A report on the potential science value of a lander on the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has been delivered to NASA, and the agency is now engaging the broader science community to open a discussion about its findings. In early 2016, in response to a congressional directive, NASA’s Planetary Science Division began a…
One Role of Mars Orbiter: Check Possible Landing Sites
At an international workshop this week about where NASA’s next Mars rover should land, most of the information comes from a prolific spacecraft that’s been orbiting Mars since 2006. Observations by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the basis for evaluating eight candidate landing sites for the Mars 2020 rover mission. The landing site workshop…
New Planet Imager Delivers First Science
A new device on the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has delivered its first images, showing a ring of planet-forming dust around a star, and separately, a cool, star-like body, called a brown dwarf, lying near its companion star. The device, called a vortex coronagraph, was recently installed inside NIRC2 (Near Infrared Camera 2), the…
A New Test for Life on Other Planets
A simple chemistry method could vastly enhance how scientists search for signs of life on other planets. The test uses a liquid-based technique known as capillary electrophoresis to separate a mixture of organic molecules into its components. It was designed specifically to analyze for amino acids, the structural building blocks of all life on Earth.…
Similar-Looking Ridges on Mars Have Diverse Origins
Thin, blade-like walls, some as tall as a 16-story building, dominate a previously undocumented network of intersecting ridges on Mars, found in images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The simplest explanation for these impressive ridges is that lava flowed into pre-existing fractures in the ground and later resisted erosion better than material around them. A…
NuSTAR Finds New Clues to ‘Chameleon Supernova’
“We’re made of star stuff,” astronomer Carl Sagan famously said. Nuclear reactions that happened in ancient stars generated much of the material that makes up our bodies, our planet and our solar system. When stars explode in violent deaths called supernovae, those newly formed elements escape and spread out in the universe. One supernova in…
Mars Rover Curiosity Examines Possible Mud Cracks
Scientists used NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in recent weeks to examine slabs of rock cross-hatched with shallow ridges that likely originated as cracks in drying mud. “Mud cracks are the most likely scenario here,” said Curiosity science team member Nathan Stein. He is a graduate student at Caltech in Pasadena, California, who led the investigation…
How Far Away is That Galaxy? Vast Catalog Has Answers
A team of researchers has compiled a special catalog to help astronomers figure out the true distances to tens of thousands of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. The catalog, called NED-D, is a critical resource, not only for studying these galaxies, but also for determining the distances to billions of other galaxies strewn throughout…
NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System
NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun. The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation, with the…
NASA Releases New, Detailed Greenland Glacier Data
NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission has released preliminary data on the heights of Greenland coastal glaciers from its first airborne campaign in March 2016. The new data show the dramatic increase in coverage that the mission provides to scientists and other interested users. Finalized data on glacier surface heights, accurate within three feet (one…
Small Troughs Growing on Mars May Become ‘Spiders’
Erosion-carved troughs that grow and branch during multiple Martian years may be infant versions of larger features known as Martian “spiders,” which are radially patterned channels found only in the south polar region of Mars. Researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) report the first detection of cumulative growth, from one Martian spring to another,…
Orbiter Recovering From Precautionary Pause In Activity
NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been in service at Mars since October 2001, put itself into safe mode — a protective standby status — on Dec. 26, while remaining in communication with Earth. The Odyssey project team has diagnosed the cause — an uncertainty aboard the spacecraft about its orientation with regard to Earth…
NASA Technology Is All Around You
Next time you share an amazing GoPro video with a friend, consider that NASA made that technology possible. The image sensors that would later be used in GoPros — and in all modern digital cameras, including those in cell phones — were first developed in the early 1990s at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.…
NASA Announces First Geostationary Vegetation, Atmospheric Carbon Mission
NASA has selected a first-of-its-kind Earth science mission that will extend our nation’s lead in measuring key greenhouse gases and vegetation health from space to advance our understanding of Earth’s natural exchanges of carbon among the land, atmosphere and ocean. The primary goals of the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCARB), led by Berrien Moore of…
Curiosity Rover Team Examining New Drill Hiatus
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is studying its surroundings and monitoring the environment, rather than driving or using its arm for science, while the rover team diagnoses an issue with a motor that moves the rover’s drill. Curiosity is at a site on lower Mount Sharp selected for what would be the mission’s seventh sample-collection drilling…
NASA’s ISS-RapidScat Earth Science Mission Ends
NASA’s International Space Station Rapid Scatterometer (ISS-RapidScat) Earth science instrument has ended operations following a successful two-year mission aboard the space station. The mission launched Sept. 21, 2014, and had recently passed its original decommissioning date. ISS-RapidScat used the unique vantage point of the space station to provide near-real-time monitoring of ocean winds, which are…
Metallic Glass Gears Make For Graceful Robots
Throw a baseball, and you might say it’s all in the wrist. For robots, it’s all in the gears. Gears are essential for precision robotics. They allow limbs to turn smoothly and stop on command; low-quality gears cause limbs to jerk or shake. If you’re designing a robot to scoop samples or grip a ledge,…
New Ceres Views As Dawn Moves Higher
The brightest area on Ceres stands out amid shadowy, cratered terrain in a dramatic new view from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, taken as it looked off to the side of the dwarf planet. Dawn snapped this image on Oct. 16, from its fifth science orbit, in which the angle of the sun was different from that…
NASA Microthrusters Achieve Success On ESA’s LISA Pathfinder
A next-generation technology demonstration mission has just passed a big milestone. The Space Technology 7 Disturbance Reduction System (ST7-DRS) is a system of thrusters, advanced avionics and software managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. It has been flying on the European Space Agency’s LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, which launched from Kourou, French Guiana on…
First GRACE Follow-On Satellite Completes Construction
Construction is now complete on the first of the two satellites for NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, planned for launch in the December 2017/January 2018 timeframe. The satellite, built by Airbus Defence and Space at its manufacturing facility in Friedrichshafen, Germany, will spend the next several months undergoing testing at the…
NASA To Launch Fleet Of Hurricane-Tracking Smallsats
NASA is set to launch its first Earth science small satellite constellation, which will help improve hurricane intensity, track and storm surge forecasts, on Dec. 12 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) hurricane mission will measure previously unknown details crucial to accurately understanding the formation and…
NASA Space Telescopes Pinpoint Elusive Brown Dwarf
In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, NASA’s Spitzer and Swift space telescopes joined forces to observe a microlensing event, when a distant star brightens due to the gravitational field of at least one foreground cosmic object. This technique is useful for finding low-mass bodies orbiting stars, such as planets. In this case, the observations revealed a brown…
NASA Small Satellites Will Take A Fresh Look At Earth
Beginning this month, NASA is launching a suite of six next-generation, Earth-observing small satellite missions to demonstrate innovative new approaches for studying our changing planet. These small satellites range in size from a loaf of bread to a small washing machine and weigh from a few to 400 pounds (180 kilograms). Their small size keeps…
Curiosity Mars Rover Checks Odd-looking Iron Meteorite
Laser-zapping of a globular, golf-ball-size object on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover confirms that it is an iron-nickel meteorite fallen from the Red Planet’s sky. Iron-nickel meteorites are a common class of space rocks found on Earth, and previous examples have been seen on Mars, but this one, called “Egg Rock,” is the first on…
Art Turns Public Eyes (And Ears) Toward Space
You might not realize it, but there’s a silent symphony overhead at any given time: NASA’s satellites talking to Earth. They track our planet’s weather, the height of its oceans, and even the changing mass of its ice. Those science measurements are then beamed down to ground stations, where they’re processed for scientists studying our…