Items tagged with NASA
NASA has collected a small amount of the rock and dust sample that its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought back from the asteroid Bennu. However, it is having a bit of trouble accessing the rest. That's because the team is having issues loosening two of the 35 fasteners on the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism...
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The furthest human spacecraft from earth—Voyager 1 and 2—are still getting software updates more than 12 billion miles away, which should help keep the probes operational for many years to come. Smartphone companies can learn a thing or two here.
It all started in 2022 when Voyager 1 began sending garbled data back...
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NASA's Webb telescope discovered a high-speed jet over Jupiter's equator. The new finding is giving researchers insight into how the layers of the gas giant's atmosphere interact.
Jupiter has some very well-known features, like its Great Red Spot which is large enough to engulf Earth. This mammoth planet, which...
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Scientists were surprised to discover the actual cause of the largest quake ever detected on Mars was not a meteoroid impact. Labled as "Marsquake S1222a," it was detected on May 4, 2022, and resembled two prior seismic events that were caused by meteoroids smashing onto the surface of the Red Planet.
The marsquake...
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NASA shared a scintillating view of the annular eclipse from 1 million miles in space. The image was produced by a 10-channel spectroradiometer onboard NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft.
Onlookers gazed upward this weekend as the Moon moved between the Sun and Earth and created what is known...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detected evidence of quartz nanocrystals in a Jupiter-like exoplanet's atmosphere 1,300 light-years from Earth. The first-ever detection of silica particles in an exoplanet's atmosphere was made possible by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
WASP-17 b, also known as...
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NASA engineers and flight control teams are reviewing data and video associated with a coolant leak that postponed two US spacewalks initially scheduled for today and October 20, 2023. The leak is from a backup radiator on the International Space Station's Nauka multipurpose laboratory module (MLM).
The space...
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured the blue spiral arms of a galaxy far, far away in stunning detail. NGC 6951, an intermediate spiral galaxy 78 million light-years away, was first discovered by French astronomer Jerome Coggia in 1887.
According to NASA, NGC 6951 is often classified as a Type II Seyfert galaxy...
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a rare and bright burst of light between two galaxies, adding even more mystery to this known phenomenon. These random events, called Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients (LFBOTs), only seem to occur once a year or so and last only a matter of days.
The first LFBOT was...
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As we inch closer to Halloween, coinciendtally, there are some interesting astronomic events afoot. Chief among these events is the upcoming annular solar eclipse, which will be crossing a significant swath of the United States. However, to view this phenomenon, one needs specific gear to protect their eyesight and/or...
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Elon Musk says he believes Starship has a "decent" chance of reaching orbit during its upcoming second test flight. The first launch attempt ended with Starship ablaze on April 20, 2023.
On what would be a fitting day, Starship made its first launch attempt on 4/20/2023. Musk and SpaceX considered the launch a...
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Axiom Space has partnered with an Italian luxury fashion house to design NASA's lunar spacesuits for the Artemis III mission, and the devil is in the details. Axiom Space announced yesterday that it has partnered with none other than Prada to design the lunar spacesuits.
Artemis III is planned for 2025 and will...
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October is chock full of amazing celestial events, including a cool Hunter's Moon and a wild "ring of fire" eclipse. The Moon, planets, and stars will also dance with one another across the October night skies.
Sky watchers do not have to wait to see a show in the cooler night sky, as the Moon will rise a couple of...
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Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May played a vital role in the OSIRIS-REx mission that successfully returned a sample of asteroid Bennu. May and his colleague, Claudia Manzoni, created stereoscopic images from the O-Rex data that helped the team locate a safe landing site for sample collection.
The 76-year-old...
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NASA's Psyche mission has been delayed slightly. However, the space agency still wants civilians to get psyched about the spacecraft traveling to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. A new teaser trailer from NASA provides a little insight into the mission that scientists believe...
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NASA has sent a request for proposal for an estimated $1B US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), a spacecraft aimed at deorbiting the International Space Station (ISS) and ultimately safely crashing back to Earth. The United States, Japan, Canada, and the European Space Agency (ESA) have all committed to operating the station...
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A group of researchers have shared what is being called the "holy grail of astrobiology," which they say can reliably detect signs of past or present life on other planets. The news of the research comes on the heels of NASA's successful OSIRIS-REx mission that returned the first asteroid sample collected in...
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NASA is making slight adjustments to the flight path of its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which is scheduled to deliver a sample capsule from Bennu, an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building, back to Earth. The final correction maneuvers ensured the spacecraft lands in a predetermined area on the Defense Department's...
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NASA utilized cameras on two separate lunar orbiters to produce a stunning image of the Moon's darkened South Pole region. The mosaic was created using imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LROC) and NASA's ShadowCam onboard the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO).
As NASA prepares to send humans back...
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Last year, NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded. The spacecraft's excursion through the CME gave scientists a new perspective on a 20-year-old theory about the interaction of CMEs with interplanetary dust, which could aid in future space weather...
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NASA's Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter performed incredibly hot spacecraft gymnastics to help solve a cosmic mystery about the Sun. The Sun's atmosphere, known as its corona, has a temperature of around one million degrees Celsius, while its surface is only about 6000 degrees...
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NASA's Webb space telescope continues to astound as it captures an image of Herbig-Haro 211 in "unprecedented detail." The image captures an outflow from a protostar, representing our own Sun when it was just tens of thousands of years old.
According to NASA, Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are radiant regions surrounding...
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