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Videos

IBEX: Exploring The Edge Of Our Solar System

This video explains the way IBEX will create a global map of the boundaries of our solar system. The two Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1970s gave data for two points on the map, but by using energetic neutral atoms, IBEX images the entire global structure of these interstellar boundaries.

Plasma Zoo: Gyroresonant Scattering

In a background magnetic field, represented by the cyan arrows, two electrons are propagating to the right, executing identical gyromotion. A circularly polarized electromagnetic wave approaches the upper electron from the left.

Parker Solar Probe

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will be the first-ever mission to “touch” the sun. The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, will travel directly into the sun’s atmosphere about 4 million miles from our star’s surface. Launch is slated for summer 2018.

Heliospheric Future: Solar Probe Plus & Solar Orbiter

Solar Probe Plus will move in a highly elliptical orbit, using seven gravity assists from Venus to move it closer to the Sun with each pass. Solar Orbiter will use Earth and Venus gravity assists to move into a relatively circular orbit and climb up and out of the ecliptic plane to capture the first images of the Sun’s poles.

NICER Finds X-ray Pulsar in Record-fast Orbit

Scientists analyzing the first data from the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission have found two stars that revolve around each other every 38 minutes. One of the stars in the system, called IGR J17062-6143 (J17062 for short), is a rapidly spinning, superdense star called a pulsar.

NASA Spacecraft Discovers New Magnetic Process in Turbulent Space

Though close to home, the space immediately around Earth is full of hidden secrets and invisible processes. In a new discovery reported in the journal Nature, scientists working with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft – MMS – have uncovered a new type of magnetic event in our near-Earth environment by using an innovative technique to squeeze extra information out of the data.

Explosive Magnetic Reconnection in Turbulent Plasma

In a turbulent magnetic environment, magnetic field lines become scrambled. As the field lines cross, intense electric currents (shown here as bright regions) form and eventually trigger magnetic reconnection (indicated by a flash), which is an explosive event that releases magnetic energy accumulated in the current layers and ejects high-speed bi-directional jets of electrons.

Exploring Turbulent Space Around Earth

Earth is surrounded by a protective magnetic environment – the magnetosphere – shown here in blue, which deflects a supersonic stream of charged particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind. As the particles flow around Earth’s magnetosphere, it forms a highly turbulent boundary layer called the magnetosheath, shown in yellow.

NASA | RXTE Detects ‘Heartbeat’ Of Smallest Black Hole Candidate

This animation compares the X-ray ‘heartbeats’ of GRS 1915 and IGR J17091, two black holes that ingest gas from companion stars. GRS 1915 has nearly five times the mass of IGR J17091, which at three solar masses may be the smallest black hole known.

Transit Method Single Planet

When a planet passes directly between its star and an observer, it dims the star’s light by a measurable amount.

NASA’s New Planet Hunter: TESS

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will find undiscovered worlds around bright nearby stars, providing targets where future studies will assess their capacity to harbor life.

NASA | The Search for New Worlds is Here

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an astrophysics Explorer-class mission between NASA and MIT. After launching in 2017, TESS will use four cameras to scan the entire sky, searching for planets outside our Solar System, known as exoplanets.

3 NASA Satellites Recreate Solar Eruption in 3-D

Using data from three different satellites, scientists have developed new models that recreate, in 3-D, CMEs and shocks, separately. This movie illustrates the recreation of a CME and shock that erupted from the Sun on March 7, 2011.

Send Your Name to the Sun with Parker Solar Probe

NASA’s historic Parker Solar Probe mission will launch in summer 2018 to travel through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the solar surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions - and you can send your name along for the ride.

Why NASA Is Exploring The Edge Of Our Planet’s Atmosphere

The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, or GOLD, instrument launches aboard a commercial communications satellite in January 2018 to inspect the dynamic intermingling of space and Earth’s uppermost atmosphere.

Swift Mission Catches a Comet Slowdown

Observations by NASA’s Swift spacecraft, now renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the mission’s late principal investigator, have captured an unprecedented change in the rotation of a comet.

Neil Gehrels Maniac Lecture, September 29, 2015

Astrophysicist Neil Gehrels presented a Maniac lecture entitled “Adventures in Astrophysics.” Neil shared his passion and adventures in astrophysics, which traces back to his astronomer father, his physicist wife, a life-long career at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and good mentors.

Prof. Neil Gehrels (Future Time Dimension)

The Dan David Prize compiled this video tribute to Goddard’s Neil Gehrels, who was posthumously named a 2017 laureate.

Exploring the Ionosphere: The View from GOLD

From its geostationary orbit, GOLD will have a continual view of Earth and its outer atmosphere. This visualization shows the view of Earth from GOLD. Because GOLD remains situated above the same geographic longitude, ICON will pass through its field of view.

Time-Lapse View of Earth’s Limb from the ISS

Bright swaths of red in the upper atmosphere, known as airglow, can be seen in this video captured by the International Space Station. NASA’s ICON mission, with a planned launch for the summer of 2017, will observe how interactions between terrestrial weather and a layer of charged particles called the ionosphere create the colorful glow.

Exploring Reconnection - Guide Field Off

This visualization shows the motion of one electron in the magnetic reconnection region. As the spacecraft approaches the reconnection region, it detects first high-energy particles, then low-energy particles.