NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) experienced a flight computer reset during a planned contact and the spacecraft went into contingency mode on Feb. 18. While fight computer resets have happened before, this time the team lost the ability to command the spacecraft during the subsequent reset recovery. The team also was unsuccessful in regaining command …
The CubeSat to Study Solar Particles (CuSP) launched as an Artemis I payload on 1:47 AM EST on Nov. 16, 2022. CuSP was deployed from its canister about eight hours after launch. Approximately two hours after deployment, CuSP transmissions were received by an Open Loop Receiver (OLR) operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Radio Science …
THE GREAT SPRITES CHASE A NASA scientist and night-sky fanatic chase the elusive lights across Oklahoma. The odds are not in their favor. By Lina Tran It wasn't dark enough. We'd driven east for two hours from Oklahoma City, and still, a stubborn red light blinked from a nearby wind farm. Paul Smith sighed with …
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are determining how to move forward with the joint Geotail mission since discovering the spacecraft's last operational data recorder has failed. Originally, Geotail was equipped with two data recorders to collect the mission's scientific data. One …
I recently had the honor of giving the laureate lecture on behalf of Eugene "Gene" Parker, winner of the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy. It was one of the biggest moments of my career. It was also one of the hardest. Gene received the award in 2020 "for pioneering and fundamental studies of the solar wind …
NASA's citizen science projects are collaborations between scientists and interested members of the public. Through these collaborations, volunteers known as citizen scientists have helped make thousands of important scientific discoveries. Aurorasaurus is one such project that tracks auroras around the world in real time via reports on its website and on Twitter. Aurorasaurus often partners …
By Emmanuel Masongsong Using a NASA-funded CubeSat, scientists have uncovered a new source of super-fast, energetic electrons raining down on our planet, which can have implications for space infrastructure and atmospheric modeling. Scientists from the University of California Los Angles (UCLA) observed this rain, known as "electron precipitation", from low-Earth orbit using the Electron Losses …
At the Sun Greetings from the Sun! Today is the final stop of our #SolarTour and we've got some big news from Parker Solar Probe. Hot off the press! We've touched the Sun! Parker Solar Probe is officially the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun's upper atmosphere – the corona – sample particles and …
Near the Sun We're nearing the end of our solar tour, which means we're getting closer to the star of the show! We sent Parker Solar Probe to the Sun to investigate some of our star's biggest mysteries. The closer we get, the more discoveries we make. The Sun's hottest mystery One of the big …
The Solar Cycle Everything we've seen so far on the solar tour has been shaped by the Sun's activity, which ebbs and flows over an 11-year cycle. To understand the Sun's effects on space, we need to get to the bottom of the solar cycle. How one scientist predicts the solar cycle Solar scientist Lisa …
