NewsSpace

NASA’s Psyche Mission Continues Preparation for Launch in 2023

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room on Dec. 8, 2022, at Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft was powered on and connected to ground support equipment, enabling engineers and technicians to prepare it for launch in 2023. Teams working at Astrotech and at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California…
Read more
NewsSpace

NASA Scientists and Satellites Make Sense of Earth’s Subtle Motions

Creeping, rising, falling, slipping – some parts of Earth are in perpetual motion. The movements are usually too tiny for human senses to notice, but they offer clues about more significant changes happening inside volcanoes, along fault lines, and where tectonic plates meet and clash. That’s why scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are using advanced tools…
Read more
NewsSpace

NASA Wants You to Help Study Planets Around Other Stars

More than 5,000 planets have been confirmed to exist outside our solar system, featuring a wide array of characteristics like clouds made of glass and twin suns. Scientists estimate there could be millions more exoplanets in our home galaxy alone, which means professional…
NewsSpace

NASA Space Missions Pinpoint Sources of CO2 Emissions on Earth

A duo of Earth-observing missions has enabled researchers to detect and track carbon dioxide (CO2) emission changes from a single facility, using the world’s fifth-largest coal-fired power plant as a test case. In the recent study, researchers used space-based measurements from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) 2 and 3 missions to quantify the carbon dioxide discharged hundreds of miles…
Read more
NewsSpace

Watch the Latest Water Satellite Unfold Itself in Space

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched into Earth orbit on Friday, Dec. 16, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, and engineers are working to prepare the mission to begin measuring the height of water on over 90% of Earth’s…
NewsSpace

NASA Explores a Winter Wonderland on Mars

When winter comes to Mars, the surface is transformed into a truly otherworldly holiday scene. Snow, ice, and frost accompany the season’s sub-zero temperatures. Some of the coldest of these occur at the planet’s poles, where it gets as low as minus 190 degrees…
NewsSpace

Juno Spacecraft Recovering Memory After 47th Flyby of Jupiter

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…
Read more