By Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx Program Manager, Lockheed Martin On Sept. 24, samples of asteroid Bennu will arrive on Earth, thanks to NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and its mission to obtain fragments of this rocky body. The flight portion of the mission, many years in the making, will end when its sample return capsule lands in the …
NASA's Psyche spacecraft took another step closer on its upcoming journey to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. On Aug. 14, a team of technicians and engineers moved the spacecraft from Building 1 to Building 9 at Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Inside Building 9, technicians will load …
On Aug. 12, 2018 – five years ago this week – NASA's Parker Solar Probe blasted off atop a powerful Delta IV rocket.
NASA researcher Joaquin Chaves calls it "ground truthing," even though land is nowhere in sight. This spring, Chaves boarded the Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) research cruise for six weeks of sampling water and taking measurements as the ship traversed the Atlantic Ocean. His team, based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, uses …
NASA's Parker Solar Probe executed a short maneuver on Aug. 3, 2023, that kept the spacecraft on track to hit the aim point for the mission's sixth Venus flyby on Monday, Aug. 21, 2023.
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 4:46 p.m. EDT on Aug. 7, 2023. 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 high-frequency (HF) radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose …
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 6:21 p.m. EDT on Aug. 5, 2023. 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 LunaH-Map (Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper) mission, a briefcase-sized lunar orbiter that launched as a ride share on NASA's Artemis I mission last year, has ceased operations after successfully demonstrating its neutron spectrometer can detect water and ice at the lunar surface. The LunaH-Map CubeSat was designed to map ice deposits across the Moon's South …
NASA's Psyche spacecraft has completed another milestone. Solar arrays are now ready to power the spacecraft on a 2.5-billion-mile (4-billion-kilometer) journey to a metal-rich asteroid to help us learn more about planet formation. A team of engineers and technicians received, prepared, and installed the solar arrays on the spacecraft at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility …
UPDATED Aug. 4, 2023: NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2. The agency's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar "shout" more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way …
