NewsSpace

NASA’s Europa Clipper Gets Its Wheels for Traveling in Deep Space

November 24, 2022
Just as NASA’s Mars rovers rely on robust wheels to roam the Red Planet and conduct science, some orbiters rely on wheels, too – in this case, reaction wheels – to stay pointed in the right direction. Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California recently installed four reaction wheels on Europa Clipper, which will rely on them during its journey at…
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Meet the People Behind the SWOT Water-Tracking Satellite

November 23, 2022
As the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission finishes final preparations for its December launch, a new video series focuses on some of the engineers and scientists behind the satellite, which will be the first to observe nearly all water on…
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5 Things to Know About How SWOT Will Look at the World’s Water

November 16, 2022
On Dec. 12, NASA will launch the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite into Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is a collaborative effort between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) – with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency – that will…
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JPL’s Venus Aerial Robotic Balloon Prototype Aces Test Flights

November 16, 2022
The intense pressure, heat, and corrosive gases of Venus’ surface are enough to disable even the most robust spacecraft in a matter of hours. But a few dozen miles overhead, the thick atmosphere is far more hospitable to robotic exploration. One concept envisions pairing a…
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NASA’s InSight Gets a Few Extra Weeks of Mars Science

November 16, 2022
As the power available to NASA’s InSight Mars lander diminishes by the day, the spacecraft’s team has revised the mission’s timeline in order to maximize the science they can conduct. The lander was projected to automatically shut down the seismometer – InSight’s…
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New Images Using Data From Retired Telescopes Reveal Hidden Features

November 16, 2022
New images using data from ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA missions showcase the dust that fills the space between stars in four of the galaxies closest to our own Milky Way. More than striking, the snapshots are also a scientific trove, lending insight into how dramatically the density of dust clouds can vary within a galaxy. With a consistency similar to smoke, dust is created by dying…
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NASA’s Psyche Starts Processing at Kennedy

November 16, 2022
Since its arrival on April 29, the Psyche spacecraft has moved into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians removed it from its protective shipping container, rotated it to vertical, and have begun the final steps to prepare the spacecraft for launch. In the coming months, crews will perform a range of work including reinstalling…
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