Tag: JHUAPL
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Titan drone, comet sampler picked as finalists for NASA mission
Artist’s concept of the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. Credit: NASA NASA has narrowed its choices for a new billion-dollar robotic space mission: A nuclear-powered quadcopter to explore the hazy landscape of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, or a probe to scoop up a piece of a comet and return it to Earth. The space…
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NASA confirms contribution to Japanese-led Mars mission
Artist’s concept of the MMX spacecraft at Phobos. Credit: JAXA/NASA NASA announced Thursday it will fund development of a scientific instrument that will fly on Japan’s Martian Moons Exploration mission, a robotic probe set for launch in 2024 to bring back the first samples from Mars’ largest moon Phobos. A neutron and gamma-ray spectrograph developed…
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Scientists firm up flyby plan for New Horizons’s next destination
Artist’s illustration of the New Horizons spacecraft communicating with Earth. Credit: NASA Now more than two years outbound from its historic encounter with Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is on target for a fleeting flyby less than 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) from 2014 MU69, an icy, city-sized world set to become the most distant object…
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NASA unveils renamed solar probe
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION NASA’s first mission to go to the sun, the Parker Solar Probe, is named after Eugene Parker who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will…
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New Horizons to continue mission of discovery with Kuiper Belt encounter
Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Kuiper Belt object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/Alex Parker Scientists planning the the next phase of NASA’s New Horizons mission, a robotic craft that completed the first exploration of Pluto in 2015, are going into the flyby of a frozen, faraway city-sized clump of rock on New Year’s Day…
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Study shows Pluto should be counted among solar system’s ocean worlds
The expanse of Sputnik Planitia, the bright region visible in this image of Pluto, might cover an ocean of slushy water-ice. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Scientists believe they can explain how an ocean of water is lurking beneath an ice sheet inside Pluto’s prominent heart-shaped region, an iconic frozen landscape discovered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby…
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Final Pluto data transmission received from flyby probe
Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft transmitting data back to Earth through its 83-inch (2.1-meter) antenna. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The last bits of data collected during NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s speedy flyby of Pluto last year are back on Earth, scientists said Thursday, marking the official end of the probe’s prime mission. It took more…
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Pluto probe’s extended mission approved, but new Dawn destination denied
Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft’s encounter with a Kuiper Belt object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/Alex Parker NASA managers formally approved the New Horizons mission another speedy encounter with an object at the frontier of the solar system, but denied a request from scientists to redirect the Dawn spacecraft to visit a third destination in the…
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See the highest-resolution snapshots from July’s Pluto flyby
In this highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI Scientists are marveling at some of the best views of Pluto recorded by the New Horizons spacecraft during its July 14 flyby of the unexplored icy dwarf in a…
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NASA probe finds intriguing ice flows under hazy skies on Pluto
This new global mosaic of Pluto was created by combining four black-and-white images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager and color data from the probe’s Ralph instrument. The LORRI images were taken July 14, when New Horizons was approximately 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) from Pluto. Features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) are…