Northrop Grumman to launch its 16th resupply mission to the ISS
The 16th resupply mission by Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is currently targeted to lift off on August 10th at 5:56 p.m. from Pad-0A of the Mid-Atlantic Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. On top of the Antares booster, the Cygnus spacecraft will carry more than 8,200 pounds of science and research, …
QuizMe: Pluto
Test your knowledge about Pluto. This space quiz contains 15 questions about Pluto, its moons, and our exploration of the former ninth planet, now classified by scientists as a dwarf planet. Discovered by humanity less than 100 years ago, Pluto has largely remained an enigma ever since. It was not until 2015 that the first …
Ingenuity ready for historic first flight on Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover has just snapped her first-ever selfie on Mars this week on April 6, or Sol 46 — as well as its also being the first joint selfie with the experimental Ingenuity Mars helicopter on the Red Planet — and it is truly spectacular. Ahead of humanity’s history-making first controlled test flight by …
Without gravity, what happens to our cells in space?
There’s one force whose effects are so deeply entrenched in our everyday lives that we probably don’t think much about it at all: gravity. Gravity is the force that causes attraction between masses. It’s why when you drop a pen, it falls to the ground. But because gravitational force is proportional to the mass of …
Final SLS Green Run test goes the distance
NASA successfully completed the critical and long-awaited hot fire test of the core stage engines for the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) human-rated mega Moon rocket Thursday afternoon, March 18, on a test stand in Mississippi. The rocket stage will now be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center, paving the path for the launch of the …
Soleil Moon Frye wants to take Punky Power into space
In 1984, Soleil Moon Frye wriggled her way into the hearts of millions of Americans as the precocious character Punky on the NBC series, “Punky Brewster,” and although this much beloved sitcom about a quirky orphaned 7-year-old girl and the old man who befriends her was pure fiction, the series didn’t shy away from tackling …
Keeping Earth’s germs from contaminating Mars
While Nasa’s Perseverance rover landed safely on Mars last month, another, China’s Tianwen rover is expected to follow in May. Both missions intend to search the planet for signs of life. But how do we make sure when our landers touch down on the Red Planet’s surface, nothing unwanted is landing with them? If we aren’t careful, …
Wheels in motion for NASA’s newest Mars rover
NASA’s Perseverance rover performed its first test drive on Martain terrain on March 4, or Sol 14, the mission team announced with the release of a batch of dramatic new images captured at the landing site now bearing the name “Octavia E. Butler Landing” where the six-wheeled robot touched down safely two weeks ago on …
Venus was once more Earth-like, until its climate dramatically changed
We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet. Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450℃ (the temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times that of Earth’s. Venus is a very strange place, totally uninhabitable, except …
Parker Solar Probe catches unexpected glimpse of surface of Venus
The Parker Solar Probe captured an absolutely stunning glimpse of Venus during its third close flyby of the planet in July 2020, as seen in a newly released image from NASA and the mission’s science team. Although the Sun is the focus of the Parker Solar Probe’s seven-year-long mission to “touch” the Sun and fly …