Tag: Lockheed-Martin
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Scientists say thinning atmosphere drove the drying and cooling of Mars
Artist’s concept of a solar storm hitting Mars and stripping ions from the upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA/GSFC Data collected by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft in its first two years at Mars confirm suspicions that the solar wind is blasting away the planet’s atmosphere and helped transform the world from a warmer, wetter and potentially habitable world…
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Juno orbiter races by Jupiter on fourth science pass
This enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter seems to reveal a Jovian “galaxy” of swirling storms. The JunoCam imager acquired this image during Juno’s flyby Feb. 2 from an altitude of about 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers). Citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko enhanced the color to bring out the rich detail in the storm and…
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SpaceX nabs GPS launch contract as Air Force opens more missions for bidding
File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket launching from Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX The U.S. Air Force this week awarded SpaceX a contract to launch a Global Positioning System satellite in early 2019, concluding the second of as many as 15 competitions the military plans to run over the next year to pit SpaceX against…
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Orion’s parachutes tested under launch abort conditions
Credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily News A model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, in development to loft astronaut crews into deep space, was dropped from a U.S. Air Force cargo plane over Arizona on Wednesday in the latest in a series of tests to verify the capsule’s parachutes are up to the job of safely landing with…
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Lightning mapper beams back first views from space
A sensitive infrared camera mounted on NOAA’s new GOES-16 weather satellite has captured its first astounding images of lightning flashes from a perch more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) out in space. The first-of-its-kind imager can detect in-cloud, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, giving weather forecasters an inventory of the location, frequency and intensity…
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NASA’s Juno spacecraft to remain in current orbit around Jupiter
Artist’s concept of the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Concerns about the health of the Juno spacecraft’s main engine have compelled NASA managers to keep the research probe in its current arcing, high-altitude orbit around Jupiter, a decision that will delay the full science return from the $1.1 billion mission but should still allow…
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Juno dives over Jupiter’s cloud tops with main engine still offline
Updated at 3:30 p.m. EST with additional comments from Scott Bolton. This amateur-processed image was taken on Dec. 11, 2016, at 9:27 a.m. PST (12:27 p.m. EST), as NASA’s Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Eric Jorgensen NASA’s Juno spacecraft made a high-speed pass less than 3,000 miles over Jupiter’s turbulent…
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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe moonlights as asteroid sleuth
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will undertake a search for Earth-Trojan asteroids while on its outbound journey to the asteroid Bennu. Earth Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with Earth while remaining near a stable point 60 degrees in front of or behind the planet. Credit: University of Arizona/Heather Roper On course to collect specimens from…
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Following Trump’s lead, Pentagon orders reviews of Air Force One, F-35 fighter jets
The current Air Force One planes were built more than a quarter-century ago. (White House Photo) President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, has ordered reviews of the multibillion-dollar programs to acquire new Air Force One jets and more F-35 fighter jets – two programs that sparked his boss’ ire in the run-up to his inauguration.…
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New U.S. weather satellite with improved camera sends back first images
This full-disk image over the Americas was captured by GOES-16’s Advanced Baseline Imager at 1807 GMT (1:07 p.m. EDT) on Jan. 15. Credit: NOAA A new-generation weather satellite launched in November promising to deliver better images of hurricanes, storms and clouds than any mission before has returned its first tantalizing pictures from geostationary orbit. NOAA…