Solar System Exploration Stories
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In 2019, Betelgeuse dimmed in brightness, sparking speculation that it may soon explode as a supernova. While it likely won’t explode quite yet, we can preview its fate by observing the nearby Crab Nebula.
After nearly five years on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has traveled almost 25 miles (40 kilometers), and the mission team has been busy testing the rover’s durability and gathering new science findings on the way to a new region nicknamed…
A key discovery from NASA’s Cassini mission in 2008 was that Saturn’s largest moon Titan may have a vast water ocean below its hydrocarbon-rich surface. But reanalysis of mission data suggests a more complicated picture: Titan’s interior is more likely…
The same historic facilities that some 50 years ago prepared NASA’s twin Voyager probes for their ongoing interstellar odyssey are helping to ready a towering commercial spacecraft for a journey to the Moon. Launches involve brutal shaking and astonishingly loud…
Mesas and dunes stand out in the view snapped by HiRISE, one of the imagers aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. After nearly 20 years at the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has snapped its 100,000th image of…
All 10 instruments aboard NASA’s newly launched IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) mission have successfully recorded their first measurements in space. With these “first light” observations, the spacecraft is now collecting preliminary science data as it journeys to its…
NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory has captured its first images from space, revealing rare views of Earth and the Moon in ultraviolet light. Taken on Nov. 17 — still months before the mission’s science phase begins — these “first light” images…
Images captured by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe as the spacecraft made its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun in December 2024 have now revealed new details about how solar magnetic fields responsible for space weather escape from the Sun —…
The center leverages AI along with JPL’s unique infrastructure, unrivaled tools, and years of operations expertise to support industry partners developing future planetary surface missions. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Wednesday inaugurated its Rover Operations Center (ROC),…
NASA has selected two science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during the Artemis IV mission to the lunar south polar region. The instruments will improve our knowledge of the lunar environment to support NASA’s…