President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated billionaire Jared Isaacman to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during his second administration.
Trump has been filling out critical roles in his next administration since he won reelection last month, including nominating his presidential Cabinet.
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A Boeing spacecraft successfully returned to Earth on Saturday, without the pilots on board.
The Boeing Starliner has been plagued with technical problems since it was launched into space with astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore more than three months ago, essentially stranding the pilots in space. NASA and Boeing have been deliberating options as to how to get Williams and Wilmore home and decided to keep them in space for the time being rather than fly them home on the troubled return vessel, which successfully touched down in New Mexico on Saturday.
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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill on Friday of galactic proportions.
“Pluto is the official state planet,” House Bill 2477 simply states.
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The battle for global dominance pitting the U.S. against China and Russia may soon become otherworldly – after the United States’ two largest rivals announced plans to collaborate on building a nuclear power plant on the moon.
Though such a plan might seen farfetched, it’s certainly not new.
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NASA said it is working on a timeline for its next crewed mission to the moon after a Congressional watchdog reported that the space agency’s planned 2025 date was “unrealistic.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in late November that NASA’s timeline for the Artemis III mission was “unrealistic.”
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The Biden White House is pushing to give veto power over major Pentagon contracts to a group of climate activist groups that advocate for establishing “guardrails” on economic growth, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.
The White House proposed a rule in November that requires major contractors for the Department of Defense (DOD), NASA, and Government Services Agency (GSA) to submit climate-related goals to a consortium of activist organizations, called the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), for validation. If the SBTi rejects the contractor’s plan to reduce emissions, the company would no longer be eligible to compete.
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NASA on Thursday announced plans to create a scientific study starting this Fall to investigate “unidentified aerial phenomena,” also known as UFOs.
The space agency stressed in a press release that there is no evidence showing that the aircraft are of extra-terrestrial origins.
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Items representing Tennessee State University (TSU) were part of the cargo aboard a Boeing spacecraft that recently returned to earth after a successful six-day mission to the International Space Station, the university announced in a press release.
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Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos offered to waive $2 billion in payments to secure his spaceflight company Blue Origin a NASA contract.
Bezos asked NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in an open letter Monday to award Blue Origin a contract to construct a Human Landing System (HLS), a lunar-landing vehicle, as part of the Artemis program, offering to waive up to $2 billion in fees. Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX had been awarded the $2.9 billion contract in April, beating out Blue Origin’s bid, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Artemis program is intended to return human astronauts to the Moon, with a manned mission to Mars planned as well. Though the program was initially planned as a joint contract, it was awarded solely to SpaceX due to budgetary constraints which Bezos’ offer sought to alleviate, according to the letter.
“Blue Origin will bridge the HLS budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2 billion to get the program back on track right now,” Bezos wrote in the letter.
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Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk always wanted to fly. She had her first flying lesson when she was nine years old and grew up making wooden planes, building treehouses, riding horses, biking, hunting, and fishing. As a young girl growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, Wally recalls, “I did everything that people didn’t expect a girl to do.”
Wally’s curiosity and love of flying, however, would ultimately shape the rest of her life. She obtained her flying license at Stephens College when she was in her teens, then joined the “Flying Aggies” aviation team at Oklahoma State University, where she earned a degree in education. Wally then got her first job at Fort Sill, Oklahoma where she was the only female flight instructor.
At the height of the Space Race, in 1961, when she was just 22 years old, Wally became infatuated with the idea of taking her passion for flying to the next level, as an astronaut in space.
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A senior NASA employee has plead guilty to bank fraud after applying for over $350,000 in COVID-19-related relief. On Monday, NASA Senior Executive Service employee Andrew Tezna pleaded guilty to submitting fraudulent applications for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, Economic Injury Disaster loans, and COVID-19 unemployment benefits for his retired mother-in-law.
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration made history Monday morning when it conducted the first ever powered and controlled flight on a different planet.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Ingenuity, a solar-powered helicopter, took flight on Mars for more than 39 seconds, reaching a maximum altitude of 10 feet, the agency announced. Hours after the flight, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California confirmed the success after it received data sent from the helicopter.
“Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement Monday.
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration released the first photos taken by its Perseverance rover on Mars after it became just the fifth rover to ever successfully complete the landing.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) photos released Saturday showed Mars’s vast landscape and rocky terrain. On Thursday, Perseverance successfully completed its landing on the Red Planet after a nearly seven-month flight from Earth.
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In a wide-ranging interview on “Just the News AM,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine touted his agency’s innovations in 3D-organ printing, immunization, and fiber optics made possible through microgravity in space.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on Thursday applauded the United States’ recent ending of nine years of reliance on Russia to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station, while also warning of the growing threat of Chinese and Russian anti-satellite technologies.
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NASA launched a Northrop Grumman Antares rocket from its Wallops Island facility on Friday evening; the launch was visible across much of eastern and central Virginia. The rocket will send a Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station with a $23 million experimental toilet, other hardware, and food resupplies including garlic, apples, brie cheese and dark chocolate covered cranberries.
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Texas A&M professor and NASA researcher Zhengdong Cheng was arrested Sunday for alleged conspiracy, false statements, and wire fraud.
According to a United States Department of Justice press release, Cheng allegedly “willfully took steps to obscure his affiliations and collaboration with a Chinese University and at least one Chinese-owned company.”
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Two NASA astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday in a dramatic, retro-style splashdown, their capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico to close out an unprecedented test flight by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
It was the first splashdown by U.S. astronauts in 45 years, with the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry people to and from orbit. The return clears the way for another SpaceX crew launch as early as next month and possible tourist flights next year.
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With eight successful Mars landings, NASA is upping the ante with its newest rover.
The spacecraft Perseverance — set for liftoff this week — is NASA’s biggest and brainiest Martian rover yet.
It sports the latest landing tech, plus the most cameras and microphones ever assembled to capture the sights and sounds of Mars. Its super-sanitized sample return tubes — for rocks that could hold evidence of past Martian life — are the cleanest items ever bound for space. A helicopter is even tagging along for an otherworldly test flight.
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A University of Tennessee – Knoxville associate engineering professor has been arrested and indicted on three counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements for allegedly hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving funding from NASA, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Anming Hu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK). “Hu allegedly committed fraud by hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving funding from NASA,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers. “This is just the latest case involving professors or researchers concealing their affiliations with China from their American employers and the U.S. government. We will not tolerate it.” “The United States Attorney’s Office takes seriously fraudulent conduct that is devised to undermine federally-mandated funding restrictions related to China and Chinese universities,” said U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey for the Eastern District of Tennessee. “The University of Tennessee has cooperated with the investigation, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office values the university’s assistance in this matter.” The indictment alleges that beginning in 2016, Hu engaged in a scheme to defraud NASA by concealing his affiliation…
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The hole in the ozone layer shrank to its smallest size since scientists began recording it, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.
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by Lee Edwards Let us pause to celebrate the 50th-anniversary today of a mission once thought impossible: the landing of a man on the moon. Let us proclaim, without embarrassment, that America, and only America, had the requisite leadership, scientific community, and resources to make it possible for Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong to take that giant leap for mankind. Let us freely admit we needed a kick to get started. That happened when the Soviet Union put the first satellite known as Sputnik in orbit and pushed ahead of the United States in the space race. The Cold War was red hot, and everything was measured on how it affected that global conflict. As one commentator wrote, “the United States could not afford [a] slight to its technical expertise and economic strength.” In a dramatic address in May 1961, President John F. Kennedy tasked NASA with the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” and to do so before the end of the decade. The following year, Kennedy raised the stakes of the Apollo program by calling space “a new frontier” and declaring: “We choose to go to the moon, not…
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by Shelby Talcott NASA announced its plan to open the International Space Station (ISS) as early as 2020 to private astronauts who want to see life on the other side of Earth’s atmosphere. Parts of the ISS will be opened for space tourism and commercial filming, according to The Washington Post. Private astronauts can use the ISS for “missions of up to 30 days,” NASA said in its announcement in New York on Friday. .@Space_Station is open for commercial business! Watch @Astro_Christina talk about the steps we're taking to make our orbiting laboratory accessible to all Americans. pic.twitter.com/xLp2CpMC2x — NASA (@NASA) June 7, 2019 “Commercial companies will play an important role both here … and around the moon, working with NASA to test technologies, train astronauts and develop a sustainable human presence,” said Christina Hoch, a resident of the ISS, in a video on Twitter. Russia has already let private citizens onto the station, so it won’t be the very first time a non-professional astronaut heads to space, WaPo reported. Companies have already reserved spots, including and Axiom Space of Houston and Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, The New York Times reported. Bigelow Aerospace plans to use SpaceX,…
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A female astronaut is due to set a record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, the U.S. space agency said Wednesday, the same astronaut who was to have been in the first all-female spacewalk scrapped over lack of a right-sized spacesuit. Astronaut Christina Koch, who completed the spacewalk with a man instead of a female colleague last month, will remain in orbit on board the International Space Station until February, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said. Part of NASA’s study of the effects of long spaceflights on the human body, Koch will spend 328 days in space. The 40-year-old astronaut has been in orbit since last month. “One month down. Ten to go,” Koch wrote Wednesday on Twitter. “Privileged to contribute my best every single day of it.” In late March, NASA canceled what would have been the first all-female spacewalk with Koch and astronaut Anne McClain due to a lack of a spacesuit in the right size for McClain. The walk was would have occurred during the final week of Women’s History Month. On board the orbiting space station, astronauts work on a range of experiments in biology, biotechnology, health, earth, space and other sciences. The…
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NASA has made it clear they want astronauts back on the Moon in 2024, and now, they are zeroing in on the Red Planet – the US space agency confirmed that it wants humans to reach Mars by 2033. Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator, said Tuesday that in order to achieve that goal, other parts of the program – including a lunar landing – need to move forward more quickly. “We want to achieve a Mars landing in 2033,” Bridenstine told lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill. “We can move up the Mars landing by moving up the Moon landing. The Moon is the proving ground,” added the former Republican congressman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump. NASA is racing to enact the plans of Trump, who dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to announce that the timetable for once again putting man on the Moon had been cut by four years to 2024. The new date is politically significant: it would be the final year in Trump’s eventual second term at the White House. Many experts and lawmakers are concerned that NASA cannot make the deadline, especially given the major delays in the development of its new heavy-lift…
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Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday called for landing astronauts on the moon within five years, an accelerated pace that would aim to put Americans on the lunar south pole. Pence said NASA needs to achieve that goal “by any means necessary.” Speaking at a meeting of the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama, he said NASA rockets and lunar landers will be replaced by private craft, if required. “It’s time to redouble our effort,” he said. “It can happen, but it will not happen unless we increase the pace.” Now, the earliest possible landing on the moon by NASA isn’t until 2028, Pence said. He acknowledged talent — and money — will be necessary to pull it off earlier. Announcement comes with warning Pence warned that if NASA can’t put astronauts on the moon by 2024, “we need to change the organization, not the mission.” The space agency must transform into a leaner, more accountable and more agile organization, and must adopt an “all-hands-on-deck approach,” he said. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine assured Pence that NASA will do everything possible to meet the deadline. Some outside experts were skeptical of the new timeline. “I will be astonished if this happens,”…
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by Michael Bastach Another major headline-grabbing climate study suggesting oceans have warmed faster than previously thought is full of “factual errors and misleading statements,” according to independent scientist Nic Lewis. Lewis challenged the climate paper’s central arguments that more recent estimates of ocean heat content (OHC) are higher than those cited in the United Nations’ 2014 climate report which vindicated climate models thought to be showing too much warming. “It is therefore misleading to claim that the warming is larger over the 1971–2010 period than reported in [the U.N.’s 2014 climate report],” Lewis wrote in an article published Monday on climate scientist Judith Curry’s blog. Lewis claims the ocean warming paper gets its alarming results from an improper treatment of the U.N.’s 2014 report, and that ocean heat content trends were “significantly smaller” than climate model estimates from 2005 to 2017. Lewis’ post challenging the study also included a response from lead author Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Cheng argued the conclusions he and his co-authors came to were “sound.” “If the alternative analysis method proposed by Nic Lewis is used, the change is not quite as dramatic as implied in some of the associated press releases,” Cheng…
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Just 33 minutes into the New Year, NASA’s New Horizons probe made space exploration history, flying by the most distant body ever visited by a spacecraft from earth. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and operates the spacecraft, said Tuesday it had “zipped past” the object known as 2014 MU69, or Ultima Thule. About 10 hours later, Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman said “We’ve just accomplished the most distant flyby,” to enthusiastic applause from colleagues. New Horizons, which is the size of a baby grand piano and part of an $800 million mission launched in 2006, collected data for four hours after the flyby. Scientists said it will take almost two years for the probe to send back all the data it collected during its encounter with Ultima Thule. Early blurry images showed and oblong shaped object nearly 35 kilometers long and more than 14 kilometers wide. More images and data were expected to begin arriving later Tuesday, giving scientists the first close look at a building block of the planets in our solar system. “Everything we are going to learn about Ultima … are going to teach us about the original formation conditions of objects in…
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by Tim Pearce Multiple federal agencies are pushing agenda-driven climate science on their websites, according to The Heartland Institute. The Trump administration has taken a public stance supporting fossil fuels and questioning the scientific “consensus” of climate change research. Parts of federal websites should be overhauled or taken down completely to conform to the administration’s stance on climate change and fossil fuel energy production, Heartland says. Trump administration agencies continue to push “climate alarmism” and publish “propaganda” on their websites despite President Donald Trump’s position on climate change and the use of fossil fuels, according to The Heartland Institute. Heartland researchers audited the websites of federal agencies for information that seemed to contradict the public stance of President Donald Trump and his administration’s agenda to expand American energy production, including fossil fuel production. Heartland researchers found numerous examples of federal agencies pushing an anti-fossil fuel narrative, according to sections of a draft report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Federal executive branch websites are littered with political propaganda instead of objective science,” Heartland senior environment and energy policy fellow James Taylor said in a statement to TheDCNF. “To the extent scientific issues are discussed, they are presented in a…
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by Alex Christy NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is looking to the future of Mars exploration after NASA successfully landed its InSight Mars Lander on Monday. “This accomplishment represents the ingenuity of America and our international partners and it serves as a testament to the dedication and perseverance of our team. The best of NASA is yet to come, and it is coming soon,” Bridenstine said of the success of InSight’s landing on the Martian surface, according to a NASA press release Monday. Bridenstine addressed NASA’s future after receiving a congratulatory phone call from Vice President Mike Pence, according to Space. “You ask what’s happening next? Right now, at NASA there is more underway probably than since I don’t know how many years past. It’s like there’s a drought and all of a sudden all these activities at once. So, we’re busy. We’re going to be working through the holiday — a lot of amazing discoveries to be made, and we’re looking forward to them,” Bridenstine said. Bridenstine views the Trump administration’s priority of returning to the moon as NASA’s first step to an eventual manned mission to Mars, Space reports. Trump’s memorandum from December 2017 states America will go beyond…
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by Chris White NASA is ordering an investigation into SpaceX’s culture and commitment to safety after company CEO Elon Musk took a hit off a marijuana cigarette in September on a livestreamed podcast. The agency’s review will look at both Boeing and SpaceX, both of which are responsible for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station. Officials will examine anything that would impact safety, The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed officials. NASA’s move comes after top officials complained after Musk smoked weed on a Sept. 7 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” while attempting to explain why he sometimes gets caught in Twitter battles with his critics. His behavior during the podcast prompted the probe, officials told WaPo. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine reiterated those concerns. He told reporters that the agency wants to reassure the public that transporting astronauts into space is safe. “If I see something that’s inappropriate, the key concern to me is what is the culture that led to that inappropriateness and is NASA involved in that,” he said. “As an agency we’re not just leading ourselves, but our contractors, as well. We need to show the American public that when we put an astronaut on…
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by CHQ Staff Universal Pictures’ chose Oscar-winning French director Damien Chazelle and Canadian actor Ryan Gosling to lead “First Man,” the story of the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s quest to land a man on the moon. The story line focuses on astronaut Neil Armstrong and the years 1961 to 1969 when the taxpayers of the United States spent billions of dollars to send Armstrong and fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin to the Moon. What was the most photographed moment of the first two and a half hours man spent on the Moon was when Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag at Tranquility Base and saluted it. The problem with First Man is, America, and the American flag, get left entirely out of Chazelle and Gosling’s movie. Ryan Gaydos of Fox News reports Ryan Gosling, the Canadian actor who portrays Armstrong in the movie, defended the decision to not show the flag in an interview with the UK’s Telegraph. Gosling was asked at the Venice Film Festival whether omitting the scene was deliberate and the actor attempted to sidestep the question by responding that the moon landing “transcended countries and borders.” “I think this was widely regarded in the end as…
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Bradford Smith, a NASA astronomer who acted as planetary tour guide to the public with his interpretations of stunning images beamed back from Voyager missions, has died. Smith’s wife, Diane McGregor, said he died Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of complications from myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disorder. He was 86. Smith led the NASA team that interpreted pictures taken by Voyager space probes as they passed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and then presented the images to the public. He was a retired professor of planetary sciences and astronomy at the University of Arizona and research astronomer at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. At NASA press conferences on Voyager discoveries following their launch in 1977, Smith was a star, and known for a certain dry wit. At a press conference showing a multicolored, pockmarked moon of Jupiter called Io, Smith quipped, “I’ve seen better looking pizzas than this.” A video of the conference ran on national broadcast news and his quote was on front pages around the world, said Ellen Hale, a former Associated Press communications director and friend of Smith’s. A 1981 People magazine profile called Smith “the nation’s tour guide” who showed the…
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Vowing to reclaim U.S. leadership in space, President Donald Trump announced Monday he is directing the Pentagon to create a new “Space Force” as an independent service branch aimed at ensuring American supremacy in space. Trump envisioned a bright future for the U.S. space program, pledging to revive the country’s flagging efforts, return to the moon and eventually send a manned mission that would reach Mars. The president framed space as a national security issue, saying he does not want “China and Russia and other countries leading us.” “My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest spacefaring nation,” Trump said in the East Room, joined by members of his space council. “The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers.” Today, President Trump delivered remarks as the Space Council gathered to discuss American leadership in space exploration and commerce. pic.twitter.com/0xCE59guNC — The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) June 18, 2018 Trump had previously suggested the possibility of creating a space unit that would include portions equivalent to parts of the Air Force, Army and Navy. But his directive will task the Defense Department to begin the process of establishing the ‘Space…
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by Jason Snead Before he became the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn was famous for another pioneering achievement. In 1957, he became the first man to fly across the country faster than the speed of sound, traveling from California to New York in just three hours and 23 minutes. Glenn’s aptly named “Project Bullet” seemed at the time to herald a new age of supersonic flight, in which passengers could cross the globe in an afternoon, thanks to American ingenuity and technological prowess. Yet, 61 years later, supersonic commercial aviation remains an unrealized dream. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Beginning in 1969, the Concorde proved that routine commercial supersonic flight was technically feasible. It carried passengers at an altitude high enough to see the curvature of the Earth and flew them fast enough to outrun a sunset. But for all its splendor, the Concorde had problems. It was an expensive, government-subsidized gas guzzler that flew just one commercially viable route—shuttling wealthy passengers back and forth between New York and London. When it was retired from service in 2003, it left…
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The International Space Station is becoming more and more independent. Now, astronauts can carry out microbial DNA sampling, which opens up exciting avenues for practical research. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins poses for a picture during the first sample initialization run of the Biomolecular Sequencer investigation. Credits: NASA. Space Germs The mere idea of identifying microbes in…
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John Young, a legendary US astronaut who went into space six times, orbited the moon and then walked on its craggy surface, has died, NASA announced Saturday. He was 87 and died late Friday of complications from pneumonia, the space agency said. He lived in a Houston suburb just minutes from the NASA Space Center.
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NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft — cruising interstellar space billions of miles from Earth — was back on the right track Friday thanks to thrusters that were fired up for the first time in 37 years. The unmanned spaceship was launched along with its twin, Voyager 2, more than 40 years ago to explore the outer planets…
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Artist’s conception of the complex magnetic field environment at Mars. Yellow lines represent magnetic field lines from the Sun carried by the solar wind, blue lines represent Martian surface magnetic fields, white sparks are reconnection activity, and red lines are reconnected magnetic fields that link the surface to space via the Martian magnetotail. Credit: Anil Rao/Univ.…
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There’s no map showing all the billions of exoplanets hiding in our galaxy — they’re so distant and faint compared to their stars, it’s hard to find them. Now, astronomers hunting for new worlds have established a possible signpost for giant exoplanets.…
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It might be lingering bashfully on the icy outer edges of our solar system, hiding in the dark, but subtly pulling strings behind the scenes: stretching out the orbits of distant bodies, perhaps even tilting the entire solar system to one side.…
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Making waves in the physics community. A visualization of how merging black holes create ripples in spacetime NASA Three American physicists won the 2017 Nobel Prize for work that enabled the first observation of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime. Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne were each instrumental to LIGO, the…
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Ready set go. Elon Musk still really wants to put people in a canister, set off a controlled explosion beneath them, and shoot them out of the Earth’s atmosphere towards a barren, airless piece of rock—preferably one 33 million miles away. On Friday at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, Musk announced an updated version…
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It’s pretty much official now: there are gravitational waves. A collaboration between the LIGO Lab and the Virgo interferometer collaboration just reported the first joint detection of gravitational waves, adding much more weight to previous detection events. It’s not the first time gravitational waves had been detected. Physicists had recorded three previous events, offering serious proof to support the hypothesis first proposed by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago. Both the LIGO and Virgo detectors picked up the same event – a binary black hole system colliding.…
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Engineers are exploring the ancient art of Origami to create folding spacecraft. An ancient art form has taken on new shape at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Origami, the Japanese tradition of paper-folding, has inspired a number of unique…
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If you sometimes find yourself in the midst of everyday annoyances and frustrations from work, it can be helpful to take some time out your day for a humbling dose of ethereal wonder. Which is why we compiled our ten favorite photos from the Cassini spacecraft’s 13-year voyage around Saturn.…
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Cassini program manager at JPL, Earl Maize, left, and spacecraft operations team manager for the Cassini mission at Saturn, Julie Webster embrace after the Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn, Friday, Sept. 15, 2017 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Photo Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky › Full image and caption › Full image and caption”/> A…
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Here’s how the planned crash into Saturn will go down. Cassini’s last moments were meticulously planned out. NASA/JPL-Caltech After almost 20 years of exploration, discoveries and gorgeous pictures, it’s time to say goodbye to Cassini. Launched in 1997, it took the Cassini spacecraft seven years to reach it’s ultimate destination—Saturn. For thirteen years, it has sent…
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is headed toward its Sept. 15 plunge into Saturn, following a final, distant flyby of the planet’s giant moon Titan. The spacecraft made its closest approach to Titan today at 12:04 p.m. PDT (3:04 p.m. EDT), at an altitude of 73,974 miles (119,049 kilometers) above the moon’s surface.…
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This artist’s concept from August 2015 depicts NASA’s InSight Mars lander fully deployed for studying the deep interior of Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and caption › Full image and caption”/> Preparation of NASA’s next spacecraft to Mars, InSight, has ramped up this summer, on course for launch next May from Vandenberg Air Force…
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee — A total solar eclipse is often attributed to various things. Coincidence. Magic. Divine intervention. The rare event is so grand that even scientists are moved to use words beyond the realm of science. Scott Bolton of NASA used all the words above when talking to reporters Monday at First Tennessee Park. The city of Nashville hosted a sold-out eclipse viewing party at the ballpark, home to the Nashville Sounds minor league baseball team. Nashville was the largest U.S. city in the path of totality, along which the moon for a few minutes completely blocked the sun. Bolton is the principal investigator for NASA’s Juno Mission, a program designed to learn more about the planet Jupiter. He was at the ballpark to speak to those in the crowd about the dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime event that would unfold before their eyes. While a solar eclipse is in some ways mystifying, it’s also something that can be predicted with surprising accuracy. “We know the moon’s orbit and we know the earth’s orbit very well,” Bolton said. “We measure these things over many years.” In the past, people were limited by hand calculations. But computer technology enables us today to make accurate calculations far into…
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