The study, “Lower Triassic carbonate δ238U record demonstrates expanded ocean anoxia during Smithian Thermal Maximum and improved ventilation during Smithian-Spathian boundary cooling event,” was published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. The work was supported by NASA Astrobiology through the Exobiology Program. This newly-revealed science is also a critical part of NASA’s work to understand the Universe, advance human exploration, and inspire the next generation. As NASA’s Artemis program moves forward with human exploration of the Moon, the search for life on other worlds remains a top priority for the agency....

This image, and others, are available on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmk54iRU

However, as the first integrated flight of the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and the exploration ground systems at NASA’s 21st century spaceport in Florida, engineers hope to accomplish a host of additional test objectives to better understand how the spacecraft performs in space and prepare for future missions with crew. Accomplishing additional objectives helps reduce risk for missions with a human crew aboard. This also provides extra data so engineers can assess trends in spacecraft performance or improve confidence in spacecraft capabilities....

Beginning on January 26, CAPSTONE was unable to receive commands from ground operators. The spacecraft remained overall healthy and on-course throughout the issue, sending telemetry data back to Earth. On February 6, an automatic command-loss timer rebooted CAPSTONE, clearing the issue and restoring two-way communication between CAPSTONE and the ground. The CAPSTONE team, led by Advanced Space, is now preparing for continued testing of the spacecraft’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, or CAPS, and other technology demonstrations....

Compared to earlier in Cassini’s mission, most of the surface in the moon’s northern high latitudes is now illuminated by the sun. (See PIA08363 for a view of the northern hemisphere from 2007.) Summer solstice in the Saturn system occurred on May 24, 2017. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 9, 2017, using a spectral filter that preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers....

Two differences between Atlas and Pan are obvious in this montage. Pan’s equatorial band is much thinner and more sharply defined, and the central mass of Atlas (the part underneath the smooth equatorial band) appears to be smaller than that of Pan. Images of Atlas and Pan taken using infrared, green and ultraviolet spectral filters were combined to create enhanced-color views (left side), which highlight subtle color differences across the moons’ surfaces at wavelengths not visible to human eyes....

As part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, DART will simultaneously test new technologies and provide important data to enhance our modeling and predictive capabilities and help us better prepare for an asteroid that might pose a threat to Earth, should one be discovered. NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s first planetary defense test mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The mission will help determine if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course....

Observing Didymos To navigate the DART spacecraft to its intended target – a binary asteroid that consists of a small moon (Didymos B) orbiting a larger body (Didymos A) – scientists need to understand how the system behaves. Scientists have been making efforts to observe Didymos from Earth since 2015, and now, an international campaign coordinated by Northern Arizona University’s Cristina Thomas, DART’s Observing Working Group Lead, is making critical observations using powerful telescopes worldwide to understand the state of the asteroid system before DART reaches it....

When the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission begins its journey to the Red Planet in 2013, it will carry a sensitive magnetic-field instrument built and tested by a team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Scheduled for launch in late 2013, MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space through time, providing answers about Mars’ climate evolution....

Launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Parker Solar Probe will make its journey all the way to the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona — closer to the Sun than any spacecraft in history. “Eight long years of hard work by countless engineers and scientists is finally paying off,” said Adam Szabo, the mission scientist for Parker Solar Probe at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Nestled atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy — one of the world’s most powerful rockets — with a third stage added, Parker Solar Probe will blast off toward the Sun with a whopping 55 times more energy than is required to reach Mars....

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is just 20 days from landing on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft has about 23.9 million miles (38.4 million kilometers) remaining in its 292.5-million-mile (470.8-million-kilometer) journey and is currently closing that distance at 1.6 miles per second (2.5 kilometers per second). Once at the top of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, an action-packed seven minutes of descent awaits – complete with temperatures equivalent to the surface of the Sun, a supersonic parachute inflation, and the first ever autonomous guided landing on Mars....

In an unexpected juxtaposition of cosmic objects that are actually quite far from each other, a newly released image from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) shows a dying star, called the Helix nebula, surrounded by the tracks of asteroids. The nebula is far outside our solar system, while the asteroid tracks are inside our solar system. The portrait, discovered by chance in a search for asteroids, comes at a time when the mission’s team is celebrating its fourth launch anniversary — and new lease on life....

“Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they’re essentially once-a-mission events and this is the first one Swift has seen,” said Neil Gehrels, the mission’s principal investigator, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This is really something we’ve been waiting for.” An X-ray outburst caught by NASA’s Swift on September 16, 2012, resulted from a flood of gas plunging toward a previously unknown black hole. Gas flowing from a sun-like star collects into a disk around the black hole....

“Due to the unique preservation of the organic matter of Beltanelliformis in the Vendian deposits in the White Sea the impressions of these organisms became an ideal object for the study of biomarkers. Having researched the remains of organic molecules, we suggested that Beltanelliformis were benthic colonial cyanobacteria. The new method may shed light on the nature of the mysterious Ediacaran macroorganisms and early revolution of life on Earth,” comments Anna Krasnova, a postgraduate student of the Department of Oil and Gas Sedimentology and Marine Geology (Faculty of Geology, MSU), and a researcher at the laboratory of Precambrian organisms at the Paleontological Institute (PIN), RAS....

Polymerized estrogen shown to protect nervous system cells. Research could enable improved treatment of spinal cord injuries. Spinal cord damage that causes paralysis and reduced mobility doesn’t always stop with the initial trauma, but there are few treatment options to halt increased deterioration — and there is no cure. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a promising new biomaterial that could offer targeted treatment to the damaged spinal cord and tissue, preventing further damage....

A breakthrough study by University of Alberta researchers has shown the fat cells that lie just beneath our skin shrink when exposed to the blue light emitted by the sun. “When the sun’s blue light wavelengths–the light we can see with our eye–penetrate our skin and reach the fat cells just beneath, lipid droplets reduce in size and are released out of the cell. In other words, our cells don’t store as much fat,” said Peter Light, senior author of the study, who is a professor of pharmacology and the director of UAlberta’s Alberta Diabetes Institute....

All normal matter surrounding us is composed of atoms, whose dense nuclei, comprising protons and neutrons, are surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Inside what are called neutron stars, atomic matter is, however, known to collapse into immensely dense nuclear matter, in which the neutrons and protons are packed together so tightly that the entire star can be considered one single enormous nucleus. Up until now, it has remained unclear whether inside the cores of the most massive neutron stars nuclear matter collapses into an even more exotic state called quark matter, in which the nuclei themselves no longer exist....

This erosion has produced several small mesas and exposed light-toned material that may differ in composition from the surrounding material. The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 27.5 centimeters (10.8 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning); objects on the order of 82 centimeters (32.3 inches) across are resolved.] North is up. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp....

This image was acquired by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) and sent back to Earth on July 20. Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. Pluto’s icy mountains have company. NASA’s New Horizons mission has discovered a new, apparently less lofty mountain range on the lower-left edge of Pluto’s best known feature, the bright, heart-shaped region named Tombaugh Regio (Tombaugh Region)....

The aftershock of a stellar explosion rippling through space is captured in this new view of the supernova remnant called W44. The image combines longer-wavelength infrared and X-ray light captured by the European Space Agency’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. NASA also plays an important role in the Herschel mission, with the U.S. project office based at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. W44 is located about 10,000 light-years away, within a forest of dense star-forming clouds in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle....