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A Red Alert has been declared in southern Chile after the eruption of the Villarrica volcano early on 3 March. Thousands of residents in the area have been evacuated and the International Charter Space & Major Disasters has been activated by Chile’s risk management authority ONEMI.

Further to the operational support provided by the Charter, ESA and the DLR German Aerospace Center have teamed up to acquire and process Sentinel-1A imagery illustrating changes at the surface of the volcano. This image is a colour composite of the two Sentinel-1 scans from 20 February and 4 March; changes are visually enhanced by a Normalised Change Index (NCI) and some statistical computations.

This work was performed by DLR in the framework of the ASAPTERRA project originated by ESA.

Sentinel-1A is the first satellite for Europe’s Copernicus programme. With its radar vision, the Sentinel-1 mission provides an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface.

Although not yet in routine operations, Sentinel-1A currently provides a coverage every 12 days of relevant tectonic areas worldwide and is therefore very suitable to monitor events such as volcanic eruptions.

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A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean, according to NASA scientists who, using ground-based observatories, measured water signatures in the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

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NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is seen inside a Soyuz simulator at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC), Wednesday, March 4, 2015 in Star City, Russia. Kelly, along with Expedition 43 Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos were at GCTC for the second day of qualification exams in preparation for their launch to the International Space Station onboard a Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:42 p.m. EST, March 27 (March 28, Kazakh time). As the one-year crew, Kelly and Kornienko will return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-18M in March 2016.Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

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Media accreditation is open for the launch of NASA’s next commercial cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station. SpaceX and NASA soon will set an April target date for launch of the company’s Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida.

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The largest, most powerful booster ever built for NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), will fire up for a ground test at 11:30 a.m. EDT (9:30 a.m. MDT) Wednesday, March 11, at Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems’ test facilities in Promontory, Utah.

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Three International Space Station crew members are scheduled to leave the orbiting laboratory Wednesday, March 11 after almost six months in space performing scientific research and technology demonstrations.

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Astronomers have found that the growth of galaxies containing black holes can be slowed down by a phenomenon referred to as cosmic precipitation.

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From the International Space Station, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) took this photograph of the island of Hawaii and posted it to social media on Feb. 28, 2015. Cristoforetti wrote, “And suddenly as we flew over the Pacific… the island of #Hawaii with its volcanoes! #HelloEarth”

Crewmembers on the space station photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface as part of the Crew Earth Observations program. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years, beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s. The ISS maintains an altitude between 220 – 286 miles (354 – 460 km) above the Earth, and an orbital inclination of 51.6˚, providing an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti

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This single frame Rosetta navigation camera image was taken from a distance of 81.9 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 25 February 2015. The 1024 x 1024 pixel image frame has a resolution of 7.0 m/pixel and measures 7.1 km across. The image is processed to bring out the details of the comet’s activity.

More information and the original image via the blog: CometWatch 25-26-27 February

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