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Mars lander preview

A preview of NASA's Phoenix Mars lander mission and the science objectives to dig into the arctic plains of the Red Planet are presented here.

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Phoenix animation

Project officials narrate animation of Phoenix's launch from Earth, arrival at Mars, touchdown using landing rockets and the craft's robot arm and science gear in action.

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Dawn launch delay

Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, explains why the agency decided to delay launch of the Dawn asteroid probe from July to September.

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Endeavour rolls to VAB

Shuttle Endeavour is transported from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building for joining with a fuel tank and boosters for launch on STS-118.

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Welcome home, Atlantis

The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft touches down on Kennedy Space Center's Runway 15 on July 3, delivering Atlantis back to its homeport after a two-day coast-to-coast ferry flight.

 Landing | Tow

Atlantis heads home

Nine days after landing at Edwards Air Force Base to conclude the STS-117 mission, Atlantis begins its cross-country ferry flight back to Florida.

 Taxi | Takeoff

Dawn preview movie

Learn more about the upcoming Dawn mission that will use an ion engine propulsion system to visit two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt.

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Hubble catches Jupiter changing its stripes
SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE
Posted: July 9, 2007

Massive Jupiter is undergoing dramatic atmospheric changes that have never been seen before with the keen "eye" of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Jupiter's turbulent clouds are always changing as they encounter atmospheric disturbances while sweeping around the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. But these Hubble images reveal a rapid transformation in the shape and color of Jupiter's clouds near the equator, marking an entire face of the globe.


Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon-Miller (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), A. Sanchez-Lavega, R. Hueso, and S. Perez-Hoyos (University of the Basque Country), E. Garcia-Melendo (Esteve Duran Observatory Foundation, Spain), and G. Orton (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Download larger image version here

 
The planet is wrapped in bands of yellows, browns, and whites. These bands are produced by the atmosphere flowing in different directions at various latitudes. Lighter-hued areas where the atmosphere rises are called zones. Darker regions where the atmosphere falls are called belts. When these opposing flows interact, storms and turbulence appear.

Between March 25 and June 5, Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 captured entire bands of clouds changing color. Zones have darkened into belts and belts have lightened and transformed into zones. Cloud features have rapidly altered in shape and size.

The image at left shows a thin band of white clouds above Jupiter's equator. The white color indicates clouds at higher altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere. In the image at right, the band's white hue has turned brown, showing clouds deep within the planet's atmosphere. The whole band appears to have merged with the one below it.

In the same cloud band above the equator, the small swirls in the left-hand image have morphed into larger wave-like features in the right-hand photo. Dominating the band is a dark streak that resembles a snake. This serpent-shaped structure is actually a small tear in the cloud deck, which gives astronomers a view deep within the atmosphere.

Below the equatorial region, the brownish upside-down shark fin in the left-hand image disappears in the photo at right. Appearing instead are brownish tongue-shaped clouds with a stream of white swirls below them.

These global upheavals have been seen before, but not with Hubble's sharp resolution. Astronomers using ground-based telescopes first spied drastic atmospheric transformation in the 1980s. Another major disturbance was seen in the early 1990s, after Hubble was launched into space. The telescope, however, did not have the resolution to view the upheaval in fine detail. These higher-quality Hubble images may help astronomers understand how such global upheavals develop on Jupiter.