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NASA Wants You to Help Study Planets Around Other Stars

January 11, 2023
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 astronomers could use your help tracking and studying them. This is where Exoplanet Watch comes in. Participants in the program…
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NASA Space Missions Pinpoint Sources of CO2 Emissions on Earth

January 10, 2023
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…
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Watch the Latest Water Satellite Unfold Itself in Space

December 29, 2022
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 surface, providing a high-definition survey of our planet’s water for the first time. But before it can do that, the…
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NASA Explores a Winter Wonderland on Mars

December 23, 2022
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…
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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…
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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 science instrument to Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado, and the teams integrated it with the small satellite, or…
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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…
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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 temperature to Earth. But to do that they’ll need new tools, like those being tested on the Coronagraph Instrument on NASA’s…
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