As progress continues in Kourou, we check in with another one of Webb's instruments, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and its scientific lead, Pierre Ferruit: "It was more than 20 years ago that the European Space Agency (ESA) teamed up with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to build the amazing James Webb Space Telescope! The …
From a flash on the Sun to a glimmer in the sky, last week's solar storms illustrated the connection between the Sun and Earth. Three solar eruptions made their journey to Earth, culminating in aurora borealis, or northern lights, visible as far south as Utah. It began with two active regions on the Sun – …
Propelled by a recent swing past Venus, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is healthy and performing normally as it heads toward its next closest approach to the Sun on Nov. 21.
By Dragana Perkovic-Martin, Principal Investigator for DopplerScatt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory // SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA // 11/02/21 Yesterday was a hard down day for the team – everyone needed a rest after a very active week before. The hard down days are in NASA airborne rules and ensure that fatigue does not set in and …
The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft, which will study the polarization of X-rays coming to us from some of the universe's most extreme sources – including black holes and dead stars known as pulsars – arrived at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Nov. 5, 2021. NASA's first mission dedicated to …
By Alison Gold // NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, MARYLAND // NASA's Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) relies on two aircraft, 17 remote-controlled vehicles, a ship and dozens of drifting instruments to make its detailed study of ocean eddies, currents and whirlpools. The researchers aim to assess how these small, high-energy ocean events contribute to …
The Lucy spacecraft continues to operate in cruise mode – the standard mode for outbound orbit. The team has begun turning on instruments. L'TES and L'Ralph have been powered on and are working normally. Turning on L'LORRI is scheduled for Nov. 8, 2021. Other than the solar array, all subsystems continue to work normally. The …
You don't need big-city credentials to work with NASA. Just ask Andrew Carton and Ryan Helland who now work on NASA's TRACERS Mission.
In Kourou, Webb went through a thorough checkout called the Comprehensive Systems Test (#6). The test included turning on all of the room-temperature electronics and a test of the mirror actuators that will be used to align the mirror segments during commissioning. The tests went very well, and the next time we move the mirrors, …
By Nick Pizzo // OFF THE COAST OF CALIFORNIA // The October deployment of NASA's Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) mission is underway and a current of excitement has filled the halls of our virtual meetings. Over the past two years, more than 50 members of the S-MODE project have been meeting virtually to prepare …
