Steve Spangler is a bestselling author, STEM educator and Emmy award-winning television personality with more than 2,100 television appearances to his credit. Steve appeared as a regular guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from 2007-2022 (27 appearances).
Steve Spangler is a bestselling author, STEM educator and Emmy award-winning television personality with more than 2,100 television appearances to his credit. Steve appeared as a regular guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from 2007-2022 (27 appearances).
What exactly is a black hole? Well, they’re not holes at all, rather incredibly dense regions in space with gravity so strong, not even light can escape.
There are stellar-mass black holes, which form when massive stars collapse and explode in a supernova, and supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of times more massive and sit at the centers of galaxies.
Scientists know these cosmic powerhouses shape galaxies and influence how the universe evolves. But how do supermassive black holes form? That’s still one of astronomy’s biggest mysteries. A NASA scientist explains what we know (and don’t know) about these cosmic gargantuans.
Steve Spangler is a bestselling author, STEM educator and Emmy award-winning television personality with more than 2,100 television appearances to his credit. Steve appeared as a regular guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from 2007-2022 (27 appearances).
Take a look at Sophie Adenot’s journey over the past year and a half as she prepares for her mission to the International Space Station, currently planned for spring 2026.
What are the dangers of going to space? Space might look peaceful from afar but it’s a harsh environment, especially for humans. From DNA damage to bone loss to making sure there’s enough food for long missions—space is tough. But NASA is working hard to keep our astronauts safe on every step of the journey.
Did you know that NASA technology is all around you? From the camera in your phone to lifesaving medical devices — and so much more — innovations developed for space often come back to improve life on Earth.
Through NASA spinoffs, space technology fuels advancements in healthcare, transportation, agriculture and more. Our expert explains how NASA is part of your everyday life!
Meet Codi, the cutting-edge rover being tested in the UK as it gears up for future Mars missions! This high-tech explorer navigates challenging landscapes and collects “lightsabre” samples with precision. And did you know? There’s a bit of fun on the side—Kevin the piglet, the team’s adorable mascot, is named after actor Kevin Bacon!
A new satellite called EarthCARE launching later this month will provide unprecedented data on clouds and aerosols, contributing to our understanding of climate change. As we approach its launch, join us as we delve into the minds of some of the individuals who have contributed to EarthCARE over the years.
The mission will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s temperature.
This video features interviews with: Dave Donovan, Senior Scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Robin Hogan, Senior Scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Ulla Wandinger, Senior Scientist at Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Alain Lefebvre, Retired Project Manager of EarthCARE at ESA, Hajime Okamoto, Director, Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Bjoern Frommknecht, EarthCARE Mission Manager at ESA, Edward Baudrez, Scientific Assistant at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, Thorsten Fehr, EarthCARE Mission Scientist at ESA, Pavlos Kollias from Stony Brook University – McGill University and Dirk Bernaerts, EarthCARE Project Manager at ESA.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Astronaut training consists of three main phases: basic training, pre-assignment training and increment training.
On the 22nd April, our astronaut candidates will have completed their basic training.
They will receive their certification at our European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, officially becoming fully fledged astronauts eligible for spaceflight.
After their graduation, the astronauts will proceed to the next phases of pre-assignment and mission-specific training, where they’ll learn specific skills for their future missions to the International Space Station and beyond!
📸 ESA – European Space Agency 📹 ESA – European Space Agency
Steve Spangler is a bestselling author, STEM educator and Emmy award-winning television personality with more than 2,100 television appearances to his credit. Steve appeared as a regular guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from 2007-2022. Learn more about Steve at https://stevespangler.com/about-steve-spangler/
The Arctic is experiencing disproportionately higher temperature increases compared to the rest of the planet, triggering a series of cascading effects. This rapid warming has profound implications for global climate patterns, human populations and wildlife.
The Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer mission (CIMR) will provide measurements to decision makers with evidence of change and impact in the polar regions – with a focus on the Arctic.
The mission has the largest radiometer developed by ESA and will provide high-resolution measurements related to sea ice, the ocean, snow and ice-sheet surfaces. This will be crucial in understanding the evolution of the climate in the polar region.
CIMR is one of six Copernicus Sentinel Expansion missions that ESA is developing on behalf of the EU. The missions will expand the current capabilities of the Copernicus Space Component – the world’s biggest supplier of Earth observation data.
This video features interviews with Craig Donlon, CIMR Mission Scientist, Rolv Midthassel, CIMR Payload Manager, Claudio Galeazzi, CIMR Project Manager, Mariel Triggianese, CIMR Satellite Engineering and AIV Manager, and Marcello Sallusti, CIMR System Performance and Operations Manager.
In the meantime Craig has changed his role but will retain his position as Mission Scientist.
Credits: ESA – European Space Agency
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Deep beneath the crust of Jupiter’s frozen moon Europa lies a massive liquid water ocean. Exploring this ocean world with our Europa Clipper spacecraft could provide new clues in our search for life beyond Earth.
Scheduled to launch in October 2024, Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the icy moon’s surface that could be habitable.
Ice is without doubt one of the first casualties of climate change, but the effects of our warming world are not only limited to ice melting on Earth’s surface. Ground that has been frozen for thousands of years, called permafrost, is thawing – adding to the climate crisis and causing serious issues for local communities.
Scientists estimate that the world’s permafrost holds almost double the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. When permafrost warms and thaws, it releases methane and carbon dioxide, adding these greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and making global warming even worse.
While permafrost cannot be directly observed from space, a lot of different types of satellite data, along with ground measurements and modelling, allow scientists to paint a picture of permafrost ground conditions.
Credits: ESA – European Space Agency
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Steve Spangler is a bestselling author, STEM educator and Emmy award-winning television personality with more than 2,100 television appearances to his credit. Steve appeared as a regular guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show from 2007-2022. Learn more about Steve at https://stevespangler.com/about-steve-spangler/
What we found in some historic asteroid samples, discussing a record-breaking spaceflight, and our Psyche spacecraft sets sail to study a unique asteroid … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!
Link to download this video: https://images.nasa.gov/details/What%20We%20Found%20in%20Some%20Historic%20Asteroid%20Samples%20on%20This%20Week%20@NASA%20%E2%80%93%20October%2013,%202023
Video Producer: Andre Valentine Video Editor: Andre Valentine Narrator: Andre Valentine Music: Universal Production Music Credit: NASA
How do we know what Earth’s climate was like long ago? If you look closely, there are clues just about everywhere across our globe. Some are easy to see and others are more subtle. NASA climate scientist Dr. Gavin Schmidt explains.
Lying in bed for a full 60 days – with one shoulder always touching the mattress – might sound like bliss, but add cycling, spinning and constant medical tests to the equation and it becomes a challenging experience for the sake of human space exploration.
A group of 12 volunteers are bracing themselves for a bedridden journey that put them into a compulsory reclined lifestyle. Participants are kept in beds tilted 6 degrees below the horizontal with their feet up – meals, showers and toilet breaks included.
As blood flows to the head and muscle is lost from underuse, researchers are charting how their bodies react. Bedrest studies offer a way of testing measures to counter some of the negative aspects of living in space.
During space missions, astronauts’ bodies go through a wide array of changes due to lack of gravity – everything from their eyes to their heart is affected, and muscles and bones start to waste away.
📹 @EuropeanSpaceAgency 📷 ESA/CNES/MEDES-IMPS
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
A new era of lunar exploration is on the rise, with dozens of Moon missions planned for the coming decade. As these missions will be operating on and around the Moon and needing to communicate together and fix their positions independently from Earth, this new era will require its own time.
Accordingly, space organisations have started considering how to keep time on the Moon. Having begun with a meeting at our technology centre in the Netherlands on November 2023, the discussion is part of a larger effort to agree a common ‘LunaNet’ architecture covering lunar communication and navigation services.
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
In the 1980s, scientists discovered a gaping hole in Earth’s ozone layer, caused by humanmade chemicals. But what is the ozone hole? Join us to find out!
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
The aurora isn’t unique to Earth. Some other worlds in our Solar System, such as Saturn and Jupiter, have magnetic fields too. Solar wind particles can collide with them just as happens with Earth! Would you like to fly to another planet and see its aurora?
📹 @EuropeanSpaceAgency
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Recently, Andreas Mogensen, now getting ready for his ‘Huginn’ mission to the ISS in 2023, stopped by ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet with some of the experts who keep our satellites flying.
Andreas usually works at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston as an ISS ‘capcom’, and we don’t often see him in Europe. A few months back, while returning to Germany for some training at ESA’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne, we seized the opportunity to ask him if he’d like to stop over in Darmstadt for a look behind the scenes at mission control, and he immediately answered, ‘yes’!
Andreas’ studied aeronautical engineering with a focus on ‘guidance, navigation and control of spacecraft’ and we thought he’d be delighted to meet with the teams at mission control doing precisely that sort of work for our robotic missions.
We figured he’d also enjoy meeting colleagues from our Space Safety programme, especially the ones working on space debris and space weather, as these are crucial areas that influence the daily life of astronauts on the ISS.
Andreas met with Bruno Sousa and Julia Schwartz, who help keep Solar Orbiter healthy and on track on its mission to gather the closest-ever images of the Sun, observe the solar wind and our Star’s polar regions, helping unravel the mysteries of the solar cycle.
He also met with Stijn Lemmens, one of the analysts keeping tabs on the space debris situation in orbit, and Melanie Heil, a scientist helping ESA understand how space weather and our active Sun can affect missions in orbit and crucial infrastructure – like power grids – on ground.
We hope you enjoy this lively and informative day at mission control as much as Andreas and the teams at ESOC did!
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
What happens to old satellites? Currently, they either burn up safely upon reentry into the atmosphere or they remain in space. But NASA is working on new technology that could make spaceflight more sustainable by refueling or upgrading satellites in space, greatly expanding their lifespans.
Here’s more about the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) Mission: https://go.nasa.gov/3FtsBHV
Producers: Jessica Wilde, Scott Bednar Editor: Matthew Schara
ESA’s Council at Ministerial level taking place on 22-23 November 2022. It is a crucial milestone as Europe sets out its ambitions and plans for space activities in the coming years and decades.
We want to strengthen Europe’s space sector and ensure we continue to serve European citizens by, for example: Tick preparing new groundbreaking missions to make new scientific discoveries, tick observing the Earth to make sure we collect enough data to mitigate climate change, Tick launching new nav satellites to improve GPS signals across Europe Tick and supporting entrepreneurs and space related businesses.
Stay tuned and find out more about what we are putting on the table at CM22.
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
Going to the Moon was the first step. Staying there is the next ambition.
ESA is a key partner in NASA’s Artemis programme, which aims to return people to the Moon by the end of the decade. Dozens of other international public and private missions are setting their sights on the lunar surface in the coming years.
But to achieve a permanent and sustainable presence on the Moon, reliable and autonomous lunar communications and navigation services are required.
This is why ESA is working with its industrial partners on the Moonlight initiative, to become the first off-planet commercial telecoms and satellite navigation provider.
Following their launch, three or four satellites will be carried into lunar orbit by a space tug and deployed one by one, to form a constellation of lunar satellites. The number and specification of these satellites are currently being defined.
The constellation’s orbits are optimised to give coverage to the lunar south pole, whose sustained sunlight and polar ice make it the focus of upcoming missions.
Moonlight will provide data capacities sufficient to serve these planned and future missions, with a navigation service that enables accurate real-time positioning for all lunar missions.
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We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
🚩 Thanks to Curiosity Stream for sponsoring today’s video. Go to https://curiositystream.thld.co/historymarche_0122 and use code HISTORYMARCHE to save 25% off today, that’s only $14.99 a year. 👇 Push down for more cool stuff 👇
🚩 After Rome’s destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, the Carthaginian libraries were given to the kings of Numidia, but Mago’s work was considered too important to lose. It was brought to Rome and Decimus Junius Silanus was commissioned by the Roman Senate to translate it into Latin – but the Punic and Latin versions of the texts were eventually lost. However, it was Cassius Dionysius of Utica, an ancient North African writer on botany and medicinal substances, who became best known for his Greek translation of the great 28-volume treatise on agriculture, written by the Carthaginian Mago…
There are no known threats to Earth, but NASA asteroid expert Dr. Kelly Fast says it’s important to find the asteroids before they find us. That’s why NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office keeps its eyes on the skies.
This November, we’re launching the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. The test mission will attempt to change the course of an asteroid that is currently no threat to our planet. Get more info at nasa.gov/PlanetaryDefense.
Producer: Scott Bednar Producer/Editor: Jessica Wilde
Lagrange points are places around a planet where the pull of its gravity, the Sun’s gravity and the motion of the orbit are balanced. Things at these points take very little energy to stay in place. NASA’s Lucy mission will visit Lagrange points where “Trojan asteroids” have been trapped for billions of years, holding clues to the formation of our solar system. NASA’s Dr. Adriana Ocampo has more.
What are the Trojan asteroids? These mysterious space rocks have been gravitationally trapped in Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun for billions of years and hold clues to the formation of our solar system. NASA’s Lucy mission will be the first spacecraft to study these ancient relics up close. Scientist Audrey Martin at Northern Arizona University has the details.
Learn more about Lucy’s mission to the Trojans, launching Oct. 16:
Producers: Jessica Wilde & Scot Bednar Editor: Matthew Schara
The Pirs docking compartment (also called DC-1) left the International Space Station together with the Progress MS-16 cargo spacecraft after 20 years of service and burned up safely in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean on 26 July 2021. Its departure made room for the Nauka science module.
European Space Agency astronaut, Thomas Pesquet, filmed this video and shared on social media with the caption: “Here’s a timelapse of DC1’s re-entry last week, together with its tow truck, Progress 77P, seen from above. Atmospheric re-entry without a heat shield results in a nice fireball (you clearly see smaller pieces of melting metal floating away and adding to the fireworks). This timelapse is sped up, we could observe the fireball for around six minutes. Next time you see a shooting star, it might be our ISS trash getting burnt up… Not sure it will be granted in that case, but you never know, I’d still advise to go ahead and make a wish.”
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
There’s a helpful concept we use to help understand what distance from a given star you might expect to find planets with liquid water on their surface – liquid water being essential for life as we know it. It’s called the habitable zone. Every star has a habitable zone, but where that zone lies is different for stars of different sizes and brightness.
Exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – are everywhere. But why do we study them? What makes them so interesting? At NASA, we’re surveying and studying exoplanets to learn all about their weirdness, their variety, and all the fascinating things they can tell us about how planets form and develop.
