The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin … Read more
On Aug. 20, Juice hurled into Earth’s magnetosphere, passing some 37,000 miles (60,000 km) above the Pacific Ocean, where the instruments got their first taste of the harsh environment that awaits at Jupiter. Racing through the magnetotail, JoEE and JENI encountered the dense, lower-energy plasma characteristic of this region before plunging into the heart of … Read more
Join Thursday’s NASA Cit Sci Leader’s Series event for a conversation about women and NASA-sponsored astronomy citizen science Gulf of Maine Research Institute Women hold up half the sky… but participation numbers for NASA-sponsored citizen science projects don’t always reflect that. Why? And what can we do to welcome people of all genders to participate? … Read more
During its first 10 years at Mars, MAVEN has helped to explain how the Red Planet evolved from warm and wet early on into the cold, dry world that we see today. Download this video in high-resolution from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14690/Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher Source link
Because the Moon has no atmosphere to speak of, its surface is exposed to plasma and radiation from the Sun. As a result, static electricity builds up on the surface, as it does when you shuffle your feet against a carpeted floor. When you then touch something, you transfer that charge via a small shock. … Read more
NASA has selected eight companies for a new award to help acquire Earth observation data and provide related services for the agency. The Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition Program On-Ramp1 Multiple Award contract is a firm-fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple-award contract with a maximum value of $476 million, cumulatively amongst all the selected contractors, and a performance period … Read more
As part of an asteroid sample exchange, NASA has transferred to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) a portion of the asteroid Bennu sample collected by the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The sample was officially handed over by NASA officials during a ceremony on Aug. 22 at JAXA’s Sagamihara, Japan, campus. This asteroid sample transfer follows the … Read more
Engineers on NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission commanded the spacecraft to turn its transmitter off for the last time Thursday. This concludes more than 10 years of its planetary defense mission to search for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. The final command was sent … Read more
Olivier Barnouin and Ronald-Louis Ballouz of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, led a paper that analyzed the geology of both asteroids and drew conclusions about their surface materials and interior properties. From images captured by DART and its accompanying LICIACube cubesat – contributed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the team … Read more
Like “lava tubes” found here on Earth, scientists suspect that lunar caves formed when molten lava flowed beneath a field of cooled lava, or a crust formed over a river of lava, leaving a long, hollow tunnel. If the ceiling of a solidified lava tube collapses, it opens a pit, like a skylight, that can … Read more