From NASA: How NASA Goddard Tests Tools Astronauts Will Use to Explore Distant Worlds When astronauts land again on the surface of another world, their limited resources will allow for a short window of time each day to explore their new surroundings. Instruments designed to quickly reveal the terrain’s chemistry and form will help Read More
Category: Earth
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Begins Asteroid Operations Campaign
From NASA: OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, survey the surface, collect a sample and deliver it safely back to Earth. The spacecraft has traveled approximately 1.1 billion miles (1.8 billion km) since its Sept. 8, 2016, launch and is scheduled to arrive at Bennu on Dec. 3. “Now that OSIRIS-REx Read More
After Near-Perfect Trajectory Maneuver, Parker Solar Probe On Course To Touch The Sun
From NASA: At 6:07 a.m. EDT on Aug. 20, 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully completed its first trajectory correction maneuver (known as TCM-1), achieving a near-perfect firing of its propulsion system and putting the spacecraft on course to “touch” the Sun. This maneuver sets up the orbital geometry that will allow Parker Solar Probe Read More
Martian Dust Storm Grows Global: Curiosity Captures Photos of Thickening Haze
From NASA: A storm of tiny dust particles has engulfed much of Mars over the last two weeks and prompted NASA’s Opportunity rover to suspend science operations. But across the planet, NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been studying Martian soil at Gale Crater, is expected to remain largely unaffected by the dust. While Opportunity is powered Read More
Mars 3D Now Available
Welcome to Mars! Through the eyes of Curiosity, Opportunity, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, this book will introduce you to the geology of Mars and the recent groundbreaking achievements in the exploration of the Red Planet. Our rovers and spacecraft have served as an extension of the human eye, enabling us to explore a Read More
Three New Crew Members on Voyage to International Space Station
Three crew members representing the United States, Russia and Japan are on their way to the International Space Station after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:21 a.m. EST Sunday (1:21 p.m. Baikonur time). The Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA’s Scott Tingle, Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Read More
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Climbing Toward Ridge Top
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has begun the steep ascent of an iron-oxide-bearing ridge that’s grabbed scientists’ attention since before the car-sized rover’s 2012 landing. “We’re on the climb now, driving up a route where we can access the layers we’ve studied from below,” said Abigail Fraeman, a Curiosity science-team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Read More
Pinpointing Where the Lights Went Out in Puerto Rico
After Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico, it quickly became clear that the destruction would pose daunting challenges for first responders. Most of the electric power grid and telecommunications network was knocked offline. Flooding, downed trees, and toppled power lines made many roads impassable. In circumstances like this, quickly knowing where the power is out—and how long Read More
NASA’s New Horizons, IAU Set Pluto Naming Themes
n 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft delivered the first close-up views of Pluto and its five moons – amazing images of distant and surprisingly complex worlds, showing a vast nitrogen glacier as well as ice mountains, canyons, cliffs, craters and more. The IAU’s action clears the way for the mission team to propose formal names Read More
Astronomers Confirm Orbital Details of TRAPPIST-1’s Least Understood Planet
cientists using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope identified a regular pattern in the orbits of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system that confirmed suspected details about the orbit of its outermost and least understood planet, TRAPPIST-1h. TRAPPIST-1 is only eight percent the mass of our sun, making it a cooler and less luminous star. It’s home Read More