When NASA’s Juno mission flies by Jupiter’s fiery moon Io on Sunday, July 30, the spacecraft will be making its closest approach yet, coming within 13,700 miles (22,000 kilometers) of it. Data collected by the Italian-built JIRAM (Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper) and other science instruments is expected to provide a wealth of information on the hundreds of erupting volcanoes pouring out molten…
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Sees Mars in a New Light
July 21, 2023
In its first 400 days on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found a diverse collection of organics – carbon-based molecules considered the building blocks of life – thanks to SHERLOC, an innovative instrument on the rover’s robotic arm. Scientists with the…
In mid-June, a team of freshwater researchers spent their nights drifting down Alaska’s Yukon River in an area that straddles the Arctic Circle. The hydrologists were using a GPS unit installed on their boat to measure the slope of the river at the same time that the…
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover sealed the tube containing its 20th rock core sample on June 23 (the 832nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission), and the mission’s science team is excited about its potential. That’s because this sample was drilled by the rover from an outcrop composed of tiny chunks of other rocks that were carried from elsewhere by a river in the distant past and deposited…
With less than 100 days to go before its Oct. 5 launch, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is undergoing final preparations at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles…
From our cosmic backyard in the solar system to distant galaxies near the dawn of time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered on its promise of revealing the universe like never before in its first year of science operations. To celebrate the completion of a…
The ESA (European Space Agency) Euclid spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 11:12 a.m. EDT on Saturday, July 1, beginning its mission to study why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Astronomers use the term “dark energy” in reference to the unknown cause of this accelerated expansion.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern…
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Phones Home
July 1, 2023
The 52nd flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is now in the official mission logbook as a success. The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it…
The motion of black holes and other massive objects through space can create ripples in the fabric of the universe, called gravitational waves. On June 28 scientists announced the first evidence of a background of long-wavelength gravitational waves that fills the cosmos.
A new space telescope named Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with important contributions from NASA, is set to launch in July to explore why the universe’s expansion is speeding up. Scientists call the unknown cause of this cosmic acceleration “dark energy.” By May 2027, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will join Euclid to explore this puzzle in ways that have never…
