NASA tested its biggest booster rocket ever Wednesday morning. The rocket will help NASA's manned Space Launch System reach deep space destinations like the moon and Mars.

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The possibility of alien life thriving somewhere other than Earth is now stronger than ever before.

Underwater hydrothermal vents — the same kind that may have spawned life on our planet — seem to be lining the ocean floors of Saturn's tiny, water-rich moon called Enceladus, according to two recently published papers.

This is the most compelling evidence we have so far for the existence of these vents anywhere other than Earth. The latest discovery is a tantalizing hint that the conditions right for life may be present outside of Earth.

While Enceladus is watery, it is no Earth: It is only about 300 miles across. But underneath a thick, icy, shell, lies a water ocean habitat that resembles the conditions on an adolescent Earth, between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago.

Back then, Earth was covered in a single, global ocean. Most of the ocean is thought to have been extremely acidic — to0 acidic to create life — except around certain underwater, hydrothermal vents where pockets of warm, less-acidic water could have formed. These conditions would have been the ideal place for life to arise on Earth, according to NASA scientist Michael Russel.

With this latest announcement, hydrothermal vents with these pockets of warm water are now believed to exist outside of Earth — at the bottom of Enceladus's oceans.

So how did these researchers find vents under miles of ice? Using the instruments on board the Cassini spacecraft, the team measured the size and number of silicon-rich particles, called silicates, in Saturn's second outer-most ring, the E ring. The E ring is made of particles that came from the moon's plumes and therefore tells scientists something about what is going on underneath the surface.

Once formed, these particles rise to the surface where they escape to space through plumes off the moon's south polar region, shown in the arresting image below taken by Cassini:

The silicates' chemical makeup, size, and abundance gives an indication of what is forming in the ocean underneath Enceladus's surface. And the result is incredibly exciting.

To show that these particles could come from hydrothermal vents, the team re-created them in the lab. To their surprise, they discovered that particles of this chemical composition, size, and abundance only grow under a very specific set of conditions. The team reported their findings Wednesday in the journal Nature.

What's more shocking is that these conditions are remarkably similar to a unique, underwater environment here on Earth, called the Lost City, which some researchers consider the cradle of life.

A miraculous find

The Lost City is a field of hydrothermal vents that was first discovered in the mid-Atlantic ocean in the year 2000. Unlike other hydrothermal vents on Earth, this unique environment has basic, non-acidic, waters that clock in at comfortable temperatures between 100 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Other vents can reach up to a scorching 860 degrees Fahrenheit.

Moreover, the life that thrives in the Lost City is mostly simple microorganisms — nothing like the larger, more complex life forms hanging around other vents on Earth's ocean floor. Some scientists think that these super-simple life forms could be close-descendants of the first single-celled life on Earth.

The team's latest discovery makes Enceladus one of the most likely places in the solar system where alien life could exist, Linda Spilker, a project scientist with Cassini at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved with the study, told Business Insider.

"You have energy, nutrients, and liquid water which create a potential habit that could support life," Spilker said.

In another recent paper published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a different team of researchers reports additional evidence supporting the presence of hydrothermal vents. The researchers used Cassini to measure the amount of methane inside of the plumes of Enceladus as Cassini flew threw them, and found more methane than what was expected.

Methane is one of the main products that the Lost City's hydrothermal vents generate. This excess methane is likely coming from hydrothermal vents, Spilker said.

"The methane story helps verify what we found with the tiny sillica particles," Spilker said.

These vents may be powered by tidal energy generated by Saturn's powerful gravitational tug on the tiny moon.

A recipe for success

Scientists first discovered that Enceladus was spewing jets of water vapor and ice back in 2005. This discovery rocked the scientific community because it indicated that Enceladus hosted liquid water underneath its surface. That was the first time astrobiologists began looking at Enceladus as a possible place to harbor alien life.

Then, in 2009, scientists discovered that not only was there an ocean, but it was salty, like the oceans on Earth.

And now there's compelling evidence that deep beneath the moon's icy surface, these salty oceans contain active hydrothermal vents like the vents of the Lost City.

About the only difference between Earth's oceans and those on Enceladus is evidence of life.

Although Spilker said that the most likely source for both team's measurements is hydrothermal vents, the authors of the Nature paper caution that farther investigations are needed to ultimately confirm the presence of active vents on Enceladus. It's not like we can see them under all that ice and ocean.

The fact that we now have two very different measurements pointing to the same hydrothermal source, however, is encouraging.

The ultimate question

Cassini has made game-changing discoveries of Enceladus since it first began flying by the tiny moon in 2005, but it is not equipped with the right instruments to answer the ultimate question: Is there life on Enceladus?

And right now, NASA has no official plans to dispatch another spacecraft to Saturn any time soon, Spilker told Business Insider. Moreover, it takes at least three years to reach Saturn, so it's going to be a while before we gain a better idea of what might be lurking beneath Enceladus's surface.

Cassini is scheduled to make its last three visits to Enceladus this year: two in October and the final flyby on December 19.

CHECK OUT: NASA just announced it'll be visiting this beautiful moon for the first time

SEE ALSO: How extreme aliens living on Jupiter's water-rich moon Europa might look

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NOW WATCH: Scientists Have A Pretty Good Idea What Aliens May Actually Look Like

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover is taking a break in the home stretch of its Red Planet marathon to study some rocks the likes of which it's never seen before.

The intriguing rocks lie atop a hill overlooking a site dubbed Marathon Valley — so named because Opportunity will have traveled the marathon distance of 26.2 miles (42.195 kilometers) on Mars by the time it gets there. As of Thursday (March 5), the rover's odometer read 26.139 miles (42.067 km), leaving it just 140 yards (128 meters) short of the milestone.

"We drove to the edge of a plateau to look down in the valley, and we found these big, dark-gray blocks along the ridgeline," Opportunity Project Scientist Matt Golombek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "We checked one and found its composition is different from any ever measured before on Mars. So, whoa! Let's study these more before moving on." [Opportunity's Latest Mars Photos]

The examined rock is rich in silicon and aluminum, and its composition is different than anything observed by Opportunity or its twin, Spirit, on the Red Planet, NASA officials said.

Spirit and Opportunity landed a few weeks apart in January 2004 to search for signs of past water activity on Mars. The golf-cart-size rovers found plenty of such evidence, helping reshape researchers' understanding of the Red Planet and its history.

Spirit and Opportunity are also famed for their longevity. Their nominal missions were set at just three months, but Spirit kept exploring Mars until 2010. Opportunity, of course, is still chugging along today, though the rover is showing some signs of its advanced age.

For example, Opportunity's robotic arm has long been a bit arthritic, and the rover recently began experiencing problems with its flash memory, the kind that can store information when the power is off. Indeed, Opportunity's handlers have operated the rover in a mode that avoids using its flash memory since late last year.

Engineers have uploaded new flight software intended to fix the issue, but Opportunity's memory will have to be reformatted before the rover can resume using its flash memory.

"After reformatting, the operations team will avoid use of the rover's arm for several days to make sure the flash file system is fixed and no longer causes resets," NASA officials said. "A reset during the use of the rover's arm would require a complex recovery effort."

Opportunity holds the record for greatest distance traveled on the surface of another world. Second place belongs to the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 lunar rover, which covered 24.2 miles (39 km) on the moon in 1973.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

• Opportunity Rover Breaks Off-World Driving Record | Video
• Top 10 Discoveries by Mars Rovers Spirit & Opportunity: A Scientist's View
• Distances Driven on Other Worlds (Infographic)

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SEE ALSO: A discovery on one of Saturn's moons just changed how we think about alien life

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NOW WATCH: Scientists Discovered What Actually Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization

After spending 176 days in space, aboard the International Space Station, one NASA astronaut, Barry Wilmore, and two Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonauts, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, returned to solid Earth on Wednesday evening at approximately 10:07 pm ET. 

Below is an image of the return capsule they were in as the re-entered Earth's atmosphere:

Re-entering Earth's atmosphere is one of the most dangerous parts of a mission to and from space, but the three crew members looked to be in tip-top shape as they reclined in chairs to re-adjust their bodies to Earth's gravity.

After living for 6 months in a weightless environment, their bodies had undergone some rather unpleasant changes, including bone and muscle loss, which is why they're taking it easy as doctors perform standard medical tests on them.

The Expedition 42 crew rode a Soyuz spacecraft back home. Upon re-entry a spacecraft can reach about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit due to friction between the spacecraft and the molecules in Earth's atmosphere. The Soyuz has a heat shield on its bottom, which it aims at the ground to protect the capsule and its precious cargo during the bumpy ride.

Earth's atmosphere does have its perks, however: It slows the spacecraft down to the point where the crew can deploy the parachute and glide safely and slowly down to Earth's surface through, what appears to be, stratus clouds in the image below:

The astronauts landed in a snow-covered part of Kazakhstan, where they were then helped out of the tiny capsule and into some very comfy-looking chairs. It was a few degrees below zero outside when they landed, but Willmore seemed happy to just be home.

Cosmonaut Samokutyaev, shown below, marveled in the simple pleasure of fresh fruit according to Space.com:

"I am drinking tea with real lemon," he said while sipping happily. "It's great."

Serova, shown below, is the first female Russian cosmonaut to ever board the International Space Station. She first climbed, or rather floated, onto the space station in Sept. 2014.

This return flight marks the 123rd mission using a Soyuz spacecraft. The first Soyuz mission was launched in 1967 — two years before NASA landed the first astronauts on the moon.

CHECK OUT: A discovery on one of Saturn's moons just changed how we think about alien life

SEE ALSO: The closest images ever taken of the sun show just how powerful it really is

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NOW WATCH: An Astronaut Compressed 6 Months In Space Into This Amazing Time-Lapse

Republican senator Ted Cruz and NASA administrator Charles Bolden don't really see eye to eye on what NASA's core mission is.

Cruz was appointed chairman of the Senate Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee this year, and many scientists raised an eyebrow when Cruz took the helm of the committee that oversees NASA.

Cruz is a notorious climate change denier, and his leadership in the committee seems very at odds with NASA's dozens of climate change focused programs and missions.

And ever since his appointment to committee chair, Cruz has pushed for NASA to focus more on space and less on Earth. By not concentrating research and funding on space exploration, Cruz argues that the government is neglecting NASA's core mission.

Bolden, who is in charge of allocating NASA's annual $18 billion budget, has a different opinion.

This is Bolden's opinion on what NASA's core mission is after reading the original National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 that created NASA:

"Our core mission from the very beginning has been to investigate, explore space and the Earth environment, and to help us make this place a better place," Bolden said Thursday during a hearing for NASA's 2016 budget request.

Cruz apparently has a problem with the "Earth environment" part. According to Cruz, "Almost any American would agree that the core function of NASA is to explore space."

Cruz thinks NASA is losing sight of that core mission, and he brought the chart below to the senate meeting to prove it.

Since 2009, NASA's budget has seen a 41% increase in funding toward Earth science, while space exploration and operations has seen a 7.6% decrease.

"In my judgment, this does not represent a fair or appropriate allocation of resources, that it is shifting resources away from the core functions of NASA to other functions," Cruz said during the hearing.

These "other functions" include satellite programs that measure things like Earth's ozone layer, air quality and sea ice thickness. These missions are crucial to our understanding of how climate change is affecting the Earth and what we need to be doing to prepare for it. As a known climate change denier, it seems like Cruz is just trying to yank funding away from essential climate change research.

"It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth's environment because this is the only place that we have to live," Bolden said. "We've got to take care of it, and the only way we can take care of it is that we know what's happening, and the only way we know what's happening is to use instruments that we develop at NASA — and we do it better than anybody else."

Cruz's argument is really just a thinly veiled attempt to discourage climate change research.

Further, Bolden said that the decrease in space exploration funding was somewhat intentional as the agency has tried to decrease the cost of space missions as it's pushed farther into space. Part of that is outsourcing space shuttle maintenance. It used to cost NASA about $2 billion a year to maintain its space shuttle whether it was flown or not. Now, two $6 billion contracts with private companies Boeing and SpaceX will get NASA around 16 flights in just three or four years.

"So I think the decrease is actually a little bit of what we're trying to do to get the cost of flying humans into space down," Bolden said. "That's what's driving the market, is reducing launch costs."

It's a good thing that Earth science funding has increased, according to Bolden.

"I'm proud to say that it has enabled us to understand our planet far better than we ever did before," Bolden said. "We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater and we don't know it — and that's understanding our environment."

"We don't give you opinions, we give you data," Bolden said.

Deep space missions cost way more than Earth-based and Earth-watching missions. NASA will need more funding to complete projects like the huge SLS rocket to take us to an asteroid and later Mars, and the Orion space capsule designed to eventually take humans to Mars.

SEE ALSO: Here's why this Texas Republican's dreams to send people to a star is equally ridiculous and important

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NOW WATCH: The Aerospace Industry Is Betting Big On 3D Printing Technology

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday with a quartet of NASA science satellites designed to map explosions triggered by criss-crossing magnetic fields around the Earth.

The 20-story-tall rocket, built and launched by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:44 p.m. EDT.

Perched atop the rocket were four identical satellites designed to fly in a pyramid formation high around Earth.

Each satellite is equipped with 25 sensors to record in split-second detail what happens when the planet's magnetic field lines break apart and reconnect. Data from the four probes will be combined to produce three-dimensional maps of the process.

Magnetic reconnection, as the phenomenon is known, is commonplace throughout the universe, but poorly understood.

Magnetic fields are generated by planets, stars, galaxies, black holes and other celestial objects. When field lines snap apart and reconnect, charged particles are sent soaring into space at nearly the speed of light, roughly 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km per second).

On the sun, magnetic reconnection unleashes solar flares, each as powerful as 1 million atomic bombs. Such solar activity can trigger magnetic storms and aurora displays on Earth.

NASA is spending about $1.1 billion on the project, known as Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, in an effort to understand how the energy is generated and released. The satellites will fly directly into reconnection zones 44,000 to 95,000 miles (70,811 to 152,888 km) above Earth and map what happens when magnetic field lines realign.

"The MMS mission will conduct a definitive experiment in space that will finally allow us to understand how magnetic reconnection works," lead researcher Jim Burch, from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference.

The research may have some practical spinoffs as well. Efforts to harness nuclear fusion in laboratories have been stymied by magnetic reconnection, which causes temperatures to drop in the fusion chambers.

It also may help forecasters predict dangerous solar storms, which can knock out power grids on Earth and disrupt radio, GPS and satellite signals.

The mission is designed to last two years.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Alan Raybould)

SEE ALSO: Ted Cruz wants NASA to quit worrying about climate change

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NOW WATCH: NASA has released images of the other side of the Moon that we've never seen before

NASA has partnered with the San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group to develop augmented-reality glasses for astronauts to wear aboard the International Space Station. 

Astronauts today use printed instructions to help them fix equipment while in space. But the big spiral-bound books are unwieldy. The glasses would make things easier by allowing directions to be uploaded directly to the glasses, Bloomberg says. Astronauts would not have to flip through pages during an emergency and would have their hands freed up. 

Using the glasses to participate in videoconferences with ground crews and exchange visual instructions could also reduce the amount of time astronauts spend training on earth, Forbes notes.

NASA had looked into using Google Glass in space, but when the space agency approached Google, the internet company said it wanted to focus on consumers, a NASA official told Bloomberg.

Babak Parviz, a former Google X director who was leading the project when NASA pitched the idea, told Forbes: "The message was very clear and consistent to me: 'we're focused on the consumer space. Period.'"

Perhaps it doesn't matter, because astronauts didn't seem to like Google Glass much anyway. "The screen was too small, and it was awkward to scroll through things quickly," according to AOL. 

The alternative glasses provide information in a full field of view. Here's a look:

Bloomberg says the US space agency received numerous submissions from companies before accepting a final, confirmed bid from ODG. The next step will be to test the glasses underwater later this year.

ODG has been making eyewear for the US government for the past six years. It has created devices such as the R-6S Smart Glasses for industrial and government customers, as well as consumer-level technology. One product is already on the market, and two more are on the way for 2015. If you're into this stuff, here's the full "tech sheet" of the top model right now.

Here's a video from ODG talking about working with NASA: 

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NOW WATCH: Why a NASA mission to Jupiter’s famous icy moon is now a priority

Few materials in the universe are in as short supply as plutonium-238--the hot, radioactive material NASA uses to power its pluckiest spacecraft. It's estimated only 77 pounds (35 kilograms) of the stuff remains available to NASA, yet only 37 pounds (17 kilograms) of that supply is of a high-enough quality to use.

And that's a huge problem for deep-space missions of the future.

Plutonium-238 is an artifact of the Cold War, a byproduct of the process used to make nuclear weapons. Since nuclear non-proliferation became popular, the flow of plutonium-238 has ceased and left limited stockpiles of this incredibly useful and relatively long-lived fuel.

Plutonium-238 continues to power deep-space missions such as Voyager, Curiosity, and New Horizons, but according to a new report by Space News, there's only enough left to make three more nuclear batteries.

The batteries in question are called the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or MMRTGs, which the Department of Energy makes for NASA. When a spacecraft launches with an MMRTG, it puts out about 125 watts of power at the start but fades to about 100 watts after 14 years. (As the Pu-238 decays, it releases less and less heat to for the battery to convert into electricity.)

There's another nuclear battery design, however, that could stretch NASA's shrinking stockpile: the Advance Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG). This model uses less than one-fourth the plutonium-238 to produce the same amount of power as an MMRTG. Among it's potential missions? Powering a nuclear submarine on Saturn's moon Titan. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. Last year, NASA closed down the ASRG team, ending that particular avenue of escape--for now.

NASA intends to use the first of the three MMRTGs to power the Mars 2020 mission, which will use a spacecraft almost identical to the Mars Curiosity Rover. The other two nuclear batteries have unknown fates. The Department of Energy just restarted domestic production of plutonium-238, but making it in large enough quantities to help the space program is an ongoing challenge.

This article originally appeared on Popular Science

This article was written by Mary Beth Griggs from Popular Science and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

SEE ALSO: A discovery on one of Saturn's moons just changed how we think about alien life

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NOW WATCH: Scientists Have A Theory About What Caused A Mysterious Mile-Wide Crater In Antarctica

The awe-inspiring history of human spaceflight is filled with a myriad of awesome and often gigantic vehicles.

"Human spaceflight is what truly inspires people to believe that we as a species are capable of greatness," says designer David Heaney, and so he created this fascinating graphic to promote interest in human space exploration.

" Putting a human face on the exploration of the cosmos has undoubtedly inspired a whole generation of scientists to get involved in the space industry. You can send rovers to Mars or probes to the edge of the solar system, but it pales in comparison to seeing a human foot touch the surface of Earth's own moon."

Among the many interesting comparisons to be made is just how tiny the Mercury capsule is in relation to more modern spacecraft. Also, since this graphic only includes vehicles which have transported humans into space, you may notice that Space X rockets are not included — though the Falcon 9.1 would sit between the Saturn 1B and Saturn V.

COMING SOON: Elon Musk will unveil SpaceX's Mars-colonizing spaceship this year

SEE ALSO: Humans just made history by reaching an icy dwarf planet for the first time

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NOW WATCH: Watch SpaceX launch their Falcon 9 rocket right at sunset

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain on Wednesday criticized the U.S. Air Force's "troubling lack of urgency" in ending dependence on Russian rocket engines for space launches, saying there was still no strategy to replace them a year after Moscow seized the Crimea.

"Continued reliance on Russian rocket engines is unacceptable and it's time the Air Force conduct itself accordingly," McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told a hearing with senior Air Force officials.

McCain said Congress had given the Air Force $220 million this fiscal year and set a deadline of 2019 for replacing the engine.

Congress is pushing for development of a U.S. engine amid rising tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow's annexation last year of the Crimea region of Ukraine.

"Instead of giving the effort the level of attention needed, the Air Force has wasted a year doing very little to end our reliance on Russian rocket engines," McCain said.

"If the Air Force is unwilling to do what is necessary to meet the 2019 deadline, they are going to have to figure out how to meet our space launch needs without the RD-180 (Russian engine)," he said.

McCain made his remarks a day after Air Force officials told lawmakers they planned to release a draft request for proposals next month and could award initial study contracts by the end of the 2015 fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The officials said the Air Force planned to focus the competition on launch services rather than development of a new American engine, since any engine must be closely integrated with the rocket it fuels.

The Russian-built RD-180 engine now powers the Atlas 5, one of two rockets used by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, which launches most big U.S. military and intelligence satellites.

Privately held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, expects to be certified by June to compete for some of those launches, but it may be years before its Falcon Heavy rocket is certified to launch the heaviest intelligence satellites.

(Editing by Grant McCool)

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NOW WATCH: This 26-year-old from Baltimore took a 35,000-mile road trip and ended up fighting in the Libyan revolution

Any iconic image of the universe you can think of was probably taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Take the Eagle Nebula, for example, which is shown below. What you might not realize is that this spectacular, colored photograph was originally black and white. Now, the experts at NASA have shown how they, quite literally, color the universe by working from Hubble's world of black-and-white.

Stars, like our sun, start off as nothing more than tiny balls of gas and dust that then grow big and bright within dense clouds, like inside of the Eagle Nebula, which Hubble first photographed in 1995.

The photo itself was so spectacular that NASA gave it a name referring to the stellar formation hidden within: "Pillars of Creation." But this picture didn't start off as the colorful masterpiece you see above.

Originally, Hubble snaps multiple pictures of an object in different wavelengths that show up in arresting black and white, shown below. Experts then use colored filters to tease out the final product.

How do you go from black and white to awe-inspiring color? That's where Photoshop comes in. 

Zolt Levay, of the Imaging Team at the Space Telescope Science Institute that runs Hubble, showed National Geographic how he transforms these images.

The red, green, and blue filters he uses on (shown on the right in the GIF), represent different elements that are part of the nebula's chemical make-up. Here, red indicates the presence of sulfur, green is for oxygen, and blue represents hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe.

The reason Levay uses the colors he does is because each element glows at different wavelengths, which scientists determine in labs here on Earth.

If you take a tube of pure hydrogen gas, for example, and excite the atoms so they release light, the tube will glow blue because that's the color in which hydrogen radiates most strongly. Below is an example of the colors certain gases, including Helium and Neon, release:

After layering one filtered image atop the other, the final colorful image gives astronomers an idea of where and how much of each of these elements are in the nebula.

"It's pure science that's driving the colors," Levay explains in a video by National Geographic. Each of the three colors that Levay uses in his example represents elements that exist both here on Earth and in space.

For more examples of transformed Hubble images check out Hubble's Toolbox.

Watch the full video from National Geographic below:

READ MORE: There's more to this beautiful space image than meets the eye

SEE ALSO: These stunning Hubble images show us the secrets of the universe

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NOW WATCH: Peter Diamandis: The first trillionaire is going to be made in space

Way back in the early ‘90s, when I was a US Navy lieutenant serving as the editor of Approach magazine (Naval Aviation’s Safety review), I was invited by NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd to come down to Houston for a hands-on tour.

Along with suiting up in full astronaut gear and flying the shuttle simulator in all regimes of flight, I had the opportunity to ride in NASA’s “reduced gravity aircraft,” better known as the “vomit comet” (because of its tendency to cause passengers to throw up during the zero-G missions).

In those days NASA used an a couple of KC-135 Stratotankers as the Vomit Comets, which were big ol’ beasts relative to the contract Airbus 300s and 727s they used later. We launched out of Ellington Field at headed over the Gulf of Mexico. There were about a dozen passengers in the compartment with me, mostly engineers who were testing exercise equipment for future use on the space station.

There was a crew chief who was charged with making sure nobody got hurt and he explained during his safety brief that the main way to avoid injury was to make sure you had a hand on the padded floor during the transition from zero-G back to 1-G. He said that passengers had sprained ankles and wrists or twisted neck muscles by getting disoriented while weightless and hitting the deck in an awkward fashion once G came back on the airplane.

The pilot announced “starting the pull,” which meant he was commencing a 1.8 G pull until the aircraft’s nose was pointed 45 degrees up. At that point he pushed the nose forward until the aircraft was right at zero G and held it there until the aircraft was pointed 45 degrees nose down, which resulted in about 30 seconds of weightlessness.

At that point he’s start another 1.8 G pull back to 45 degrees nose up into another zero G pushover . . . over and over again. Each cycle was known as a “parabola,” and a mission consisted of 40 of them – 20 headed eastbound and 20 headed back to the base, westbound.

My host Navy Captain Bill Shepherd, a SEAL by warfare specialty who later broke the record for days on the International Space Station, had done the Vomit Comet missions many times. He’d admitted before the mission that he’d become airsick every time and predicted he’d do so on that day’s mission as well.

I was a Tomcat Radar Intercept Officer with more than 1,000 tactical jet hours under my belt at the time, so high-G flight was nothing new to me. In fact, the parabola profile seemed pretty mild compared to the way a fighter maneuvered during a dogfight. But the engineers weren’t as experienced, and Capt. Shepherd instructed me to watch them as the flight went along.

“Everybody will do the first 10 parabolas very giddy,” he said. “They’ll flip around and laugh and high five each other.”

The next ten parabolas would have fewer spins and less laughter, he predicted. The 10 after that would consist of people fighting the urge to throw up. And the last 10 would be a bunch of miserable people wishing the flight would end as they floated for 30 seconds at a time after getting sick.

And that’s pretty much what happened. At some point in the flight everybody’s joy wore off as their inner ears said “WTF?” with all the gyrating and weird sensations. Along with Capt. Shepherd the majority of those in the compartment got airsick, and about three-quarters of the way through the mission all of the engineers were so incapacitated that they were unable to test the fitness equipment.  

According to former Reduced Gravity Research Program director John Yaniec, anxiety contributes most to passengers’ airsickness. The stress on their bodies creates a sense of panic and therefor causes the passenger to vomit.

The crew chief noticed that I seemed to be doing okay, so he asked if I would jump in and try out the reclined bicycle and the stepper. I did, and we were able to flag that the stepper had a tendency to stick on the down-stroke during zero G.

I’d experience zero G many times before that, but never for 30 seconds at a time. The sensation of being weightless for that long was very cool, relaxing even. Although those suffering airsickness among us certainly didn’t feel the same way, before I knew it we’d done 40 parabolas and we were back on deck at Ellington Field.

My flight on the Vomit Comet was among the most memorable experiences of my 20-year Navy career, and I’m glad I got to do it before the “reduced gravity” program was cancelled in 2014, another casualty of NASA’s dwindling budget.

SEE ALSO: Here’s what the war helicopters of the future might look like

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NOW WATCH: Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted

The new Republican majority in Congress really, really doesn't like climate science.

GOP budgeters in the House of Representatives have singled out the study of climate change by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an example of government "waste" they aim to eliminate.

The framework laid out by the House Budget Committee this week lists climate science as an example of "areas where there should be room to cut waste, eliminate redundancies and end the abuse or misuse of taxpayer dollars."

David G. Hawkins, director of the climate program at the environmentalist Natural Resources Defense Council, called the swipe at climate science "stupid but not surprising."

"It's just a political stunt for these people," Hawkins told VICE News. "Because they are so locked into denial on the issue of climate protection, they think it's politically easy to identify these activities to cut," he said. "It's very unwise, and most of the time the people who are sponsoring these cuts are the ones who say we ought to listen to our military leaders."

Representative Tom Price, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, did not respond to a VICE News request for comment.

The idea that the buildup of carbon emissions in the atmosphere is warming the planet may remain politically controversial, but it's accepted as fact by an overwhelming majority of scientists. And generals and admirals — hardly your typical tree-huggers — see trouble in a future of rising oceans, stronger storms, and prolonged drought.

In a 2014 strategy document, the Pentagon called climate change "a significant challenge for the United States" and said its expected effects were "threat multipliers" that will worsen conditions in already volatile regions.

For instance, a recent scientific study argued that a five-year drought in Syria displaced 1.5 million farmers from the countryside, fueling unemployment in the cities, and adding more tinder to the smoldering discontent that erupted into open revolt in 2011.

"Climate change is really a cross-cutting issue," Andrew Holland, a senior fellow at the American Security Project, told VICE News. "You can't look at water security issues without talking about the impact of climate change. You can't even talk about a lot of security issues around the world without how water is related to that, and how climate change is related to that."

He added: "To prohibit [the Department of Defense] from doing work on climate change is taking an element of reality out of their planning process."

The GOP budget resolution will have little direct impact. There's no single line item in either department's budget for climate research, and there's no specific legislative language in the resolution preventing research, Holland said. Any explicit prohibition on climate studies would likely be threatened with a presidential veto.

But taking this sort of swing at the subject is a shot across the bow of the national security bureaucracy, warning them away from raising the subject, he said.

"I think they just frankly don't like that his sort of messaging is coming out of the DOD and the intelligence community, and they're trying to silence it," Holland told VICE News.

The House isn't alone: On the other side of the Capitol, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — a potential GOP presidential contender — has come out swinging against NASA's science budget.

Cruz is the chairman of a Senate Commerce subcommittee that oversees the space agency. In budget hearing last week, he complained about "a disproportionate increase" in spending on its Earth science division, where most NASA's climate research is housed.

Cruz said his panel's job would be "to refocus NASA's energies on its core priority of exploring space." NASA Administrator Charles Bolden replied that it will be hard to launch rockets if his primary launch facility, Florida's low-lying Kennedy Space Center, is under water.

In January, senators voted almost unanimously for a resolution acknowledging that climate change "is real and not a hoax"— but avoided any mention of a cause. The sponsor, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, told VICE News that he trusts the judgment of military leaders "who agree that climate change affects our national security."

"To keep our country safe, our national security leaders must anticipate and prepare for these changes," Whitehouse said. "Restricting their ability to do so, just because you don't like the issue, is irresponsible."

Whitehouse's measure was so broad that it had the support of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, author of the 2012 book The Greatest Hoax: How the Climate Change Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

Since Republicans took over the Senate in January, Inhofe has been the chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee. A month after that vote, he tossed a snowball onto the Senate floor in an effort to demonstrate that Washington's latest snowstorm proved there was no such thing — a move President Barack Obama called "disturbing" in a recent interview with VICE News.

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Two new maps of Mercury taken by a NASA probe have identified never-before-seen formations on the planet's surface.

The previously unidentified regions of Mercury have compositions that differ significantly from the crust around them.

Known as geochemical terranes, these zones provide insight into the formation of the outer skin of the planet.

The maps appear in two new studies, which suggest that the most recently identified features may have formed not from the planet's crust but from just below it, in the mantle.

Created using the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) and Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) instruments on NASA's MESSENGER probe, the maps are used to study the surface chemistry of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun.

This analysis will provide information about the concentrations of elements like potassium, uranium and sodium on Mercury's surface. The experiment will also provide scientists with ratios of silicon to other elements on the planet's surface.

The first study used the XRS to produce the first global geochemical maps of Mercury, using a novel method performed for the first time on a planetary scale. By studying X-rays streaming from the sun, the authors were able to examine the composition of geochemical terranes on the planet.

"The consistency of the new XRS and GRS maps provides a new dimension to our view of Mercury's surface," lead author Shoshana Weider, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said in a statement. "The terranes we observed had not been previously identified on the basis of spectral reflectance or geographical mapping."

The most obvious of these unusual terranes is a large feature that covers more than 3 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of the planet's surface.

This terrane exhibits the highest observed ratios of silicon to each of the elements of magnesium, sulfur and calcium, as well as some of the lowest aluminum-to-silicon ratios on the planet, according to a new paper published this week in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

One possible explanation for the unusual region is that it stems from an impact that occurred long ago. The exposed mantle could have aided in the creation of the extremely large feature.

A second map used GRS to trace the absorption of low-energy ("thermal") neutrons across the surface of Mercury. This map shows the distribution across Mercury's northern hemisphere of elements that absorb thermal neutrons.

By combining that information with previously obtained data, the authors were able to identify four distinct geochemical terranes on the planet.

The Caloris basin on Mercury, the planet's largest well-preserved impact basin, contains smooth interior plains that the new results reveal have a distinct composition from other volcanic plains on the planet. According to the authors, these plains formed by partial melting of the mantle.

"Earlier MESSENGER data have shown that Mercury's surface was pervasively shaped by volcanic activity," Patrick Peplowski, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and lead author of the paper concerning the second map, said in the same statement.

"The magmas erupted long ago [and] were derived from the partial melting of Mercury's mantle," he said. "The differences in composition that we are observing among geochemical terranes indicate that Mercury has a chemically heterogeneous mantle."

The second study appeared online in the journal Icarus.

"The crust we see on Mercury was largely formed more than 3 billion years ago," said Larry Nittler, deputy principle investigator of the mission and co-author on both studies. "The remarkable chemical variability revealed by MESSENGER observations will provide critical constraints on future efforts to model and understand Mercury's bulk composition and the ancient geological processes that shaped the planet's mantle and crust."

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NOW WATCH: Why a NASA mission to Jupiter’s famous icy moon is now a priority

On Friday, March 27, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, together with cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, will strap in for a rocket ride to the International Space Station, embarking on a mission unlike any before them.

When Kelly climbs, or rather floats, aboard the ISS, it will mark the beginning of his historic one-year-long mission in space — the longest anyone has spent on the ISS and the longest any American has ever spent in space at one time.

And that's not all. Kelly will also be a key participant in a never-before-conducted experiment called the NASA Twin Study, the results of which will advance what we know about human adjustment to time in space, and pave the way for deep-space missions to asteroids, Mars, and beyond.

Two of a kind

Scott Kelly is a perfect subject for this experiment because he has an identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, who is a retired NASA astronaut. Together, the brothers make up the only twins who have both been to space.

Before retiring in June 2011, Mark Kelly completed four spaceflight missions, spending a total of about 54 days in space. His brother, Scott, has spent over 170 days in space and will soon be adding many more. The two men have led similar lifestyles growing up and training to become astronauts, which makes them an ideal pair to compare life in space and on Earth in real time.

Identical twins, unlike fraternal twins or siblings, have the exact same DNA sequences. NASA researchers will study how Scott Kelly 's genes are affected by space, in particular the cosmic radiation he is exposed to on the ISS, over the next year.

They can then directly compare that to changes in Mark Kelly's genes over the same time period, but on Earth.

"This is a chance in a lifetime," Dr. Craig Kundrot, the deputy chief scientist of NASA's Human Research Program, said in a NASA interview on YouTube. "In this case we've got two genetically identical individuals and we can monitor what kind of changes occur in Mark in an ordinary lifestyle and compare those to the changes that we see in Scott."

Even though he'll be kept on Earth, Mark Kelly doesn't have it easy. He'll be completing the same experiments as his space-based brother.

Their role as guinea pigs for the historical NASA Twin Study began last summer and will continue after Scott Kelly returns from space with a complete before, during, and after set of examinations and tests.

Study of a lifetime

Some of these experiments will explore why astronauts' vision worsens while in space, whether cosmic radiation can lead to premature aging, and how space affects the human immune system.

One experiment, led by Susan Bailey at Colorado State University, will investigate the telomeres in each brother's cells.

Telomeres are DNA caps at the end of human chromosomes — large structures of DNA created when our cells divide in two. This end-cap DNA shrinks through many cell divisions, making important DNA vulnerable. Scientists have seen that these telomeres are smaller in older people, and therefore, their loss is thought to be related to aging.

If Scott Kelly has shorter telomeres than his brother by the end of his time in space, it could be a sign of premature aging brought on by his tenure on the ISS.

In total, Scott and Mark will complete ten different experiments that explore four main categories: physiology, behavioral health, microbiology, and molecular genetics.

"This is very unusual," Kundrot said during the interview. "I'm not aware of another study like this, even on the ground, where you've got so much molecular work as well as the physiology, the psychology, and the microbiome."

While the study is completely original and novel, it will be hard to draw any real conclusions. With a study sample of only 2 people, it will not provide statistically significant results. That doesn't mean that it isn't worth doing, however.

"What we're expecting is that with the genetic identity underlying them that we're in a good position to see some subtle changes that we wouldn't be able to see in two individuals who weren't identical twins," Kundrot said.

Scott Kelly will be part of another study with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, who will also be spending a full year aboard the ISS.

Both men will complete a different set of experiment that are similar but not the same to NASA's Twin Study. The study, called the One Year Mission, is sure to provide scientists a better idea of the long-term affects of space on the human body and how they will impact future deep-space exploration.

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When you gotta eat, you gotta eat I guess. Even if you are an astronaut. While aboard the Gemini 3 space mission in 1965, Astronaut John Young had a craving. For some corned beef. Luckily, he had snuck a sandwich onto the craft in case he got peckish during the five-hour mission.

This little tidbit of space debauchery is just one of "Spaceflight’s Most Badass Maneuvers" a compilation of astronauts at their most badass by Adam Mann at Wired.com. From  Mann's Wired article:

Young was apparently a little unhappy with the terrible-tasting space food that astronauts received. Once in orbit, Young pulled out a mysterious object he had snuck aboard, leading to this exchange with his co-pilot Gus Grissom:

Grissom: What is it?
Young: Corn beef sandwich
Grissom: Where did that come from?
Young: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?

Young was nice enough to share his prize with Grissom, before Grissom placed the contraband sandwich in his pocket. Apparently, Young brought the sandwich because Grissom was a big fan of corned beef.

The sneaky space sandwiching was pulled off with the help of Deke Slayton, director of flight crew operations. On the Gemini 3 Wikipedia page Grissom is quoted as saying about the corned beef sandwich incident:

"After the flight our superiors at NASA let us know in no uncertain terms that non-man-rated corned beef sandwiches were out for future space missions. But John's deadpan offer of this strictly non-regulation goodie remains one of the highlights of our flight for me."

Check out the rest of Mann's "Badass Space Maneuvers" over at Wired. 

What's so bad about having a corned beef sandwich in space? They seemed to make it back home alright, so what's the big deal?

Well, especially for something crumbly like rye bread and corned beef, the low gravity of space causes particles of food to float around in the cabin, and these particles can get into the machinery inside the space capsule.

Actually, in the transcript of the mission, Grissom says he's putting the sandwich away because it was breaking up and floating around the cabin, the exact potential problem that makes corned beef sandwiches banned in space.

After the mission, a congressional hearing was called about the sneaky sandwich, and NASA's deputy administrator George Mueller had to promise there would be no repeats of the apparently-tasty event.  

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If you were given the chance to spend a year in space, would you?

That's what NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have signed on for. They will float aboard the International Space Station this Friday, March 27 not to return until March of 2016.

On one hand, they will be the first to live on the ISS for a full year — and performing somersaults in a weightless environment while watching Earth spin through space sounds pretty glamorous.

But on the other hand, these long-term space dwellers will potentially experience some rather unpleasant physical affects. These include a loss of bone and muscle mass, impaired vision, weakened immune system, and increased flow of bodily fluid to the brain, to name just a few. And that's just what we know will happen in the first six months.

To better understand why some astronauts adjust to space better than others, as well as study what happens to the body beyond six months is why NASA's one-year experiment is so important.

"We know a lot about [the first] six months but we know almost nothing about what happens between 6 and 12 months in space," NASA chief scientist for the orbiting laboratory, Julie Robinson, said during an interview uploaded to the NASA YouTube January 15.

Kelly and Kornienko could develop never-before-seen or much-worse-than-expected adverse health affects during the latter half of their stay.

Still think they're the lucky ones?

Lucky or not, their one-year mission as a science lab experiment is a crucial pioneering effort to help mankind plan a crewed mission to Mars, which will take as long as 30 months, according to this NASA video.

"Even though it's only two crew members, it really gives us our first glimpse at what happens from 6 to 12 months and what risks are there that we don't know about today," Robinson said in the interview. "And then that will help us both to design future research and also to identify those risks. And then to define the future one-year expeditions that we may need to do to make sure those risks have been taken care of and we're ready to go to Mars."

The most complicated ISS experiment

One of the coolest things about space is also the most detrimental to our health: weightlessness.

Without gravity, the flow of fluid in our bodies reverses direction from down to the feet to up toward the chest and head, like in the GIF below:

This shift in direction leads to all sorts of complications like a puffy face, shrinking leg mass, and in some cases impaired vision. Scientists like Robinson also suspect it could affect other parts of the body, like on cardiovascular health, which is why Robinson and her colleagues have designed the most complicated experiment ever done on the ISS, she said.

Kelly and Kornienko will be strapped to a device that will use pressure to literally suck the fluids in their body down toward their legs, temporarily acting like gravity on Earth. Scientists on board the ISS will then use ultrasound and other instruments to study what affect this has on the astronauts' blood vessels, Robinson explained.

"This is going to be a really novel investigation and give us some insights we've never had before into the overall fluid shift and eye impact problem," Robinson said during the interview.

Moreover, Kelly and Kronienko will be completing a number of other experiments that will monitor not only changes in their physical health but their mental health, as well. What's the point in going to Mars if the confined isolation has stolen your sanity by the time you get there?

Each man will, for example, keep a journal that will give some insight into their emotional and psychological states throughout the year. For a list of all seven experiments Kelly and Kronkienko will complete, check out NASA's one-year-mission website.

Kelly will also be a key participant in another experiment, the NASA Twin study. Kelly's twin brother, Mark Kelly, will stay on Earth serving as a control subject for scientists to learn how space radiation, like cosmic rays, might be causing astronauts on the ISS to age pre-maturely. 

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Water covers 71 percent of Earth's surface, giving rise to the nickname "the Blue Marble" or "the Blue Planet." Satellites that observe ocean color, however, show that it's not that simple. Materials in the water—living or otherwise—are often stirred and mixed until the surface swirls with hints of blue, green, tan, white, and brown.

One area where this is extremely apparent is the Yellow Sea, pictured here in an image acquired on February 24, 2015, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite.

"The region of Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, and East China is one of the most turbid and dynamic ocean areas in the world," said ocean color expert Menghua Wang of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In the image, the brown area along China's Subei Shoal is turbid water commonly seen in coastal regions. According to Wang, shallow water depths, tidal currents, and strong winter winds likely contributed to the mixing of sediment through the water.

Some of the swirls in the image might be due to the Yellow Sea Warm Current, which intrudes into the Yellow Sea in wintertime. This branch of the Kuroshio Current changes the temperature of the sea surface and brings instability that could be the cause of the relatively dark swirls in the lower-middle part of the image.

Interpreting satellite images of ocean color can be a challenge, especially in complex regions like the Yellow Sea. Upcoming missions such as the Pre-Aerosol, Clouds, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) should help scientists to better distinguish the particles and materials in the atmosphere and ocean.

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NOW WATCH: NASA has released images of the other side of the Moon that we've never seen before

A dark line more than half a million miles long curves across the lower half of the sun in a gorgeous photo snapped by a NASA spacecraft.

The line is what scientists call a solar filament, a large region of dense, cool gas held in place by magnetic fields. If stretched into a straight line, the filament would be more than 533,000 miles (858,000 kilometers) long, according to NASA officials — the equivalent of about 67 Earths arrayed side-by-side.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which took the image on Feb. 10, registers colder materials in the sun's atmosphere as dark, and hotter materials as bright.

"SDO captured images of the filament in numerous wavelengths, each of which helps highlight material of different temperatures on the sun," NASA officials wrote in a description of the image.

Capturing images of filaments at different wavelengths and temperatures helps scientists learn more about what causes them. Red images, which highlight plasma at temperatures of 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit (50,000 degrees Celsius), are good for observing filaments as they form and erupt, NASA officials said.

The Feb. 10 filament was plenty big, certainly, but the sun has hosted even larger ones in the past. In October 2014, for example, SDO spotted a filament 1 million miles long — more than 100 times the width of the Earth and longer than the diameter of the sun, which is about 865,000 miles (1.39 billion km).

Filaments, though sometimes benign, can be explosive. When filaments break through the sun's atmosphere, called the corona, they release a shower of solar plasma particles that either rain back down to the sun's surface or escape into space and become a moving cloud called a coronal mass ejection (CME).

On Sept. 2, 2014, SDO captured video of a solar filament eruption thought to have sent a wave of solar particles toward Earth. CMEs that collide with Earth can generate geomagnetic storms that interfere with electronics, cause radio blackouts and create stunning auroras.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

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Mars might not look like much from Earth, but close up, it's a perfect spectacle of natural beauty.

Since 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has been orbiting Mars snapping pictures of the surface with its HiRISE camera.

Here is a collection of some of the most incredible images the camera has taken over the years.

The HiRISE images shown here have false coloring that highlights distinct Martian features, like sand dunes shown in the image to the right. The false-coloring helps scientists see how the grooves and troughs of these features change over time.

During the summer on Mars' north pole, all of the surface ice is gone revealing the cracked surface underneath. The cracks are likely from underground ice expanding and contracting with the seasons.

Dark and light streaks crawl up a ridge in this picture of the Acheron Fossae region. Scientists debate over how the different-colored streaks formed, but they agree that the darker streaks are younger that turn into the lighter streaks over time.

Believe it or not Mars has dust devils and this mesmerizing picture shows the tracks that they trace in the sandy Martian surface.