
NASA Mission Suggests Sun and Planets Formed Differently

In this NASA Now episode, Dr. Ed Ethridge, a ceramics engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.,explains his research on extracting water from lunar soil, or lunar regolith.
Learn how future explorers could use microwaves to extract water from soil on the moon, Mars or an asteroid.
Link to the NES Virtual Campus home page.
Solar flares are giant explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high-speed particles into space. These flares often are associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. The number of solar flares increases approximately every 11 years. The sun currently is moving toward another solar maximum, likely in 2013. That means more flares will be coming — some small and some big enough to send their radiation all the way to Earth.
Earth is about to pass through a stream of debris from Halley’s comet, source of the annual Orionid meteor shower. Forecasters expect more than 15 meteors per hour to fly across the sky on Saturday morning, Oct. 22, when the shower peaks.
For more information visit http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/20oct_orionids/