Satellite News

More than one million people have watched assembly and testing of NASA's next Mars rover via a live webcam since it went online in October.NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as the Curiosity rover, is being tested and assembled in a clean room at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The webcam, affectionately dubbed "Curiosity Cam," show

NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington

Artist's concept showing a planned flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft This artist's concept shows a planned flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Nov. 30. During the closest part of the flyby, Cassini's radio science subsystem will make gravity measurements.NASA's Cassini spacecraft resumed normal operations today

Astronomers have caught sight of an unusual galaxy that has illuminated new details about a celestial "sandbar" connecting two massive islands of galaxies. The research was conducted in part with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.These "sandbars," or filaments, are known to span vast distances between galaxy clusters and form a lattice-like structure known as the cosmic

A space shuttle main engine burns at 6,000 degrees F, but the outside of the nozzle remains cool to the touch. Prior to launch, sometimes it even frosts over. The nozzle technology that allows a finger-width of ridged metal to contain and steer flames that would boil iron is just one of the scores of innovations designers came up with for the engines three decades ag

Teams have completed final inspections on the stringer repair work on space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The environmental enclosure, built to support foaming operations, was removed. Flight Crew Systems middeck stow operations are under way.The Space Shuttle Program will review the analysis and repairs that are re

Glory is a remote-sensing Earth-orbiting observatory designed to achieve two separate mission objectives. One is to collect data on the chemical, microphysical, and optical properties, and spatial and temporal distributions of aerosols. The other is to continue collection of total solar irradiance data for the long-term climate record.The Glory mission's scientific o

To make a difference look- NASA, Microsoft, Google, The World Bank and Yahoo! are welcoming software developers, independent computer experts and students to participate in the Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) event on December 4th and 5th in several locations around the world.RHoK is a worldwide event that will use the new technology to make the world a better place

When Patrick Minnis saw video of the "mystery" contrail Nov. 9 that looked like a missile launch near Catalina Island off Los Angeles, he figured it the way most people did. "I assumed it was a missile," said Minnis, a contrail expert in the Science Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Then he got a call from an Associated Press reporter and

Technicians at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A in Florida plan to install new quick disconnect hardware Tuesday morning in the recently-installed ground umbilical carrier plate (GUCP) to fix a hydrogen gas leak that scrubbed space shuttle Discovery’s launch Nov. 5. Technicians installed a new flight seal in the GUCP attached to Discovery’s external fuel ta

NASA selected DB Consulting Group, Inc. in Silver Spring, Md., to provide information technology, multimedia, information management and external relations support services at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The new Information Technology and Multimedia Services contract has a maximum value of $251.5 million.The services provided are primarily under the

Overnight, crews removed space shuttle Discovery’s ground umbilical carrier assembly, or GUCA, which includes the flight seal, the 7-inch quick disconnect, or QD and the carrier plate, known as the GUCP, as they continue working to investigate the leak.Teams performed an initial inspection of the flight seal and quick disconnect prior to sending them to labs for a th

NASA will hold a news conference on Monday, Nov. 15 at 12 PM and to discuss about the Chandra X-ray Observatory's discovery.The news conference will start off from NASA Headquarters' TV studio, 300 E St. SW in Washington and going to live on NASA TV.Precocious Galaxy Cluster Identified by ChandraMedia representatives may also attend the conference and they join by t

Active sunspot 1121 has unleashed one of the brightest x-ray solar flares in years, an M5.4-class eruption.Radiation from the flare created a wave of ionization in Earth's upper atmosphere that altered the propagation of low-frequency radio waves. There was, however, no bright CME hurled in our direction, so the event is unlikely to produce auroras in the nights ahea

During the encounter, the spacecraft and comet whisked past each other at a speed of 12.3 kilometers per second (27,560 miles per hour). The spacecraft came within about 700 kilometers (435 miles) of the comet's nucleus at the time of closest approach.The video clip of the flyby is comprised of 40 frames taken from the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution Instrument during

Light-colored mounds of a mineral deposited on a volcanic cone more than three billion years ago may preserve evidence of one of the most recent habitable microenvironments on Mars.Observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enabled researchers to identify the mineral as hydrated silica and to see its volcanic context. The mounds' composition and their locatio