Tag: NASA
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SpaceX rehearses Falcon 9 rocket launch – and relives last month’s rocket landing
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fires its engines during a launch-pad test at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Monday evening. (Credit: SpaceX) SpaceX fired the engines of its Falcon 9 rocket on its California launch pad on Monday evening, marking a seemingly successful rehearsal for this weekend’s launch of the Jason 3 ocean-monitoring satellite.…
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New Horizons team shares new X-Files from Pluto
This image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows patterns in the nitrogen glaciers of an area informally named Sputnik Planum – including an X shape just to the right and below the image’s center. The darker patch at the center of the image is probably a dirty block of water ice “floating” in the denser…
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SpaceX plans Falcon 9 rocket landing on Pacific drone ship after Jan. 17 launch
The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket descends toward a drone ship during SpaceX’s April landing try in the Atlantic. The attempt was unsuccessful, but SpaceX plans to try again in the Pacific on Jan. 17. (Credit: SpaceX) SpaceX is planning something completely different for its next rocket-landing trick: After launching the U.S.-European Jason 3 satellite…
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NASA’s newest women astronauts get the Glamour treatment: Want to join them?
NASA astronaut Anne McClain keeps her eye on the Magic 8 Ball during zero-G training on NASA’s “vomit comet” airplane in 2014. The toy served as a mascot for the eight astronauts in the class of 2013, who were nicknamed the “8 Balls.” (Credit: NASA via @AstroAnnimal) That’s one small step for NASA’s women astronauts,…
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Get a 360-degree view of that monster dune on Mars from NASA’s Curiosity rover
A portion of a 360-degree panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows a portion of a 16-foot-high sand dune on Mars, with the summit of Mount Sharp in the far background. The bottom of the image is distorted due to the 360-degree effect. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS) The 16-foot-high sand dune that…
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Postal Service geeks out with space stamps for Pluto, planets, the moon and Star Trek
The U.S. Postal Service’s souvenir sheet of four stamps contains two new stamps appearing twice. The first stamp shows an artist’s rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft and the second shows the spacecraft’s enhanced color image of Pluto taken near closest approach. (Credit: Antonio Alcala / USPS) For the first time since 1991, Pluto and…
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Ceres as you’ve never seen it before: NASA’s Dawn orbiter delivers closest close-ups of dwarf planet
This Dec. 10 image of Ceres shows the area around a crater chain called Gerber Catena,. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft was flying about 240 miles above Ceres when the picture was taken. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA). Earlier this month we started seeing some of the closest views yet of…
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NASA holds up InSight lander mission to Mars due to leaky seismic instrument
An artist’s conception shows the InSight lander on the surface of Mars. The SEIS instrument is the light-colored dome at lower left. (Credit: NASA) NASA says it’s putting off next year’s scheduled launch of its InSight lander mission to Mars until at least 2018, due to a persistent leak in the spacecraft’s main seismic-sensing instrument.…
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For the first time in 27 years, U.S. produces plutonium-238 to power space missions
By producing 50 grams of plutonium-238, Oak Ridge researchers have demonstrated the ability to resume providing an energy source for deep-space missions. (Credit: ORNL) After a 27-year gap, the U.S. Department of Energy has resumed producing plutonium-238, the radioactive fuel that powers NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars and the New Horizons mission to Pluto and…
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Spacewalkers free up jammed rail car, get set for Russian cargo delivery
NASA astronaut Tim Kopra conducts a spacewalk at the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA TV) Two NASA spacewalkers executed a quick fix at the International Space Station today, moving a stuck rail car to clear the path for a robotic Russian cargo ship that was launched just hours before. The 3-hour, 16-minute spacewalk was put on…