NASA's Has HUGE Plans for Superbowl XLV

"On February 6, 2011," says Chris St. Cyr of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Super Bowl XLV will be played in Arlington, Texas. And on the same day NASA's two STEREO spacecraft will be 180 degrees apart and will image the entire Sun for the first time in history."
STEREO's station on opposite sides of the Sun solves the problem that has troubled astronomers for centuries: Sunspots can materialize, explode, and regroup in a matter of days, coronal holes open and close, magnetic filaments stretch tight and then explode; a full half of these events are hidden from sight making it nearly impossible to track sunspots or understanding magnetic filaments. But in two years, those skipped pages in reasearch will be filled with more of an understanding of how our Sun affects our world and the rest of the solar systems.
Already, however, the two spacecrafts are beaming back over the horizon images that have researchers and forecasters glued to their monitors. "This is a perspective we've never had before," says STEREO mission scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters. "We're now monitoring more than 270 degrees of solar longitude-that's 3/4ths of the star. After all these years, we're finally getting to see the dark side of the Sun."

Salty Secrets

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is reporting to have found evidence of salt deposits. Evidence of salt deposits? Meaning that they didn't actually find salt?
"They could come from groundwater reaching the surface in low spots," said Mikki Osterloo of the University of Hawaii. "The water would evaporate and leave mineral deposits, which build up over years. The sites are disconnected, so they are unlikely to be the remnants of a global ocean."
The deposits point to places where water once was abundant and where proof might exist of possible martian life from the Red Planet's past.
Source.

Deep Impact Probe; Sounds Dirrty

NASA spacecraft prob, The Deep Impact, rocketed past Earth on Monday about 10,000 miles over Australia. The Deep Impact is on its way to make contact with another comet.
In 2005, Deep Impact became the first spacecraft to break open a comet by releasing a copper impactor into its core and scientist were able to get a first hand look at its interior.
Now on its second mission, called Epoxi, the probe is set to meet Hartley 2 in 2010 about 12 million miles from Earth.
But first, "We're taking laps around the sun until the comet comes," said William Blume of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Source.

My Parents Will Finally Have Something Else To Talk About Besides The Weather

Checking your local air quality may someday become included in your daily routine.
With the help of NASA, researchers are working on an operational system to try and predict global forecasts of air pollution on a ground level.
Europe is responsible for testing the combination of atmospheric satellite data with that of weather station data. Richard Engelen of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in the United Kingdom states,
"Regional modeling is already getting quite meaningful."
The Global and Regional Earth System (Atmosphere) Monitoring Using Satellite and In-Situ Data project is still in its experimental stage but the finishing product is hoping to not only inform you of the pollution level that your breathing in but also notify you of where it is coming from, (if not from your own city). Source.

The Northern Lights Are Not Made By Jenna

Scientists of NASAs Themis mission have found that the energy source of the famed Northern Lights, of Canada and Alaska, comes from a 'stream of charged particles from the sun flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields connecting Earth's upper atmosphere to the sun,' Associated Press (..put it best.)
I'm just a little surprised to come across this discovery today because if I can remember the movie Balto correctly, they explain the Northern Lights as being exactly as what is described above. Right? And Balto was made in 1995. Or did I just make that all up?

Our Spaceship Returns to Earth

Space ship, or excuse me.. Space shuttle Discovery landed yesterday after accomplishing the most challenging and heroic mission in shuttle history. Setting out on a 'build and repair' mission, 7 astronauts and 3 residents teamed up to fix the broken solar wing of a space station.
Marcia Dunn, an aerospace writer for AP, put it best:
Parazynski floated outside with wire cutters, pliers and some homemade tools and fixed the torn wing. No one had ever ventured so far from the safe confines of the space station before or worked right up against a solar wing coursing with more than 100 volts of electricity and swaying back and forth. He was propped on the end of a 90-foot extension beam that just barely reached the wing's damaged section.
I can hear Hollywood calling from here. Source.