NASA News

Scientists thought Bennu’s surface was like a sandy beach, abundant in fine sand and pebbles, which would have been perfect for collecting samples. Past telescope observations from Earth had suggested the presence of large swaths of fine-grained material smaller than a few centimeters called fine regolith. But when NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission arrived at Bennu in late 2018, the mission saw a …

All the brightly colored plastic pieces might remind you more of something you’d find in a kids’ playroom than in a NASA clean room, but the team that built a full-scale replica of an early design of NASA’s Artemis water-hunting mobile Moon robot had some serious fun—while eliminating serious risk. Using a mix of 3D-printed plastic and metal parts, the …

The surface of Venus is completely inhospitable for life: barren, dry, crushed under an atmosphere about 90 times the pressure of Earth’s and roasted by temperatures two times hotter than an oven. But was it always that way? Could Venus once have been a twin of Earth – a habitable world with liquid water oceans? …

As NASA expands its quest to discover exoplanets — planets beyond our solar system — it also grows its toolbox. Over the summer, a new tool called NEID (pronounced NOO-id) delivered its first batch of data on the nearest and best-studied star, our Sun. The NEID spectrometer, which will help locate and characterize new worlds, …

Just two days after leaving the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, in a specialized container carefully strapped to the deck of a semi-trailer truck, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft arrived in California — its final stop here on Earth. The truck, spacecraft and a small motorcade of APL engineers and technicians …

Lakes provide drinking water for people, habitat for plants and wildlife, and a place to fish, boat and swim. But the water can become harmful to humans, animals and the ecosystem when toxic algae called cyanobacteria reach abnormally high levels due to warm, nutrient-rich water conditions. A now publicly available NASA dataset allows citizens and …

NASA’s Orion spacecraft will carry astronauts on future Artemis missions to the Moon and return them safely to Earth. Orion will be home to the crew on these long-duration missions, which help prepare for future destinations like Mars. The agency is working with industry and international partners to ensure the next-generation spacecraft is safe and …

Our corner of the universe, the solar system, is nestled inside the Milky Way galaxy, home to more than 100 billion stars. The solar system is encased in a bubble called the heliosphere, which separates us from the vast galaxy beyond – and some of its harsh space radiation. We’re protected from that radiation by the …

One way that scientists monitor climate change is through the measure of sea ice extent. Sea ice extent is the area of ice that covers the Arctic Ocean at a given time. Sea ice plays an important role in reflecting sunlight back into space, regulating ocean and air temperature, circulating ocean water, and maintaining animal …