Finding New Planets

This artist's animation illustrates a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our Sun. Asteroids are chunks of rock from "failed" planets, which never managed to coalesce into full-sized planets. Asteroid belts can be thought of as construction sites that accompany the building of rocky planets.

Announced on April 28, 2010, scientists using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility have detected water-ice and carbon-based organic compounds on the surface of an asteroid. The cold hard facts of the discovery of the frosty mixture on one of the asteroid belt's largest occupants, suggests that some asteroids, along with their celestial brethren, comets, were the water carriers for a primordial Earth.

New image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s

This new image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) shows in great detail a solar prominence taken from a March 30, 2010 eruption. The twisting motion of the material is the most noticeable feature.

Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. During its five-year mission, it will examine the sun's magnetic field and also provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate. Since launch, engineers have been conducting testing and verification of the spacecraft’s components. Now fully operational, SDO will provide images with clarity 10 times better than high-definition television and will return more comprehensive science data faster than any other solar observing spacecraft.

Oil Slick Spreads off Gulf of Mexico

NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the Gulf of Mexico on April 25, 2010 using its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. With the Mississippi Delta on the left, the silvery swirling oil slick from the April 20 explosion and subsequent sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform is highly visible. The rig was located roughly 50 miles southeast of the coast of Louisiana.

The oil slick may be particularly obvious because it is occurring in the sunglint area, where the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water gives the Gulf of Mexico a washed-out look. Oil slicks are notoriously difficult to spot in natural-color (photo-like) satellite imagery because a thin sheen of oil only slightly darkens the already dark blue background of the ocean. Under unique viewing conditions, oil slicks can become visible in photo-like images, but usually, radar imagery is needed to clearly see a spill from space.

Another World

This other worldly landscape is actually Dagze Co, one of many inland lakes in Tibet. In glacial times, the region was considerably wetter, and lakes were correspondingly much larger, as evidenced by the numerous fossil shorelines that circle the lake and attest to the presence of a previously larger, deeper lake. Over millennia changes in climate have resulted in greater aridity of the Tibetan Plateau.

Image of Cumulonimbus Cloud Over Africa

High above the African continent, tall, dense cumulonimbus clouds, meaning 'column rain' in Latin, are the result of atmospheric instability. The clouds can form alone, in clusters, or along a cold front in a squall line. The high energy of these storms is associated with heavy precipitation, lightning, high wind speeds and tornadoes.

Separation of shuttle and the space station

As the shuttle and the space station began their post-undocking relative separation, Expedition 23 flight engineer Soichi Noguchi photographed the underside of the shuttle over the south end of Isla de Providencia, about 150 miles off the coast of Nicaragua. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred on April 17, 2010, ending the shuttle's 10-day stay. The visit included three spacewalks and delivery of more than seven tons of equipment and supplies to the station.

The crews of STS-131 and Expedition 23 gathered for a group portrait

The crews of STS-131 and Expedition 23 gathered for a group portrait in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station while space shuttle Discovery was docked at the station. STS-131 crew (in light blue shirts) are commander Alan Poindexter, pilot James P. Dutton Jr., and mission specialists Clayton Anderson, Rick Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. Expedition 23 crew Commander Oleg Kotov, cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Alexander Skvortsov, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, and NASA astronauts T.J. Creamer and Tracy Caldwell Dyson.

Crew Completes Equipment Transfers; Undocking Saturday

EDT Mission Control awakened the STS-131 crew with the song "The Earth in the Color of Lapis Lazuli" by Seiko Matsuda for Naoko Yamazaki, who served as the loadmaster, supervising the unloading and loading activities for this mission.

Space shuttle Discovery's seven-member crew will begin their day by unloading the last transfer items in the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and then closing the hatches between it and the Harmony node in preparation for its return to the shuttle's payload bay.