What motivates someone to labor for years to help build something that will be rocketed into space, never to be seen again on our planet? For the scientists, engineers, and technicians behind NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal-rich asteroid, the answers are wide-ranging but share a common thread: a passion to explore the unknown.
That inspiration is highlighted in the new “Behind the…
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer is nearing completion now that its second and final cutting-edge science instrument has been added to the small spacecraft. Built by the University of Oxford in England and contributed by the UK Space Agency, the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM) joins…
NASA’s Europa Probe Gets a Hotline to Earth
August 16, 2023
NASA’s Europa Clipper is designed to seek out conditions suitable for life on an ice-covered moon of Jupiter. On Aug. 14, the spacecraft received a piece of hardware central to that quest: the massive dish-shaped high-gain antenna.
Stretching 10 feet (3 meters) across the…
NASA Announces Launch Service for Arctic Warming Experiment
August 15, 2023
NASA has selected Rocket Lab USA Inc. of Long Beach, California, to provide the launch service for the agency’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission, which aims to give researchers a more accurate picture of the energy entering and leaving Earth.
The PREFIRE mission will help close a gap in our understanding of how much of Earth’s heat is lost to space…
Watch NASA Engineers Put a Mars Lander’s Legs to the Test
August 11, 2023
NASA’s Perseverance rover continues to rack up tubes filled with rock core samples for the planned Mars Sample Return campaign. The joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth…
Scientists aren’t entirely sure how life began on Earth, but one prevailing theory posits that persistent cycles of wet and dry conditions on land helped assemble the complex chemical building blocks necessary for microbial life. This is why a patchwork of well-preserved…
Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have created a series of maps showing land-surface temperatures in the Phoenix area in July 2023, when the city experienced a record-breaking run of hot weather. The images reveal the cumulative effect – overnight and across the month – of relentless daytime heating.
The data was captured during overnight hours (around 2 a.m.) on several days…
NASA is sending a trio of miniature rovers to the Moon to see how well they can cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. A teamwork-minded experiment to demonstrate new technology, the CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed…
A Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with more than 8,200 pounds of NASA science investigations and cargo after launching at 8:31 p.m. EDT Tuesday from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
NASA…
The two instruments aboard Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) spacecraft with NASA contributions, have captured their first test images. The results indicate that the space telescope will achieve the scientific goals that it has been designed for – and possibly much more.
The mission will delve into some of the biggest mysteries about our universe, including the nature of dark matter and why…
