An illustration of NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter flying on Mars. Ingenuity, a technology demonstration experiment, will be the first aircraft to attempt powered, controlled flight on another planet. Ingenuity arrived at Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, attached to the belly of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseveranc […]
Sometime in the far distant future, about 4 billion years from now, our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as illustrated in this artist’s rendition. The universe is expanding and accelerating, and collisions between galaxies in close proximity to each other s
In this image from Jan. 18, 2019, Teddy Tzanetos, MiMi Aung and Bob Balaram of NASA’s Mars Helicopter project observe a flight test of a model of the Mars Helicopter in the Space Simulator, a 25-foot-wide (7.62 meter-wide) vacuum chamber at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Aung is currently the
NASA uses pi every day! Pi is instrumental in developing the size of parachutes to land on the Red Planet. In fact, pi helps engineers determine how big the parachute needs to be in order to generate the drag needed to slow down craft landing on Mars. It also helps researchers map and explore Earth
During the March 5, 2021, spacewalk, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi spent nearly 7 hours working on the farthest set of existing solar arrays on the International Space Station’s left (port) side, known as P6, to install a modification kit on solar array 4B and re
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features an impressive portrait of M1-63, an example of a bipolar planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scutum (the Shield). A nebula like this one is formed when the star at its center sheds huge quantities of material from its outer la
Stacking is complete for the twin Space Launch System (SLS) solid rocket boosters for NASA’s Artemis I mission. Over several weeks, workers used one of five massive cranes to place 10 booster segments and nose assemblies on the mobile launcher inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Ken
March 8 of each year is celebrated around the globe as International Women’s Day. At NASA, women – be they scientists, pilots, astronauts or subject matter experts – help the agency fulfill its mission. Joan Higginbotham is one of those women. She was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996
This artist’s impression of hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris shows the star’s vast convection cells and violent ejections. VY Canis Majoris is so large that if it replaced the Sun, the star would extend for hundreds of millions of miles, between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. Image Cr
It’s March 2021 and in about another month the Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate 31 years in space observing the universe. In this image celebrating Hubble’s 30th birthday, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region
