NASA, SpaceX, and Europa Clipper mission managers met Friday, Oct. 4, to conduct a Flight Readiness Review at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the review, teams provided an update on the mission’s status and certified its readiness to initiate final launch preparation activities. Europa Clipper will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy …
NASA and SpaceX technicians recently completed several important milestones as they prepare for the upcoming launch of the agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. First, teams connected the Europa Clipper spacecraft to the payload adapter on Thursday, Sept. 26, inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in …
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its 21st close approach to the Sun on Sept. 30, equaling its own distance record by coming within about 4.51 million miles (7.26 million kilometers) of the solar surface.
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 8:18 a.m. ET on Oct. 3, 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 …
The small near-Earth asteroid 2024 PT5 was first observed on Aug. 7, 2024, by the Sutherland, South Africa telescope of the University of Hawai’i’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which is funded by NASA. Estimated to be about 33 feet (10 meters) wide, the asteroid does not pose a hazard to Earth. Because 2024 …
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 6:20 p.m. ET on Oct. 1, 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 …
Mission engineers at NASA have turned off the plasma science instrument aboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft due to the probe’s gradually shrinking electrical power supply.
Editor’s Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. Measuring the Hubble constant, the rate at which the universe is expanding, is an active area of research among astronomers around the world who analyze data from both ground- and space- based observatories. NASA’s James Webb …
Technicians completed loading propellants in the agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on Sunday, Sept. 22, inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Housed in the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission, Europa Clipper’s propulsion module is an aluminum cylinder 10 feet (3 meters) long and 5 …
Welcome to NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX). We’ve been talking about this validation campaign and now are finally here. “Here” being one of three main locations where PACE-PAX validation efforts are taking place: NASA’s Armstrong Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California. PACE-PAX uses the unique vantage point of the …
