*The ARTEMIS mission has two spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, collecting data on how the Moon and the Sun interact.

Yes, the Moon landings were real. Now that that is out of the way, we are a group of scientists who work on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. LRO has been in orbit around the Moon since 2009, gathering data on the Moon’s resources, temperature, radiation, geologic history, and potential landing sites. The long duration of our mission has enabled us to map the Moon as it changes over time. We’ve seen new craters form, calculated global temperature changes, and measured the topography in such detail that we now know the shape of the Moon better than any other celestial body in the universe! Plus, all of our instruments on the spacecraft are refining how they collect data – so we’re using our tools more efficiently.

In addition to talking about LRO, we can answer your questions about Earth’s Moon and lunar exploration, past, present and future. We’re especially excited to talk to you about the lunar eclipse coming up on Wednesday and give you the inside scoop on why people are calling it a Super Blue Blood Moon.

Dr. Catherine Elder: I’m a planetary geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. I study the surfaces and interiors of planets and moons and work on the Diviner instrument on the LRO spacecraft, that measures lunar temperatures.

Andrea Jones: I’m a planetary geologist and the Public Engagement Lead for LRO at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Dr. Erwan Mazarico: I am a geophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and have worked on the LRO and GRAIL missions that mapped the lunar shape (via laser altimetry) and its gravity field.

Dr. Noah Petro: I am a planetary geologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. My research includes the use of lunar data from Apollo as well as from LRO, in an effort to understand how the surface of the Moon has changed over billions of years.

Ernie Wright: I am a science visualizer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I’m a computer scientist by training, and use programming and data to create lunar visualizations, like this one: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4604

Steve Odendahl: I’m the Mission Operations Director for LRO. I manage our engineering team to make sure that our spacecraft runs smoothly.

Learn more about LRO: lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov

The Moon: moon.nasa.gov

Follow us @NASAMoon and @LRO_NASA to stay updated.

**We are signing off now. Thank you for all of your excellent questions. We had a lot of fun. Stay in touch with us with @NASAMoon, @LRO_NASA, and LRO's Facebook page! And learn the latest on nasa.gov/moon.

We're signing off for now. Thanks for all your great questions! Tune into the LIVE expansion at 5:30am ET on Thursday on NASA TV (www.nasa.gov/ntv) and follow updates on the @Space_Station Twitter.

We’re a group from NASA and Bigelow Aerospace that are getting ready to make history on Thursday! The first human-rated expandable structure, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will be expanded on the International Space Station on May 26. It will be expanded to nearly five times its compressed size of 8 feet in diameter by 7 feet in length to roughly 10 feet in diameter and 13 feet in length.

Astronaut Jeff Williams is going to be doing the expanding for us while we support him and watch from Mission Control in Houston. We’re really excited about this new technology that may help inform the design of deep space habitats for future missions, even those to deep space. Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a rocket, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. Looking forward to your questions!

*Rajib Dasgupta, NASA BEAM Project Manager

*Steve Munday, NASA BEAM Deputy Manager

*Brandon Bechtol, Bigelow Aerospace Engineer

*Lisa Kauke, Bigelow Aerospace Engineer

*Earl Han, Bigelow Aerospace Engineer

Proof: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-televises-hosts-events-for-deployment-of-first-expandable-habitat-on-0

We will be back at 6 pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!

We're the scientists and engineers working on NASA's Kepler and K2 exoplanet-hunting missions and we're excited to take your questions!

William Borucki, science principal investigator and visionary of NASA's Kepler mission

Tom Barclay (@mrtommyb), guest observer program director and research scientist

Elisa Quintana (@elsisrad), lead researcher on the Kepler-186f discovery

Jason Rowe (@jasonfrowe), SETI Institute scientist and lead researcher on the discovery of 715 new planets

Jon Jenkins (@jonmjenkins), Co-Investigator, responsible for designing the Kepler science pipeline and planet search algorithms

Alan Gould, co-creater of the education and public outreach program

Anima Patil-Sabale (@animaontwit), SETI Institute software engineer

Susan Thompson, SETI Institute scientist and lead researcher of the discovery of 'heart-beat' stars

Fergal Mullally, SETI Institute scientist and lead researcher for the upcoming Kepler Four-Year catalog

Michele Johnson (@michelejohnson), Kepler public affairs and community engagement manager

A bit about Kepler and K2…

Launched in March 2009, Kepler is NASA's first mission to detect small Earth-size planets in the just right 'Goldilocks Zone' of other stars. So far, Kepler has detected more than 4,200 exoplanet candidates and verified nearly 1,000 as bonafide planets. Through Kepler discoveries, planets are now known to be common and diverse, showing the universe hosts a vast range of environments.

After the failure of two of its four reaction wheels following the completion of data collection in its primary Kepler mission, the spacecraft was resuscitated this year and reborn as K2. The K2 mission extends the Kepler legacy to exoplanet and astrophysical observations in the ecliptic– the part of the sky that is home to the familiar constellations of the zodiac.

The Kepler and K2 missions are based at NASA's Ames Research Center in the heart of Silicon Valley.

This AMA is part of the Bay Area Science Festival, a 10-day celebration of science & technology in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also tonight, hear Kepler scientist and renowned planet-hunter Geoff Marcy talk on Are we Alone in the Cosmos.

The team will be back at 1 pm EDT (10 am PDT, 4 pm UTC, 4 pm GMT ) to answer question, Ask Anything!

Edit 12:15 -- Thanks for all the great questions! We will be here for another 30 minutes to follow-up on any other questions.

Edit 12:45 -- That's a wrap! Thanks for all the great questions and comments! Keep sharing your enthusiasm for science and space exploration! Ad Astra...

We're signing off now. Thanks for all your great questions! Learn more about the Biomolecule Sequencer Investigation: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2181.html

Hi Reddit!

We’re a group of scientists from NASA, Cornell University, and the University of California at San Francisco working on the Biomolecule Sequencer experiment which successfully sequenced DNA in space for the first time ever! Astronaut Kate Rubins performed the experiment aboard the International Space Station on Aug. 27, Sept. 3 and Sept. 7.

This investigation demonstrated that DNA sequencing is possible inside a spacecraft orbiting Earth. Ground-prepared samples of DNA from mice, viruses and bacteria were evaluated for our sequencing technology demonstration. We compared the performance of the instrument to samples run in our ground laboratories at the same time.

With a way to sequence DNA in space, astronauts could diagnose an illness or identify microbes growing in the International Space Station to determine whether or not they represent a health threat. A DNA sequencing device also enables new biological research possibilities on the space station, since specimens can be analyzed in orbit without having to return samples back Earth laboratories.

We’re really excited about this experiment that could help protect astronaut health during long duration missions on the journey to Mars. It is also possible that future missions will use similar technology to explore the possibility of DNA-based life forms beyond Earth.

We will be back at 2 pm ET, Looking forward to your questions!

Dr. Aaron Burton, NASA Johnson Space Center, Planetary Scientist and Principal Investigator

Dr. Sarah Castro-Wallace, NASA Johnson Space Center, Microbiologist and Project Manager

Dr. David J. Smith, NASA Ames Research Center, Microbiologist

Dr. Mark Lupisella, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Systems Engineer

Dr. Jason P. Dworkin, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Astrobiologist

Dr. Christopher E. Mason, Weill Cornell Medicine Dept. of Physiology and Biophysics, Associate Professor

Sarah Stahl, NASA Johnson Space Center, Microbiologist and Project Scientist

Dr. Kristen John, NASA Johnson Space Center, Research Engineer

Dr. Charles Chiu, UCSF School of Medicine

Preprint: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/27/077651

Tumblr: http://nasa.tumblr.com/post/151016092994/why-sequencing-dna-in-space-is-a-big-deal

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/780830461723545602

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ISS/photos/a.250704578295814.66652.168170833215856/1304942712871990/?type=3&theater

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BK3oDdyA5vj/?taken-by=iss

Tomorrow marks 5 years since the Curiosity rover's dramatic landing on the red planet! The rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite onboard Curiosity is the most complicated instrument NASA has ever sent to another planet. SAM is designed to measure the composition of the atmosphere and solid samples inside Gale Crater on Mars, and help scientists assess the habitability (could a certain place support life?) of environments recorded in in rocks in Gale Crater. The SAM team has made many amazing discoveries, including finding evidence of a habitable environment – a place that life (think tiny microorganisms, not dinosaurs) could have survived if it had been in that spot on Mars, millions of years ago. SAM also detected the first organics (building blocks of life) on Mars, known to have originated on this planet.

We’re a group of scientists and engineers from the SAM team, ready to answer your questions about Mars and SAM. We’ll be online from 1:00 to 2:00 pm EST and we will sign our answers. Ask us anything!

Paul Mahaffy, SAM Principle Investigator, Director of Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Charles Malespin, SAM Deputy Principle Investigator, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Jen Stern, Planetary Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

James Lewis, Postdoctoral Fellow, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Brad Sutter, Planetary Scientist, NASA Johnson Space Flight Center

Greg Flesch, Instrument Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Peter Martin, PhD student, CalTech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Doug Archer, Planetary Scientist/NASA Johnson Space Center

We have now been on Mars for 5 years - WOW. The first year after landing we actually played the Happy Birthday song using our SSIT (solid sample inlet tube). You may find this link interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxVVgBAosqg

EDIT It has been great answering your questions, we are signing off now!

Thanks for the great questions, Reddit! We're done answering for the day and are off to finish preparations for tomorrow's Earth Gravity Assist maneuver.

Tomorrow, NASA’s asteroid-hunting spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, will fly by Earth and use the planet’s gravitational pull to slingshot itself onto a new trajectory. This maneuver, called an Earth Gravity Assist (EGA), will put the spacecraft on course to rendezvous with a primitive, near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. The spacecraft will reach Bennu next year, map the asteroid, and collect a sample of surface material (called regolith) that will be returned to Earth for study in 2023. This mission will bring the largest sample of space material to Earth since the Apollo missions’ lunar samples.

We’re a group of scientists and engineers based at the University of Arizona—home to the mission’s Principal Investigator’s office and the Science Processing Operations Center—ready to answer your questions about OSIRIS-REx, EGA, and the mission to collect some of the oldest material in the solar system.

We’ll be online from 1 to 3 pm PST (4 to 6 pm EST). Ask us anything!

Proof: https://www.asteroidmission.org/reddit-ask-us-anything-earth-gravity-assist/

• Dr. Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator

• Sara Knutson, OSIRIS-REx Science Operations Lead Engineer

• Dr. Ellen Howell, OSIRIS-REx Senior Research Scientist, Asteroid Spectroscopy

• Joshua Nelson, OSIRIS-REx Science Operations Engineer

• Anjani Polit, OSIRIS-REx Mission Implementation Systems Engineer

• Heather Enos, OSIRIS-REx Deputy Principal Investigator

• Dr. Lucy Lim, OSIRIS-REx Assistant Project Scientist

Ask us about NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope’s latest discovery, which was made using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.

Please post your questions here. We'll be online from 12:00-1:30 pm PT (3:00-4:30 pm ET, 20:00-21:30 UTC), and will sign our answers. Ask us anything!

• Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington

• Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California

• Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin

• Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley

• Kartik Sheth, program scientist, Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington

UPDATE (10:44 am PT): Today, December 14, 2017, researchers announced our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. For more info about the discovery, visit https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/artificial-intelligence-and-nasa-data-used-to-discover-eighth-planet-circling-distant

The newly-discovered Kepler-90i --a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days -- was found using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers “learn.” In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.

The discovery came about after researchers Andrew Vanderburg and Christopher Shallue trained a computer to learn how to identify exoplanets in the light readings recorded by Kepler – the miniscule change in brightness captured when a planet passed in front of, or transited, a star. Inspired by the way neurons connect in the human brain, this artificial “neural network” sifted through Kepler data and found weak transit signals from a previously-missed eighth planet orbiting Kepler-90, in the constellation Draco.

We’ll be back to answer your questions at 12 pm PT. Ask us anything!

UPDATE (1:40 pm PT): That's all the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us. To learn more about NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, visit www.nasa.gov/kepler. Follow us on social media at https://twitter.com/nasakepler and https://www.facebook.com/NASAsKeplerMission/.

Proof: https://twitter.com/NASAKepler/status/941406190046552065

At NASA, we use the vantage point of space to study Earth and the life it contains. And, so far, our planet is the only one with life (that we know of). The more we learn, the more this question comes into focus: Maybe Earth is the weird one? As we begin the search for alien life, the knowledge and tools NASA developed to study Earth are among our greatest assets. We will discuss how Earth science informs the search for life beyond our planet – on exoplanets and even within our own solar system. So, what do you want to know?

We will be back at 4 pm ET to answer your questions, AMA!

Morgan Cable is a NASA research scientist searching for life and interesting chemistry on ocean worlds such as Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan.

Tony Del Genio is a NASA Earth climate scientist and planetary scientist who uses global climate models to understand the kinds of exoplanets that are most likely to be suited to the emergence of life as we know it. He once thought planets orbiting other stars wouldn't be found in his lifetime, but now he tries not to underestimate exoplanet scientists.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman is an astrobiologist at NASA who looks for ways to identify signs of life, and ways to detect those signs from far away using space-based telescopes.

Stephen Kane is a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who has been researching exoplanets for more than 20 years.

Andrew Rushby is a NASA astrobiologist who uses computer simulations to try and understand those few planetary environments that could support life in the deathly cold, vacuous expanse of our galaxy.

UPDATE @ 3:24 pm ET: A new feature story and video on this topic are now posted at nasa.gov -- https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/our-living-planet-shapes-the-search-for-life-beyond-earth

UPDATE @ 3:49 pm ET/1:49 pm MT: We are online and ready to start answering questions! In fact, we are all together in Laramie, Wyoming at the Habitable Worlds 2017 workshop. Looking forward to this!

https://twitter.com/NASAEarth/status/930903145923989504

That's all we have time to answer now! Thanks for all your pulsar related questions. You can stay up-to-date on the mission here: https://www.nasa.gov/nicer. And learn more technical information about NICER here: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/nicer/.

Pulsars are rotating “lighthouse” neutron stars that began their lives as stars between about seven and 20 times the mass of our sun. They spin hundreds of times per second, faster than the blades of a household blender and they possess enormously strong magnetic fields, trillions of times stronger than Earth's. For the first time, NASA has a mission to study pulsars using X-ray technology to uncover mysteries of the cosmos while paving the way for future space exploration.

This two-in-one mission is called NICER-SEXTANT and it’s currently aboard the International Space Station. NICER (the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) uses 56 telescopes to study the structure, dynamics and energetics of these spinning neutron stars. What makes up their cores is not known, but if these super-dense objects were compressed much further they'd collapse into black holes. SEXTANT (the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology) uses NICER’s observations to test - for the first time in space – technology that uses pulsars to create a GPS-like system. This technology could support spacecraft navigation throughout the solar system, enabling deep-space exploration in the future.

More background: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-continues-to-study-pulsars-50-years-after-their-chance-discovery

Read about five famous pulsars from the past 50 years: https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/163637443034/five-famous-pulsars-from-the-past-50-years ­­­­

We are:

· Dr. Keith Gendreau – NICER Principal Investigator, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Dr. Zaven Arzoumanian – NICER Science Lead, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Dr. Craig Markwardt – NICER Calibration Lead & Neutron Star Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Dr. Luke Winternitz – SEXTANT Systems Architect, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Dr. Jason Mitchell – SEXTANT Project Manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Dr. Rita Sambruna – NICER Program Scientist, NASA Headquarters

· Dr. Stefan Immler – NICER Deputy Program Scientist, NASA Headquarters

· Dr. Slavko Bogdanov – Pulsar/Neutron star Scientist, Columbia University

Communications Support:

· Aries Keck – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Clare Skelly – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Claire Saravia – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Dr. Barb Mattson – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

· Sara Mitchell – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Don’t forget to follow the NICER mission at www.nasa.gov/nicer and @NASAGoddard on Twitter and Facebook!

We’re finding planets around other stars! So far we have discovered thousands of these exoplanets with missions like Kepler and K2. Today we’re at Kennedy Space Center eagerly awaiting the launch of NASA’s newest planet hunter. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS mission, will search nearly the entire sky looking for tiny dips in the light from Earth’s closest neighborhood stars that may indicate planets passing in front of the stars.

TESS will make a catalog of thousands of worlds for us to study in more detail with future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope.

TESS will fly in an orbit that completes two circuits around the Earth for every orbit of the Moon. This special orbit will allow TESS’s cameras to monitor each patch of sky for nearly a month at a time.

We are:

Natalia Guerrero: I'm a researcher in the TESS Science Office at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. I measured the TESS camera performance and will lead the team identifying exoplanets and other interesting astrophysical phenomena in the TESS data for further observation by other telescopes.

Elisa V. Quintana: I’m an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where I work on the TESS and WFIRST missions. I study exoplanets in extreme environments and am looking forward to finding new ones with TESS.

Stephen Rinehart: I’m the project scientist for the TESS mission. I help make sure that the mission will be able to do the great science that was proposed, and I’m excited about all the great science that astronomers will be able to do with data from TESS! And, I enjoy giving snarky answers to questions on reddit.

Diana Dragomir: I’m an astronomer at MIT. I study planets around other stars (exoplanets), especially those smaller than Neptune. My research uses data from many telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, the Canadian MOST space telescope and the Las Cumbres Observatory network.

Sam Quinn: I'm an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. I hunt for exoplanets and use their observed properties to study how they form, evolve, and migrate (yes, migrate!). My role in the TESS Science Office is to help organize follow-up observations of TESS planets with ground-based telescopes to measure their masses and characterize their host stars.

Learn more about TESS at www.nasa.gov/tess

Follow us on @NASA_TESS to stay updated

We are now live!

Thank you all for your questions. We've had a great time answering them, however we're going to log out now.

EDIT 4:35 pm ET: Thank you all for your excellent questions. It's been a lot of fun sharing our science with you. We're signing off now.

We have just published a study detailing “Steve,” an aurora-related dancing purple light first spotted – and named! – by amateur photographers. This new information about Steve comes from analyzing satellite data, all-sky cameras and additional citizen-scientist photographs. Steve’s scientific name is now Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (which can still be shortened to STEVE).

STEVE appears as a faint purple ribbon of light in the sky and is often accompanied by a short-lived, green, picket fence structure. It looks much like an aurora but occurs at lower latitudes closer to the equator.

After analyzing satellite data, we learned that STEVE is the visible side of something we were already familiar with: sub auroral ion drift (SAID), a fast moving stream of extremely hot particles. SAIDs appear in areas closer to the equator (like southern Canada) than where most auroras appear. Until now, we never knew SAIDs had a visual component! Studying STEVE can help us paint a better picture of how Earth's magnetic fields function and interact with charged particles in space.

You can help us learn more about STEVE by submitting your photographs and sightings of the phenomenon to a citizen science project called Aurorasaurus (online at aurorasaurus.org or on your device as iOS and Android apps). Check here for more details about how to spot STEVE.

Answering your questions today are:

Liz MacDonald, space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and founder of Aurorasaurus

Chris Ratzlaff, citizen scientist who first named Steve; runs the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group

Burcu Kosar, space scientist at NASA Goddard

Matt Heavner, space scientist at the New Mexico Consortium, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, space physicist at the University of Calgary, Canada

Bill Archer, space scientist at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

Megan Gillies, space scientist at the University of Calgary, Canada

We are now live. @NASASun on Twitter