Browse Archive

  • Astronaut Andrew Feustel practices installing the Fastener Capture Plate

    Hubble Instruments Slated for On-Orbit 'Surgery'

    When astronauts visit the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2008 for its final servicing mission, they will be facing a task that has no precedence – performing on-orbit 'surgery' on two ailing science instruments that reside inside the telescope.

  • The new swimsuits were unveiled at a press conference

    Rocketing Through Water

    Champion swimmer Michael Phelps knows swimsuits; NASA researcher Steve Wilkinson knows drag reduction. Put them together, and you get record-breaking Olympic trials.

  • Image of a solar sail

    Sailing Ships in Space? Maybe.

    Later this summer NASA will attempt to deploy and operate the first spacecraft in low Earth orbit propelled only by the power of sunlight.

  • concept of future spacesuit

    Introducing the Spacesuit of the Future

    NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston, to develop a new spacesuit that future astronauts will wear to the moon.

  • Spacesuit design

    Well Suited for Space

    At the bottom of NASA’s 40-foot-deep swimming pool – known as the Neutral Buoyancy Lab – astronauts strap on weights and plastic piping to simulate the backpack that attaches to a spacesuit.

  • Scott Barthelmy with prototype Gamma-ray detector

    NASA Technology Applied to Homeland Security Need

    Gamma-ray detectors from NASA's Swift mission could be applied to detect smuggled nuclear material.

  • Astrophysicist Will Zhang and his X-ray mirror

    Zhang's Glass Kitchen

    After 10 years of fine-tuning a technique to efficiently manufacture super-thin, curved mirrors needed to focus X-ray photons, Goddard astrophysicist Will Zhang and his team have won a position on the NuSTAR mission to provide the telescope’s more than 3,000 individual mirror segments.

  • Tracking and Data Relay Satellite

    TDRS: 25 Years of Connecting Space To Earth

    Twenty-five years ago, NASA inaugurated a new era in spacecraft communications with the launch of the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, or TDRS.

  • A reflective sunshield is installed during the Skylab-3 mission.

    A Shining Example of Space Benefits

    A simple NASA technology that protected Apollo and Skylab also comes to the rescue on Earth.

  • Volunteers inside test chamber

    Exhaling for Exploration: Scientists Test Lunar Breathing System

    Imagine yourself hip-to-hip, shoulder-to-shoulder, inside a room the size of a walk-in closet for eight hours with five people you just met. Does that make you sweat? Or maybe make your breathing a little more animated?