Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)
New Research Reveals Provides Insight into Mysterious Features on Airless Worlds
Between 2011 and 2018, NASA's Dawn mission conducted extended observations of Ceres and Vesta, the largest bodies in the Main…
Dr. Tracy Becker Honored with 2023 Carl Sagan Medal for Science Communication
This year’s prestigious Carl Sagan Medal, also known as the “Sagan Medal” and named after the late astronomer, Dr. Carl…
Charon’s Red Cap at its North Pole? We Might Have an Answer
Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, started off as a beautiful, smooth red grape until someone came along, mostly peeled it, tried…
Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids Offer Surprises Even Before NASA’s Lucy Mission has a Chance to Visit Them.
A new study out this month suggests that Jupiter's Trojan asteroids may be more peculiar than previously thought. The Trojan…
Mars Was Hit By a Lot of Protoplanets Early in its History, Taking Longer to Form than Previously Thought.
There are around 61,000 meteorites on Earth, or at least that's how many have been found. Out of those, about…
NASA is Now Considering a Pluto Orbiter Mission
NASA's New Horizons mission taught us a lot about Pluto, the ice dwarf planet. But the spacecraft sped past Pluto…
New Horizons’ Next Flyby Target Just Got Weirder!
In preparation for their historic flyby with a KBO, the New Horizons team conducted observations that indicated that the target…
NASA’s Experimental Hurricane Monitoring Fleet Launched by Pegasus rocket
NASA’s constellation of experimental hurricane monitoring CYGNSS microsatellites was successfully air launched by the unique Orbital ATK winged Pegasus rocket…
Scientists Assemble Fresh Global Map of Pluto Comprising Sharpest Flyby Images
The science team leading NASA’s New Horizons mission that unveiled the true nature of Pluto’s long hidden looks during the…
Surveying the “Fossils of Planet Formation”: The Lucy Mission
In February of 2014, NASA's Discovery Program put out the call for mission proposals, one or two of which will…