Satellite News

Space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of six astronauts are to return to Earth in the early morning of June 1, 2011, to complete the STS-134 mission, the last of Endeavour's spacegoing career. Landing is scheduled for 2:35 a.m. EDT. The mission launched Monday, May 16, 2011, at 8:56 a.m. EDT on a mission to the International Space Station. We will cover Endeavour's re

Tiny crystals of a green mineral called olivine are falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, according to observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This is the first time such crystals have been observed in the dusty clouds of gas that collapse around forming stars. Astronomers are still debating how the crystals got there, but the most likely culprits ar

At 11:55 p.m. EDT, space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station. Endeavour spent 11 days, 17 hrs and 41 minutes docked to the orbiting laboratory. At undocking, the spacecraft were 215 miles above LaPaz, Bolivia. The fly around of the space station will begin at 12:22 a.m., with Pilot Greg Johnson maneuvering Endeavour to circle the station a

NASA will launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016 and use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system's formation and how life began. The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth. "Th

NASA's twin lunar probes have arrived in Florida to begin final preparations for a launch in late summer. The two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory spacecraft (Grail) were shipped from Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, to the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., Friday, May 20. NASA's dynamic duo will orbit the moon to determine the

An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. "These jets arise as infalling matter approaches the black hole, but we don't yet know the details of how they form and maintain th

NASA's Cassini spacecraft and a European Southern Observatory ground-based telescope tracked the growth of a giant early-spring storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere that is so powerful it stretches around the entire planet. The rare storm has been wreaking havoc for months and shooting plumes of gas high into the planet's atmosphere. Cassini's radio and plasma wave

Final preparations are under way for the June 9 launch of the international Aquarius/SAC-D observatory. The mission's primary instrument, Aquarius, will study interactions between ocean circulation, the water cycle and climate by measuring ocean surface salinity.  Engineers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are performing final tests before mating A

At the heart of every comet lies a remnant of the dawn of the solar system. Or is that remnants? Astronomers don't know, but the answer would give them a clearer picture of exactly how comets were born eons ago at the birth of the Solar System. Did thin tendrils of dust and ice get drawn slowly inward and pack themselves into a single, uniform mass? Or did a hodge-po

Space shuttle Endeavour is officially on its way to the International Space Station on its STS-134 mission and final flight. Endeavour lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on time at 8:56 a.m. EDT, soaring through a few clouds, after a relatively smooth countdown. "I can't thank the teams that got this vehicle ready to fly and for all the work they've done," s

New data analysis from NASA's Galileo spacecraft reveals a subsurface ocean of molten or partially molten magma beneath the surface of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io. The finding heralds the first direct confirmation of this kind of magma layer at Io and explains why the moon is the most volcanic object known in the solar system. The research was conducted by scientists

The famous Crab Nebula supernova remnant has erupted in an enormous flare five times more powerful than any flare previously seen from the object. On April 12, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the outburst, which lasted six days. The nebula is the wreckage of an exploded star that emitted light which reached Earth in the year 1054. It is located

How do instruments end up on satellites orbiting the Earth? For many of them, long before they are ever launched into space, they are tested from NASA airplanes. One of the objectives of the NASA Airborne Science Program is to test new instruments in space-like environments. Testing future satellite instruments from airplanes is the next best thing to actually testin

One of the space shuttle program's earliest commanders and the first woman to live on the International Space Station took their places alongside the nation's space heroes May 7 as they were welcomed into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame. Karol "Bo" Bobko and Susan Helms joined the Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex at NASA's Ke

On the morning of May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard crawled into the cramped Mercury capsule, "Freedom 7," at Launch Complex 5 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The slender, 82-foot-tall Mercury-Redstone rocket rose from the launch pad at 9:34 a.m. EST, sending Shepard on a remarkably successful, 15-minute suborbital flight. But more than that, it kick

NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission has confirmed two key predictions derived from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which the spacecraft was designed to test. The experiment, launched in 2004, used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the hypothesized geodetic effect, the warping of space and time around a gravitational body, and frame-dragging,

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has reached its official approach phase to the asteroid Vesta and will begin using cameras for the first time to aid navigation for an expected July 16 orbital encounter. The large asteroid is known as a protoplanet – a celestial body that almost formed into a planet. At the start of this three-month final approach to this massive body in the a

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. manned spaceflight during two events this week around the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA Television will carry both events live. On Wednesday, May 4, at 2 p.m. EDT, the U.S. Postal Service will unveil two new stamps at the Rocket Garden of the Kennedy Space Cente

NASA managers have determined space shuttle Endeavour will not launch before Sunday, May 8, but will not officially set a new launch date until early this week. After Friday’s launch scrub, Kennedy Space Center technicians searched for the cause of a failure in a heater circuit associated with Endeavour’s hydraulic power system. The failure was found to be in a pow