This summer, with sea ice across the Arctic Ocean shrinking to below-average levels, a NASA airborne survey of polar ice just completed its first flights. Its target: aquamarine pools of melt water on the ice surface that may be accelerating the overall sea ice retreat. NASA’s Operation IceBridge completed the first research flight of its […]
Gravity: we barely ever think about it, at least until we slip on ice or stumble on the stairs. To many ancient thinkers, gravity wasn’t even a force–it was just the natural tendency of objects to sink toward the center of Earth, while planets were subject to other, unrelated laws. Of course, we now know […]
The JunoCam camera aboard NASA’s Juno mission is operational and sending down data after the spacecraft’s July 4 arrival at Jupiter. Juno’s visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine and placed itself into orbit around the largest planetary inhabitant of our solar system. The first high-resolution images of the […]
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA—There were hugs, “high fives” and handshakes at Juno mission control at Jet Propulsion Laboratory Monday, as the unmanned spacecraft completed its engine burn to enter Jupiter orbit and start its 20-month mission mapping the giant planet. Scientists and engineers in Pasadena, California, felt “a huge sigh of relief, and excitement,” said principal investigator […]