With a thunderous roar, NASA’s Mars Atmoshere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft rocketed into space today on time at 1:28 p.m. EST and the opening of a 20-day launch period. Nestled atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-401 rocket, MAVEN lifted off from from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral AFS and quickly sliced through […]
Space Exploration
This LADEE Wasn’t Just Eating Bon Bon’s During The Government Shutdown
During the NASA shutdown, the LADEE mission continued to perform its critical maneuvers and capture into the commissioning orbit around the moon. The trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-1) was completed on Oct. 1, and set the spacecraft to rendezvous with the moon on Oct. 6.
The View From Here: Curiosity Looks Back At Home
The HiRISE instrument would make a great backyard telescope for viewing Mars, and we can also use it at Mars to view other planets, such as Jupiter. This is an image of Earth and the Moon, acquired at 5:20 a.m. MST on 3 October 2007, at a range of 142 million kilometers, which gives the […]
MAVEN Granted Reprieve, Preparations Resume For November Launch
The cloud of pessimism over NASA because of funding shortfalls in the federal budget and partial government shutdown lifted somewhat today when the agency’s MAVEN mission to Mars was granted a special exemption from the mass furloughs that have caused activities across NASA and other agencies to grind to a halt. This has allowed workers […]
Curiosity Fails To Find Methane And Adds To The Mystery Of Life On Mars
Data from NASA’s Curiosity rover has revealed the Martian environment lacks methane. This is a surprise to researchers because previous data reported by U.S. and international scientists indicated positive detections. The roving laboratory performed extensive tests to search for traces of Martian methane. Whether the Martian atmosphere contains traces of the gas has been a […]
Historic Comet Hunting Mission Ends As Deep Impact Falls Silent
After almost 9 years in space that included an unprecedented July 4th impact and subsequent flyby of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of approximately 500,000 images of celestial objects, NASA’s Deep Impact mission has ended. The project team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., has reluctantly pronounced the […]
Moon Express’ Guidance Software Flies NASA’s Mighty Eagle On A Successful Test
The Mighty Eagle, a NASA robotic prototype lander managed out of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. successfully completed a test flight today as part of a series to help validate software from Moon Express, Inc. The flight also evaluated a new hazard avoidance system designed and developed at the Marshall Center. Like […]
To Boldly Go… Voyager 1 Reaches For The Stars
There was a time over a generation ago when people still talked about men walking on the Moon like it was yesterday, where the space shuttle was still something of the future and memories of the Vietnam War still burned painfully in the minds of many. It was five years after Gene Cernan and company […]
NASA Narrows List Of Potential Sites For Next Mars Lander
NASA has narrowed to four the number of potential landing sites for the agency’s next mission to the surface of Mars, a 2016 lander to study the planet’s interior. The stationary Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander is scheduled to launch in March 2016 and land on Mars six months […]
NASA Prepares LADEE for First Virginia Coast Launch to Moon
In an attempt to answer prevailing questions about our moon, NASA is making final preparations to launch a probe at 11:27 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 6, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. The small car-sized Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to […]