Tag: NASA

  • Prototype Capture System, Mock Asteroid Help Simulate Mission Sequence

    Prototype Capture System, Mock Asteroid Help Simulate Mission Sequence

    A prototype of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) robotic capture module system is tested with a mock asteroid boulder in its clutches at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The robotic portion of ARM is targeted for launch in 2021.

  • Rains of Terror on Exoplanet HD 189733b

    Rains of Terror on Exoplanet HD 189733b

    This Halloween, take a tour with NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration site of some of the most terrifying destinations in our galaxy. The nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken.

  • Expedition 49 Soyuz Spacecraft Landing

    Expedition 49 Soyuz Spacecraft Landing

    The Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 49 crew members NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016 (Kazakh time).

  • NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins Prepares For the Journey Home

    NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins Prepares For the Journey Home

    NASA astronaut Kate Rubins is pictured inside of the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft while conducting routine spacesuit checks. The Expedition 49 trio of Rubins, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin are scheduled to undock their Soyuz on Saturday, Oct. 29, and land at 11:59 p.m. EDT.

  • NASA Missions Harvest a Passel of ‘Pumpkin’ Stars

    NASA’s Kepler and Swift missions have found rapidly rotating stars producing more than 100 times our own sun’s peak X-ray emission. Spinning so fast they resemble pumpkins, the stars likely formed by mergers of sun-like stars.

  • First Pass of Echo 1 Satellite Over the Goldstone Tracking Station

    First Pass of Echo 1 Satellite Over the Goldstone Tracking Station

    This photograph shows the first pass of Echo 1, America’s first communications satellite, over the Goldstone Tracking Station managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, in the early morning of Aug. 12, 1960. The movement of the antenna, star trails, and Echo 1 (the long streak in the middle) are visible in this image.

  • Paw Paw Bends

    Paw Paw Bends

    The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of the Potomac River and canal on September 27, 2016. The image shows the stretch between Hancock and Cumberland, Maryland—about 97 kilometers (60 miles) if you were to hike or bike along the towpath between these two towns. West Virginia is south of the river.

  • Cygnus Spacecraft Attached to Space Station's Unity Module

    Cygnus Spacecraft Attached to Space Station's Unity Module

    Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo craft (left) is seen from the Cupola module windows aboard the International Space Station on Oct. 23, 2016. The main robotic work station for controlling the Canadarm2 robotic arm is located inside the Cupola and was used to capture Cygnus upon its arrival.

  • CST-100 Starliner Manufacturing

    CST-100 Starliner Manufacturing

    An engineer guides the upper dome of a Boeing CST-100 Starliner as it is connected to the lower dome to complete the first hull of the Starliner’s Structural Test Article. The Starliner is one of two spacecraft in development in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program that will enable astronauts to fly to the International Space Station.

  • 'Heartbeat Stars' Unlocked in New Study

    Heartbeat stars got their name because if you were to map out their brightness over time, the result looks like an electrocardiogram, a graph of the electrical activity of the heart.

  • NASA, Citizen Scientists Discover Potential New Hunting Ground for Exoplanets

    Via a NASA-led citizen science project, eight people with no formal training in astrophysics helped discover what could be a fruitful new place to search for planets outside our solar system – a large disk of gas and dust encircling a star known as a circumstellar disk.

  • Hubble Spins a Web Into a Giant Red Spider Nebula

    Hubble Spins a Web Into a Giant Red Spider Nebula

    Huge waves are sculpted in this two-lobed nebula called the Red Spider Nebula, located some 3,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius.

  • Media Invited to Rare View of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Mirrors

    Media are invited to join NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Wednesday, Nov. 2, for an update about what’s in store for NASA’s next great observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, and a rare glimpse of the telescope’s mirrors.