Less than a day after NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars, engineers and scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were hard at work, awaiting the next transmissions from Perseverance.www.nasa.gov
#EarthObservatory #NASA #MountFuji #Japan #SnowMount Fuji’s Missing Snow
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147780/mount-fujis-missing-snow
Even as record snowfall has clobbered Japan’s western coast, much of the country’s eastern half has avoided major snow accumulation this winter. Notably, Mount Fuji’s iconic snow cap—which is normally visible throughout December—has been small or absent this year.
The mountain peak, the tallest in Japan, did get a dusting on September 28, 2020, its first snowfall of the year. But that melted off quickly, and Fuji’s snow cap remained elusive in the coming months. Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) observations from NASA’s Terra satellite indicate that snow cover on the mountain last month was among the lowest in the satellite's 20-year record for any December.
Ground-based weather stations made similar observations. “Stations around Mount Fuji recorded much less precipitation than usual in December,” said Toshio Iguchi, a remote sensing scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Through December 24, it was only 10 percent of an average year.” Weather data also indicate that temperatures around the mountain were warm during much of December.
In the images at the top of the page, the bare upper slopes of the mountain were visible to the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite on January 1, 2021. For comparison, the other image, also acquired by OLI, shows Mount Fuji on December 29, 2013, on a day it was snowier. The mountain had a slightly above average amount of snow in December 2013, according to the Terra NDSI observations.
Toward the end of December 2020, the mountain finally received some snow. But even chillier January weather did not guarantee that the snow cap would last. After a few days, the snow cap was much reduced as temperatures creeped above freezing. And part of the snow cap was likely blown away by wind, according to Weather News.
While local weather conditions are key to whether Fuji’s snow cap is present on any given day, long-term climate data indicates that conditions on the peak are changing. One recent study found the mountain’s timberline had moved upslope by 30 meters (100 feet) over the past four decades, likely due to a 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in summer temperatures near the peak.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and MODIS data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Story by Adam Voiland.
The lack of snow cover in December left Japan’s iconic mountain looking a little different than usual.earthobservatory.nasa.gov
Fly me to the Moon, let me swim among the starswww.theregister.com
Ambitious series of joint missions aims to construct a crewed space station that will orbit the moonwww.theguardian.com
The space agency gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the sun, which have now been stitched together to form the videowww.theguardian.com
Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin once ridiculed the lack of a U.S. manned flight programme, saying it might as well "deliver its astronauts to the ISS by using a trampoline".(c) Photo: MK
Six years later Elon Musk and NASA had the last laugh.
"The trampoline is working," quipped the 48-year-old U.S. entrepreneur at a post-flight news conference alongside NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Both men laughed. "It's an inside joke," Musk added.
On Saturday, his SpaceX made history by becoming the first commercial company to send humans into orbit.
The U.S. feat and Musk's joke set Russian social media alight, with wits ridiculing Rogozin, and the Russian space chief's name began trending on Twitter.
"How do you like this, Dmitry Rogozin?" one critic prodded.
Russia still prides itself on sending the first human into orbit in 1961 and other achievements of the Soviet-era space programme.
Rogozin has remained conspicuously silent but his spokesman was forced to react.
"We don't really understand the hysteria sparked by the successful launch of a Crew Dragon spacecraft," spokesman Vladimir Ustimenko said on Twitter.
"What should have happened a long time ago happened," he added.
While cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, Roscosmos executive director for crewed space programmes, saluted the US achievement in a brief video address, not everyone was in such a gracious mood.
Alexey Pushkov, a member of the upper house of parliament, declared Saturday's flight was not a big deal.
"This is a flight to the International Space Station, not to Mars," he said on messaging app Telegram.
He pronounced it time to stop ferrying Americans to the orbiting lab.
"Russia needs spaces for its own young cosmonauts."
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/31/trampoline-is-working-musk-taunts-russia-a70433
Several hundred million years ago, two galaxy clusters collided and then passed through each other.www.nasa.gov
On April 25, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the cargo bay of space shuttle Discovery.www.nasa.gov
Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravitational Lens Missionwww.nasa.gov
Content warning: Sie war eine der unbekannten Heldinnen, eine "Hidden Figure", bei der Apollo 11 Mondmission der Amerikaner 1969: die Mathematikerin Katherine Johnson. Nun ist sie mit 101 Jahren gestorben... (weiter) Audio: Web (ganz unten) | MP3 https://www.tagesschau.de
THE deadly coronavirus which has killed more than 1,000 people globally came from a meteorite which hit China last year, scientists have sensationally claimed.www.express.co.uk
Vergessene Tabelleneinträge, fehlende Zeitabfragen und störende Mobilfunksignale sollen ursächlich für die Probleme beim Testflug des Starliner-Raumschiffs gewesen sein.www.golem.de
Ein Sicherheitskomitee der Nasa hat einen weiteren Fehler beim Testflug von Boeings Starliner veröffentlicht und fordert eine Untersuchung der Sicherheitskultur des Unternehmens.www.golem.de