Category: NASA Directorates

New NASA Mission to Reveal Earth’s Invisible ‘Halo’

A new NASA mission will capture images of Earth’s invisible “halo,” the faint light given off by our planet’s outermost atmospheric layer, the exosphere, as it morphs and changes in response to the Sun. Understanding the physics of the exosphere is a key step toward forecasting dangerous conditions in near-Earth space, a requirement for protecting […]

NASA’s IMAP Mission to Study Boundaries of Our Home in Space

Summary Space is a dangerous place — one that NASA continues to explore for the benefit of all. It’s filled with radiation and high-energy particles that can damage DNA and circuit boards alike. Yet life endures in our solar system in part because of the heliosphere, a giant bubble created by the Sun that extends […]

NASA’s IMAP Mission to Study Boundaries of Our Home in Space

Summary Space is a dangerous place — one that NASA continues to explore for the benefit of all. It’s filled with radiation and high-energy particles that can damage DNA and circuit boards alike. Yet life endures in our solar system in part because of the heliosphere, a giant bubble created by the Sun that extends […]

Regions on Asteroid Explored by NASA’s Lucy Mission Get Official Names

The IAU (International Astronomical Union), a global naming authority for celestial objects, has approved official names for features on Donaldjohanson, an asteroid NASA’s Lucy spacecraft visited on April 20.

NASA’s Artemis II Lunar Science Operations to Inform Future Missions

While the Artemis II crew will be the first humans to test NASA’s Orion spacecraft in space, they will also conduct science investigations that will inform future deep space missions, including a lunar science investigation as Orion flies about 4,000 to 6,000 miles from the Moon’s surface.

NASA’s Apollo Samples, LRO Help Scientists Predict Moonquakes

Moonquakes pose little risk to astronauts during a mission lasting just a few days. But their effects on longer-term lunar surface assets could be significant.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Snaps Closest-Ever Images to Sun

KEY POINTS On its record-breaking pass by the Sun late last year, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured stunning new images from within the Sun’s atmosphere. These newly released images — taken closer to the Sun than we’ve ever been before — are helping scientists better understand the Sun’s influence across the solar system, including events […]

NASA Launching Rockets Into Radio-Disrupting Clouds

NASA is launching rockets from a remote Pacific island to study mysterious, high-altitude cloud-like structures that can disrupt critical communication systems. The mission, called Sporadic-E ElectroDynamics, or SEED, opens its three-week launch window from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on Friday, June 13. The atmospheric features SEED is studying are known as Sporadic-E layers, […]

NASA’s Dragonfly Mission Sets Sights on Titan’s Mysteries

When it descends through the thick golden haze on Saturn’s moon Titan, NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft will find eerily familiar terrain. Dunes wrap around Titan’s equator. Clouds drift across its skies. Rain drizzles. Rivers flow, forming canyons, lakes and seas.  But not everything is as familiar as it seems. At minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit, the dune […]

What NASA Is Learning from the Biggest Geomagnetic Storm in 20 Years

One year on, NASA scientists are still making huge discoveries about the largest geomagnetic storm to hit Earth in two decades, the Gannon storm. The findings are helping us better understand and prepare for the ways in which the Sun’s activity can affect us. One year ago today, representatives from NASA and about 30 other […]