Since antiquity, Mars has been a source of myth, lore, and inspiration. It is also an exciting place to research — a legitimate candidate for us to find some form of alien life. Since the 1960s, Mars has been a popular destination for space missions. For the first time, NASA has invited the private sector ...
Studies of neurological organoids, plant growth, and shifts in body fluids aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 71 are among the scientific investigations that NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and Tracy C. Dyson will help support. The crew members are targeting launch to the space station in February and March. Work ...
Capable of receiving both radio frequency and optical signals, the DSN’s hybrid antenna has tracked and decoded the downlink laser from DSOC aboard NASA’s Psyche mission. An experimental antenna has received both radio frequency and near-infrared laser signals from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft as it travels through deep space. This shows it’s possible for the giant dish antennas ...
NASA and Lockheed Martin formally debuted the agency’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft. Using this one-of-a-kind experimental airplane, NASA aims to gather data that could revolutionize air travel, paving the way for a new generation of commercial aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound. “This is a major accomplishment made possible only through ...
A colorful, festive image from NASA shows different types of light containing the remains of not one, but at least two exploded stars. This supernova remnant is known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B for short) and is part of a larger region of space where stars have been continuously forming for the past ...
Psyche was the Greek goddess of the soul, born a mere mortal and later married to Eros, the God of love. Who knows why the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis gave her name to a celestial object he observed one night in 1852? Psyche was only the 16th “asteroid” ever discovered: inhabitants of the Solar ...
After a journey of billions of kilometers, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has culminated in a small black capsule blazing through the sky before touching down in the Utah desert. Inside is likely to be the largest-ever sample of dust and rock returned from an asteroid. Extracted and brought back with great technical ingenuity from an asteroid ...
In 1977, five years before ET asked to “phone home,” two robotic spacecraft began their own journeys into space — Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Almost 46 years later, after exploring the Solar System and beyond, one of those spacecraft — Voyager 2 — has lost contact with Earth. All communications with Voyager 2 go ...
What would we do if we spotted a hazardous asteroid on a collision course with Earth? Could we deflect it safely to prevent the impact? Last year, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tried to find out whether a “kinetic impactor” could do the job: smashing a 600 kg spacecraft the size of a ...
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched into Earth orbit on Friday, December 16, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, and engineers are working to prepare the mission to begin measuring the height of water on over 90 percent of Earth’s surface, providing a high-definition survey of our planet’s water for ...