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Dawn leaves Earth

NASA's Dawn space probe launches aboard a Delta 2-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral to explore two worlds in the asteroid belt.

 Full coverage

Dawn: Launch preview

These briefings preview the launch and science objectives of NASA's Dawn asteroid orbiter.

 Launch | Science

ISS crew change preview

The Expedition 15 mission draws to a close aboard the space station and the Expedition 16 launch nears. These two briefings from Sept. 25 cover the upcoming transition between the two missions.

 Exp. 15 recap
 Exp. 16 preview

Discovery moves to VAB

Shuttle Discovery is transported from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building for attachment to the external tank and boosters.

 Play

STS-120: The programs

In advance of shuttle Discovery's STS-120 mission to the station, managers from both programs discuss the flight.

 Play

STS-120: The mission

Discovery's trip to the station will install the Harmony module and move the P6 solar wing truss. The flight directors present a detailed overview of STS-120.

 Part 1 | Part 2

STS-120: Spacewalks

Five spacewalks are planned during Discovery's STS-120 assembly mission to the station. Lead spacewalk officer Dina Contella previews the EVAs.

 Full briefing
 EVA 1 summary
 EVA 2 summary
 EVA 3 summary
 EVA 4 summary
 EVA 5 summary

The Discovery crew

The Discovery astronauts, led by commander Pam Melroy, meet the press in the traditional pre-flight news conference.

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STS-69: The Dog Crew

Astronauts flying aboard shuttle Endeavour in September 1995 called themselves the Dog Crew, a lighthearted twist to their complicated mission to launch and then retrieve a pair of satellites.

 Play

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Satellite sees solar hurricane detach comet tail
NASA NEWS RELEASE
Posted: October 1, 2007

GREENBELT, Md. - A NASA satellite has captured the first images of a collision between a comet and a solar hurricane. It is the first time scientists have witnessed such an event on another cosmic body. One of NASA's pair of Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory satellites, known as STEREO, recorded the event April 20.


This series of four still images were taken from a visualization of Comet Encke flying through the solar storm as witnessed by the STEREO satellite. Note Encke's tail being torn off by the coronal mass ejection in the third still above. Credit: NASA
Download larger image version here

 
The phenomenon was caused by a coronal mass ejection, a large cloud of magnetized gas cast into space by the sun. The collision resulted in the complete detachment of the plasma tail of Encke's comet. Observations of the comet reveal the brightening of its tail as the coronal mass ejection swept by and the tail's subsequent separation as it was carried away by the front of the ejection. The researchers combined the images into a movie.

"We were awestruck when we saw these images," says Angelos Vourlidas, lead author and researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington. "This is the first time we've witnessed a collision between a coronal mass ejection and a comet and the surprise of seeing the disconnection of the tail was the icing on the cake."

Encke's comet was traveling within the orbit of Mercury when a coronal mass ejection first crunched the tail then ripped it completely away. The comet is only the second repeating, or periodic, comet ever identified. Halley's comet was the first.

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory made the observations using the Heliospheric Imager in its Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation telescope suite aboard the STEREO-A spacecraft. The results will be published in the Oct. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Coronal mass ejections are violent eruptions with masses greater than a few billion tons. They travel from 60 to more than 2,000 miles per second. They have been compared to hurricanes because of the widespread disruption they can cause when directed at Earth. These solar hurricanes cause geomagnetic storms that can present hazards for satellites, radio communications and power systems. However, coronal mass ejections are spread over a large volume of space, mitigating their mass and power to create an impact softer than a baby's breath.

Scientists have been aware of the disconnection of the entire plasma tail of a comet for some time, but the conditions that lead to these events remained a mystery. It was suspected that coronal mass ejections could be responsible for some of the disconnected events, but the interaction between a coronal mass ejection and a comet never had been observed.

Preliminary analysis suggests the disconnection likely is triggered by what is known as magnetic reconnection, in which the oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet are crunched together by the magnetic fields in the coronal mass ejection. The comet fields suddenly link together, reconnecting, to release a burst of energy that detaches the comet's tail. A similar process takes place in Earth's magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms, powering the aurora borealis and other phenomena.

Comets are icy leftovers from the solar system's formation billions of years ago. They usually reside in the cold, distant regions of the solar system. Occasionally, the gravitational tug from a planet, another comet or a nearby star sends a comet into the inner solar system, where the sun's heat and radiation vaporizes gas and dust from the comet to form its tail. Comets typically have two tails: one of dust and a fainter one of electrically conducting gas called plasma.

"Even though STEREO is primarily designed to study coronal mass ejections, particularly their impact on Earth, we hope this impact will provide many insights to scientists studying comets," said Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

STEREO is the third mission in NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program, sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Goddard manages the mission, instruments, and science center. The Heliospheric Imager was built in the United Kingdom by Rutheford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Birmingham with major contributions from the Naval Research Laboratory and the Centre Spatial de Liege, Belgium. Other international partners in the STEREO mission include the European Space Agency and France, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland.