NASA News

Team Develops New Tool to Assure Ultra-Stable Space Telescopes Finding and characterizing dozens of Earth-like planets will require a super-stable space telescope whose optical components move or distort no more than a few picometers — a measurement smaller than the size of an atom. It also will require next-generation tools with which to assure that …

On July 6, 2016, engineers instructed NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, to roll 360 degrees on one axis. SDO dutifully performed the seven-hour maneuver, while producing some dizzying data: For this period of time, SDO images – taken every 12 seconds – appeared to show the sun spinning, as if stuck on a pinwheel. …

When NASA and its international partners launch the precision science instrument Hi-C – or High-Resolution Coronal Imager – aboard a sounding rocket later this month to study the sun’s atmosphere, it will include improvements to its camera performed by engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Capable of delivering some of the …

Imagine a future spacecraft following New Horizons’ trailblazing path to Pluto, but instead of flying past its target – as New Horizons did to explore Pluto and beyond – the next visitor touches down in the midst of tall mountains on the icy plains of Pluto’s heart. There’s no need to wait for that fantasy …

One year ago, NASA’s New Horizons mission made history by exploring Pluto and its moons – giving humankind our first real look at this fascinating world on the frontier of our solar system. Since those amazing days in July 2015 the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted numerous images and many other kinds of data home …

Where were you at 7:49 a.m. Eastern Time on July 14, 2015? Three billion miles from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, moving at speeds that would get it from New York to Los Angeles in about four minutes, was pointing cameras, spectrometers, and other sensors at Pluto and its moons – distant worlds that humankind …

As NASA spacecraft explore deeper into space, onboard computer electronics must not only be smaller and faster, but also be prepared for extreme conditions. A prime example is shown in these images: a family of Application Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASICs, microchips specifically designed to measure the particles in space – the very stuff that …

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch September 2016 and travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. But before the science team selects a sample site, they can find out a bit about Bennu’s elemental make-up. To determine the composition of Bennu’s surface, the …

This article is for students grades K-4. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Jupiter is so big that all the other planets in the solar system could fit inside it. More than 1,300 Earths would fit inside Jupiter. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. From Earth, it is almost always the …