News

NASA Robots Compete in DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge Final

Wednesday, September 22nd 2021 04:26 PM

  Team CoSTAR, led by NASA’s JPL, will use autonomous robots with diverse methods of movement to compete in the complex underground environments of the SubT Challenge Final. One of the robots, NeBula-Spot, walks on four legs to explore hard-to-access locations. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Led by NASA JPL, Team CoSTAR will participate in the SubT final this week to demonstrate multi-robot autonomy in a series of tests in extreme environments. Eight teams featuring dozens of robots from more than 30 institutions, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, will converge in a former Kentucky limestone mine from Sept. 21 to 24 to participate in a series of complex underground scenarios. The goal: to demonstrate cutting-edge robotic autonomy capabilities and compete for the chance to win $2 million. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the event marks the final contest in the Subterranean, or SubT, Challenge, which bega...

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James Webb Space Telescope: How, when, and why it's launching

Tuesday, September 21st 2021 07:50 PM

  The James Webb Space Telescope is the biggest orbital telescope ever built and is scheduled to be launched into space on Dec. 18, 2021. The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to head to space on Dec. 18, 2021. With it, astronomers hope to find the first galaxies to form in the universe, will search for Earthlike atmospheres around other planets and accomplish many other scientific goals. I am an astronomer and the principal investigator for the Near Infrared Camera – or NIRCam for short – aboard the Webb telescope. I have participated in the development and testing for both my camera and the telescope as a whole. To see deep into the universe, the telescope has a very large mirror and must be kept extremely cold. But getting a fragile piece of equipment like this to space is no simple task. There have been many challenges my colleagues and I have had to overcome to design, test and soon launch and align the most powerful space telescope ever built.  ...

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Inspiration4, the first all-civilian spaceflight, is now in orbit

Friday, September 17th 2021 05:58 PM

  Last night at 8:02 PM EDT, the crew of Inspiration 4 — the first all-civilian spaceflight — blasted off from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Tucked inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which was lofted to orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, are four fortunate astronauts: Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, Christopher Sembroski, and Jared Isaacman. The latter footed the bill for the trip. Unlike the recent suborbital spaceflights of billionaires carried out this summer by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, Inspiration4 is setting its sights higher, taking the untrained civilian crew all the way to orbit. There, they will circle the Earth for three days, conducting experiments and enjoying their views before returning for a soft water landing off the coast of Florida.   Although Inspiration4 is currently orbiting more than 100 miles above the International Space Station (ISS), one of the mission's main goals is much more Earth-bou...

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Justin Simon Shepherds Perseverance Through First Phase of Martian Rock Sampling

Thursday, September 16th 2021 04:14 PM

  Sample tube number 266 was used to collect the first sample of Martian rock by NASA's Perseverance rover. The laser-etched serial number helps science team identify the tubes and their contents.   NASA's Mars 2020 rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve, as seen in this illustration. The Johnson Space Center scientist was tasked with helping guide the way for mission’s first cored Mars rock sample. The evening of Aug. 1 felt a lot like a birthday to NASA planetary scientist Justin Simon. On that night, Simon attended a virtual watch party for researchers preparing to use NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover to conduct the first detailed study of a candidate rock target for drilling and collecting a sample. Ready to unwrap presents, Simon and his fellow researchers anxiously refreshed their inboxes to see the first downlinked and up-close images of the rock – that could help them be...

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NASA Confirms Thousands of Massive, Ancient Volcanic Eruptions on Mars

Wednesday, September 15th 2021 04:19 PM

  Some volcanoes can produce eruptions so powerful they release oceans of dust and toxic gases into the air, blocking out sunlight and changing a planet’s climate for decades. By studying the topography and mineral composition of a portion of the Arabia Terra region in northern Mars, scientists recently found evidence for thousands of such eruptions, or “super eruptions,” which are the most violent volcanic explosions known. Spewing water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide into the air, these explosions tore through the Martian surface over a 500-million-year period about 4 billion years ago. Scientists reported this estimate in a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in July 2021. “Each one of these eruptions would have had a significant climate impact — maybe the released gas made the atmosphere thicker or blocked the Sun and made the atmosphere colder,” said Patrick Whelley, a geologist at NASA’s Goddard...

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Rerun of Supernova Blast Expected to Appear in 2037

Monday, September 13th 2021 04:29 PM

It's challenging to make predictions, especially in astronomy. There are however, a few forecasts astronomers can depend on, such as the timing of upcoming lunar and solar eclipses and the clockwork return of some comets. Now, looking far beyond the solar system, astronomers have added a solid prediction of an event happening deep in intergalactic space: an image of an exploding star, dubbed Supernova Requiem, which will appear around the year 2037. Although this rebroadcast will not be visible to the naked eye, some future telescopes should be able to spot it.   Now you see them, now you don't. Three views of the same supernova appear in the 2016 image on the left, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. But they're gone in the 2019 image. The distant supernova, named Requiem, is embedded in the giant galaxy cluster MACS J0138. The cluster is so massive that its powerful gravity bends and magnifies the light from the supernova, located in a galaxy far behind it. Called gravitatio...

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NASA to Host Briefing on Successful Sample Collection of Martian Rock

Friday, September 10th 2021 04:18 PM

  This composite of two images shows the hole drilled by NASA's Perseverance rover during its sucessful sample-collection attempt. Panelists will discuss the Perseverance rover’s successful collection of the sample and latest science analysis. NASA will hold a virtual media briefing Friday, Sept. 10, at noon EDT to provide an update on the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover, which recently completed its first successful rock sampling. The event will be livestreamed on NASA Television, the NASA app, the agency’s website, and multiple agency social media platforms. The briefing will also discuss what the rover’s instruments have learned about the rock from which the sample was taken, and implications for a future sample retrieval mission. Through the Mars Sample Return campaign, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are planning a series of future missions to return the rover’s sample tubes to Earth for closer study. Briefing participants include:...

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Rocket Flight to Sharpen NASA's Study of the Sun

Thursday, September 9th 2021 04:09 PM

  The EVE payload is loaded onto a cart for transport at the White Sands Missile Range. Credits: NASA It’s best not to look directly at the Sun, unless you’re one of NASA’s Sun-observing instruments. And even then, doing so will cause some damage. Exposure to the Sun degrades light sensors of all kinds, from the retinas in the human eye to instruments aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, or SDO. Fortunately, with periodic calibrations, the latter can continue transmitting high-quality data to researchers on Earth. SDO’s Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, or EVE, uses sounding rockets for calibration. During roughly 15-minute flights, these suborbital rockets carry a duplicate of the EVE instrument about 180 miles above Earth, where it records measurements to keep its twin instrument aboard SDO in tune. Tom Woods, a solar physicist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, is t...

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NASA Readies James Webb Space Telescope for December Launch

Wednesday, September 8th 2021 04:34 PM

  After successful completion of its final tests, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is seen here being prepared for shipment to its launch site. Credits: NASA/Chris Gunn NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit Dec. 18, 2021, to serve as the premier deep space observatory for the next decade. The agency set the new target launch date in coordination with Arianespace after Webb recently and successfully completed its rigorous testing regimen – a major turning point for the mission. The new date also follows Arianespace successfully launching an Ariane 5 rocket in late July and scheduling a launch that will precede Webb. The July launch was the first for an Ariane 5 since August 2020. Webb, an international program led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency, will launch on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America. ESA is providing the Ariane 5. T...

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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Collects First Mars Rock Sample

Tuesday, September 7th 2021 04:29 PM

This sealed titanium sample tube contains Perseverance’s first cored sample of Mars rock. The rover’s Sampling and Caching System Camera (known as CacheCam) captured this image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech   Perseverance’s first cored-rock sample of Mars rock is seen inside its titanium container tube in this image taken by the rover’s Sampling and Caching System Camera (known as CacheCam). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech   Sample tube number 266 was used to collect the first sample of Martian rock by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The laser-etched serial number helps science team identify the tubes and their contents. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The rock core is now enclosed in an airtight titanium sample tube, and will be available for retrieval in the future. NASA’s Perseverance rover today completed the collection of the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil. Mission controllers at NASA’s Je...

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