NASA News

–Studying comet composition helps explain how early Earth may have received water and organics. –New research used “Himalaya,” an icebox-like instrument. Astronomers tinkering with ice and organics in the lab may have discovered why comets are encased in a hard, outer crust. Using an icebox-like instrument nicknamed Himalaya, the researchers show that fluffy ice on …

Space travel is difficult and expensive – it would cost thousands of dollars to launch a bottle of water to the moon. The recent discovery of hydrogen-bearing molecules, possibly including water, on the moon has explorers excited because these deposits could be mined if they are sufficiently abundant, sparing the considerable expense of bringing water …

Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh could only dream of a spacecraft flying past the small planet he spotted on the edges of the solar system in 1930. Yet the newest views of Pluto from NASA’s approaching New Horizons probe – released today, on the late American astronomer’s birthday – hint at just how close that dream …

The “Pineapple Express” has set up again and is bringing wet weather to the U.S. Pacific Northwest. An animation of satellite imagery from NOAA’s GOES-West satellite from Feb. 1 to Feb. 4, 2015 captured the movement of a stream of clouds associated with moisture that is expected to bring rain and snow to the region …

The space shuttle left its 30 years of achievements written in the sky above and in the hearts of the astronauts, American and international, who flew in them. “Personally, looking back on it, I think the shuttle has been one of the most marvelous vehicles that has ever gone into space or done anything,” said …

When blizzard warnings were in effect in New England, NASA’s ISS-RapidScat instrument provided forecasters with wind speed data on the nor’easter that had hurricane-force wind gusts. “The nor’easter has been over a large enough region that RapidScat has had ascending and descending passes over parts of it every 24 hours,” said Doug Tyler who creates …

On count day number 15, the Aural Spatial Structures Probe, or ASSP, was successfully launched on a NASA Oriole IV sounding rocket at 5:41 a.m. EST on Jan. 28, 2015, from the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. Preliminary data show that all aspects of the payload worked as designed and the principal investigator Charles …

Researchers studying data from NASA’s Cassini mission have observed that Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, behaves much like Venus, Mars or a comet when exposed to the raw power of the solar wind. The observations suggest that unmagnetized bodies like Titan might interact with the solar wind in the same basic ways, regardless of their nature …

NASA and NOAA have provided night-time and daytime views of the Blizzard of 2015 from the Suomi NPP and the GOES-East satellites. A combination of the day-night band and high resolution infrared imagery from the NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite showed the historic blizzard near peak intensity as it moves over the New York through Boston …