NASA's Lucy mission team has decided to suspend further solar array deployment activities. The team determined that operating the mission with the solar array in the current unlatched state carries an acceptable level of risk and further deployment activities are unlikely to be beneficial at this time. The spacecraft continues to make progress along its …
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 5:47 p.m. EDT on Jan. 10, 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 …
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 1:50 p.m. EST on Jan. 9, 2023. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured imagery 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 spacecraft …
By Rick Smith As NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer mission explores black holes, neutron stars, and other cosmic phenomena – helping to answer fundamental questions about extreme space environments – it relies on the mission operations team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP. Some 700 people – engineers, scientists, mission-operations personnel …
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 7:57 p.m. EST on Jan. 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 …
The final two investigations for the Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission—or GDC—have been selected. NASA recently announced that the Thermal Plasma Sensor (TPS)—led by Phillip Anderson from the University of Texas, Dallas, and the Near Earth Magnetometer Instrument in a Small Integrated System (NEMISIS)—led by Mark Moldwin from the University of Michigan, will join the GDC …
On Oct. 9, 2022, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a high-energy blast of light from deep space. The light came from a powerful explosion called a gamma-ray burst dubbed GRB 221009A that ranks among the most luminous known. Scientists around the world trained their telescopes on the aftermath. Michela …
The James Webb Space Telescope resumed science operations Dec. 20, after Webb's instruments intermittently went into safe mode beginning Dec. 7 due to a software fault triggered in the attitude control system, which controls the pointing of the observatory. During a safe mode, the observatory's nonessential systems are automatically turned off, placing it in a …
On Dec. 18, 2022, NASA's InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. The lander's power has been declining for months, as expected, and it's assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. It's unknown what prompted the change in its energy; the last time the mission contacted the spacecraft was on Dec. 15, …
SWOT has successfully made contact with ground stations here on Earth and is providing teams with early data on the spacecraft's health. A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency, SWOT will provide high-resolution measurements …
