February 13, 2019
Juno unveils Jupiter's secrets
The Roman god Jupiter was known for his dalliances with women other than his wife, the goddess Juno. Juno was not fooled, however. Although her …
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58 articles · Page 1 of 3
February 13, 2019
Deep Space Network
Messages from Juno and other spacecraft in the far reaches of the solar system are relayed to scientists via NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), …
January 17, 2019
Wrangling the data to choose Mars landing sites
NASA has sent four rovers to Mars, and the fifth — the Mars 2020 Rover — is slated to launch in summer 2020 for an early 2021 arrival. Selecting …
June 5, 2018
Benchmarks: July 29, 1958: The Birth of NASA
Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., meant that my house was often frequented by guests who wanted to visit our nation’s capital. …
May 23, 2018
Down to Earth With: Maria Zuber
In 2011, a pair of orbiters will launch for the moon, making some of the most exact measurements yet of our satellite. Luckily for the orbiters, …
May 23, 2018
Down to Earth With: Marc Kuchner
Marc Kuchner likes to joke that when he feels sociable at a party, he tells fellow guests that he is an astronomer. But when he wants to be left …
May 1, 2018
Comment: Could NASA find evidence of extraterrestrial life by 2050?
by Jacob Haqq-Misra Exoplanet discoveries are featured almost weekly in the news. With ground-based observations supplementing the Kepler Space …
March 19, 2018
Ceres: A bright spot in the asteroid belt
Orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Ceres is the nearest dwarf planet to Earth and the only one within the inner solar …
December 14, 2017
From space to village: NASA's SERVIR program brings a big picture to local communities
Life is tightly linked to weather in the Lower Mekong countries of Southeast Asia, and the weather is rarely still. In 2016, the Mekong River was …
September 12, 2017
Mars class of 2020: A diverse group of missions takes aim at the Red Planet
About every 26 months, the positions of Earth and Mars in their respective orbits align for a few weeks such that spacecraft can take the …
September 1, 2017
Down to Earth With: Evan Thomas
At age 16, Evan Thomas made a list of 100 life goals — his bucket list. At only 27 years old, he’s done pretty well so far: Graduate college with …
June 22, 2017
Benchmarks: July 15-24, 1975: Apollo-Soyuz mission launches space collaboration
The space race between the United States and the Soviet Union spurred innovations and historic firsts for humankind from Sputnik to the moon …
September 28, 2016
Philae: Achievement and disappointment
Rosetta’s Philae lander made the first landing on the surface of a comet when it touched down on Nov. 12, 2014, three months after Rosetta began …
September 28, 2016
Rosetta's journey
Launch date: March 2, 2004 Launch place: French Guiana Launch mass: Rosetta: 2,900 kilograms; Philae: 100 kilograms Rosetta dimensions: 2.8 x 2.1 …
September 28, 2016
What's in a name: Rosetta, Philae, and 67P?
All of the names associated with the Rosetta mission, including the orbiter itself, the lander and all of the place names coined by mission …
September 28, 2016
Rosetta mission ends with a bang: But the discoveries will continue
The most ambitious exploration of a comet came to a successful conclusion when the Rosetta spacecraft executed a controlled crash onto the …
July 26, 2016
Ice (Re)Cap: August 2016
From Antarctica to the Arctic; from polar caps, permafrost and glaciers to ocean-rafted sea ice; and from burly bears to cold-loving microbes, …
June 17, 2016
Down to Earth With: Planetary scientist Steven Squyres
Squyres already considered himself a scientist, and, with his father’s help, would conduct rudimentary experiments with a chemistry kit. By the …
June 16, 2016
Buried lunar craters filled by lava long ago
Craters dot much of the nearside of the moon. And buried beneath this pockmarked landscape, according to the latest findings from NASA’s two …
May 9, 2016
Down to Earth With: Solar physicist Thomas Berger
Growing up in California during the Space Race, Thomas Berger was fascinated with aeronautics and aviation, so when he arrived at the University …
April 22, 2016
Geomedia: Performance: Bella Gaia is a show in orbit and Earth is the star
On the screen, images of the far reaches of the cosmos — galaxies, stellar nebulae and supernovae — loom high over a stage. The words, “The …
April 19, 2016
Comment: GAVRT: Learning science by doing science
Science education is very much a part of the lexicon of K-12 education these days, and numerous STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and …
April 13, 2016
Benchmarks: April 22, 1995: GLOBE is launched
Studying the global environment requires collecting numerous detailed observations. And although it may seem today like we’re awash in such data, …
March 27, 2016
Lunar atmosphere more active than we thought
LADEE — pronounced “laddie” and short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer — was among the shortest-lived of NASA’s successful …