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 […]
Planetary Science
Planetary Science
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 […]
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 […]
One Special Day in the Life of Planet Earth Shining Brightly In The Black Void
Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion […]
Stephen Hawking – “Why Go To Space?” – NASA 50th Anniversary Lecture
MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Welcome to the campus of George Washington University in downtown Washington, D.C., for what promises to be a very remarkable afternoon. My name is John Logsdon. I am the director of the Space Policy Institute here at GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs. We are a very happy co-host, along with Lockheed […]
NASA Announces New Grand Challenge Aimed At Finding Asteroids
WASHINGTON, DC – NASA announced Tuesday a Grand Challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them. The challenge, which was announced at an asteroid initiative industry and partner day at NASA Headquarters in Washington, is a large-scale effort that will use multi-disciplinary collaborations and a variety […]
Data From NASA Rover’s Voyage to Mars Aids Planning
PASADENA, CA – Measurements taken by NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission as it delivered the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2012 are providing NASA the information it needs to design systems to protect human explorers from radiation exposure on deep-space expeditions in the future. Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure […]
NASA’s GRAIL Mission Solves Mystery of Moon’s Surface Gravity
PASADENA, CA – NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has uncovered the origin of massive invisible regions that make the moon’s gravity uneven, a phenomenon that affects the operations of lunar-orbiting spacecraft. Because of GRAIL’s findings, spacecraft on missions to other celestial bodies can navigate with greater precision in the future. GRAIL’s twin […]