NASA has selected two new missions to Venus, Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor. Part of NASA’s Discovery Program, the missions aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world when it has so many other characteristics similar to ours – and may have been the first habitable world in the solar system, complete with an ocean and […]
NASA’s annual maintenance visits to Poker Flat Research Range have resumed after a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with big projects this year including removal of a little-used launcher and the transfer of one radar to another facility. One crew has finished its work and departed. That crew focused on the launch facility’s […]
The U.S space agency NASA says its Perseverance rover has converted carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Martian atmosphere to oxygen, a critical step toward future human exploration of Mars. NASA on Monday said a toaster-size, experimental instrument on the rover called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), produced about 5.4 grams of […]
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this shot as it hovered over the Martian surface on Apr. 19, 2021, during the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) The U.S. space agency, NASA, Monday received images and data confirming its small helicopter, Ingenuity, successfully performed the first controlled powered flight of an aircraft […]
Making it through the frigid Martian temperatures after being deployed by NASA’s Perseverance rover is a major milestone for the small rotorcraft. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has emerged from its first night on the surface of Mars. Evening temperatures at Jezero Crater can plunge as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), which […]
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, […]
NASA/Youtube Watch an epic journey unfold on Thursday, Feb. 18 as NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars. To reach the surface of the Red Planet, the rover has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing.
Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face on Oct. 8, 2014. The image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which watches the sun at all times from its orbit in space. The active regions in this image appear brighter because those are areas that emit more […]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The search for life beyond Earth has largely revolved around our rocky red neighbor. NASA has launched multiple rovers over the years, with a new one currently en route, to sift through Mars’ dusty surface for signs of water and other hints of habitability. Now, in a surprising twist, scientists at MIT, […]