Technology in development today could radically change the future of air and space exploration. Nearly silent electric aircraft could ferry people and packages around cities, a sprawling radio telescope array on the far side of the Moon could reveal new secrets about the universe, and astronauts on long-duration missions could grow their own medicines to …
NASA Awards Innovative Concept Studies for Science, Exploration Read More »
One of six instruments aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, CRISM produced global maps of minerals on the Red Planet’s surface. NASA switched off one of its oldest instruments studying Mars on April 3, a step that’s been planned since last year. Riding aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, CRISM, or the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer …
NASA Retires Mineral Mapping Instrument on Mars Orbiter Read More »
Humans have always looked up into the night sky and dreamed about space. In the latter half of the 20th century, rockets were developed that were powerful enough to overcome the force of gravity to reach orbital velocities, paving the way for space exploration to become a reality. In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany …
A new NASA study offers an explanation of how quakes could be the source of the mysteriously smooth terrain on moons circling Jupiter and Saturn. Many of the ice-encrusted moons orbiting the giant planets in the far reaches of our solar system are known to be geologically active. Jupiter and Saturn have such strong gravity …
Icy Moonquakes: Surface Shaking Could Trigger Landslides Read More »
JPL’s Abigail Fraeman will help study the composition of Phobos and Deimos using instruments on the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s spacecraft. NASA has selected 10 researchers from institutions across the U.S. to join the Science Working Team of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission as NASA-supported participating scientists. JAXA’s MMX mission, …
NASA Selects 10 Scientists for International Mission to Martian Moons Read More »
Under a cloudless sky, 20,000 eclipse chasers crowded a tiny outpost to watch a rare solar eclipse plunge part of Australia’s northwest coast into brief midday darkness Thursday while temporarily cooling the tropical heat. The remote tourist town of Exmouth, with fewer than 3,000 residents, was promoted as one of the best vantage points in …
Awesome’ solar eclipse wows viewers in Australia, Indonesia Read More »
It looks like a black hole and bends light like a black hole, but it could actually be a new type of star. Though the mysterious object is a hypothetical mathematical construction, new simulations by Johns Hopkins researchers suggest there could be other celestial bodies in space hiding from even the best telescopes on Earth. …
Could this copycat black hole be a new type of star? Read More »
Space travel has brought us to our next-door neighbor, the moon, and to the depths of our larger solar community inhabited by giants such as Saturn and Jupiter. In 1982, Voyager 2 whisked past Uranus closer than any other spacecraft has since, and now is sailing—46 years after its launch—through the constellation of Pavo, some …
Solar sails could guide interplanetary travel, says new study Read More »
The board, initiated by NASA, will provide added confidence that the program won’t exceed guidelines following an important upcoming milestone. NASA will convene a Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program independent review board, or IRB, to perform a review of current plans and goals for one of the most difficult missions humanity has ever undertaken: bringing …
We human beings have been venturing into space since October 4, 1957, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This happened during the period of political hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States known as the Cold War. For several years, the two …
