This animation is an artist’s concept of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io, made using data from the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. With multiple islands in its interior, Loki is a depression filled with magma and rimmed with molten lava. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Imagery from the solar-powered spacecraft provides close-ups [...]
The rapid pace of preparations for the first Moon landing continued in April 1969. The successful Apollo 9 mission in March cleared the way for Apollo 10 to test all three components of the spacecraft in lunar orbit in May, in a dress rehearsal for the landing itself. Apollo 10 astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John [...]
1 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Two Black Brant IX sounding rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, April 17, 2024, during an M-class solar flare for NASA’s sounding rocket solar flare campaign. The first rocket launched at 2:13 p.m. local Alaska time for the Focusing Optics [...]
6 Min Read Climate Change Research The Kibo laboratory module from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (comprised of a pressurized module and exposed facility, a logistics module, a remote manipulator system and an inter-orbit communication system unit) pictured as the International Space Station orbits over the southern Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. Credits: [...]
5 min read Hubble Goes Hunting for Small Main Belt Asteroids Like boulders, rocks, and pebbles scattered across a landscape, asteroids come in a wide range of sizes. Cataloging asteroids in space is tricky because they are faint and they don’t stop to be photographed as they zip along their orbits around the Sun. [...]
Open Science Data Repository Team Hosts Blue Origin’s Dr Erika Wagner at the Meet the Expert Seminar Series Focused on Flight Integrators Friday, March 29, 2024—The Open Science Data Repository hosted the sixth presentation showcasing flight integrators in the “Meet the Expert” series. This series is targeted for the Open Science Analysis Working Group [...]
2 min read NASA’s TESS Returns to Science Operations NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has returned to work after science observations were suspended on April 8, when the spacecraft entered into safe mode. All instruments are powered on and, following the successful download of previously collected science data stored in the mission’s recorder, [...]
Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone and other mission team members gave a framed copy of an iconic Voyager 1 solar system image that includes Earth as a “Pale Blue Dot” to President George H.W. Bush on June 7, 1990. The presentation was made at the White House in the Oval Office. White House [...]
18 Min Read The Marshall Star for April 17, 2024 The Full Experience: NASA, Marshall, and Arkansas Celebrate Total Solar Eclipse By Celine Smith More than 100,000 people from across the world gathered April 8 in Russellville, Arkansas, to witness an astronomical syzygy – the alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth – creating [...]
The PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission has delivered its first operational data back to researchers, a feat made possible in part by innovative, data-storing technology from NASA’s Near Space Network, which introduced two key enhancements for PACE and other upcoming science missions. As a satellite orbits in space, its systems generate critical data [...]
