Chris Looper is Chief Engineer of the EVA Branch of the Astronaut Office, and is splitting time as a test subject and as Traverse Director of Desert RATS 2010. We got an early start trying to get things situated in the rover before time to depart on the first traverse. The beginning of the test day in a field test is always very hectic. More at NASA Blogs

This photo of Hurricane Earl's eye was taken from the HDVis camera on the underside of the Global Hawk aircraft during the morning of Thursday, Sept. 2 at 13:05 UTC (9:05 a.m. EDT). The Global Hawk captured this photo from an altitude of 60,000 ft. (about 11.4 miles). The Global Hawk is one of three aircraft involved in the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment. GRIP a NASA Earth science field experiment from August 15-September 30, 2010 to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. Credit: NASA/NOAA

The TRMM satellite observed the high rates (red) rain was falling within Earl, in some areas more than 2 inches per hour.In this image an Infrared GOES-EAST satellite image captured at close to the same time was warped to match the TRMM satellite image in order to show parts of EARL not seen by TRMM. Credit: NASA/SSAI, Hal Pierce

What's missing from this picture on this iPad app's "landing page"? Pluto, Ceres, and Vesta for starters. NASA has missions on their way to these worlds (Dawn and New Horizons). But it does show the ISS (which is not a planet or a moon). Whether you think Pluto, Ceres, and Vesta are planets or dwarf planets or something else, they are the destinations for major missions and deserve to be on this front page. Not to do so is to ignore a billion dollar's worth of hardware and science. I wonder who reviews these apps prior to release? More below.

NASA: Why do we still find rocks from the Archean, one of the earliest geological eons on Earth dating from about 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago? This is an apt question as our planet is one of the most dynamic in the solar system. Earth’s crust has been constantly destroyed and created throughout its 4.5-billion-year history.  

NASA and NOAA's latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, has successfully completed five months of on-orbit testing and has been accepted into service. The satellite has demonstrated operational readiness of its subsystems, spacecraft instruments and communications services. GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites.

We're in the Second Life rover yard this morning, preparing for a D-RATS mixed reality event from the Arizona Black Rock volcanic field. We'll stream the live, real-world webcast into Second Life's social media 3-D world to create an immersive, participatory experience for the Second Life community. The rover yard in Second Life replicates NASA rover activities so users can share in NASA's compelling story of science and exploration. Mission concepts and technology models are available to everyone in this hands-on, distance-learning environment. Second Life residents are telepresent as they work together and communicate about the design, analysis and performance of space technology and events. This feeling of telepresence creates a collaborative bond that fosters engagement, conversation, feedback and learning. More at NASA Blogs