This series of images from the WISPR instrument on board Parker Solar Probe shows a small sungrazing comet, SOHO-4063, as it approached the Sun on Sept. 13-14, 2020. This is the first observation of a sungrazing comet by Parker Solar Probe’s instruments.Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab/Parker Solar Probe/Guillermo Stenborg When scientists downlinked data from... Continue Reading →
Greenland’s Retreating Glaciers Could Impact Local Ecology
Greenland appears in this image created using data from the ITS_LIVE project, hosted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The coloring around the coast of the arctic island shows the speed of outlet glaciers flowing into the ocean.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS Details about the physical transformation of over 200 of the island’s coastal glaciers are documented in a... Continue Reading →
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Is Midway to Mars
This illustration of the Mars 2020 spacecraft in interplanetary space was generated using imagery from NASA's Eyes on the Solar System. The image is from the mission's midway point between Earth and Mars.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech Sometimes half measures can be a good thing – especially on a journey this long. The agency's latest rover only has... Continue Reading →
NASA, European Space Agency Formalize Artemis Gateway Partnership
NASA and ESA (European Space Agency)have finalized an agreement to collaborate on the Artemis Gateway. This agreement is an important element in a broad effort by the United States to engage international partners in sustainable lunar exploration and to demonstrate technologies necessary for a future human mission to Mars. The agreement, signed Tuesday, marks NASA’s first formal... Continue Reading →
NASA, Space X Set Launch Date For Crew 1 Mission To The ISS
By James Tutten, via WFTV 9 Eyewitness News The first operational Commercial Crew mission to the International Space Station is set to launch next month. SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission will send four astronauts to the orbiting laboratory for a six-month science mission at 7:49 p.m. on Nov. 14. Crew-1 spacecraft commander, Mike Hopkins, announced last month... Continue Reading →
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Goes for Early Stow of Asteroid Sample
This illustration shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft stowing the sample it collected from asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20, 2020. The spacecraft will use its Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) arm to place the TAGSAM collector head into the Sample Return Capsule (SRC).Credits: NASA/University of Arizona, Tucson NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is ready to perform an early stow on Tuesday, Oct.... Continue Reading →
NASA, SpaceX Invite Media to Crew-1 Mission Update, Target New Launch Date
NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, and Mike Hopkins, and astronaut Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency - who constitute the crew of NASA's Crew-1 mission - inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.Credits: SpaceX NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, and Mike Hopkins, and astronaut Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency -... Continue Reading →
NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon
This illustration highlights the Moon’s Clavius Crater with an illustration depicting water trapped in the lunar soil there, along with an image of NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) that found sunlit lunar water.Credits: NASA NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of... Continue Reading →
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Collects Significant Amount of Asteroid, Not Concerned Over Loss Of Some Material
Captured by the spacecraft’s SamCam camera on Oct. 22, 2020, this series of three images shows that the sampler head on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is full of rocks and dust collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu. They show also that some of these particles are slowly escaping the sampler head. Analysis by the... Continue Reading →
Resilient Autonomy Project Develops EVAA Software
Derek Abramson and Robert Jensen install one of two wings on the Hybrid Quadrotor 90C (HQ-90) at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s Dale Reed Subscale Flight Research Lab in California on Oct. 1, 2020. This vertical lift and transition remotely piloted aircraft arrived in pieces packed in crates for the Resilient Autonomy project to test... Continue Reading →