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Nasa

Roman Space Telescope starts waking up as NASA powers on instruments for the 1st time

September 17, 2026

As the newest heavy hitter in orbital observatories continues the journey to its final destination, NASA has begun the process of switching the spacecraft on. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Aug. 30, and is on a three-month long trek to Lagrange point two (L2). L2 is a relatively idle orbital sweet spot almost a million miles from Earth that will allow Roman to remain on the…

The critical robot arm on the ISS isn't working properly, but NASA has a plan to fix it

June 15, 2026

One of the space station’s robot arms, crucial for catching cargo ships and doing a share of maintenance duties, is offline for at least a few weeks for repairs. Canadarm2, which just passed 25 years of service in April on the International Space Station (ISS), will…

NASA is building a new space telescope to search for life on nearby planets. What would it see on ancient Earth?

June 11, 2026

NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory is the agency’s next flagship space telescope, designed to do something no previous instrument has managed: directly image Earth-like planets around nearby stars and analyze the light reflecting off their atmospheres for signs…

Massive boom over northeastern US was a meteor explosion as powerful as 300 tons of TNT, NASA confirms

June 3, 2026

A sonic boom heard throughout the northeastern United States last week was caused by a meteor, NASA confirmed after consulting satellite imagery. The meteor’s boom, heard widely on Saturday (May 30) at 2:06 p.m. EDT (local time), was audible over the northeastern U.S. NASA made the determination that it was a meteor based on both eyewitness reports to the American Meteor Society as well as…

NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS reveals its most complete look at the night sky yet

May 22, 2026

NASA’s exoplanet-hunting spacecraft TESS, or Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has released its most complete view of the sky over Earth — the map reveals the location of 6,000 potential worlds beyond the solar system. The mix of possible and confirmed…

NASA wants to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. Will SpaceX's Starship or Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander be ready in time?

May 6, 2026

With the Artemis 2 crew back home after their historic circumlunar voyage, attention now turns to getting astronauts back on the surface of the moon. But how are the landers that will make such an ambitious endeavor possible progressing? NASA recently outlined a revised plan…

News Photography

NASA Missions That Changed Our Understanding of Space

August 20, 2025

Photographers often wish for more time to shoot the sunset – but the astronauts aboard the International Space Station get to witness 16 sunsets and sunrises a day. The problem? Golden hour is more like “the golden five seconds,” says astronaut, chemist, and renowned space photographer Don Pettit. Pettit recently joined fellow astronaut and photographer Matt Dominick on NASA’s Houston We…

5 Things to Know About NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications

October 11, 2023

NASA’s pioneering Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment will be the first demonstration of laser, or optical, communications from as far away as Mars. Launching with NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name on Thursday, Oct. 12, DSOC…

News Photography

NASA Turns Space Photos Into Music

October 7, 2020

NASA has a new project that turns space photos into sounds. Using sonification, images obtained from telescopes are turned into “music” that sounds like what you’d hear when your operating system boots up. The creative project is being carried out by scientists at…