After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu in 2020 to gather up dust and rocks, NASA's intrepid OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: deliver an asteroid sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earthly contaminants. "Once the sample capsule touches down, …
NASA's GLIMR instrument — short for Geostationary Littoral Imaging and Monitoring Radiometer — is moving to its building phase. Originally selected in 2019, GLIMR recently underwent a review known as Key Decision Point C – which evaluated the instrument's preliminary design and project plan to deliver the instrument by January 2025. On March 21, GLIMR …
Welcome to the OSIRIS-REx blog. Here you will find updates on NASA's first mission to collect an asteroid sample for analysis in labs around the globe. NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth now with samples it collected at the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20, 2020. The spacecraft will deliver …
The study of exoplanets is a key part of the James Webb Space Telescope's science goals. We asked Webb's Deputy Observatory Project Scientist Christopher Stark of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to tell us about one of the ways Webb studies other worlds. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has many different observing modes to study …
The satellite host of NASA's Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument recently arrived by aircraft at NASA's Kennedy Space Center ahead of its launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in early April. From a geostationary, or fixed, orbit aboard the Maxar-built Intelsat 40e, TEMPO will be the first satellite instrument to make hourly …
Whether in plants or animals, greenhouse gases or smoke, carbon atoms exist in various compounds as they move through a multitude of pathways within Earth's system. That's why NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission – scheduled to launch in January 2024 – was designed to peer down at Earth from space to see …
NASA's Parker Solar Probe completed its 15th close approach to the Sun on March 17, coming within 5.3 million miles of the scorching solar surface.
On March 9, the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite's main scientific instrument – the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) – returned to regular commissioning activities. KaRIn was shut off in late January. Since then, the team has worked to analyze the situation and developed a plan to restore operations utilizing a backup KaRIn …
After more than 15 years of scientific discoveries, NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, spacecraft is no longer supporting operations after experiencing issues with its battery. AIM's batteries initially started to decline in 2019, but the Earth-studying spacecraft continued to return a significant amount of data. Now, with further decline in the …
A massive eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, was detected escaping from the Sun at 11:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2023. The CME erupted from the side of the Sun opposite Earth. While resarchers are still gathering data to determine the source of the eruption, it is currently …
