NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for SpaceX Starship

NASA has awarded SpaceX of Starbase, Texas, a modification under the NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to add Starship to their existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch service offerings. The NLS II contracts provide a broad range of commercial launch services for NASA’s planetary, Earth-observing, exploration, and scientific satellites. These high-priority, low and […]

NASA’s Dust Shield Successfully Repels Lunar Regolith on Moon

NASA’s Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) successfully demonstrated its ability to remove regolith, or lunar dust and dirt, from its various surfaces on the Moon during Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which concluded on March 16. Lunar dust is extremely abrasive and electrostatic, which means it clings to anything that carries a charge. It can […]

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Detects Largest Organic Molecules Found on Mars

Researchers analyzing pulverized rock onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover have found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date. The finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests prebiotic chemistry may have advanced further on Mars than previously observed. Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity’s Sample Analysis […]

NASA, USGS, Industry Explore Off-World Resource Development

NASA, USGS, Industry Explore Off-World Resource Development NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) welcomed a community of government, industry, and international partners to explore current technology needs around natural resources – both on Earth and “off world.” During a workshop held in February at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, participants discussed […]