When NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) deliberately smashed into a 560-foot-wide (170-meter-wide) asteroid on Sept. 26, 2022, it made its mark in more ways than one. The demonstration showed that a kinetic impactor could deflect a hazardous astero... More »
Student-made contraptions of a metal and a little magic battled each other in front of cheering and dancing high schoolers at the annual Los Angeles regional FIRST Robotics Competition over the weekend, an event supported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. O... More »
Leslie Livesay begins her tenure as deputy director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday, March 18. She succeeds Larry D. James, who served as deputy director since September 2013. During a career spanning more than 37 years at JPL, Livesay has manage... More »
There were no brooms or bludgers in sight on the basketball court inside Caltech’s Scott Brown Gymnasium on March 8, but it was hard not to think of everyone’s favorite teenage wizard and his sporting pastime while watching the 39th annual ME72 Engineering Des... More »
What do margaritas, vinegar, and ant stings have in common? They contain chemical ingredients that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has identified surrounding two young protostars known as IRAS 2A and IRAS 23385. Although planets are not yet forming around th... More »
The formation of stars and the chaotic environments they inhabit is one of the most well-studied, but also mystery-shrouded, areas of cosmic investigation. The intricacies of these processes are now being unveiled like never before by NASA’s James Webb Space T... More »
Following in NASA’s storied tradition of sending inspirational messages into space, the agency has special plans for Europa Clipper, which later this year will launch toward Jupiter’s moon Europa. Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena is responsible for managi... More »
Celebrate one of the world’s most famous numbers with a set of math problems involving real space missions, courtesy of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. March 14 marks the annual celebration of the mathematical constant pi, aka the Greek letter ?. Its i... More »
Construction and testing are complete on the CADRE rovers, which will map the lunar surface together as a tech demo to show the promise of multirobot missions. A trio of small rovers that will explore the Moon in sync with one another are rolling toward launch... More »
For decades, scientists and pathologists have tried, without much success, to come up with a way to determine which individual lung cancer patients are at greatest risk of having their illness spread, or metastasize, to other parts of the body. Now a team of s... More »
Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons, is a world of wonder and intrigue. Beneath its frozen surface, a vast ocean of liquid water may harbor the ingredients for life. Above it, the bombardment of charged particles from the giant planet constantly replenishes a t... More »
What do you picture in your mind’s eye when you hear the word “laser”? A light saber? A cat toy? The sensor at the supermarket reading barcodes as fast as the eye can blink? These are all lasers, but there are so many more in so many sizes and colors with capa... More »
