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NASA News
The latest updates from deep space missions, planetary defense, and scientific breakthroughs across the cosmos.
MarsClimbing the Ladder to Life Detection
In the past two decades, NASA spacecraft have identified potentially habitable environments throughout the solar system and beyond. Spacecraft on Mars have found evidence that lakes and streams once covered the planet, protected by a long-gone thick atmosphere. At Saturn’s moon Enceladus, the Cassini spacecraft sniffed plumes of water jetting out of Enceladus’s icy shell—detecting …
MoonNew NASA Position to Focus on Exploration of Moon, Mars and Worlds Beyond
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is taking a giant leap focusing the agency’s exploration of the Moon, Mars and our Solar System. Effective immediately, Steve Clarke is SMD’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration. He will serve as the agency’s interface between the NASA mission directorates, the scientific community, and other external stakeholders in developing a …
ExoplanetsChandra Scouts Nearest Star System for Possible Hazards
In humanity’s search for life outside our Solar System, one of the best places scientists have considered is Alpha Centauri, a system containing the three nearest stars beyond our Sun. A new study that has involved monitoring of Alpha Centauri for more than a decade by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory provides encouraging news about one …
James WebbEngineers Solve Excessive Heat Removal from NASA’s Webb Telescope
How will NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shed the heat generated by its science instruments and their supporting electronics? To anyone who is not an engineer or scientist, the answer might be complex and “baffling,” and it turns out the process is exactly that. Webb’s four science instruments are held within a support structure called …
The SunNASA’s Hi-C Launches to Study Sun’s Corona
NASA and its partners launched a rocket-borne camera to the edge of space at 2:54 p.m. EST May 29, 2018, on its third flight to study the Sun. The clarity of images returned is unprecedented and their analysis will provide scientists around the world with clues to one of the biggest questions in heliophysics – …
AsteroidsTiny Asteroid Discovered Saturday Disintegrates Hours Later Over Southern Africa
A boulder-sized asteroid designated 2018 LA was discovered Saturday morning, June 2, and was determined to be on a collision course with Earth, with impact just hours away. Because it was very faint, the asteroid was estimated to be only about 6 feet (2 meters) across, which is small enough that it was expected to …
The SunThe Case of the Relativistic Particles Solved with NASA Missions
Encircling Earth are two enormous rings — called the Van Allen radiation belts — of highly energized ions and electrons. Various processes can accelerate these particles to relativistic speeds, which endanger spacecraft unlucky enough to enter these giant bands of damaging radiation. Scientists had previously identified certain factors that might cause particles in the belts …
MarsScientists Shrink Chemistry Lab to Seek Evidence of Life on Mars
An international team of scientists has created a tiny chemistry lab for a rover that will drill beneath the Martian surface looking for signs of past or present life. The toaster oven-sized lab, called the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer or MOMA, is a key instrument on the ExoMars Rover, a joint mission between the European …
ExoplanetsNASA’s New Planet Hunter Snaps Initial Test Image, Swings by Moon Toward Final Orbit
NASA’s next planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is one step closer to searching for new worlds after successfully completing a lunar flyby on May 17. The spacecraft passed about 5,000 miles from the Moon, which provided a gravity assist that helped TESS sail toward its final working orbit. As part of camera commissioning, …
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