Beyond a fertile field of satellite communication antennas at Kennedy Space Center, an Atlas V rocket streaks into orbit in this long exposure photograph. In the thoughtfully composed image recorded on the evening of Jan. 30, the antennas in the foreground bring to mind the rocket’s payload, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. This TDRS-K […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS, MAHLI] What’s in this smooth soil on Mars? In late October, NASA’s robotic Curiosity rover stopped near a place dubbed Rocknest as it continues to explore Gale Crater on Mars. Rocknest is the group of stones seen near the top left of the above image […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] An international team of astronomers has used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a census of some of the universe’s earliest galaxies. The results, reported in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirm that galaxies formed gradually in the early universe and not in a dramatic spurt. […]
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space. Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun’s magnetic field lines are connected to […]
Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet in our solar system, revolves around the sun in a mere 88 days, making a tight orbit that keeps the planet incredibly toasty. Surface temperatures on Mercury can reach a blistering 800 degrees Fahrenheit — hot enough to liquify lead. Now researchers from NASA, MIT, the University of California […]
A self-proclaimed systems engineer, BTE Dan is the person behind Build the Enterprise, a website devoted to, well, building an actual, functional, space lasers ‘n all version of the USS Enterprise, the venerable pop-culture starship featured in the “Star Trek” film and television franchises. Estimated time frame? Twenty years. Suggested cost? $1 trillion. Proposed missions? […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Just as it captured the Phoenix lander parachuting to Mars in 2008, the HiRise camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) snapped this picture of the Curiosity rover’s spectacular descent toward its landing site on August 5 (PDT). The nearly 16 meter (51 foot) wide parachute and its payload […]
The truth is that only the United States has had the knowledge and moxie to successfully land a vehicle on Mars. We have now done it seven times, and no other nation has really come particularly close. And with the touchdown of the one-ton and highly sophisticated Curiosity, the U.S. has reached a whole new […]
PASADENA, Calif. — About 34 hours from the Mars rover Curiosity’s landing (scheduled for 01:31 am Eastern time on Monday), NASA brought us the latest weather forecast from the surface — dry and cold, with a slight chance of dust. Slight is good. Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a dust storm south […]
Click here for high-resolution image. From fresh rover tracks to an impact crater blasted billions of years ago, a newly completed view from the panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain where the voyaging robot spent the Martian winter. This scene, recorded from the mast-mounted color camera includes the rover’s […]
