Tag Archives: NASA

How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe

How the James Webb Space Telescope broke the universe

But the speed at which JWST has made discoveries is due to more than its intrinsic capabilities. Astronomers prepared for years for the observations it would make, developing algorithms that can rapidly turn its data into usable information. Much of the data is open access, allowing the astronomical community to comb through it almost as […]

NASA wants to use the sun to power future deep space missions

While other spacecraft, like Lucy, have used solar energy to operate instruments, Psyche will be among the first of NASA’s deep-space missions to use solar energy for both onboard operations and propulsion.  Paulo Lozano, director of MIT’s space propulsion laboratory, says Psyche could lay the groundwork for more solar-powered space exploration. Eventually, the technology could help us investigate multiple celestial objects for longer periods […]

US astronomers want a giant telescope to hunt for new Earth-like planets

Using spectroscopy, which examines how matter and light interact, astronomers will now begin to study the atmospheres of large, hot worlds for evidence of biosignatures, or signs of life on other planets. The second new priority announced in the report: seeking to understand what happened during the earliest moments of our universe by probing the […]

NASA’s new rovers will be a fleet of mobile robots that work together

Onboard, each rover will carry a small computer, a wireless radio, and a stereo camera to capture 3D imagery. While none of them alone will be able to collect as much data as a larger one would, deploying several at once could reduce the risk of a catastrophic mission failure. CADRE was developed inside NASA’s […]

This NASA spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s mysterious asteroid swarms

Lucy will take black-and-white and color images, and use a diamond beam splitter to shine far-infrared light at the asteroids to take their temperature and make maps of their surface. It will also collect other measurements as it flies by. This data could help scientists understand how the planets may have formed. Sarah Dodson-Robinson, an […]

This AI could predict 10 years of scientific priorities—if we let it

The survey committee, which receives input from a host of smaller panels, takes into account a gargantuan amount of information to create research strategies. Although the Academies won’t release the committee’s final recommendation to NASA for a few more weeks, scientists are itching to know which of their questions will make it in, and which will be […]

We just got our best-ever look at the inside of Mars

NASA’s InSight robotic lander has just given us our first look deep inside a planet other than Earth.  More than two years after its launch, seismic data that InSight collected has given researchers hints into how Mars was formed, how it has evolved over 4.6 billion years, and how it differs from Earth. A set of three new studies, published in Science this week, suggests that Mars has a […]

NASA inches closer to printing artificial organs in space

In America, at least 17 people a day die waiting for an organ transplant. But instead of waiting for a donor to die, what if we could someday grow our own organs? Last week, six years after NASA announced its Vascular Tissue Challenge, a competition designed to accelerate research that could someday lead to artificial […]

NASA is ending its 30-year Venus drought with two new missions

It’s honestly a bit hard to understand why NASA has not been more bullish about going to back to Venus in such a long time. It’s true that Venus has always been a tough bugger to explore because of its hostile environment. The surface boasts temperatures of up to 471 °C (hot enough to melt […]