Tag: NASA
-
NASA astronaut joins Russian Soyuz crew for April flight to space station
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos pose for a crew portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia. Credit: Roscosmos NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, veteran of a 168-day stay in space in 2017-18, will join two Russian cosmonauts aboard…
-
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will give NASA a spin in lunar gravity on suborbital flight
A drone’s eye view shows Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lifting off for a test flight. (Blue Origin Photo) With backing from NASA, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture will upgrade its New Shepard suborbital spaceship to provide lunar levels of gravity for future experiments. “Humanity has been dreaming about artificial gravity since…
-
Perseverance rover aces first test drive on Mars
This image was taken during the first drive of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars on March 4, 2021, shortly after its first drive after landing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Two weeks into its mission of exploration on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover has completed its first test drive and returned some 7,000 images from its station in Jezero…
-
NASA names Perseverance rover landing site on Mars after Seattle sci-fi pioneer Octavia E. Butler
An image sent back to Earth by NASA’s Perseverance rover shows the tread tracks left behind by its first drive on Mars on March 4. (NASA / JPL-Caltech) Fifteen years after her death, Seattle science-fiction author Octavia E. Butler has joined an exclusive pantheon of space luminaries memorialized on Mars. Today NASA announced that the…
-
NASA, Boeing looking to begin SLS Exploration Upper Stage manufacturing in 2021
Manufacturing and assembly development work for the Space Launch System (SLS) Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) is starting to ramp up at the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans. NASA’s SLS Program and EUS prime contractor Boeing are preparing to begin construction of the test and flight articles that will be needed to certify and…
-
Parker Solar Probe pulls back the veil on Venus’s night side
When flying past Venus in July 2020, Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR instrument, short for Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow — light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules in the nightside. The prominent dark feature…
-
Second prevalve issue delays completion of SLS Core Stage Green Run campaign
A problem with another one of the eight prevalves in the Artemis 1 Core Stage for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) has postponed a second test-firing to wrap up the Green Run campaign. The SLS Program’s first flight article has been installed in the B-2 Test Stand at the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi…
-
Perseverance rover operating nominally in preparation for surface operations
After successfully touching down on the Martian surface on February 18, 2021, NASA teams have started the many checkouts required to begin operating the Perseverance rover. The mission touched down within five meters of their landing target (the landing target that was chosen by the terrain relative navigation system, not the pre-planned estimation), and several…
-
NASA backs concepts for deep-drilling Mars rover and interstellar-object probe
An illustration shows the deployment of an autonomous borebot into a layered deposit on Mars. The inset shows a closeup of the borebot drive system. (Planet Enterprises Illustration / James Vaughan) The latest crop of NASA-backed concepts for far-out space exploration includes “borebots” that could drill as far as a mile beneath the Martian surface…
-
NASA releases jaw-dropping video and audio from Mars, with an assist from AWS
A portion of a panorama from NASA’s Perseverance rover shows its surroundings in Mars’ Jezero Crater. The close-range perspective is somewhat skewed due to the panorama effect. (NASA / JPL-Caltech) For the first time ever, NASA has captured video of a rover landing on the surface of Mars, plus audio of the wind whistling past…