Like a maw into the pits of hell, the Paluwej volcano in Indonesia has caught even NASA’s attention. As the Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite flew over Indonesia’s Flores Sea April 29, it captured an [...]
Author Archive | NASA
The Day NASA’s Fermi Dodged a 1.5-ton Bullet
NASA scientists don’t often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, [...]
X-ray view of a thousand-year-old cosmic tapestry
This year, astronomers around the world have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of X-ray astronomy. Few objects better illustrate the progress of the field in the past half-century than the supernova remnant known as SN [...]
Human Asteroid Initiative Builds on NASA History
NASA’s FY2014 budget proposal includes a plan to robotically capture a small near-Earth asteroid and redirect it safely to a stable orbit in the Earth-moon system where astronauts can visit and explore it. Performing these [...]
Suzaku ‘Post-mortem’ Yields Insight into Kepler’s Supernova
An exploding star observed in 1604 by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler held a greater fraction of heavy elements than the sun, according to an analysis of X-ray observations from the Japan-led Suzaku satellite. The [...]
Hubble sees supernova a record distance away
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years [...]
NASA to U.S. Universities: Let’s Grow Some Tech
NASA is seeking innovative, early-stage space technology proposals from accredited U.S. universities that will enable NASA’s future missions and America’s leadership in space. Proposals are sought for science instruments, cryogenic propellant storage for long-duration space [...]
NASA Flies Dragon Eye Unmanned Aircraft Into Volcanic Plume
NASA Earth science researchers last month traveled to Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, to fly a Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — a small electric aircraft equipped with cameras and sensors — [...]
NASA’s LRO sees GRAIL’s explosive farewell
Many spacecraft just fade away, drifting silently through space after their mission is over, but not GRAIL. NASA’s twin GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) spacecraft went out in a blaze of glory Dec. 17, [...]
Sun burp aimed at Earth
On Feb. 9, 2013 at 2:30 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, associated with a long duration C2.4-class flare. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the [...]
NASA Beams Mona Lisa to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Moon
As part of the first demonstration of laser communication with a satellite at the moon, scientists with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the spacecraft from Earth. The [...]
Titan Gets a Dune Makeover, Filling Pocks and Wrinkles
Titan’s siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn’s moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan – Saturn’s largest moon – may look much younger than it really is because its [...]
NASA Landsat Senses a Disturbance in the Forest
A new way of studying and visualizing Earth science data from a NASA and U.S. Geological Survey satellite program is resulting in, for the first time, the ability to tease out the small events that [...]
Galaxy’s gamma-ray flares erupted far from its black hole
In 2011, a months-long blast of energy launched by an enormous black hole almost 11 billion years ago swept past Earth. Using a combination of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National [...]
An Image Gallery Gift from NASA’s Swift
Of the three telescopes carried by NASA’s Swift satellite, only one captures cosmic light at energies similar to those seen by the human eye. Although small by the standards of ground-based observatories, Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope [...]