Jupiter is set to make its closest approach to Earth in the last 70 years and on September 26, stargazers can expect an excellent view when the giant planet reaches opposition. From the viewpoint of Earth’s surface, opposition happens when an astronomical object rises in the east as the Sun sets in the west, placing the object and the Sun ...

For decades, scientists have been trying to solve a vexing problem about the weather in outer space: At unpredictable times, high-energy particles bombard the earth and objects outside the earth’s atmosphere with radiation that can endanger the lives of astronauts and destroy satellites’ electronic equipment. These flare-ups can even trigger showers of radiation strong enough to reach passengers in airplanes ...

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were a national tragedy that resulted in a staggering loss of life and a significant change in American culture. Each year, we pause and remember. Beyond honoring the Americans who died that day, NASA also assisted FEMA in New York in the days afterward, and remembered the victims by providing flags flown aboard the Space Shuttle ...

After disconnecting the ground and rocket-side plates on the interface, called a quick disconnect, for the liquid hydrogen fuel feed line, teams have replaced the seals on the Space Launch System rocket’s core stage associated with the liquid hydrogen leak detected during the Artemis I launch attempt Sept. 3.  Both the 8-inch line used to fill and drain liquid hydrogen from the core stage and the ...

Engineers are making progress repairing the area where a liquid hydrogen leak was detected during the Artemis I launch attempt Sept. 3, and NASA is preserving options for the next launch opportunity as early as Friday, Sept. 23.  Technicians constructed a tent-like enclosure around the work area to protect the hardware and teams from weather and other environmental conditions at Launch Pad 39B. They ...

NASA is awarding more than $4 million to institutions across the U.S. to help bring the excitement of authentic NASA experiences to groups of middle and high school students who are traditionally underserved and underrepresented in STEM. The new Space Grant K-12 Inclusiveness and Diversity in STEM (SG KIDS) opportunity will boost these students’ sense of belonging in STEM subjects, ...

Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the importance of climate, human spaceflight, and STEM education during the Biden-Harris Administration’s second National Space Council meeting Friday, held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “For generations, with our allies and partners around the globe, America has led our world in the exploration and use of space,” said Harris. “Our leadership has been ...

Nature likes spirals – from the whirlpool of a hurricane, to pinwheel-shaped protoplanetary disks around newborn stars, to the vast realms of spiral galaxies across our universe. Now astronomers are bemused to find young stars that are spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The outer ...

The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp celebrating NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, most powerful, and most complex science telescope ever put in space. The stamp, which features an illustration of the observatory, will be dedicated in a ceremony Thursday, Sept. 8, at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington. “When anyone who uses these stamps ...

Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, died on Sept. 8, 2022 at age 96. Her reign spanned all of spaceflight, predating both Sputnik and Explorer 1. As NASA joins the planet in marking her passing, we are moved by the curiosity The Queen showed our explorers over the years. In this photo, Queen Elizabeth II greets employees on her walk from NASA’s Goddard ...

Thousands of never-before-seen young stars spotted in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, called Tarantula Nebula owing to its appearance in dusty filaments. The nebula has long been a favorite for astronomers studying star formation and the  Webb has been revealing beautiful distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition ...

Key takeaways: Roving the Red Planet. Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021 and has been gathering data on the planet’s geology and climate and searching for signs of ancient life.​​​​​​ What lies beneath. The rover’s subsurface radar experiment, co-led by UCLA’s David Paige, has returned images showing unexpected variations in rock layers beneath the Jezero crater. Probing the past. The variations could indicate ...

The agency’s newly upgraded “Eyes on the Solar System” visualization tool includes Artemis I’s trajectory along with a host of other new features. NASA has revamped its “Eyes on the Solar System” 3D visualization tool, making interplanetary travel easier and more interactive than ever. More than two years in the making, the update delivers better controls, improved navigation, and a ...

Digital content creators are invited to register to attend the launch of the fifth SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station for a science expedition mission. This mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The earliest targeted launch date for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission is Oct. 3, from Kennedy’s ...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. This observation of a gas giant planet orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away provides important insights into the composition and formation of the planet. The finding, accepted for publication in Nature, offers evidence that in ...

NASA will target Saturday, Sept. 3 at 2:17 p.m. EDT, the beginning of a two-hour window, for the launch of Artemis I, the first integrated test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mission managers met Tuesday to discuss data and develop a forward plan to address ...

Finding water on the Moon could be easier with a Goddard technology that uses an effect called quantum tunneling to generate a high-powered terahertz laser, filling a gap in existing laser technology. Locating water and other resources is a NASA priority crucial to exploring Earth’s natural satellite and other objects in the solar system and beyond. Previous experiments inferred, then ...

By harnessing the capabilities of the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, which is part of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, astronomers have obtained the sharpest image ever of the star R136a1, the most massive known star in the Universe. Their research, led by NOIRLab astronomer Venu M. Kalari, challenges our understanding of the most massive stars ...

As the SLS rocket is scheduled for launch during a two-hour window that opens at 8:33 a.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 29, from Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center, NASA is planning to provide a wide coverage of prelaunch, launch, and postlaunch activities for Artemis I. Artemis I will be the first integrated test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, Space Launch ...

Like a Swiss Army knife, NASA’s Lightweight Surface Manipulation System (LSMS) technology is likely to find many ways of usage on the surface of Moon as part of its Artemis moon program. This lightweight robotic crane with a structurally efficient truss frame and cable actuation mimics the movement of a human arm, but with a much longer reach as seen in ...