• Question: What is the most amazing thing you've done/seen with NASA?

    Asked by SATURNSRINGS672 to Lisa, Mark, Rachel, Sammie, Stephen, Tim on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Stephen Wilkins

      Stephen Wilkins answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      The Hubble Space Telescope was originally built by NASA but is now operated in partnership with our space agency (the European Space Agency) and has revealed many amazing objects from stars forming in our own galaxy to galaxies present during the early Universe.

      However, my personal favorite image is from the Cassini probe that went to Saturn. Cassini took an image () of Saturn eclipsing the Sun which looks amazing. Even more amazing is that the Earth is present as a little dot in the image.

    • Photo: Lisa Baddeley

      Lisa Baddeley answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      The most amazing thing I have ever done with NASA would have to be providing ground radar support for rockets which are launched either from here on Svalbard or from a rocket launch facility in northern Norway called Andøya Space Centre. The are called sounding rockets and are basically intercontinental missiles with all the explosives taken out and science instruments put in. They have a travel time of about 10 mins, during which time they fly up to between a few hundred and a 1000 km in altitude before crashing down into the ocean. Each rocket has a specific mission and we use the radars to look at the ionosphere (the ionized part of the upper atmosphere from about 80 – 600km) to decide if the conditions are suitable for a launch. They can make very detailed measurements of the ionosphere which is not possible from ground or space.
      Here is a video of a launch of a rocket called C-REX taken by one of the engineers at Andøya:

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