Topic Browser

NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018.

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA has unveiled NASA App HD, a new mobile application designed for the iPad.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield in 2013 will become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station (ISS), the Canadian Space Agency announced Thursday.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cluster has spent a decade revealing previously hidden interactions between the Sun and Earth. Its studies have uncovered secrets of aurora, solar storms, and given us insight into fundamental processes that occur across the Universe. And there is more work to do.

NASA and NOAA's latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-15, has successfully completed five months of on-orbit testing and has been accepted into service. The satellite has demonstrated operational readiness of its subsystems, spacecraft instruments and communications services. GOES-15 is the third and final spacecraft in the GOES N-P Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites.

Pity poor Mercury. The tiny planet endures endless assaults by intense sunlight, powerful solar wind and high-speed miniature meteoroids called micrometeoroids. The planet's flimsy covering, the exosphere, nearly blends in with the vacuum of space, making it too thin to offer protection. Because of this, it's tempting to think of Mercury's exosphere as just the battered remains of ancient atmosphere.

With a brilliant, finely tuned spark of ultraviolet (UV) light, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology helped NASA scientists successfully position a crucial UV sensor inside a space-borne instrument to observe a "hidden" layer of the Sun where violent space weather can originate.

Today (September 1), space scientists around the world are celebrating ten years of ground-breaking discoveries by 'Cluster', a mission that is illuminating the mysteries of the magnetosphere, the northern lights and the solar wind.

A team of NASA experts in Chile to share the US space agency's experience in having men endure extensive periods of isolation told officials Tuesday to be totally frank with the 33 miners trapped underground for months to come.

University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates, who have been helping to control five NASA satellites from campus, participated in the unusual decommissioning of a functioning satellite with a failed science payload in recent days, bringing the craft into Earth re-entry to burn up yesterday.

(PhysOrg.com) -- With a loud roar and mighty column of flame, NASA and ATK Aerospace Systems successfully completed a two-minute, full-scale test of the largest and most powerful solid rocket motor designed for flight. The motor is potentially transferable to future heavy-lift launch vehicle designs.

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is ready to deploy a remarkable capability that has been the focus of a six-year project developed in concert with numerous government and industry partners. Developed by NRL's Spacecraft Engineering Department, the Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC) is a web-enabled multi-application service that ushers in a new era for globally-dispersed military users of DoD, commercial, and civilian satellite payloads.

An extensive series of tests has been completed on a new rocket engine that will use a non-toxic propellant combination at NASA's Glenn Research Center. The reaction control engine that was tested provides 100 pounds of thrust and is typically used for spacecraft maneuvering.

Spiral galaxy NGC 4921 presently is estimated to be 320 million light years distant.

One of NASA's orbiting sentinels is expected to return to Earth in a few days. The agency's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation (ICESat) satellite completed a very productive scientific mission earlier this year. NASA lowered the satellite's orbit last month and then decommissioned the spacecraft in preparation for re-entry. It is estimated that the satellite will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and largely burn up on or about August 29.

The launch into space of Denmark's first privately-built rocket has been postponed to Thursday due to bad weather conditions, one of its builders said.

(AP) -- Russia will launch its manned space missions from a new center in the Far East in 2018, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Saturday, as the country seeks greater independence for its space program.

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily profiles of the changing structure of the planet's atmosphere.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression near Mars's equator, in the eastern hemisphere of the planet. Located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, its formation remains a mystery.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A couple of Danish engineers are working towards launching a human being into space.

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most complex space scientific instruments ever built, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, escorted by astronauts who will fly with it on the Space Shuttle in February 2011.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Nearing the end of its third month of continuous operation, the International Space Station's ship-tracking experiment has experienced a marked increase in data quality. Now it operates along with a dedicated satellite carrying the same receiver.

It spreads, it mutates, it refuses to die. For the seventh year in a row, the Mars Hoax is infecting email boxes around the world. Passed from one reader to another, the message states that on August 27th Mars will approach Earth and swell to the size of a full Moon. "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN," the email declares--always in caps.

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is often depicted as a dull zone of dead rocks with an occasional wayward speedster smashing through on its way toward the sun.

A unique antenna which could help unveil a new window on the universe by observing thousands of gravitational waves should be one of NASA's next space missions according to a group of leading US experts.

(AP) -- The U.S. Air Force has taken charge of a $2 billion antimatter detector destined to catch the last scheduled space shuttle flight in February 2011.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Bacteria collected from rocks taken from the cliffs at the tiny English fishing village of Beer in Devon, have survived on the outside surface of the International Space Station for 553 days. The bacteria, known as OU-20, resemble cyanobacteria called Gloeocapsa.

What does it feel like to return to Earth after a long stay in space? Until now, it has been difficult during astronaut training to realistically simulate the dizzying effects the human body can experience.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A senior astronomer with the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, Dr Seth Shostak, has reported in an article published online that perhaps we should be seeking alien "life forms" that are thinking machines instead of concentrating the search on biological life forms.

The final frontier may be no further than Manhattan, Kan., as a team of Kansas State University researchers launches a project funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.