Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have received the first status report from the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which landed Feb. 18, 2021, at Jezero Crater attached to the belly of the agency’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. The downlink, which arrived at 3:30 p.m. PST (6:30 p.m. EST) via a connection through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, […]
This GIF shows the flash of an asteroid impacting Earth’s atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea on June 22, 2019. It was captured by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument aboard GOES-16, an Earth-monitoring satellite operated by NOAA and NASA. CIRA/CSU, RAMMB/NOAA/NASA › Larger view When a lightning detector on a NOAA weather satellite detected something […]
Since the Wright brothers first took to the skies of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, Dec. 17, 1903, first flights have been important milestones in the life of any vehicle designed for air travel. After all, it’s one thing to design an aircraft and make it fly on paper — or computer. It is quite […]