NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC'S SPACE PICTURES THIS WEEK XVII

Space Pictures This Week: White Marble, China Module, More
By Kastalia Medrano, National Geographic News, 25 June 2012.

1. Arctic Shine

Earth's most famous light formation hangs over a landscape saturated by the glow of a full moon in Longyearbyen, Norway. The photographer, who recently submitted this image to National Geographic's Your Shot, said it was the most beautiful northern lights display he had ever witnessed.

Referred to as the aurora borealis around the Arctic Circle, the light show also appears in southern polar latitudes, where it's known as the aurora australis. In addition, the naturally occurring phenomenon has been spied on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (See "Auroras Seen on Uranus For First Time.")

Green light is the most common for Earthly auroras, but blue and red hues also appear from time to time.

2. Space Spy

For the last 15 months, the military spacecraft X-37B has been flying under the radar, orbiting Earth on a classified test flight.

This handout image, taken from infrared video shot on June 26, shows the robotic shuttle landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early in the morning.

"Team Vandenberg has put in over a year's worth of hard work in preparation for this landing, and today we were able to see the fruits of our labour," Col. Nina Armagno, 30th Space Wing commander at Vandenberg, said in an msnbc.com article.

So what was X-37B doing way up high for 269 days? That's still classified.

3. Stardust

Far above Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro, the band of the Milky Way cuts through a sky dusted with stars. This recently released photo, a single frame from a time lapse video, was taken near the town of Moshi on Kilimanjaro's lower southern slopes.

The smaller, almost opalescent blur on the left of the frame is the Small Magellanic Cloud - a dwarf galaxy far, far away that's home to hundreds of millions of stars.

Photo credit link: Kwon O. Chul, TWAN

4. Float On

A still from a live broadcast on China's state television network shows the country one step closer to its first manned space station: Seen June 18, Chinese astronauts Liu Wang (left), Jing Haipeng, and Liu Yang float inside the orbiting test module Tiangong 1, or "Heavenly Palace."

Liu Yang (right) is China's first woman to go to space.

"I feel honoured to fly into space on behalf of hundreds of millions of Chinese females," said Liu, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

5. Dynamic Earth

Solar particles get bent as they sweep around Earth's magnetic field, as seen in a still from a new NASA planetarium show called Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth's Climate Engine.

The image shows the full scale of a coronal mass ejection, an eruption of charged particles from the sun's upper atmosphere.

When the particles reach Earth, they can interact with our planet to produce the northern and southern lights. Under the right conditions, CMEs can trigger especially intense solar storms that can damage satellites or cause power outages.

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6. Well Suited

A spacesuit waits for its next occupant in the Quest Airlock of the International Space Station, as seen in a picture snapped June 14. This NASA extravehicular mobility unit, or EMU, is slated for use this coming August.

The EMU is one of only two suits designed for spacewalking that's in circulation today, the other being Russia's Orlan suit. NASA's version dates back to 1982, although it's been tailored a few times since then to improve power supplies and update various in-suit devices.

(See photos: "Space Suit Evolution Since First NASA Flight.")

[Note: Some of the images in the original article are not included as they have been presented in previous posts here and here.]

Top image: Still from video Dynamic Earth

[Source: National Geographic News. Edited. Top image added.]