Allisonkitten - Here, Have Some Space

This is actually amazing 🚀

Travel Posters of Fantastic Excursions

What would the future look like if people were regularly visiting to other planets and moons? These travel posters give a glimpse into that imaginative future. Take a look and choose your destination:

The Grand Tour

Our Voyager mission took advantage of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets for a grand tour of the solar system. The twin spacecraft revealed details about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – using each planet’s gravity to send them on to the next destination.

Mars

Our Mars Exploration Program seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. This poster imagines a future day when we have achieved our vision of human exploration of the Red Planet and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of Mars exploration that will someday be celebrated as “historic sites.”

Earth

There’s no place like home. Warm, wet and with an atmosphere that’s just right, Earth is the only place we know of with life – and lots of it. Our Earth science missions monitor our home planet and how it’s changing so it can continue to provide a safe haven as we reach deeper into the cosmos.

Venus

The rare science opportunity of planetary transits has long inspired bold voyages to exotic vantage points – journeys such as James Cook’s trek to the South Pacific to watch Venus and Mercury cross the face of the sun in 1769. Spacecraft now allow us the luxury to study these cosmic crossings at times of our choosing from unique locales across our solar system.

Ceres

Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the sun. It is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, with an equatorial diameter of about 965 kilometers. After being studied with telescopes for more than two centuries, Ceres became the first dwarf planet to be explored by a spacecraft, when our Dawn probe arrived in orbit in March 2015. Dawn’s ongoing detailed observations are revealing intriguing insights into the nature of this mysterious world of ice and rock.

Jupiter

The Jovian cloudscape boasts the most spectacular light show in the solar system, with northern and southern lights to dazzle even the most jaded space traveler. Jupiter’s auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth’s, and they form a glowing ring around each pole that’s bigger than our home planet. 

Enceladus

The discovery of Enceladus’ icy jets and their role in creating Saturn’s E-ring is one of the top findings of the Cassini mission to Saturn. Further Cassini discoveries revealed strong evidence of a global ocean and the first signs of potential hydrothermal activity beyond Earth – making this tiny Saturnian moon one of the leading locations in the search for possible life beyond Earth.

Titan

Frigid and alien, yet similar to our own planet billions of years ago, Saturn’s largest moon, Titan has a thick atmosphere, organic-rich chemistry and surface shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane. Our Cassini orbiter was designed to peer through Titan’s perpetual haze and unravel the mysteries of this planet-like moon.

Europa

Astonishing geology and the potential to host the conditions for simple life making Jupiter’s moon Europa a fascinating destination for future exploration. Beneath its icy surface, Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean of salty liquid water twice the volume of Earth’s oceans. Tugging and flexing from Jupiter’s gravity generates enough heat to keep the ocean from freezing.

You can download free poster size images of these thumbnails here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Adorable motor protein just traveling along. Converting chemical energy into mechanical energy. Keep on rockin motor protein!

Amazing!

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, so let us break it down for you. Here are five things you need to know this week:

1. The Lure of the Rings

Scientists and stargazers alike can’t resist the call of Saturn’s rings, or of its moon Titan. Both have been under close scrutiny by the Cassini spacecraft lately, and there are striking new pictures to prove it. Check out the latest images HERE.

2. A New Moon Rises

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured dramatic landscapes on the moon for more than six years. “A New Moon Rises,” now on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, showcases those images ranging from Apollo landing sites to mountains that rise out of the darkness of the lunar poles. See an online version of the exhibit HERE.  

3. Around the (Giant) World in (Just Under) 88 Days

The Juno mission is closing in on Jupiter. On July 4, the spacecraft enters orbit around the king of planets. Learn more about Juno HERE.

4. Spiders and Volcanoes and Glaciers, Oh My

The more data that New Horizons spacecraft sends down about Pluto and its moons, the more there is to fascinate explorers, from spider-shaped canyons to signs of glacial flow. Take a peek at the new finds on Pluto HERE.

5. World of Wonders

Hexagonal craters, mysterious mountains, eye-catching bright patches — the dwarf planet Ceres is proving to be an intriguing place. The Dawn mission is looking for clues to how it works. See the latest from Ceres HERE.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

when ur mom comes home with the groceries

Straight up

Zodiac Sagittarius | See much more at TheZodiacCity.com