Artist’s concept of NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA will host a news teleconference at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST), Wednesday, Feb. 26, to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. The briefing participants are: — Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington — Jack... More »
This image taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the view of Victoria Crater from Duck Bay. Opportunity reached Victoria Crater on Sol 951 (September 27, 2006) after traversing 9.28 kilometers (5.77 miles) since her landing site at Eagle Crater. NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington are sponsoring events to commemorate 1... More »
Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA Television will provide commentary starting at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) on Friday, Feb. 15, during the close, but safe, flyby of a small near-Earth asteroid named 2012 DA14. NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting our home planet from them... More »
At left, the extent of the 2005 megadrought in the western Amazon rainforests during the summer months of June, July and August as measured by NASA satellites. The most impacted areas are shown in shades of red and yellow. The circled area in the right panel shows the extent of the forests that experienced slow recovery from the 2005 drought, with areas in red and yellow shades experiencing the sl... More »
The total ground deformation caused by a simulated magnitude 8.0 earthquake on the San Andreas fault. This is the largest event from a 30,000 year interacting earthquake fault simulation using QuakeSim’s Virtual California. Instead of mimicking an exact series of observed events, Virtual California simulations create a large catalog of possible earthquake sequences. Image Credit – University of Ca... More »
Researchers are brewing up icy, organic concoctions in the lab to mimic materials at the edge of our solar system and beyond. The laboratory equipment at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is seen at right, and a very young solar system, with its swirling planet-forming disk, is shown in the artist’s concept at left. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Would you like icy organics wit... More »
Say ‘Ahh’ on Mars This set of images from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the inlet covers for the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument opening and closing, as the rover continues to check out its instruments in the first phase after landing. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Mars Curiosity team has almost finished robotic arm tests in preparation for the rover to touch and examine its first Martia... More »
A Sky Chock-Full of Black Holes With its all-sky infrared survey, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has identified millions of quasar candidates. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies. Images from the te... More »
Artist rendition of the proposed InSight (Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Lander. Image credit: JPL/NASA NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to see why the Red Planet evolved so differently from Earth as one of our solar system’s rocky planets. The new mission, named InSi... More »
This artist’s concept features NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars’ past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech PASADENA, Ca. — NASA’s newest Mars mission, landing in three days, will draw on support from missions sent to Mars years ago and will contribute to missions envisioned for future decades. “Curiosity i... More »
