NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is continuing its traverse southward on the western rim of Endeavour Crater during the fall of 2014, stopping to investigate targets of scientific interest along way.  This view is from Opportunity’s front hazard avoidance camera on Nov. 26, 2014, during the 3,854th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars. This camera is mounted low on the rover and has a wide-angle lens.
The scene includes Opportunity’s robotic arm, called the “instrument deployment device,” at upper left. Portions of the pale bedrock exposed on the ground in front of the rover are within the arm’s reach. Researchers used instruments on the arm to examine a target called “Calera” on this patch of bedrock.  The wheel tracks in the scene are from the drive — in reverse — to this location, a drive of 32.5 feet (9.9 meters) on Sol 3846 (Nov. 18, 2014).
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/mer/pia19082

NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft, designed to transport extremely large cargo, rests after making a special delivery to the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The aircraft measures more than 48 feet to the top of its tail and has a wingspan of more than 156 feet with a 25-foot diameter cargo bay – the aircraft features a hinged nose that opens 110 degrees.
A representative test article of a futuristic hybrid wing body aircraft will be unloaded from the Super Guppy on Friday, Dec. 12 at Langley Research Center. The large test article, representing the uniquely shaped fuselage cross-section, is made out of a low-weight, damage-tolerant, stitched composite structural concept called Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure, or PRSEUS. Langley’s Combined Loads Test System will subject the revolutionary carbon-fiber architecture test article to conditions that simulate loads typically encountered in flight.
Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/super-guppy-spends-a-restful-night-in-the-nasa-langley-hangar

Late spring and summer weather brings blooms of color to the Atlantic Ocean off of South America, at least from a satellite view. The Patagonian Shelf Break is a biologically rich patch of ocean where airborne dust from the land, iron-rich currents from the south, and upwelling currents from the depths provide a bounty of nutrients for the grass of the sea—phytoplankton. In turn, those floating sunlight harvesters become food for some of the richest fisheries in the world.
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP captured this view of phytoplankton-rich waters off of Argentina on Dec. 2, 2014. Scientists in NASA’s Ocean Color Group used three wavelengths (671, 551, and 443 nanometers) of visible and near-infrared light to highlight different plankton communities in the water. Bands of color not only reveal the location of plankton, but also the dynamic eddies and currents that carry them.
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Image Credit: Norman Kuring, NASA’s Ocean Color Group, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/colorful-and-plankton-full-patagonian-waters