Latest news with #NASAGoddard
India Today
12-05-2025
- Science
- India Today
Flower Moon 2025: How and when to see May's full moon
It's selenophile day. May's full moon, also commonly referred to as Flower Moon, will be seen in the sky on Sunday and Monday Flower Moon this year will be at the farthest point from Earth. Therefore, it will look approximately 14 per cent smaller and 30 per cent fainter compared to an average full per NASA, the moon will be approximately 4 lakh km away from Earth as opposed to its average distance of about 2.4 lakh showers bring May Flower(Moon)s!The next full moon occurs Mon. May 12 at 12:56 p.m. EST, but it will look full the night before and more May skywatching: NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) May 9, 2025advertisement WHEN WILL FLOWER MOON HAPPEN?The Flower Moon will be visible at its fullest on May 12 at 12:56 pm ET. IST says it will be at its maximum at 10:26 pm, says Earthsky. If the peak time passes you by, you can still view the full moon from Sunday night to Tuesday Monday, the moon will appear low in the southeast at sunset and at its zenith in the sky after midnight. When the Moon crosses above the horizon, it will also seem a bit orange or golden because of the atmospheric TO WATCH FLOWER MOON?To observe the Full Moon, gaze towards the east. Binoculars or a telescope are not needed; the Flower Moon will be clearly visible with the naked ELSE CAN YOU OBSERVE DURING THE FLOWER MOON?advertisementMars and Jupiter, besides the Flower Moon, are visible soon after sunset in the west. The two stars, Arcturus and Spica, will also appear brighter in the vicinity of the May 13, also rising early will be able to witness the moon setting close to the southern horizon while the planetary trio of Saturn, Venus, and Neptune rise on the eastern MOON TRADITIONThe full moon is derived from Native American cultures, which are named after flowers that bloom during May. This represents the coming of Watch
NDTV
12-05-2025
- Science
- NDTV
'Flower Moon' 2025: When And Where To Watch May's Full Moon
It is a day for selenophiles. May's full moon, popularly known as Flower Moon, will be visible in the sky on Sunday and Monday evening. This year, the Flower Moon will be at its farthest point from Earth. Hence, it will appear around 14 per cent smaller and 30 per cent dimmer than a typical full moon. According to NASA, the moon will be around 4 lakh km away from Earth as against its average distance of around 2.4 lakh km. April showers bring May Flower(Moon)s! 🌼 The next full moon occurs Mon. May 12 at 12:56 p.m. EST, but it will look full the night before and after. For more May skywatching: — NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) May 9, 2025 When Will Flower Moon Occur? The Flower Moon will be at its brightest on May 12 at 12:56 pm ET. According to IST, it will reach its peak at 10:26 pm, according to Earthsky. If you miss the peak timing, you can still see the full moon from Sunday evening to early Tuesday. On Monday, the moon will rise low in the southeast after sunset and reach its zenith in the sky after midnight. As the Moon rises above the horizon, it may also appear slightly orange or golden due to the atmospheric scattering. How To Watch Flower Moon? To watch the Full Moon, look in the east. There is no need for binoculars or a telescope; the Flower Moon will be visible to the naked eye. What Else Can You Witness During The Flower Moon? Soon after sunset, you can also see Mars and Jupiter in the western sky. Arcturus and Spica, the two stars, will also shine brighter near the moon. On May 13, early risers will also have the opportunity to see the moon descending near the southern horizon as the planetary trio of Saturn, Venus, and Neptune rises in the eastern sky. May Flower Moon Tradition The term full moon comes from Native American traditions, named after blooming flowers that typically bloom during May. This symbolises the arrival of spring.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
The sun might be spitting out particles that create water on the moon
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Future moon astronauts may find water more accessible than previously thought, according to a new experiment that suggests the sun is replenishing the sought-after resource on the lunar surface. Because the moon lacks a magnetic field like Earth's, the barren lunar surface is constantly bombarded by energetic particles from the sun; these particles make up the solar wind. Scientists have long suspected, based on computer simulations, that the solar wind helps make the ingredients of water on the lunar surface. The high-speed particles, primarily composed of positively charged hydrogen ions, capture lunar electrons to become hydrogen atoms. The newly-formed hydrogen atoms then migrate through the dusty and rocky regolith to bond with oxygen, forming hydroxyl and water molecules across the surface, often concentrating in permanently shadowed polar regions. However, the natural cycle and renewability of these ingredients remained unclear. So, to shed light on this process, Li Hsia Yeo, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, led a lab experiment observing the effects of simulated solar wind on two samples of loose regolith brought to Earth by the Apollo 17 mission. One of the samples was dug from a scar-like trench called Wessex Cleft and the other from the bottom of a young crater rim in South Massif. To remove any terrestrial water the 50-year-old samples would have absorbed since their return to Earth, Yeo and her team baked the samples overnight in a vacuum furnace. To mimic conditions on the moon, the researchers built a custom apparatus that included a vacuum chamber, where the samples were placed, and a tiny particle accelerator, which the scientists used to bombard the samples with hydrogen ions for several days. "It took a long time and many iterations to design the apparatus components and get them all to fit inside," Jason McLain, a research scientist at NASA Goddard who co-led the experiment with Yeo, said in a statement, "but it was worth it, because once we eliminated all possible sources of contamination, we learned that this decades-old idea about the solar wind turns out to be true." An analysis of how the samples' chemical makeup changed over time showed a drop in the light signal at the same spot in the infrared region — near three microns — where water absorbs energy. This indicates the formation of hydroxyl and water molecules due to the mock solar wind, confirming the long-held theory, the study reports. The team also found that heating the samples to typical lunar dayside temperatures of about 260 degrees Fahrenheit (126 degrees Celsius) for 24 hours led to a decrease in these water-related molecules. But when the samples were cooled for another 24 hours and blasted with mock solar wind again, the water-related signatures reappeared. This cycle suggests the solar wind continuously replenishes small amounts of water on the moon's surface, according to the new study. "The exciting thing here is that with only lunar soil and a basic ingredient from the sun — which is always spitting out hydrogen — there's a possibility of creating water," Yeo said in a statement. "That's incredible to think about." Related Stories: — NASA's sun-studying PUNCH mission captures its 1st-light images. Everything looks great so far — A hidden solar cycle is awakening, but more extreme space weather over the next 50 years may not be a bad thing — Blue Skies Space to build satellite fleet around the moon to map the ancient universe Supporting this idea, observations from previous moon missions have revealed an abundance of hydrogen gas in the moon's tenuous atmosphere. Scientists suspect that solar-wind-driven heating facilitates the combination of hydrogen atoms on the surface into hydrogen gas, which then escapes into space. This process also has a surprising upside, the new study suggests. Leftover oxygen atoms are free to bond with new hydrogen atoms formed by repeated bombardment of the solar wind, prepping the moon for more water formation on a renewable basis. The findings could help assess how sustainable water on the moon is, as the sought-after resource is crucial for both life support and as propellant for rockets. The team's study was published in March in the journal JGR Planets.
CBS News
14-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Maryland leaders to tour NASA flight center as Trump administration proposes federal cuts
A group of Maryland lawmakers will tour the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Monday as the Trump administration proposes billions of dollars in federal cuts. According to the lawmakers, President Trump is expected to announce the funding cuts in his proposed 2026 budget. The potential funding cuts could impact vital initiatives that expand our understanding of Earth and the universe, along with our economy and national security. Several Maryland lawmakers expressed their opposition to the cuts to NASA Goddard missions proposed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). "This work is critical to our exploration of space, our understanding of the universe and the planet we live on, our development of new, innovative technologies and our national security," Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks said in a joint statement with other state leaders. "Cutting NASA Goddard's missions would not only be harmful to our state – the negative impacts would be felt across the country," the group of lawmakers added. Sen. Van Hollen also shared another statement, emphasizing that the science missions have a direct impact on our technological innovation and serve as the foundation for things like GPS and weather monitoring. "To gut NASA Goddard and the NASA Science Mission Directorate is not just shortsighted, it's dangerous," Sen. Van Hollen said in his statement. "This move is anything but efficient – as these programs provide us vital information that informs countless innovations and technologies – and in the case of Roman, which will allow us to see even greater images of the universe than those provided by Webb, the mission is both under budget and almost fully complete. The Trump administration has taken an aggressive approach to lowering federal spending and slashing the federal workforce with the goal of making the government more efficient. Under the direction of Elon Musk, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has implemented layoffs at a number of federal agencies and facilitated funding cuts that have impacted schools and research facilities across the country. In March, Johns Hopkins University said it was eliminating more than 2,2000 workers due to a loss of USAID funding. Johns Hopkins University researchers were also impacted by the federal funding cuts, as the university is one of the top recipients of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. The Trump administration is also proposing changes and a 25% budget cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The cuts would close NOAA's Oceanic and Atmospheric Research team and end funding for climate, weather and ocean labs along with other programs, CBS News reported.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA Is Watching a Huge, Growing Anomaly in Earth's Magnetic Field
NASA has been monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa. This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers. The space agency's satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun. The South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) – likened by NASA to a 'dent' in Earth's magnetic field, or a kind of 'pothole in space' – generally doesn't affect life on Earth, but the same can't be said for orbital spacecraft (including the International Space Station), which pass directly through the anomaly as they loop around the planet at low-Earth orbit altitudes. During these encounters, the reduced magnetic field strength inside the anomaly means technological systems onboard satellites can short-circuit and malfunction if they become struck by high-energy protons emanating from the Sun. These random hits may usually only produce low-level glitches, but they do carry the risk of causing significant data loss, or even permanent damage to key components – threats obliging satellite operators to routinely shut down spacecraft systems before spacecraft enter the anomaly zone. Mitigating those hazards in space is one reason NASA is tracking the SAA; another is that the mystery of the anomaly represents a great opportunity to investigate a complex and difficult-to-understand phenomenon, and NASA's broad resources and research groups are uniquely well-appointed to study the occurrence. "The magnetic field is actually a superposition of fields from many current sources," geophysicist Terry Sabaka from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland explained in 2020. The primary source is considered to be a swirling ocean of molten iron inside Earth's outer core, thousands of kilometers below the ground. The movement of that mass generates electrical currents that create Earth's magnetic field, but not necessarily uniformly, it seems. A huge reservoir of dense rock called the African Large Low Shear Velocity Province, located about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) below the African continent, is thought to disturb the field's generation, resulting in the dramatic weakening effect – which is aided by the tilt of the planet's magnetic axis. "The observed SAA can be also interpreted as a consequence of weakening dominance of the dipole field in the region," said NASA Goddard geophysicist and mathematician Weijia Kuang in 2020. "More specifically, a localized field with reversed polarity grows strongly in the SAA region, thus making the field intensity very weak, weaker than that of the surrounding regions." Satellite data suggesting the SAA is dividing. (Division of Geomagnetism, DTU Space) While there's much scientists still don't fully understand about the anomaly and its implications, new insights are continually shedding light on this strange phenomenon. For example, one study led by NASA heliophysicist Ashley Greeley in 2016 revealed the SAA slowly drifts around, which was confirmed by subsequent tracking from CubeSats in research published in 2021. It's not just moving, however. Even more remarkably, the phenomenon seems to be in the process of splitting in two, with researchers in 2020 discovering that the SAA appeared to be dividing into two distinct cells, each representing a separate center of minimum magnetic intensity within the greater anomaly. Just what that means for the future of the SAA remains unknown, but in any case, there's evidence to suggest that the anomaly is not a new appearance. A study published in July 2020 suggested the phenomenon is not a freak event of recent times, but a recurrent magnetic event that may have affected Earth since as far back as 11 million years ago. If so, that could signal that the South Atlantic Anomaly is not a trigger or precursor to the entire planet's magnetic field flipping, which is something that actually happens, if not for hundreds of thousands of years at a time. A more recent study published in 2024 found the SAA also has an impact on auroras seen on Earth. Obviously, huge questions remain, but with so much going on with this vast magnetic oddity, it's good to know the world's most powerful space agency is watching it as closely as they are. "Even though the SAA is slow-moving, it is going through some change in morphology, so it's also important that we keep observing it by having continued missions," said Sabaka. "Because that's what helps us make models and predictions." An earlier version of this article was published in August 2020. Galaxy Caught Turning on Lights at Cosmic Dawn, Stunning Astronomers Did Life Ever Exist on Venus? Scientists Develop New Equation to Find Out. Giant 'Space Tornadoes' Discovered Raging in Milky Way's Turbulent Heart
