Posts by alicia.eakin@weathergroup.com

JAKARTA — 2023 saw the worst fire season in Indonesia since 2019, with an area the size of Qatar going up in flames, according to official government data. A total of 1.16 million hectares (2.87 million acres) of land and forest were burned last year, with an intense El Niño weather pattern a major factor. […]

On April 8, 2024, a NASA photographer captured the total solar eclipse in Dallas. A small part of North America, from Mexico’s Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada, saw the total solar eclipse, while all North America and parts of Central America and Europe saw a partial solar eclipse. The next total […]

NASA astronauts are using virtual reality to explore Gateway. When they slip on their headsets, they’re not just seeing the station—they’re in it, meticulously surveying every detail and offering crucial insights on design and functionality.

The energetic electrons that drive the aurora borealis (the northern lights) have a rich and very dynamic structure that we currently do not fully understand.  Much of what we know about these electrons comes from instruments that have fundamental limitations in their ability to sample multiple energies with high time resolution. To overcome these limitations, NASA is using an innovative approach to develop instrumentation that will enhance our measurement capabilities by more than an order of magnitude—revealing a wealth of new information about the amazing physics happening within the aurora.

Three Black Brant IX sounding rockets launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia April 8, 2024, during the solar eclipse. The rockets launched for the Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study the disturbances in the electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere known as the ionosphere created when the Moon eclipses the Sun. […]

By almost any measure, Kara Choquette’s hometown of Kearney, Nebraska, is windy, particularly where it meets Interstate 80. But a drive 450 miles west, and over 4,000 feet higher, leads to an even windier place: Carbon County, Wyoming.  In 2009, Choquette leaned into that wind, moving west and taking a job as communications director with […]

NASA is opening access to space for more people by working with private industry on the development of new commercial space stations for low Earth orbit where the agency’s astronauts could fly in the future. New commercial space stations will be available to people beyond government or professional astronauts with years of specialized training and […]

Dr. Lola Fatoyinbo, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, received the Esmond B. Martin Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Prize on April 8 in London. The prize, according to the RGS, recognizes “outstanding achievement by an individual in the pursuit and/or application of geographical research, with a particular emphasis on […]

On April 8, 1964, Gemini 1 successfully completed the first uncrewed test flight of the Gemini spacecraft and its Titan II booster. The three-orbit mission proved the structural integrity of the spacecraft and the launch vehicle, paving the way for a second uncrewed test flight and ultimately missions with astronauts. The primary goals of Project […]

Measuring the concentration of radioactive elements in a single, sand-size crystal reveals the growth of the Himalayan mountain range over time.