Tag: NASA
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Engineers still hopeful Mars rover will wake up after dust storm
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view Mars, with its surface partially hidden under a veil of dust, last month as the planet reached the closest point in its orbit to Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI Flight controllers have not heard from NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover since…
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Fresh findings about water ice at moon’s poles boost prospects for lunar settlement
The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the grayscale corresponds to surface temperature. Darker shades represent colder areas, while lighter shades indicate warmer…
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Engine test for NASA’s heavy-lift SLS rocket cuts off early, but achieves goals
News Brief: NASA put a developmental model of the RS-25 engine for its heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket through a hot-fire test today at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in attendance. Although the test firing ended at 319 seconds rather than the originally planned 500 seconds, officials said the test…
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Fastest, closest, hottest: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe blasts off to ‘touch the sun’
A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket sends NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spaceward from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (NASA via YouTube) NASA today sent a super-shielded spacecraft known as the Parker Solar Probe on a mission that will take it closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has flown, with…
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Photos: Parker Solar Probe closed up inside Delta 4 fairing for launch
Ready for a journey into the sun’s enigmatic, scorching corona, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been encapsulated inside the nose cone of its Delta 4-Heavy rocket for liftoff Saturday. These photos show the solar-powered probe’s enclosure inside the Delta 4 fairing at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, last month. Ground crews transported…
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NASA signs off on SpaceX’s “load-and-go” procedure for crew launches
A prototype of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule completed a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral in May 2015. Credit: SpaceX The NASA manager overseeing development of Boeing and SpaceX’s commercial crew ferry ships says the space agency has approved SpaceX’s proposal to strap in astronauts atop Falcon 9 rockets, then fuel the launchers in the…
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Blue Origin’s lunar lander program wins a share of NASA’s ‘tipping-point’ tech awards
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander on the lunar surface. (Blue Origin Illustration) NASA is awarding $44 million to six commercial partners to support “tipping-point” technologies that range from lunar landing capabilities to in-space refueling and spacecraft servicing. Blue Origin, the space venture that was founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and…
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NASA picks 13 companies to envision the future of orbital human spaceflight
An artist’s conception shows three Bigelow Aerospace B330 modules linked together to create a space station being serviced by SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Such a configuration would provide as much pressurized volume as the International Space Station. (Bigelow Aerospace Illustration) Thirteen companies, including Boeing and Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, will be doing…
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‘Smallsats are big’: NASA official details initiatives to boost tiny science satellites
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for the science mission directorate, gives a keynote address at the SmallSat Conference in Logan, Utah. (NASA Photo via Twitter) LOGAN, Utah — NASA is already deep into small-satellite science, but today the space agency’s associate administrator for science signaled that NASA will be getting in even deeper. “We think, in…
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SpaceX Dragon cargo craft splashes down, delivering space algae and cell samples
News Brief: The International Space Station’s crew sent a Dragon back to Earth today, filled with more than 3,800 pounds of scientific samples and equipment. SpaceX’s robotic Dragon cargo capsule had been hooked up to the station for just over a month, providing plenty of time for the crew to unload shipments from Earth and…