NASA Archives

November 15, 2019November 17, 2019 by Matt Williams

Stingray Glider to Explore the Cloudtops of Venus

The spacecraft would circumnavigate Venus every four to six days, with solar panels charging every two to three days on the side of planet illuminated by the sun. Credit: CRASH Lab, University at Buffalo.

Venus is colloquially referred to as “Earth’s Twin”, owing to the similarities it has with our planet. Not surprisingly though, there is a great deal that scientists don’t know about Venus. Between the hot and hellish landscape, extremely thick atmosphere, and clouds of sulfuric rain, it is virtually impossible to explore the planet’s atmosphere and surface. What’s more, Venus’ slow rotation makes the study of its “dark side” all the more difficult.

However, these challenges have spawned a number of innovative concepts for exploration. One of these comes from the University of Buffalo’s Crashworthiness for Aerospace Structures and Hybrids (CRASH) Laboratory, where researchers are designing a unique concept known as the Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Explorations (BREEZE).

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019 by Evan Gough

Mars 2020 Rover is Going to a Place on Mars That’s Perfect for Preserving Fossils

Jezero Crater on Mars. Lighter colors represent higher elevations. The Mars 2020 rover will investigate the "bathtub ring" of carbonates around the edge of the crater for microscopic fossils. The dark oval is the landing ellipse. Image NASA/MRO

Back in November 2018, NASA announced that the Mars 2020 rover would land in the Jezero Crater. Jezero Crater is a geologically diverse area, with an alluvial fan of sediment deposited by an incoming river. That sediment may contain preserved ancient organic molecules, and the deposit is clearly visible in satellite images of the Crater.

But the crater holds something else that has scientists intrigued, something that doesn’t show up so clearly in visible light images: a “bathtub ring” of carbonates, which scientists think could hold fossils.

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

TESS Has Now Captured Almost the Entire Southern Sky. Here’s a Mosaic Made of 15,347 Photographs

On April 18th, 2018, NASA’s Transitting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) took to space for the first time. By August, it began capturing the light curves of distant stars for signs of planetary transits, effectively picking up where the Kepler Space Telescope left off. Now, just a few months away from the end of its primary mission, NASA has put a year’s worth of images of the southern sky together to create the beautiful mosaic you see here.

November 7, 2019May 18, 2021 by Matt Williams

NASA is Testing a Coating to Help Astronauts and Their Equipment Shed Dangerous Lunar Dust

Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA

In the coming years, NASA is going back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. Rather than being a “footprints and flags” operation, Project Artemis is intended to be the first step in creating a sustainable human presence on the Moon. Naturally, this presents a number of challenges, not the least of which has to do with lunar regolith (aka. moondust). For this reason, NASA is investigating strategies for mitigating this threat.

November 6, 2019November 10, 2019 by Susie Murph

Weekly Space Hangout: November 6, 2019 – Tiera & Myron Fletcher, Engineers on NASA’s Space Launch System

Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)

Nancy Atkinson ( @Nancy_A / @nancyatkinson_ut)

Beth Johnson (@planetarypan)

Veranika Klimovich ( @VeronikaSpace)

This week we welcome Tiera and Myron Fletcher, Aerospace Engineers with Boeing working on NASA’s Space Launch System.

November 4, 2019November 4, 2019 by Matt Williams

Boeing’s Starliner Performed its Abort Test Today. One Parachute Failed to Deploy

For years, NASA has been working to restore domestic launch capability to the US and send astronauts to the Moon and beyond. A crucial part of this is the development of next-generation crew capsules that can carry crews and payloads to space. These include Lockheed Martin’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and the Crew Space Transportation (CST) -100 Starliner currently being developed by Boeing.

Earlier today (on Monday, Nov. 4th), the CST-100 passed a critical milestone with a successful end-to-end test of its abort system. The Pad Abort Test took place at Launch Complex 32 at the US Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. When crewed missions to space begin using the CST-100, this system will ensure that astronauts will be carried to safety in the unlikely event of an emergency before liftoff.

November 4, 2019November 4, 2019 by Matt Williams

NASA Has a New Method For Cooling Down Electronics Crammed Together in a Spacecraft

Ground crew recover experiments that launched on the reusable New Shepard rocket on which the microgap-cooling technology flew twice. Credits: Blue Origin

One of the most exciting things about space exploration today is the ways in which it is getting more cost-effective. Between reusable rockets, miniaturized electronics, and low-cost launch services, space is becoming more accessible and populated. However, this also presents a challenge when it comes to conventional methods for maintaining spacecraft and satellites.

One of the biggest challenges is packing electronics into tighter spaces, which makes it harder to keep them at operational temperatures. To address this, engineers at NASA are developing a new system known as microgap-cooling technology. During two recent test flights, NASA demonstrated that this method is effective at removing heat and can also function in a weightless environment.

November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 by Evan Gough

NASA is Now Considering a Pluto Orbiter Mission

Far left: Pluto and it's heart-shaped feature called “Tombaugh Regio” in honor of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet. The bright expanse of the western lobe of Pluto’s “heart” is informally called Sputnik Planum. Above left: Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of landforms that have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story. Credit: Courtesy NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Table of Contents page 2015 Annual Report Division: (15)

NASA’s New Horizons mission taught us a lot about Pluto, the ice dwarf planet. But the spacecraft sped past Pluto so quickly, we only got high-resolution images of one side of the planet, the so-called “encounter side.” New Horizons gave us a big leap in understanding, but in a way, it asked more questions than it answered.

The next step is clearly an orbiter, and now NASA is starting to seriously consider one.

November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 by Matt Williams

Mars 2020 Stands Up on its Wheels For The First Time

This coming July, the Mars 2020 rover will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and begin its journey to the Red Planet. After it touches down in the Jezero Crater, the rover will commence science operations similar to what Curiosity has been doing since 2012. This will consist of driving over rough terrain, sampling the atmosphere, collecting drill samples, and subjecting them to chemical analysis.

In order to get it ready for this mission, the engineering team over at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are putting the rover through its paces. On Oct. 8th, this included placing the full weight of the rover on its legs and wheels for the first time ever. This event, which was tantamount to an infant standing for the very first time, was captured with a time-lapse video that you can see below.

October 31, 2019October 31, 2019 by Evan Gough

This is the Machine Astronauts Trained on to Land on the Moon

The first LLRV silhouetted against the rising sun on the dry lake bed at Edwards AFB. Image Credit: NASA

The Moon landings were a huge undertaking. In order to prepare, NASA had to think of every detail, right down to machines for the astronauts to train on. And those machines are an interesting part of space history all on their own.