Rosetta bound for outer Solar System after final Earth swingby This morning, mission controllers confirmed that ESA's comet chaser Rosetta had swung by Earth at 8:45 CET as planned, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. view more (2009-11-16)
ESA spacecraft may help unravel cosmic mystery When Europe's comet chaser Rosetta swings by Earth tomorrow for a critical gravity assist, tracking data will be collected to precisely measure the satellite's change in orbital energy. The results could help unravel a cosmic mystery that has stumped scientists for two decades. view more (2009-11-13)
Follow Rosetta's final Earth boost ESA's comet chaser Rosetta will swing by Earth for the last time on 13 November to pick up energy and begin the final leg of its 10-year journey to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. ESA's European Space Operations Centre will host a media briefing on that day. view more (2009-11-05)
NRL sensor provides critical space weather observations Launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard an United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle, Oct. 18, 2009, the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Limb Imager (SSULI) developed by NRL's Space Science Division and Spacecraft Engineering Department offers a first of its kind technique for remote sensing of the ionosphere and thermosphere from... view more... (2009-11-04)
Meteorite from September 25 fireball event recovered and presented When Tony Garchinski heard a loud crash just after 9 p.m. on Friday, September 25 he didn't think much of it. That is, until he awoke the next morning to find the windshield of his mom's Nissan Pathfinder with a huge crack in it. Making note of the 'unusual' rocks he later found on the car's hood, Garchinski chalked the incident up to vandalism... view more... (2009-10-19)
NAE announces award winners John Casani and Sheila Widnall During its 2009 annual meeting, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will present two awards for extraordinary impacts on the engineering profession. view more (2009-10-02)
Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high. view more (2009-09-30)
CU-Boulder space scientists set for final spacecraft flyby of Mercury NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which is toting an $8.7 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument, will make its third and final flyby of Mercury on Sept. 29 -- a clever gravity-assist maneuver that will steer it into orbit around the rocky planet beginning in March 2011. view more (2009-09-29)
Deep Impact and Other Spacecraft Find Clear Evidence of Water on Moon New data from the Deep Impact spacecraft and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument aboard India's recently ended Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, provide, for the first time, clear evidence that water exists on the surface of the Moon. view more (2009-09-25)
NASA Goddard Shoots the Moon to Track LRO On certain nights, an arresting green line pierces the sky above NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It's a laser directed at the moon, visible when the air is humid. No, we're not repelling an invasion. Instead, we're tracking our own spacecraft. view more (2009-09-25)
Brown Scientists Announce Finding of Water on the Moon Brown University scientists have made a major discovery: The moon has distinct signatures of water. The discovery came from a paper published in Science detailing findings from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), a NASA instrument aboard the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1. Carle Pieters, professor of geological sciences at Brown, is the principal... view more... (2009-09-24)
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's LAMP shedding light on permanently shadowed regions of the Moon NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18 of this year, has begun its extensive exploration of the lunar environment and will return more data about the Moon than any previous mission. view more (2009-09-18)
NASA Researchers Make First Discovery of Life's Building Block in Comet NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. view more (2009-08-18)
NASA and NOAA'S GOES-14 satellite takes first full disk image The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-14, provided its first visible full disk image of Earth on July 27, at 2:00 p.m. EDT. The prime instrument on GOES, called the Imager, is taking images of Earth with a 1 kilometer (km) or 0.62 mile resolution from an altitude of 36,000 km (22,240 miles) above Earth's surface,... view more... (2009-07-29)
LROC's first look at the Apollo landing sites The imaging system on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently had its first of many opportunities to photograph the Apollo landing sites. view more (2009-07-20)
NRL's ANDE-2 Launches Aboard STS-127 The Naval Research Laboratory's satellite suite, the Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment 2 (ANDE-2), launched aboard NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour on July 15, 2009. view more (2009-07-20)
GOES-O Satellite Reaches Orbit and Renamed GOES-14 On June 27, 2009, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O, soared into space during a spectacular launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. GOES-O has now been renamed and its solar array has been deployed. view more (2009-07-13)
ASU instrument takes better look at Mars minerals A slow drift in the orbit of NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft that mission controllers started nine months ago is now giving an ASU instrument on the spacecraft a better and more sensitive view of minerals on the surface of Mars. view more (2009-06-23)
IBEX spacecraft detects fast neutral hydrogen coming from the moon NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence. view more (2009-06-19)
Magnetic Tornadoes Could Liberate Mercury's Tenuous Atmosphere As the closest planet to the sun, Mercury is scorching hot, with daytime temperatures of more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 450 degrees Celsius). view more (2009-06-03)
| |