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Vesta in Dawn's Rear View Mirror
09.11.12 -
NASA's Dawn mission is releasing two parting views of the giant asteroid Vesta, using images that were among the last taken by the spacecraft as it departed its companion for the last year.
Dawn left Vesta on Sept. 4, 2012 PDT (Sept. 5, 2012 EDT). The spacecraft is using its ion propulsion system to travel to Ceres. It is expected to arrive in early 2015. -
A Canopy of Confidence: Orion’s Parachutes
09.07.12 -
Orion will be the most advanced spacecraft ever flown, and its parachutes have been designed with a return from exploration missions in mind.
The spacecraft will weigh more than 21,000 pounds as it descends through the air. Each of the main chutes only weighs 300 pounds, so it is quite a feat of engineering that they are able to catch the heavy weight of the spacecraft underneath them. -
Global Hawk Mission Flies to Hurricane Leslie
09.07.12 -
NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight from California to Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast. -
Hurricane Season 2012: Michael
09.10.12 -
NASA satellites have provided visible, infrared and microwave imagery of Hurricane Michael as it tracks north in the eastern Atlantic. A stunning visible image of Hurricane Michael was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite on Sept. 6 at 12:20 p.m. EDT. -
'Mighty Eagle' Robotic Prototype Lander Aces Exam
09.06.12 -
Completing this round of flight test objectives, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, flew to an altitude of 100 feet and descended gently to a controlled landing during a successful free flight Sept. 5 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
Guided by autonomous rendezvous and capture software, the vehicle located an on-the-ground target using its onboard camera and flew to it. -
Dawn Departs the Giant Asteroid Vesta
09.06.12 -
Mission controllers received confirmation on Sept. 5 that NASA's Dawn spacecraft has escaped from the gentle gravitational grip of the giant asteroid Vesta.
Communications from the spacecraft via NASA's Deep Space Network confirmed the departure and that the spacecraft is now traveling toward Ceres. -
Examining the Link Between Sea Salt and Climate
09.05.12 -
A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet.
The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. -
Williams and Hoshide Complete Successful Spacewalk
09.05.12 -
Expedition 32 spacewalkers Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide completed a 6 hour, 28 minute spacewalk at 1:34 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 5.
Williams and Hoshide successfully installed a replacement Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) after cleaning and lubricating the power relay unit’s bolts and posts. The MBSU is routing power from the space station’s solar arrays to components of the orbiting laboratory. -
Voyager at 35: Break on Through to the Other Side
08.20.12 -
Thirty-five years ago, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, the first Voyager spacecraft to launch, departed on a journey that would make it the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune and the longest-operating NASA spacecraft ever. Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, that launched 16 days later on Sept. 5, 1977, are still going strong, hurtling away from our sun. -
NASA Announces Student Asteroid Naming Contest
09.04.12 -
Students worldwide have an opportunity to name an asteroid from which an upcoming NASA mission will return the first samples to Earth.
Scheduled to launch in 2016, the mission is called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx).
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