Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past. What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks […]
Category: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA: Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability
The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past. New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial […]
NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon
Headed for a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, the Psyche spacecraft successfully calibrated its cameras by looking homeward. On schedule for its 2029 arrival at the asteroid Psyche, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft recently looked back toward home and captured images of Earth and our Moon from about 180 million miles (290 million kilometers) away. The […]
NASA Selects Contractors to Supply Centers with Helium
NASA has chosen a group of contractors to supply multiple agency facilities with liquid and gaseous helium for at least the next two years. The NASA Agency-wide Supply of Liquid and Gaseous Helium contract is a fixed-price indefinite-delivery requirements contract with firm-fixed-price delivery orders. The awards have a total estimated value of approximately $105.1 million. […]
US-French SWOT Satellite Measures Tsunami After Massive Quake
Data provided by the water satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency, is helping to improve tsunami forecast models, benefitting coastal communities. The SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured the tsunami spawned by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 30, 11:25 a.m. […]
NASA Supercomputers Take on Life Near Greenland’s Most Active Glacier
As Greenland’s ice retreats, it’s fueling tiny ocean organisms. To test why, scientists turned to a computer model out of JPL and MIT that’s been called a laboratory in itself. Runoff from Greenland’s ice sheet is kicking nutrients up from the ocean depths and boosting phytoplankton growth, a new NASA-supported study has found. Reporting in […]
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Mars Vista As Clear As Day
‘Float rocks,’ sand ripples, and vast distances are among the sights to see in the latest high-resolution panorama by the six-wheeled scientist. The imaging team of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took advantage of clear skies on the Red Planet to capture one of the sharpest panoramas of its mission so far. Visible in the mosaic, […]
NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer Moon Mission Ends
The small satellite was to map lunar water, but operators lost contact with the spacecraft the day after launch and were unable to recover the mission. NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer ended its mission to the Moon on July 31. Despite extensive efforts, mission operators were unable to establish two-way communications after losing contact with the spacecraft […]
NASA’s Europa Clipper Radar Instrument Proves Itself at Mars
The agency’s largest interplanetary probe tested its radar during a Mars flyby. The results include a detailed image and bode well for the mission at Jupiter’s moon Europa. As it soared past Mars in March, NASA’s Europa Clipper conducted a critical radar test that had been impossible to accomplish on Earth. Now that mission scientists […]
How Joint NASA-ESA Sea Level Mission Will Help Hurricane Forecasts
Sentinel-6B will measure sea surface height for nearly all of the world’s ocean, providing important data for information products, including weather and hurricane forecasts. NASA has a long record of monitoring Earth’s sea surface height, information critical not only for tracking how the ocean changes over time but also for hurricane forecasting. These extreme storms […]