Tag: Interstellar Space
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Recoding Voyager 1—NASA’s interstellar explorer is finally making sense again
Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity’s first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations. Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal…
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Humanity’s most distant space probe jeopardized by computer glitch
Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission’s loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft. The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected…
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NASA selects SpaceX to launch mission studying interstellar space
This illustration shows the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe observing signals from the interaction of the solar wind with the winds of other stars. Credit: NASA NASA has awarded SpaceX a $109 million contract to launch the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, a NOAA space weather observatory, a robotic scout to map water on the moon,…
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Hubble catches best glimpse yet of interstellar interloper
The comet appears in front of a distant background spiral galaxy (2MASX J10500165-0152029) in this Nov. 19 image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy’s bright central core is smeared in the image because Hubble was tracking the comet. Comet Borisov was approximately 203 million miles from Earth in this exposure. Its tail of ejected…
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Hubble observes interstellar visitor
This Hubble image, taken on Oct. 12, 2019, is the sharpest view to date of the comet. Hubble reveals a central concentration of dust around the nucleus (which is too small to be seen by Hubble). Credit: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA) The Hubble Space Telescope has returned an image of a comet that…
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Voyager 1 probe fires long-dormant thrusters in interstellar space
Artist’s concept of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has fired a set of four control thrusters for the first time in 37 years, giving the long-lived probe a new way to point itself on its cruise into interstellar space 13 billion miles from Earth. The backup rocket jets were originally…