Scientists Hope Rover Will Discover If Life Exists on Mars
Excitement is building at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. A little over eight months after its November 2011 launch, NASA’s newest and most advanced Mars rover is set to land on the red planet on Monday, Aug. 6. The Curiosity rover carries the most sophisticated payload of scientific equipment ever used on Mars’ […]
Space Pioneer Sally Ride Dies at 61
Dr. Sally Kristen Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, died at age 61 on Monday after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Ride shattered NASA’s gender barrier and earned her place in the history books on June 18, 1983 when she flew into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, serving as a Mission Specialist. […]
Advanced Telescope Optics Spot Faraway Planets
Astronomers have a powerful new tool to help them in their search for planets outside of our solar system. Project 1640 is a first-of-its-kind, high-contrast imaging program which combines high-tech instrumentation and software, giving scientists the ability to spot planets orbiting distant suns in star systems outside of our solar system. Ever since the search […]
Research Casts Doubt on NASA ‘New Life Form’ Claim
New research throws scientific cold water on NASA’s purported 2010 discovery of a new form of life which lives and thrives off of arsenic rather than phosphorus, an important element that supports life as we know it. In December 2010, NASA announced its researchers, led by Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon, had found bacteria in California’s Mono […]
NASA Launches Online Game for Would-be Rocket Scientists
If you think you have what it takes to build a satellite, NASA has just introduced an online game that might appeal to you. With “Build It Yourself: Satellite!” the US space agency offers users the chance to act as engineers and astronomers who conceive and build their own special virtual satellite. “It’s fun to […]
NASA Makes Surprise Discovery in Arctic Ocean
NASA has discovered phytoplankton are much more abundant in Arctic waters than any other ocean region on Earth, which could have a huge impact on our understanding of the region’s ecology. Space agency officials say the revelation is as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. The microscopic, one-celled […]
European Scientists Hope to Send Humans Back to the Moon
A team of European scientists wants to send people back to the moon, ending the 40-year break from human lunar exploration. The group not only wants to see a resumption of lunar exploration, but it recommends those efforts be dramatically stepped-up. In a report to be published in “Planetary and Space Science,” the authors argue […]
Rare Astronomical Event Occurs Tuesday in US
On Tuesday, June 5, people in most parts of the world have a good chance of witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event called the transit of Venus. It’s a planetary alignment which occurs when the planet Venus passes directly between the Earth and sun. For those of us here on Earth, it’ll look like a little […]
NASA Checks Out Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
First, the good news. There are fewer asteroids near Earth than previously estimated. Now the bad news. A new NASA survey also finds there may be more than twice as many aligned with Earth’s orbit than thought, which could increase the odds of an asteroid coming close enough to us to cause concern. The findings […]
SpaceX Marks New Commercial Era in Space Exploration
Yesterday’s successful launch of SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon reusable spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in Florida, marked what NASA administrator Charles Bolden called “the beginning of a new era in exploration.” Now that the Dragon is in space, technicians are testing its capability of rendezvousing and docking with the International Space Station, where it […]