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NASA saw the Northern Lights and seized their chance in the wee hours of Thursday morn, launching three science rockets into active auroras within a couple hours of one another.

Kristina Lynch, master investigator on the mission, said, "The visible light produced in the atmosphere as aurora is the last step of a chain of processes connecting the solar wind to the temper. Nosotros are seeking to empathise what construction in these visible signatures can tell the states nigh the electrodynamics of processes college up."

The instruments flew on Black IX sounding rockets, launched from the Poker Apartment Research Range in Alaska. The 3rd rocket was part of the Ionospheric Structuring: In Situ and Groundbased Depression Distance StudieS, or ISINGLASS, mission. ISINGLASS. Because we have to give something a head-scratching acronym, or else it wouldn't really be NASA, now would it?

SpaceX is either broke enough, or stoked enough on their armada, that they've accustomed "a significant deposit" from two people — naturally, two unnamed people — toward a moon mission in 2022. The every bit-yet-anonymous astronauts will be in the Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon Heavy rocket, launching from Pad 39A. In SpaceX'due south words: "This presents an opportunity for humans to render to deep infinite for the first time in 45 years and they will travel faster and farther into the Solar System than any before them."

In the official teaser, SpaceX tips a hat to NASA, whose Commercial Crew Program enabled SpaceX to develop the Dragon ii in the starting time place. Maybe I'm a terrible person for routinely picking on apartment earthers, simply this makes me want to crowdfund tickets for these people.

Saturn and Enceladus, with bonus cryovolcano. Inset: Enceladus, zoomed way in. Image and inset: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ted Stryk

A scientist sifting through old Voyager 1 data plant this long-ignored image of Saturn that came with a prize. Enceladus is visible in the background, in its waxing crescent phase; well-nigh its lesser, there's a visible plume coming from the surface. Turns out this was a snapshot of a cryovolcano in mid-eruption, taken by Voyager 1 a day afterwards its closest arroyo to Saturn. After going through the raw information with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, amateur image processor Ted Stryk is ready to nowadays his piece of work to the Lunar and Planetary Scientific discipline Briefing. "Subsequently combining unlike [raw information] subsets as well as the full set," Stryk said, "I am confident in the detection of the plumes, just where they should be."

Sometimes when I'm bellyaching, I threaten to fire the object of my annoyance into the sun. NASA is taking this idea more than literally. They are sending a spacecraft to the sun, in gild to figure out some longstanding scientific questions.

Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins

Scientists are conducting the Solar Probe Plus mission to figure out what gives the solar current of air its speed, why the surface of the sun is so much cooler than its atmosphere, and maybe even what causes the emission of solar energetic particles. On its last few close passes to the sunday, Solar Probe+ will get within about three.7 meg miles of the lord's day — about a tenth the distance between the sunday and Mercury. They're planning to proceed the scientific discipline payload cool with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon blended rut shield.

One last thought: This anticipated finer understanding of the Sun represents a babe step toward becoming a Kardashev Type Ii civilisation, capable of harnessing the entire energy output of our parent star.