NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of its journey toward launch as soon as this fall. As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will help researchers better understand the boundary of the heliosphere, a sort of magnetic...
NASA’s TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) now is targeting no earlier than summer 2025 for launch in order to give the mission spacecraft team additional time to prepare. The mission is a pair of satellites that will study how the solar wind — the continuous stream of ionized particles escaping the Sun...
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are targeting June 2025 for launch of the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite mission. The first mission to carry both L-band and S-band radar, NISAR will scan nearly all of Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. The mission will measure changes in the...
As NASA continues work to reestablish command of its Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft, the mission team’s modeling indicates that the lighting conditions from May through mid-June are favorable to provide enough sunlight on the spacecraft’s solar panels to recharge the batteries to an operational level and potentially regain command of the spacecraft. Contact with the small...
Engineers with NASA’s Psyche mission are working to determine what caused a recent decrease in fuel pressure in the spacecraft’s propulsion system.
NASA’s Dragonfly, the first rotorcraft designed for science exploration on another planet, has passed its Critical Design Review. The mission to Saturn’s icy moon Titan will investigate prebiotic chemical processes and complex organic compounds that, on Earth, are the building blocks of life. Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and...
NASA’s EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission has taken its first measurements. These “first light” observations show that EZIE is poised to reveal crucial details about Earth’s auroral electrojets — powerful electric currents that flow through our upper atmosphere where auroras glow in the sky. This information will help us better understand Earth’s connection to space and mitigate the negative impacts of...
The Lucy operations team has confirmed NASA’s Lucy spacecraft phoned home after its encounter with the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson. The spacecraft’s closest approach to the asteroid occurred at 1:51 pm EDT on Sunday. Initial information indicates that the spacecraft is in good health. The team has commanded the spacecraft to start sending the data...
This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on science data. K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light-years from Earth. Illustration: NASA, CSA, ESA, J. Olmsted (STScI), Science: N. Madhusudhan (Cambridge University) NASA’s James …
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will soon reach the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson. In this image, created by stacking images that the Lucy spacecraft took during its approach, the asteroid appears as a series of points in front of the static background of stars and galaxies. In addition to the asteroid brightening as the spacecraft approaches...