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Juno Spacecraft Recovering Memory After 47th Flyby of Jupiter

December 23, 2022
NASA’s Juno spacecraft completed its 47th close pass of Jupiter on Dec. 14. Afterward, as the solar-powered orbiter was sending its science data to mission controllers from its onboard computer, the downlink was disrupted. The issue – an inability to directly access the spacecraft memory storing the science data collected during the flyby – was most likely caused by a radiation spike as Juno…
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Moon Water Imager Integrated With NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer

December 23, 2022
Lunar Trailblazer, NASA’s mission to understand lunar water and the Moon’s water cycle led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is one step closer to launching next year. Earlier this month, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California delivered a key…
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Construction Begins on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter

December 22, 2022
A space telescope designed to search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that stray into Earth’s orbital neighborhood, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) recently passed a rigorous technical and programmatic review. Now the mission is transitioning…
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Deposits First Sample on Mars Surface

December 22, 2022
A titanium tube containing a rock sample is resting on the Red Planet’s surface after being placed there on Dec. 21 by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Over the next two months, the rover will deposit a total of 10 tubes at the location, called “Three Forks,” building humanity’s first sample depot on another planet. The depot marks a historic early step in the Mars Sample Return…
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Assembly Begins on NASA’s Next Tool to Study Exoplanets

December 22, 2022
Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. As technologies for studying these worlds continue to advance, researchers may someday be able to search for signs of life on exoplanets that are similar in size, composition, and…
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NASA Retires InSight Mars Lander Mission After Years of Science

December 22, 2022
NASA’s InSight mission has ended after more than four years of collecting unique science on Mars. Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were unable to contact the lander after two consecutive attempts, leading them to…
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NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Sentinel-6B Mission

December 21, 2022
NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the Sentinel-6B mission. Sentinel-6B will continue the long-term global sea level data record begun in 1992 by Topex/Poseidon followed by Jason 1, 2, 3, and Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich. The mission is a partnership between NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ESA…
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NASA Gets Unusually Close Glimpse of Black Hole Snacking on Star

December 21, 2022
Multiple NASA telescopes recently observed a massive black hole tearing apart an unlucky star that wandered too close. Located about 250 million light-years from Earth in the center of another galaxy, it was the fifth-closest example of a black hole destroying a star ever…
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover to Begin Building Martian Sample Depot

December 16, 2022
In the coming days, NASA’s Perseverance rover is expected to begin building the first sample depot on another world. This will mark a crucial milestone in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign, which aims to bring Mars samples to Earth for closer study. The depot-building process starts when the rover drops one of its titanium sample tubes carrying a chalk-size core of…
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