NASA has removed its Janus mission from the Psyche mission's 2023 launch manifest after an assessment determined that Janus would not be on the required trajectory to meet its science requirements as a result of Psyche's new launch period. The Janus mission, which was designed to send twin small satellite spacecraft to study two separate …
UPDATE AS OF DECEMBER 15, 2022: The Lucy team updated the spacecraft's attitude controller on Dec. 6, resolving the previously observed vibration interaction between the controller and the solar array structural modes. As previously reported, the vibration was too small to pose a risk and the spacecraft continues to operate safely. The team resumed solar …
By Audrey Delpech, postdoc in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences department at UCLA Being part of the NASA S-MODE oceanographic mission was a great experience for me. It was only my second oceanographic mission and my first one on a US research vessel. I learned a lot about how to use the different instruments, interpret …
NASA announced Wednesday that its Lunar Trailblazer mission is approved to go forward, targeting a launch in mid-2023. NASA confirmed Lunar Trailblazer in 2020 as part of the agency's Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program to provide an understanding of the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the Moon, as well as …
As of Nov. 5, 2022, InSight is generating an average of 310 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.33 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).
NASA, the French space agency Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), and SpaceX are now targeting Monday, Dec. 12, for the launch of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch SWOT from Space Launch Complex-4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. After considering the schedule for completion …
By Kelly Luis, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology // Aboard the Bold Horizon // ʻAʻohe o kahi nana o luna o ka pali; iho mai a lalo nei; ʻike ke au nui ke au iki, hea lo a he alo. The top of the cliff isn't the …
By Gwendal Marechal, postdoctoral researcher at the Colorado School of Mines // Aboard the Bold Horizon // Upon leaving the Breton coastlines after my Ph.D., I started a postdoc at the Colorado School of Mines. After one month in the Colorado mountains, I traveled to Newport, Oregon, to board the Bold Horizon for one month …
By Joseph D'Addezio, oceanographer with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory // NASA's Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi // NASA's S-MODE mission faces quite the challenge: robustly observe, for the first time, ocean features spanning up to about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) across. Currently, the oceanographic community routinely observes and studies very large ocean features, …
NASA's Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) will study atmospheric gravity waves to understand the flow of energy through Earth's upper atmosphere and space. Powerful waves are formed by weather disturbances, such as strong thunderstorms, brewing hurricanes, or winds rushing upward over massive obstacles at Earth's surface, like the towering Andes Mountains.
