outer space Archives - Tennessee Star

NASA’s Next Mars Rover Sports Brawn, Brains, and Even a Helicopter

July 28, 2020July 27, 2020 The Associated Press

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.

Chinese Craft First To Land On Moon’s Far Side

January 4, 2019January 3, 2019 Admin

A Chinese spacecraft Thursday made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon in the latest achievement for the country’s growing space program. The relatively unexplored far side of the moon faces away from Earth and is also known as the dark side. A photo taken by the…

NASA Makes Space History with Distant Fly-By

January 2, 2019January 1, 2019 Admin

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…

Trump Issues Commercial Space Policy Directive on Eve of Anniversary of JFK’s Space Program Speech

May 26, 2018July 18, 2018 Admin

by Ginny Montalbano President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a space policy directive, calling for “updating and refocusing” those policies in a bid to promote innovation and modernize American commercial space policy. The White House said the move “reforms America’s commercial space regulatory framework, ensuring our place as a leader in space…

Elon Musk Publishes a New Academic Paper Detailing His Plans to Colonize Mars

March 29, 2018March 29, 2018 Admin

SpaceX’s founder and CEO published an academic paper earlier this month outlining his vision for a future where the Red Planet is permanently inhabited. Illustration of Musk’s vision for a Mars colony. “The base starts with one ship, then multiple ships, then we start building out the city and making…

NASA Discovers Mars Has a Magnetic Tail Twisted by Solar Wind

October 20, 2017October 20, 2017 Admin

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…

Giant Exoplanet Hunters: Look for Debris Disks

October 11, 2017 Admin

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.…

NASA Uses Ancient Origami to Maximize Spacecraft Design

September 25, 2017September 24, 2017 Admin

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…

The 9 Most Breathtaking Photos of Saturn’s Cassini Voyage

September 20, 2017September 20, 2017 Admin

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.…

A Timeline of Cassini’s Plunge of Fiery Doom on Friday

September 15, 2017September 20, 2017 Admin

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.…