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Relative soil moisture over the Carolinas on Oct. 5, 2015, shown in percent. Green indicates the soils are 50 to 65 percent saturated, while blues and purples indicate 65 to 100 percent saturated. Saturated soils can hold no more water so those areas will flood.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will get its best-ever look at the northernmost reaches of the Saturnian moon Enceladus on Oct. 14.

Electron microscope image of the ETH Zurich experiment. Between the quantum dot (left) and the curved electrode (right) electronic standing waves arise, which interact with the electrons of the quantum dot.

As a strand of DNA moves through the MinION nanopore, the MinION 'sees' five nucleotides at a time. Every set of five nucleotides produces a characteristic current, allowing the MinION to read out the DNA code in a single, continuous stream.

Archives, in their many forms, save information from October 8 that people will want to access and study in the future. This is a critical function of all archives, but it is especially important when it comes to storing data from today’s modern telescopes.

NASA and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California, have received confirmation the Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD) CubeSat spacecraft is in orbit and operational. OCSD launched aboard an Atlas V rocket Thursday from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Their findings, published on October 10 in Nature Communications, reveal how a nanoscale, synthetic version of the precious gem can light up early-stage cancers in non-toxic, non-invasive Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans.

It was rain that wouldn't quit. A weather system fueled by warm moisture streaming in from the Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 3 and 4 relentlessly dumped between 1 and 2 feet (0.3 and 0.6 meters) of rain across most of South Carolina. The result was rivers topping their banks and dams bursting. Catastrophic flooding followed across most of the state, which has left residents in some areas without power or clean drinking water.

A view from the "Kimberley" formation on Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed.

The colors are adjusted so that rocks look approximately as they would if they were on Earth, to help geologists interpret the rocks. This "white balancing" to adjust for the lighting on Mars overly compensates for the absence of blue on Mars, making the sky appear light blue and sometimes giving dark, black rocks a blue cast.

This image was taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Curiosity on the 580th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.