In the age of same-day delivery, the International Space Station sent a package 249 miles down to Earth on Sunday in less than six hours. There was, however, one sizable difference between it and the cardboard box sitting on your front doorstep.
Category: NASA
What does it look like when a black hole devours a star? NASA offers clues
They can have a mass millions of times as large as the sun. They sit at the center of galaxies that have billions of stars.
Wandering satellites and space debris can now be found by a giant NASA antenna
NASA and other space agencies lose satellites and other space debris all the time, but now, they may be able to find them. Sometimes, you lose your keys.
After Math: Keep pace in the space race
It’s been a productive week for those of us trying to get the hell off this crazy planet. NASA showed off a radiation-proof flight vest for interplanetary astronauts while Blue Origin debuted its latest rocket engine and previewed its upcoming New Glenn spacecraft .
This Week at NASA: Orion Spacecraft’s Parachute System Test and More
NASA conducted the latest successful test of the Orion spacecraft’s parachute system on March 8 in the skies above the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The test was designed to evaluate the parachutes’ performance in an emergency abort situation that would require Orion to be jettisoned from the agency’s Space Launch System rocket during a launch.
Mars Colonists Might Need to Radically Alter Their Bodies and Minds
In 2016, two astronauts finished nearly a year of work on the International Space Station. NASA’s Scott Kelly and Russia’s Mikhail Kornienko were studied closely for changes in their physical and psychological health.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Mission Invades SXSW 2017
An interactive exhibit on NASA’s next flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope , has landed at the 2017 South by Southwest celebration in Austin, Texas. NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Northrop Grumman Corporation are hosting the space telescope exhibit from today through Saturday , NASA officials said in an announcement.
NASA reveals strange shape of Saturn’s moon Pan
Not all moons are round like the one orbiting our planet Earth. Saturn, the second largest planet in the solar system, has a strange-shaped moon called Pan.
Kyrie’s flat Earth and the science of understanding: Starkman and Princehouse
Between Kyrie Irving’s flat Earth and Isaac Newton’s apple tree, science remains a process of understanding: Glenn Starkman and Patricia Princehouse “Clear skies over much of the USA today,” astronaut Scott Kelly noted with this photo showing Earth’s spherical shape, taken from the International Space Station in September 2015. Scientists Glenn Starkman and Patricia Princehouse write that Kyrie Irving’s comments on challenging scientific convention could be the start of a beautiful conversation — even though it’s clear the Earth is not flat.
Bright Nights
The cities of Florida glow brilliantly in this 2012 view from the International Space Station. From the ground, the light sources blot out the view of the night sky.
Travel to the Red Planet is the next big biz (ad)venture
Commercial space missions, colonies on Mars and finding a way for the tourists of the future to book round-trip flights to the Moon were among the out-of-this-world ideas being discussed by brainiacs yesterday at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology forum aimed at helping private companies get a foothold in what could be a budding multibillion dollar economy. The university’s second annual New Space Age Conference focused on getting out in front of the space race of the new millennium, which is being fueled by private companies looking to create and expand a brand new commercial market for space travel.
NASA’s Europa Clipper to probe habitability of Jupiter’s icy…
Washington, March 12: To check the habitability of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, National Aeronautics and Space Administration is all set to launch ‘Europa Clipper’ in 2020. NASA on Friday announced that its upcoming mission to explore the habitability of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa will be officially called ‘Europa Clipper’.
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Senator Bill Nelson visited the Weiss School in Palm Beach Gardens to make the announcement that NASA has selected to use a satellite they built. Students at the school have spent years designing, building, and testing small satellites with the hopes one would go into orbit.
Apollo astronaut: ‘You go to heaven when you are born’
On February 27, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that two unnamed people are paying his rocket company, SpaceX, to send them on an auto-piloted trip around the moon in 2018. Later The Washington Post revealed that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and his own rocket company, Blue Origin, had circulated a 2020 moon colonization plan around Capitol Hill.
NASA shocked by amazing discovery at the moon
A new NASA radar technique has just found something astonishing circling the moon many miles away: a long-lost lunar probe launched by India that went missing eight years ago. Chandrayaan-1 is a very small spacecraft that is jut five feet on each size, half the size of a small car, and scientists were able to locate it with a remarkable new method using radar.
Attention Earthlings: Help Wanted in Finding a New Planet
The pursuit of Planet Nine -a hypothesized Neptune-like giant that some scientists believe may be cruising along a remote orbit in our solar system-can now go door-to-door. A new NASA-launched citizen science project seeks the public’s help in reviewing more than a million animations to identify moving space objects that could be new discoveries.
MIT conference to focus on space travel for the public
Trips into space, future habitats on Mars and moon tourism flights. Those are just a few of the aspects of “astropreneurship” being discussed this weekend at MIT.
Trump’s plans for NASA are not exactly rocket science
Donald Trump has won the presidency after narrowly carrying a few states to put him above 270 electoral votes. But… At his Senate confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath that he had never had contact with the… Despite promising to release his tax returns in a televised debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump continues to show that… Land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with base period 1951-1980.
ISS to House Cold Air Laboratory for Extreme temperature Atomic Research
As such, the space agency will be sending an ice chest-sized box to the International Space Station, where Nobel prize victor Eric Cornell and other scientists will conduct experiments. Project Scientist Robert Thompson of the JPL said: “Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity”.
NASA finds India’s lost lunar rover after 8 years
India’s first lunar probe – Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft – which was considered lost is still orbiting the moon, NASA scientists have discovered. The Indian Space Research Organisation lost communication with Chandrayaan-1 on August 29, 2009, almost a year after it was launched on October 22, 2008.
NASA Images Reveal Weird Shape of Saturn’s Moon Pan
After studying Saturn for more than 13 years, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has finally given us a close-up view of its small moon Pan. And it shows how strange the Saturn moon is.
Scientists grow potato under Mars-like conditions in Peru
Potatoes on Mars? Scientists are reporting promising results growing the tuber under conditions that mimic the Red Planet in an experiment in Peru linked to US space agency NASA. “Preliminary results are positive,” the International Potato Center said this week after a potato grew under simulated Mars atmospheric conditions in an experiment in Lima.
Fried Egg? Flying Saucer? Nope. Just Cool New Closeups of Saturn’s Moon Pan
This new view of Saturn’s moon Pan is the closest yet, snapped by Cassini from a distance of 15,268 miles on March 7, 2017. Pan measures 22 miles wide by 14 miles across and displays a number of small craters along with parallel ridges and grooves in addition to its relatively smooth equatorial “flap.”
Lost since 2009, Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 found orbiting moon, claims NASA
China announced plans to launch a space probe to bring back samples from the moon before the end of the year in what state media cast as competition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambitions to revitalise U.S. space exploration. The Chang’e 3 probe is JPL radar scientist Marina Brozovic said: “We have been able to detect NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar”.
Lost & found after 7 years: Chandrayaan-1 spotted orbiting moon
In this handout photograph provided by the Indian Space Research Organization, India”s maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, or Moon Craft in ancient Sanskrit, is seen successfully taking off at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, about 100 kilometers north of Chennai, India, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008. ” INDIA’S MAIDEN moon mission spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 has been found in deep space by a powerful earth-based interplanetary radar deployed by researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, over seven years after all communication with the spacecraft was lost.
New NASA radar technique finds lost lunar spacecraft
It is known as the “Mars Antenna” as it was first to receive signals from the first spacecraft to closely observe Mars, Mariner 4, on March 18, 1966. Finding derelict spacecraft and space debris in Earth’s orbit can be a technological challenge.
Green ice in Antarctica’s Ross Sea is due to plankton
A wide view of Antarctica’s Granite Harbor – a cove in the vicinity of the Ross Sea. The green floating ice is caused by phytoplankton at the water’s surface.
SpaceX Test Fires Rocket, Aims for March 14 Satellite Launch
The private spaceflight company SpaceX test fired a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday , setting the stage for a commercial satellite launch next week. SpaceX conducted the Falcon 9 static test fire at Launch Pad 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida to ensure that the rocket is ready to launch the communications satellite EchoStar 23 on Tuesday .
NASA Mars Orbiter shows images of back-to-back regional storms on the red planet9 min ago
Washington, March 10: In a major development, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has tracked images from the orbiter’s wide-angle Mars Color Imager on the surface of the red planet. The images that are captured show each storm growing in the Acidalia area of northern Mars, then blowing southward and exploding to sizes bigger than the United States after reaching the southern hemisphere.
It’s a ravioli! It’s a UFO! It’s a moon
NASA on Thursday released pictures of Pan, one of Saturn’s many moons, and its distinctive shape is drawing comparisons to flying saucers and stuffed pasta. The images of the moon come courtesy of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, and reveal the UFO-like form of the tiny satellite, which has an average radius of just 8.8 miles.
In a change of attitude, NASA appears to embrace private rockets
On Wednesday, NASA’s chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, flashed an interesting slide during a presentation that showed 23 different rockets, from the small Orbital ATK Antares and Russian Soyuz boosters all the way to SpaceX’s massive Interplanetary Transport System. Some of the boosters, such as the Soyuz, have flown often.
Very beautiful (and very expensive) watch contains mechanical solar system model
The Geo. Graham Orrery Tourbillon integrates a mechanical solar system model with meteorites as planets.
New experiment suggests potatoes can grow in harsh Mars-like conditions
The project demonstrates that specially bred potatoes may be able to withstand conditions on Mars, or changing conditions on our planet. Just a few things kept Mark Watney alive in The Martian – resourcefulness, wit, and a handful of spuds.
It’s official: Potatoes can grow on Mars
An experiment simulating conditions on Mars demonstrated that the hearty tubers can thrive even under the harsh conditions on the Red Planet. Two years after a humble potato patch co-starred in “The Martian,” scientists have found that fictional astronaut Mark Watney’s strategy for surviving on the Red Planet could actually work.
Report: China developing advanced lunar mission spaceship
China is developing an advanced new spaceship capable of both flying in low-Earth orbit and landing on the moon, according to state media. The newspaper Science and Technology Daily cited spaceship engineer Zhang Bainian as saying the new craft would be recoverable and have room for multiple astronauts.
ISS to house Cold Air Labratory for extreme temperature atomic research
The International Space Station will be home to the coldest place in the universe this summer after NASA scientists conduct experiments in a chamber that cools temperatures to near absolute zero. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology announced a plan Wednesday to send up the agency’s Cold Atom Laboratory, an ice-chest sized box that can lower its internal temperature to within one-billionth of a degree above absolute zero, the temperature at which all atomic motion stops.
Video: NASA’s Science Spy Plane Catches What Satellites Can’t
The ER2 high altitude research plane is a modified U-2 spy plane turned NASA aircraft that soars at the edge of space. Its goal? Keeping an eye on the Earth and its atmosphere, and studying hazardous weather situations like hurricanes.
Study reveals how potatoes could grow on Mars
Experiments to grow potatoes in the harsh soil of the southern Peruvian desert have revealed new promise for their ability to thrive on Mars. The dry soils in the Pampas de La Joya desert are the closest thing on Earth to the conditions of the red planet, and so far, researchers have found the potatoes are able to tolerate the environment.
House Passes NASA Bill, Cornyn Provisions to Set Goal of Astronaut Landing on Mars
U.S. Senator John Cornyn issued the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 442, the to require NASA to develop plans for the future of U.S. human space exploration, including setting the goal of landing an astronaut on Mars: “This bill’s passage demonstrates our nation’s strong commitment to the long-term goal of landing a human astronaut on Mars,” . “I thank my colleague Rep. Culberson for his work on this legislation, and I look forward to the President signing this bill into law so we can continue exploring the next frontier.”
House Passes NASA Bill, Cornyn Provisions to Set Goal of Astronaut Landing on Mars
U.S. Senator John Cornyn issued the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 442, the to require NASA to develop plans for the future of U.S. human space exploration, including setting the goal of landing an astronaut on Mars: “This bill’s passage demonstrates our nation’s strong commitment to the long-term goal of landing a human astronaut on Mars,” . “I thank my colleague Rep. Culberson for his work on this legislation, and I look forward to the President signing this bill into law so we can continue exploring the next frontier.”