Ice currently covers more than 10 percent of our watery planet, yet its volume is continuing to decline at a staggering pace in response to our warming world. A new NASA interactive tool lets you take a close-up tour of some of the places around our planet where climate change … Continue reading
Combining instruction in science and math with lessons in Spanish, students from a rural Kentucky middle school participated Thursday in a bilingual online chat with Herman Posada, a NASA research pilot who flies unmanned aerial vehicles. “A chat like this provides our students with a real and meaningful second language, … Continue reading
A full-scale mock-up of the Orion launch abort system (LAS) is heading back across the country. The nearly 45-foot-long mock-up, known as the LAS pathfinder, is hitting the road on a large flatbed trailer to travel from the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to NASA’s Kennedy … Continue reading
Expedition 24 Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko landed their Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft in Kazakhstan on Saturday, Sept. 25, wrapping up a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station. Skvortsov was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 10:02 p.m. EDT … Continue reading
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will swing high over Saturn’s moon Titan on Friday, Sept. 24, taking a long, sustained look at the hazy moon. At closest approach, Cassini will fly within 8,175 kilometers (5,080 miles) above the hazy moon’s surface. This flyby is the first in a series of high-altitude Titan … Continue reading
After undergoing a major overhaul and upgrades, the Boeing / NASA X-48B Blended Wing Body research aircraft resumed flight tests with a checkout flight Sept. 21 from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The subscale, manta ray-shaped, remotely piloted airplane, also called a hybrid wing … Continue reading
NASA has awarded grants to nine academic institutions and their partners that serve large numbers of minority and underrepresented students to strengthen offerings in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. The grants total approximately $1.15 million through the agency’s Curriculum Improvement Partnership Award for the Integration of Research (CIPAIR) … Continue reading
Been outside at midnight lately? There’s something you really need to see. Jupiter is approaching Earth for the closest encounter between the two planets in more than a decade–and it is dazzling. The night of closest approach is Sept. 20-21st. This is also called “the night of opposition” because Jupiter … Continue reading
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, will complete the exploration phase of its mission on Sept. 16, after a number of successes that transformed our understanding of Earth’s nearest neighbor. LRO completed a one-year exploration mission in a polar orbit approximately 31 miles above the moon’s surface. It produced a … Continue reading
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself into a precautionary standby mode after experiencing a spontaneous computer reboot on Sept. 15. The mission’s ground team has begun restoring the spacecraft to full operations. Initial analysis of telemetry from the orbiter indicates the “safe mode” status was triggered by a reboot similar … Continue reading