Hi Students,

NASA projects cover a wide range of topics, both on the Earth and in space! In space, were going back to Mars next year, with a robot rover named Curosity. NASA is also launching a new mission to explore Jupiter and its satellites, named Juno. In terms of studying the Sun, there are no less than four spacecraft right now in space studying the Sun. Soho, Stereo (two spacecraft), and newly operational, Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO for short!

NASA also studies everyday aspects on life on Earth. From flying in an airplane, to designing safe new products we use, a wide variety. This is called "spin-off" technology.

From an Astronomy point of view, we have of course the Hubble Space Telescope, now in orbit more than 20 years since 1990! The next is called the James Webb space telescope to follow. Hope this helps.

Hello,

As Jim mentioned, NASA is working on a lot of different projects in many different areas of science. Two upcoming missions to study the Earth's magnetosphere are the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Mission and the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission. Juno is an upcoming mission to study Jupiter's magnetosphere and aurora, among other things. Scientists and engineers that I work with at the University of Iowa are currently building and testing instruments for these spacecraft. I have been helping out with the Electron Drift Instrument for the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission by running computer simulations. You can learn more about these missions here:

Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP, May 2010 launch) - http://rbsp.jhuapl.edu/

Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS - SMART, October 2014 launch) - http://space.rice.edu/MMS/

Juno (August 2011 launch) - http://www.nasa.gov/missi...juno/main/index.html

Kris