Blogs

The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 5:43 a.m. ET on Sept. 12, 2024. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to …

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft recently completed the shaking, chilling, baking, and other testing needed to ensure it can survive launch and the harsh conditions of space. Now that environmental testing is done, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, is putting the orbiter and its science instruments through flight system software tests …

Engineers working on NASA’s Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft’s thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering.

In 2025, NASA will launch its first mission to image the magnetic fingerprint of intense electrical currents that flow high in our atmosphere when auroras shimmer above Earth’s poles.

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission passed a mission planning milestone, known as Key Decision Point E, on Monday. It now is approved to continue to proceed toward launch, with a launch period that opens Thursday, Oct. 10.

NASA announced Friday it will not fuel the two ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft at this time, foregoing the mission’s upcoming October launch window. While future launch opportunities are under review, the next possible earliest launch date is spring 2025.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe executed a short maneuver on Aug. 26 that kept the spacecraft on course for the mission’s seventh and final planned Venus flyby on Nov. 6.

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission remains on track, with a launch period opening on Thursday, Oct. 10. The next major milestone for Clipper is Key Decision Point E on Monday, Sept. 9, in which the agency will decide whether the project is ready to proceed to launch and mission operations. NASA will provide more information at …

NASA’s Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) mission — a spacecraft that will study the Sun’s atmosphere — passed a critical mission review on Aug. 21, 2024. The review, called Key Decision Point C, evaluated the mission’s preliminary design and program plan to achieve its target launch readiness date in 2027. With the successful review, MUSE now …

Stephen Broccardo, research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, is the principal investigator for the Sea-going Sky-Scanning Sun-tracking Atmospheric Research Radiometer (SeaSTAR). The ship-based instrument is one of many in a campaign set out to gather data around the world to check the information that NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean …