Cassini imaging scientists used views like this one to help them identify the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science... More »
Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor and professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has been named a co-winner of the 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for his efforts to understand the outer solar... More »
NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has a complex set of mirrors, or optics, that will help it see high-energy X-ray light in greater detail than ever before. These images show different views of one of two optic units onboard NuSTAR, each... More »
There are trillions of bacteria living in our bodies, making up complex communities of microbes regulating processes like digestion and immunity. For Caltech biologist Sarkis Mazmanian, they also make up the focus of his research: understanding how the “good” ... More »
An artist’s depiction of the twin spacecraft that comprise NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. During the GRAIL mission’s science phase, spacecraft (Ebb and Flow) transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them ... More »
Later this week, a four-wheeled robot designed and built by Caltech undergraduate students will maneuver, apparently under its own guidance, through various challenges at the NASA Johnson Space Center Rock Yard in Houston. In actuality, the robot’s every move ... More »
DNA tile ribbons (shown here in an atomic force microscopy image) can store information in their arrangement of tiles—12.5nm x 4nm x 2nm self-assembled DNA structures. This information can be propagated during ribbon growth, and replicated in a cycle of ribb... More »
These series of radar images of asteroid 1999 RQ36 were obtained by NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. on Sept 23, 1999. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in , has accurately determined the mass ... More »
Artist’s concept of NuSTAR in orbit. NuSTAR has a 33-foot (10-meter) mast that deploys after launch to separate the optics modules (right) from the detectors in the focal plane (left). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will hold a news conference on Wednesda... More »
One day each spring, kept secret until the last minute, Caltech seniors ditch their classes and vanish from campus, leaving behind complex, imaginative scavenger hunts, mazes, puzzles, and other challenges that are carefully planned out to occupy the undercl... More »
NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity catches its own late-afternoon shadow in this dramatically lit view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ. Like a tourist waiting for just the right lighting to snap a ... More »
Artist’s concept showing NASA’s NuSTAR mission orbiting Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Final pre-launch preparations are underway for NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The mission, which will use X-ray vision to hunt for hidden bl... More »
