NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research.
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Several hundred new faces walked through the gates of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the first time on June 3. Who is this small army of motivated space-enthusiasts? It’s Goddard’s 2024 summer intern cohort. Across Goddard’s campuses, more than 300 on-site and virtual interns spend the 10-week program contributing across all manners of disciplines, science, engineering, finance, communications, and many more. From helping engineers who will send new space telescopes into orbit, to communicating NASA’s scientific discoveries to the world, this cohort of interns hopes to bring their new ideas and perspectives to Goddard this summer. Ab…
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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Despite some years with significant snowfalls, long-term drought conditions in the Great Basin region of Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, along with increasing water demands, have strained water reserves in the western U.S. As a result, inland bodies of water, including the Great Salt Lake pictured here, have shrunk dramatically, exposing lakebeds that may release toxic dust when dried.Dorothy Hall/University of Maryland Record snowfall in recent years has not been enough to offset long-term drying conditions and increasing groundwater demands in the U.S. Southwest, according to a new…
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4 Min Read Slow Your Student’s ‘Summer Slide’ and Beat Boredom With NASA STEM Creating and testing soda-straw rockets is a fun way for younger students to avoid the “summer slide” and stay engaged in STEM during summer vacation. Credits: NASA The school year has come to an end, and those long summer days are stretching ahead like an open runway. Parents and educators often worry about the “summer slide,” the concept that students may lose academic ground while out of school. But summer doesn’t mean students’ imaginations…
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6 Min Read Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb This image by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows different structural details of the Crab Nebula. New data revises our view of this unusual supernova explosion. A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. With the telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the team gathered data that is helping to clarify the Crab Nebula’s h…
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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The NASA 5.2% scale, semi-span version of the High Lift Common Research Model installed in the German-Dutch Wind Tunnels – Braunschweig Low-Speed Wind Tunnel in Braunschweig, Germany on May 4, 2023. NASA NASA and its international partners are using the same generically shaped wing design to create physical and digital research models to better understand how air moves around an aircraft during takeoff and landing. Various organizations are doing computer modeling with computational tools and conducting wind tunnel tests using the same High Lift Common Research Model (CRM-HL), a NASA-le…
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4 Min Read Tropical Solstice Shadows June 20, 2024, marks the summer solstice — the beginning of astronomical summer — in the Northern Hemisphere. Credits: NASA/DSCOVR EPIC Solstices mark the changing of seasons, occur twice a year, and feature the year’s shortest and longest daylight hours – depending on your hemisphere. These extremes in the length of day and night make solstice days more noticeable to many observers than the subtle equality of day and night experienced during equinoxes. Solstices were some of our earl…
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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docked to the Harmony module of the International Space Station on the company’s Orbital Flight Test-2 mission (Credits: NASA) NASA and Boeing will discuss Starliner’s mission and departure from the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test in a pre-departure media teleconference at 12 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 18. NASA, Boeing, and station management teams will evaluate mission requirements and weather conditions at available landing locations in the southwestern U.S. before committing to the spacecraft’s departure from the orbiting laboratory. Participants in the news conference include: Steve S…
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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) High school and collegiate student teams gathered just north of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to participate in the agency’s annual Student Launch competition April 13. Credits: NASA/Charles Beason Over 1,000 students from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico launched high-powered, amateur rockets on April 13, just north of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the agency’s annual Student Launch competition. Teams of middle school, high school, college, and university students were tasked to design, build, and launch a rocket and…
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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA astronaut and Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Victor Glover reviews procedures on a computer for the Monoclonal Antibodies Protein Crystal Growth (PCG) experiment inside the Harmony module. Each year, Black Space Week celebrates the achievements of Black Americans in space-related fields. To kick-off Black Space Week 2024, NASA is collaborating with the National Space Council for the Beyond the Color Lines: From Science Fiction to Science Fact forum on Monday, June 17, at 11:30 a.m. EDT at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Participants in…
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Representatives from NASA, FEMA, and the planetary defense community participate in the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise on April 2 and 3, 2024, to discuss the nation’s ability to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet.Credits: NASA/JHU-APL/Ed Whitman NASA will host a virtual media briefing at 3:30 p.m. EDT, Thursday, June 20, to discuss a new summary of a recent tabletop exercise to simulate national and international responses to a hypothetical asteroid impact threat. The fifth biennial Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise was held April 2 and 3, 2024, at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Labo…
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2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This summer between June 17 and July 2, NASA will fly aircraft over Baltimore, Philadelphia, parts of Virginia, and California to collect data on air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. The campaign supports the NASA Student Airborne Research Program for undergraduate interns. Two NASA aircraft, including the P-3 shown here, will be flying over Baltimore, Philadelphia, Virginia and California between June 17 and July 2, to collect data on air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: (NASA/ Zavaleta) The East Coast flights will take place from June 17-26. Researchers a…
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4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) A Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket carrying students experiments for the RockOn! mission successfully launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Aug. 17, 2023 at 6 a.m. EDT.NASA/ Kyle Hoppes More than 50 student and faculty teams are sending experiments into space as part of NASA’s RockOn and RockSat-C student flight programs. The annual student mission, “RockOn,” is scheduled to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, on a Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket Thursday, June 20, with a launch window that opens at 5:30 a.m. EDT. An introduction to rocketry for college student…
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Earth Observer Earth and Climate Earth Observer Home Editor’s Corner Feature Articles News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam More Meeting Summaries Archives 22 min read Summary of the Ninth DSCOVR EPIC and NISTAR Science Team Meeting Introduction The ninth Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Camera (EPIC) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Radiometer [NISTAR] Science Team Meeting (STM) was held virtually October 16–17, 2023. Over 35 scientists attended, most of whom were from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), with several participating from other NASA field centers, U.S…
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This image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows China’s Chang’e 6 lander in the Apollo basin on the far side of the Moon on June 7, 2024. The lander is the bright dot in the center of the image. The image is about 0.4 miles wide (650 meters); lunar north is up.Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) imaged China’s Chang’e 6 sample return spacecraft on the far side of the Moon on June 7. Chang’e 6 landed on June 1, and when LRO passed over the landing site almost a week later, it acquired an image showing the lander on the rim of an eroded, 55-yard-diameter (about 50 meters) crater. The LRO Camera team comput…
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Michael Chandler has provided configuration and data management support at Houston’s Johnson Space Center for the last 13 years. After roughly seven years supporting the Exploration Systems Development Division, Chandler transitioned to the Moon to Mars Program Office in 2019. He and his team work to ensure that the baseline for Moon to Mars products, like agreements and documents, is appropriately controlled and that configuration and data management processes are integrated across the office’s six programs – Orion, Gateway, EHP, Space Launch System, Human Landing system, and Exploration Ground Systems. “The most rewarding part of my job is not only the magnitud…
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“I graduated in 2008, so that job market was not super great, and I ended up with this very unusual job working for this guy who thought that he had some new theory of physics that he wanted to work on. And so I was responsible for creating little computer simulations, trying to resemble some version of his ideas. His whole thing was like a quasi-spiritual tool, looking toward science as a rationalization of different spiritual beliefs that he had about a collective consciousness and the interconnectedness of things. “As I worked for him longer and met a bunch of other people who were trying to put various spiritual beliefs on scientific footing, I got interested [and…
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ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Niederhofe This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and of itself, but it is a peculiarity when compared to its surroundings. NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy some 162,000 light-years from Earth. Globular clusters are densely-packed groups of stars that can hold tens of thousands or millions of stars. Their density means they are tightly bound by gravity and therefore very stable. This stability contributes to their longevity: globular clusters can be bil…
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NASA’s Pegasus barge delivers the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket’s core stage for the 2022 Artemis I mission to the turn basin at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in April 2021. Credits: NASA/Michael Downs Media are invited in late July to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to see progress on the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) Moon rocket as preparations continue for the Artemis II test flight around the Moon. Participants joining the multi-day events will see the arrival and unloading of the 212-foot-tall SLS core stage at the center’s turn basin before it is transported to the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building. The stage will arrive on NASA’s Pegasus barge…
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“Don’t let the NASA emblem scare you away. “I was very intimidated by it because it was a childhood dream [to make it to NASA]. I saw a picture of me at Kennedy Space [Center’s] visitor center the last time I went home. I must have been five years old. I always used to tell myself that I wasn’t smart enough. [I assumed you needed to be] a literal rocket scientist, and I have absolutely no STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] degree whatsoever. “So my advice is, as long as you’re true to who you are, you’re transparent, you’re yourself, and you put the work in, you will get what you want. “And make them tell you no — that was one of the first things I learn…
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Although surrounded by the big and bold missions of human spaceflight, Margaret Kennedy, an aerospace systems engineer on the Human Health and Performance Contract, still appreciates the little things. Ask about her favorite NASA experience to date and she will tell you it is getting to show her badge to the gate guards at Houston’s Johnson Space Center every day. “Knowing I get to be a part of things that can change the world – that I’m helping to make it possible for astronauts to do their job safely, which in turn supports life on Earth – is very rewarding,” she said. Margaret Kennedy poses with Johnson Space Center’s inflatable mascot, Cosmo, at Comicpalooza 2…
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2 min read Hubble Observes a Cosmic Fossil This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Niederhofer, L. Girardi This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and of itself, but it is a peculiarity when compared to its surroundings. NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy some 162,000 light-years from Earth. Globular clusters are densely-packed groups of stars that can hold tens of thousands or millions of stars. Their d…
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Science Instruments Science Highlights News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Mars Resources Mars Exploration All Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets 3 min read Sols 4214–4215: The Best Laid Plans… MAHLI image of “Mammoth Lakes,” which we had hoped would become our 41st drill hole after today’s plan. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Wednesday, June 12, 2024 Planning today was defined by the decision about whether or not to drill at “Mammoth Lakes,” the potential …
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2 min read Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft. NASA/JPL-Caltech The spacecraft has resumed gathering information about interstellar space. NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is conducting normal science operations for the first time following a technical issue that arose in November 2023. The team partially resolved the issue in April when they prompted the spacecraft to begin returning engineering data, which includes information about the health and status of the spacecraft. On May 19, the mission team executed the second step of that repair process and beamed a command to the spacecraft to beg…
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17 Min Read The Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon A perigee full moon, or supermoon, is seen next to the Empire State Building, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015 in New York City. Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky The Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon; the Flower, Hot, Hoe, or Planting Moon; the Mead or Honey Moon; the Rose Moon; Vat Purnima; Poson Poya; and the LRO Moon. The next full Moon will be Friday evening, June 21, 2024, appearing opposite the Sun (in Earth-based longitude) at 9:08 PM EDT. This will be Saturday from Greenland and Cape Verde time eastward across Eurasia, Africa, and Australia to the International Date Line…
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A collaboration between the MSFC Lightning Team, NOAA NESDIS, and the NASA ARSET (Applied Remote Sensing Training) team completed on 4/2/24 with the final installment of a three-part series focused on Lightning Observations and Applications. On 3/26/24, Part 1 was presented to an audience of people from around the globe focused on the background and history of lightning measurements. This presentation was given by Steven Goodman of Thunderbolt Technologies. Part 2 was titled” Overview of Current Lightning Data Products from Remote Sensing” and was given by MSFC Lightning lead Timothy Lang (ST11). This presentation focused a lot on NASA lightning missions, field campaigns,…
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