteners that had prevented the final steps of opening the Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head. Pictured here is a top-down view. Credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold
#PPOD: Global color mosaic of Triton, taken in 1989 by Voyager 2 during its flyby of the Neptune system. Triton is the largest of Neptune's 13 moons. It is unusual because it is the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet's rotation―a retrograde orbit. Scientists think Triton is a Kuiper Belt Object captured by Neptune's gravity millions of years ago. It shares many similarities with Pluto. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS
#PPOD: Ganges Chasma is one of several deep troughs that make up the Valles Marineris system on Mars. This image shows the geologic contact between the walls of Ganges Chasma and the adjacent plains. The upper slopes of the walls of Ganges have layering that appears dark, rough, and blocky, consistent with lava flows that are thought to make up the plains around Valles Marineris. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
#PPOD: NASA’s JWST new view of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) in near-infrared light is giving astronomers hints at the dynamical processes occurring within the supernova remnant. Tiny clumps represented in bright pink and orange make up the supernova’s inner shell, and are comprised of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (University of Gent)
The Earth, from a height of about 18,000 kilometers, on November 9, 1967. The image was taken using an automatic camera mounted in the Apollo Command Module.
#PPOD: Distant boulders and dunes on the surface of Mars as seen from the Viking 1 lander in 1977. On the horizon, a crater rim can be seen. The Viking 1 lander touched down on the western slope of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold) on July 20, 1976. The Viking mission was planned to continue for 90 days after landing, but Viking Lander 1 made its final transmission to Earth on November 11, 1982. Credit: NASA; Image processing: Ted Stryk
#PPOD: NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this close-up of Jupiter's circumpolar cyclone, processed in false color to emphasize small differences. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Navaneeth Krishnan S.
#PPOD: This misshapen orb is Uranus' moon Miranda, which is about 235 km in radius, and was imaged here by Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to ever visit the Uranian system. From this shot, it is pretty obvious that whoever put it together ran out of parts! Incredible little world... Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kevin M. Gill
#PPOD: Venus's surface as seen by Venera-14, a Soviet space mission launched in 1981. The lander touched down on 5 March 1982 and survived about an hour on the surface, nearly double the planned life. With a temperature of 465 °C and a pressure 94 times as strong as that of Earth, our "twin" planet is not at all hospitable to humans or machines. Credit: Roscosmos; Image processing: Ted Stryk
#PPOD: The JunoCam onboard NASA's Juno spacecraft captured Jupiter’s gorgeous clouds in this image taken on May 29, 2019. Have a lovely weekend! Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS / @kevinmgill
#PPOD: All members of the Pluto system as taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft and shown at 1 km/pixel. Pluto and Charon, technically a binary planetary system, anchor this eclectic group, and the small moons are tantalizingly interesting as well. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Ted Stryk
#PPOD: Resembling sparks from a fireworks display, this image taken by a JPL camera onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows delicate filaments that are sheets of debris from a stellar explosion in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. Credit: NASA, STScI/AURA
#PPOD: A massive dust storm looms near the mighty Olympus Mons on Mars. Taken from China's Tianwen-1 orbiter using the MoRIC Camera on 6 January 2022. North is to the right. Credit: CNSA/CLEP/PEC/MoRIC/ @andrealuck
#PPOD: This view of Comet Halley's nucleus was obtained by the Halley Multicolor Camera (HMC) on board the Giotto spacecraft as it passed within 600 km of the comet nucleus on 13 March 1986. Credit: ESA/MPAe Lindau
#PPOD: To mark 20 years of ESA’s Mars Express, the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) team produced a global colour mosaic: Mars as never seen before. The mosaic reveals the planet’s surface colour and composition in spectacular detail. Darker grey-toned areas of Mars represent grey-black basaltic sands of volcanic origin; lighter patches show clay and sulphate minerals; and the large scar across the planet's face is Valles Marineris. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G. Michael
#PPOD: The spectacular aurora borealis, or the “northern lights,” over Canada is sighted from the space station near the highest point of its orbital path. The station’s main solar arrays are seen in the left foreground. Credit: NASA
#PPOD: Amazing new images of Jupiter's moon Io have come down from NASA's Juno spacecraft! This one shows the volcanic world from only 2,800 kilometers away, which is the closest look we’ve gotten of Io in over 20 years of missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
#PPOD: What better way to finish out the week than with this new image of Uranus taken by the JWST? Taken with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the picture shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The planet’s seasonal north polar cap gleams in a bright white, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity resolves Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings, including the Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
#PPOD: This is Iceland erupting! This image, taken from the air on 19 December, is nothing short of Hadean. The new eruption fissure is about four kilometers long, painting the frosted ground with the planet’s latest coat of magmatic paint. Credit: Icelandic Coast Guard
The Earth is seen beyond the limb of the Moon, taken from the Command Module of Apollo 17 on December 16, 1972. (From original NASA image # AS17-152-23274).
#PPOD: The HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this striking image of dunes near Nili Patera on #Mars. They have an elongated crescent form and are called “barchan dunes.” They are formed by the continuous action of the wind, blowing in the same direction, giving this particular shape. The orientation of these dunes tells us that the prevailing wind blows from the right to the left (east to west). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona; Susan Conway
#PPOD: Callisto as seen by the Galileo spacecraft on November 5, 1997. Callisto is Jupiter’s second-largest moon and the third-largest moon in our solar system. It’s about the same size as Mercury. Data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s revealed Callisto may have a secret: a salty ocean beneath its surface. That finding put the once seemingly dead moon on the list of worlds that could possibly harbor life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ @tedstryk
Distracted with #AGU23 this week and almost forgot a wallpaper post! This golden ribbon is a symbol of one of Earth's earliest civilizations. Enjoy the Nile River as seen from the ISS. Evidence of technosignatures!
#PPOD: It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dusty stellar nurseries in which they formed. About 7,500 ly distant, the featured image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and highlights an interior region of Carina known as HH1066 which spans nearly a light-year. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA); Franco Meconi (Terraza al Cosmos)
#PPOD: The remnant of supernova 1987A that occurred about 168,000 light-years away from Earth. The light from this supernova first reached us on February 23, 1987, with its brightness peaking in May of the same year. The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Credit: NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colorado, Boulder), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)