Tag: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  • Fate of NASA’s InSight Mars mission to be decided soon

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    Updated March 7. The back shell of the InSight spacecraft is lowered onto the lander in a clean room at Lockheed Martin. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lockheed Martin NASA is close to deciding whether to spend an extra $150 million to send the InSight lander to Mars in 2018 or cancel the mission after an instrument problem made…

  • Launch of NASA’s next Mars mission delayed until at least 2018

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    NASA’s InSight lander is pictured inside Lockheed Martin’s satellite factory in Colorado. Credit: Lockheed Martin Persistent problems with a seismometer instrument package will keep NASA’s InSight Mars lander from departing for the red planet during a March launch period, and officials said they will consider shelving the $675 million project if the issues prove too…

  • Curiosity rover reaches Martian sand dunes

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    The rippled surface of the first Martian sand dune ever studied up close fills this Nov. 27, 2015, view of “High Dune” from the Mast Camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover. This site is part of the “Bagnold Dunes” field of active dark dunes along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS NASA’s Curiosity rover…

  • Mars rover steers toward active sand dunes

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    The dark band near the top of this Nov. 18 image from Curiosity’s navigation camera is part of the Bagnold Dunes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The Curiosity rover’s next destination is a moving mound of wind-blown dark sand blanketing the base of Mount Sharp, the focal point of the Mars mission’s research, scientists said this week. It…

  • NASA turning to U.S. industry to build asteroid redirect craft

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    Artist’s concept of the Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission spacecraft with a captured boulder from an asteroid. Credit: NASA NASA is seeking proposals from U.S. satellite manufacturers interested in building the spacecraft bus for the agency’s initiative to pluck a boulder from an asteroid and drive it into lunar orbit, with plans to select multiple winners…

  • Radar on NASA’s SMAP Earth observing satellite declared lost

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    Artist’s concept of the SMAP spacecraft and its rotating antenna. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech One-half of the instrument payload aboard NASA’s $916 million Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite has failed after collecting just two months of data, NASA announced Wednesday after weeks of troubleshooting turned up no progress in recovering the sensor. A radiometer instrument on the…

  • Mountain-climbing Mars rover sends back low-angle selfie

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    This low-angle self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover from Aug. 5 shows the vehicle at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called “Buckskin” on lower Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has recorded itself in another of its famous self-portraits as the mobile robot analyzes bore…

  • NASA to rely on Mars program’s silent workhorse for years to come

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    Artist’s concept of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, aging and arthritic a decade after its launch, remains productive and is expected to be the primary pipeline for high-resolution maps of Mars for scientists and mission planners over the next decade. Scientists who want to study Mars’ enigmatic history, tenuous water…

  • NASA troubleshoots radar outage on new SMAP satellite

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    Artist’s concept of the Soil Moisture Active Passive spacecraft in orbit. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Engineers have so far been unable to restart a balky radar aboard NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive environmental satellite launched in January, robbing scientists of the most detailed maps of how much water is locked up in the top layers of Earth’s…

  • NASA confident in finding fix for test parachute failure

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    Two frames from a video camera on-board NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator test vehicle show the craft’s supersonic parachute inflate, then begin to tear apart. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech One day after a supersonic parachute crafted to land robots on Mars failed on a test flight high above Hawaii, NASA officials said Tuesday a jackpot of high-resolution video…