Items tagged with NASA
The iconic Halley’s Comet will be leaving a treasure trove of shooting stars for stargazers to catch this weekend. The meteor shower, also known as the Orionids, peaks during mid-October each year, and is considered to be one of the most beautiful meteor showers of the year.
Whether a comet with an orbit of every...
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The devil may wear Prada, but NASA is taking it to the moon, and possibly Mars. Axiom Space revealed the first flight design of the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit, which will be worn by astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis III mission, at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, this...
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NASA is set to livestream the launch of its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in a search for signs for possible alien life. Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter around April 2030, and is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever deployed for a planetary mission.
Joining...
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While NASA searches for signs of life on the Red Planet, its Curiosity rover has found new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially suitable for life, to the inhospitable terrain it’s known as now.
Scientists believe there are signs that early Mars had an abundance of liquid water on its...
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The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera spacecraft is headed toward the same asteroid NASA’s DART mission successfully impacted in 2022. The car-sized probe is part of a mission to better understand the ‘kinetic impact’ technique of asteroid deflection.
Hollywood has brought forth a few ideas of how humanity might...
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As NASA gets closer to returning humans to the Moon, the space agency is also looking at ways of providing shelter for future astronauts on the lunar surface for long-term missions. One idea that is regaining momentum involves feeding fungal species to build materials that would be stronger than concrete and provide...
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NASA has a SSPICY take on how to enable commercial inspection of defunct, or inoperable, satellites in low Earth orbit. The Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability (SSPICY) mission will be a precursor to capturing and repairing, or removing, the satellites.
With more satellites going up into low Earth...
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NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted a striped rock unlike any seen on the Red Planet before. The unusual textures were spotted from a distance by team members as the rover made its way toward the Jezero Crater rim.
The new find is not the first striped rock spotted by Perseverance on its trek across Mars. It also...
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A group of physicists designed a first-of-its-kind experiment to simulate what might happen if a nuclear bomb was detonated near an asteroid approaching Earth. The experiment recorded in nanosecond detail how a very large pulse of radiation from a nuclear blast could essentially vaporize the side of an approaching...
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NASA’s Webb telescope tells an elliptical and spiral galaxy to say “Cheese!” The image is a composite of images, combining observations from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) of a pair of galaxies collectively known as Arp 107.
The pair of galaxies, located 465 million...
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ATLAS, an asteroid impact early warning system in Hawaii, spotted a small asteroid that will temporarily orbit Earth for the next two months. Asteroid 2024 PT5 is a 10-meter (33-feet) wide space rock that is expected to come as close as 1 million kilometers of Earth in an orbital path that resembles a...
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As NASA and other space agencies continue working toward sedning humans back to the moon, the agency’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts to create a coordinated lunar time standard. The goal is to enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar...
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SpaceX has performed the first private spacewalk during the Polaris Dawn mission, viewing Earth 458 miles below. Crew members Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis took turns floating just outside the Dragon capsule while wearing specially-designed suits.
After having its launch delayed due to the FAA grounding all...
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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft made a successful return to Earth over the weekend, but not without some additional issues being found. While NASA reported astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams would have been safe on the spacecraft, it also reported a thruster had failed during Starliner’s decent.
Issues with...
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Hubble may be the older sibling to the more advanced James Webb Space Telescope, but it is still being used to help solve the riddles and mysteries of the universe. Now, along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the iconic space telescope unexpectedly unveiled a duo of supermassive black holes within a pair of...
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NASA and Boeing are preparing to bring the Starliner spacecraft back to Earth, albeit uncrewed. Starliner will depart from the International Space Station (ISS) later today for a rendezvous back on Earth at one of several possible landing sites.
Early in the mission, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams...
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An international team of scientists reported the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field, first hypothesized more than 60 years ago. According to NASA, the ambipolar electric field is a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields.
Spacecraft flying...
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“Houston. I have a question about Starliner,” is what Butch Wilmore radioed ground control this past Saturday after hearing a “strange noise coming through the speaker.” The report from Wilmore comes just days ahead of the spacecraft’s scheduled departure from the International Space Station (ISS) without any crew...
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NASA Meteor Watch confirmed what many across nearly a dozen states saw and heard in the early morning hours of August 30 was indeed a meteor. The space agency added the meteor event began about 45 miles above Piney Flats, Tennessee, and moved south and eastward at a breakneck speed of 31,300 miles per hour.
The...
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Intuitive Machines will receive $116.9 million to deliver six NASA payloads to the Moon’s South Pole in 2027. The new set of science experiments and technology demonstrations are part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, including support for missions with crew on the lunar surface.
The lunar...
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While the James Webb Space Telescope has been solving the Universe's riddles in the last couple of years, Hubble continues to prove its value. One recent example was a new image comprising more than 500 images from Hubble spanning two decades of the innermost region of Omega Centauri, providing new evidence for the...
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While the James Webb Space Telescope continues to amaze with its images of deep space, a new study finds it is not “breaking” the Universe in at least one way, with its enlightening discoveries. What do we mean by "breaking?" Scientists and astronomers were expecting to find galactic pipsqueaks in Webb’s early images...
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