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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, so let us break it down for you. Here are a few things you should know this week:

1. Science at the Edge

As the New Horizons spacecraft speeds away at more than 31,000 miles per hour (14 km/s) it continues to explore the Kuiper Belt, the region of icy bodies beyond Neptune. New Horizons has now twice observed 1994 JR1, a 90-mile-wide object orbiting more than 3 billion miles from the sun.

2. A Spaceship, Refined

This artist’s rendering shows our Europa mission spacecraft, which is being developed for a launch sometime in the 2020s. The mission will place a spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter to explore the giant planet’s moon Europa. This updated concept image shows tow large solar arrays extending from the sides of the spacecraft, to which the mission’s ice-penetrating radar antennas are attached. A saucer-shaped high-gain antenna is also side mounted with a magnetometer boom placed next to it. Find out more about the spacecraft HERE.

3. Sojourn at Saturn

The Cassini spacecraft is hard at work this week, orbiting Saturn to study the planet and its rings. The recent pictures are spectacular, take a look at them HERE.

4. Talking Juno

Our Juno mission arrives at Jupiter on July 4, and that presents a unique opportunity for educators, science communicators and anyone interested in space exploration. We are providing a growing set of Juno-related information resources. Take a look at them HERE.

5. Now THAT’S a Long Distance Call

How do explorers on Earth talk to astronauts and robotic spacecraft flung across the far reaches of space? They use the remarkable technology deployed by our Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program Office. This month, SCaN is celebrating its 10th anniversary of managing the ultimate network. Find out how it works HERE.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCeIG06iAEA)

Functional Family Unit

If you have a "smart" mobile phone, then you have a digital camera in your pocket, backpack or purse. The camera sensor built into these phones provide high resolution images that are captured in a digital format readily displayed, saved and shared with others. This same technology is now being built into flexible scopes for inspecting the internal channels of medical devices. This approach to flexible scope design offers a number of advantages over traditional fiber optics.

First, and foremost, is an incredible improvement of the image quality. With fiber optics, as the number of glass fibers are reduced, the resolution or quality of the image is also reduced. In very small bundles, below 5mm in diameter, the image can be blurry. Conversely, with the use of modern digital camera technology, the optical imaging sensor is actually placed right at the tip of the scope, delivering a clear, well defined image.

Another issue often experienced with fiber optics, is their delicate nature. A fiber optic scope has thousands of individual strands of glass. These strands are very delicate and when flexed and bent, they easily break. Not so with modern digital camera technology. The only thing running through the shaft of these flexible inspection scopes are wires that relay the bits and bytes from the image sensor at the tip - and deliver the power to that image sensor as well as the LED light also located at the tip.

Power and lighting bring up another important advancement made possible by digital imaging technology - unlike with traditional fiber optic systems that require a separate light source and some kind of individually powered camera coupling mechanism - the digital imaging technology found in flexible inspection scopes, including the lighting, camera and image capturing system, are all powered by the USB port of a desktop or laptop computer.

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