Satellite News

Ten years ago, on Dec. 30, 2000, NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on its way to orbiting Saturn. The main purpose was to use the gravity of the largest planet in our solar system to slingshot Cassini towards Saturn, its ultimate destination. But the encounter with Jupiter, Saturn's gas-giant big brother, also gave the Cassini project a p

Technicians in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are making such good progress with X-ray type image scans of space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank that they expect to finish the job today, a day ahead of schedule. The team has been using a refined method of gathering the computed radiography scans of all 108 support beams

One of the greatest challenges that NASA faces in incorporating advanced technologies into future missions is bridging the mid-Technology Readiness Level (TRL 3-6) gap between early conceptual studies and infusion of a new technology onto the critical path of a science or exploration mission. Maturing a space technology to flight readiness status through relevant env

Snows are finally winding down in New England today, Dec. 27, as a powerful low pressure system brought blizzard conditions from northern New Jersey to Maine over Christmas weekend. The GOES-13 satellite captured an image of the low's center off the Massachusetts coast and saw the snowfall left behind. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES

A rock-zapping laser instrument on NASA's next Mars rover has roots in a demonstration that Roger Wiens saw 13 years ago in a colleague's room at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on the rover Curiosity can hit rocks with a laser powerful enough to excite a pinhead-size spot into a glowing, ionized gas. ChemCa

On Dec. 16, 2010, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached a crater about the size of a football field—some 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. The rover team plans to use cameras and spectrometers during the next several weeks to examine rocks exposed at the crater, informally named "Santa Maria."A mosaic of image frames taken by Opportunity's navigation cam

NASA has taken the next step toward a new generation of Deep Space Network antennas. A $40.7 million contract with General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies, San Jose, Calif., covers implementation of two additional 34-meter (112-foot) antennas at Canberra, Australia. This is part of Phase I of a plan to eventually retire the network's aging 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide)

NASA and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne have successfully completed the heart of the J-2X upper stage rocket engine - the turbomachinery assemblies - for the first development engine off the production line.The engine's turbomachinery consists of two turbopumps, each part pump and part turbine. Turbines provide the power to drive the pumps. One pump pushes high-press

Christmas Eve, 1968. As one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history drew to a close, millions around the world were watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts -- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders -- became the first humans to orbit another world. As their command module floated above the lunar surface, the astronauts beamed back images o

Lots of questions are coming in about the best times to view this around the world. Here's a summary from our astronomers below: "Early in the morning on Dec. 21, a total lunar eclipse will be visible to sky watchers around the world. The eclipse is visible across all of North America - for viewers in western states, the eclipse actually begins late in the evening of

Two satellite instruments aboard NASA's Solar Radiation & Climate Experiment (SORCE) mission - the Total Solar Irradiance Monitor (TIM) and the Solar Irradiance Monitor (SIM) - have made daily measurements of the sun's brightness since 2003. The two instruments are part of an ongoing effort to monitor variations in solar output that could affect Earth's climate.

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians are finalizing preparations at Launch Pad 39A for a tanking test on space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank on Friday, Dec. 17. The rotating service structure will be moved away from the spacecraft tonight at 9:30 p.m. EST. Managers will meet at 6:30 a.m. Friday for a weather briefing before beginning the te

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NASA's Mars Odyssey, which launched in 2001, will break the record Wednesday for longest-serving spacecraft at the Red Planet. The probe begins its 3,340th day in Martian orbit at 8:55 p.m. EST on Wednesday to break the record set by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which orbited Mars from 1997 to 2006. Odyssey's longevity enables continued science, including the monitor

The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind. Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directl

On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.It was as big as it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity. "The August 1st event really opened our eyes,"

NASA researchers are presenting new findings on a wide range of Earth and space science topics during the 2010 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.The meeting runs from Monday, Dec. 13, through Friday, Dec. 17, at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. They are all open to registered media representatives.This NASA AGU media Web site contains detailed

A circular rainbow appears like a halo around an exploded star in this new view of the IC 443 nebula from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.When massive stars die, they explode in tremendous blasts, called supernovae, which send out shock waves. The shock waves sweep up and heat surrounding gas and dust, creating supernova remnants like the one pict

With the success of the SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon mission still fresh, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the flight "has really been better than I expected. It's actually almost too good."The Falcon 9 lofted the Dragon capsule into orbit this morning at 10:43 a.m. EST, lifting off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a few miles south of the sp

The first demonstration flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program has been scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 8, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch window extends from 9 a.m. to 12:22 p.m. EST.During a routine inspection this week, SpaceX engineers observed two small cracks

On Dec. 6 at 1:31 a.m. EST, NASA for the first time successfully ejected a nanosatellite from a free-flying microsatellite. NanoSail-D ejected from the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite, or FASTSAT, demonstrating the capability to deploy a small cubesat payload from an autonomous microsatellite in space.The successful ejection of NanoSail-D demonstra

Airline and cruise ship passengers will soon be able to see an Emmy award-winning NASA TV program that shows how agency technology is part of everyday life.The producers of "NASA 360" have reached agreement with Airline Media Productions (AMP) International to air the half-hour magazine-style TV show through AMP's entertainment outlets around the world."We're excited

Black is black, right? Not so, according to a team of NASA engineers now developing a blacker-than pitch material that will help scientists gather hard-to-obtain scientific measurements or observe currently unseen astronomical objects, like Earth-sized planets in orbit around other stars.The nanotech-based material now being developed by a team of 10 technologists at

The first SpaceX Falcon 9 demonstration launch for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program is targeted for liftoff on Tuesday, Dec. 7. Liftoff will occur from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch window extends from 9:03 a.m. to 12:22 p.m. EST. If necessary, launch opportunities also are available on Dec. 8 an