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 …
On July 26, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its engines for about 63 seconds to slightly thrust itself onto a course closer to Earth. Preliminary tracking data indicates OSIRIS-REx changed its velocity, which includes speed and direction, by 1.3 miles, or 2 kilometers, per hour. It's a tiny but critical shift; without course adjustments like this …
On July 18-20, the team behind NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission rehearsed recovering a mock sample return capsule from the location where the real one, with fragments of asteroid Bennu, will land on Sept. 24: the Utah desert. Though the team has rehearsed portions of the recovery operation many times this year, this was the most realistic …
After a launch postponement made its primary science targets inaccessible to the spacecraft, NASA has concluded the Janus mission and directed the project to prepare the spacecraft for long-term storage. Designed to send twin small satellite spacecraft to study two separate binary asteroid systems, Janus was originally a ride-along on the Psyche mission's scheduled 2022 …
By Rick Smith When Italian researcher Luca Baldini stepped down as analysis coordinator for NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope in 2016 to help develop IXPE, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, colleagues presented him with a flamethrowing guitar. It was a spot-on gift for a musician and scientist who, in his spare time, crafts his …
July 12 marks the first anniversary of science and amazing discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. To celebrate the year of spectacular discoveries, on July 12, 14 and throughout the summer, there will be multiple events online and live across the U.S. where the public can join in. The schedule of Webb first anniversary …
The capsule looked like something from a 1960s sci-fi flick. Resting on the ground, slightly tilted, its white heat shield flaked off in places, it looked how one would expect after speeding in from outer space and streaking across the sky like a shooting star. Despite its appearance, the mini-fridge-sized object had, in fact, never …