In this installment of NASA Now, you’ll meet spacecraft pilot and engineer Steven Wissler, who talks about the challenges of flying a spacecraft remotely from Earth and the excitement of being part of a team that discovers something new about comets.The program focus is on the EPOXI flyby spacecraft. EPOXI is a recycling of the Deep Impact spacecraft, whose probe intentionally collided with comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, revealing, for the first time, the inner material of a comet. Deep Impact returned to an Earth orbit where it was reprogrammed to rendezvous with a second comet, Hartley 2. After reprogramming, the spacecraft received a gravity assist from Earth and began its second life, dubbed EPOXI. The spacecraft incorporated the same trio of instruments used during the Deep Impact mission: two telescopes with digital imagers to record the encounter, and an infrared spectrometer.
Link to this NASA Now episode (must be logged into the NES Virtual Campus)
Link to other NASA Now events (must be logged into the NES Virtual Campus)
Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old object provides a unique opportunity to watch a black hole develop from infancy.
What may look like green slime growing on a pond is what scientists call a microbial mat. Microbial mats are living examples of the most ancient biological communities on Earth. As Earth’s earliest ecosystems, they are important to understanding the history of life on our planet and are useful models for the search for life elsewhere.
Carrie’s, four inclusion classes must complete a class science fair project. This allows her to guide the students through the scientific method. This year their science fair project dealt with rockets, with the NASA Rockets Guide on the NES Virtual Campus as a resource. Students 
During this week’s NASA Now program, you’ll meet Michael Studinger, Project Scientist for Operation IceBridge. He’ll describe the purpose of the IceBridge campaign and how the campaign objectives will be met. He also explains why studying Earth’s ice is important for understanding climate changes and how they related to humans.
Check out part 2 of the NASA Now: A-Train series and learn how NASA uses a constellation of satellites called the A-Train to monitor the Earth system. Five NASA satellites comprise the A-Train. They fly over the same location on Earth within 15 minutes of each other collecting data about the current state of the components of the Earth system.
Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”