Join in the Cassini Name Game
As NASA’s Cassini mission approaches its 10th anniversary at Saturn, its team members back here on Earth are already looking ahead to an upcoming phase. Starting in late 2016, the Cassini spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn’s north pole, flying just outside its narrow F ring. Cassini will probe the water-rich plume of the …
Space sunflower may help telescopes snap pictures of planets
A spacecraft that looks like a giant sunflower might one day be used to acquire images of Earth-like rocky planets around nearby stars. The prototype deployable structure, called a starshade, is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The hunt is on for planets that resemble Earth in size, composition and temperature. Rocky …
Scientists detect gravitational waves from birth of the Universe
Astronomers are announcing today that they have acquired the first direct evidence that gravitational waves rippled through our infant universe during an explosive period of growth called inflation. This is the strongest confirmation yet of cosmic inflation theories, which say the universe expanded by 100 trillion trillion times, in less than the blink of an …
Meet NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – Launch Date: 2018
In a 1.3 million cubic-foot cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., 18 gold-coated primary mirror segments await installation on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Those mirrors and the telescope’s four science instruments just steps away, will become the most powerful space telescope ever built. “The Hubble Space Telescope has already rewritten the …
Bigelow’s promise: More space at less cost with inflatable space habitats
We’ve all seen or played in one of those inflatable bounce houses at a carnival or a friend’s birthday party. Now just imagine a bounce house that you can live inside of in outer space. While much more advanced than a bounce house, that’s what Bigelow Aerospace is pursuing. They are designing and building inflatable …
City in the sky: A cheaper space station from Bigelow
Vocabulary • BA-2100: A Bigelow module. Volume: 2,100 m3. Weight: 100 mT. Crew: 16, Cost: $500M. • BA-330: A Bigelow module. Volume: 330 m3. Weight: 25 mT. Crew: 6. Cost: $125M. • Falcon Heavy: An expendable launch vehicle from SpaceX. Payload: 53 mT. Cost: $150M. • Propulsion Bus/Docking Node (PB/DN): A unit used to reboost the space station due …