Technology Stories
Planets of Our Solar System
Jan 19, 2017
An initial version of the drill technology—the
Auto-Gopher-1—is pictured here with coresit
acquired from drilling a 3-m hole in
40MPa gypsum.
Earth
Jan 13, 2017
An artist’s depiction of GRIFEX in orbit.
Planets of Our Solar System
Jan 5, 2017
Technology Development: When the Galileo mission’s probe entered the Jovian atmosphere in December 1995, it experienced temperatures twice as hot as the surface of the sun, and required carbon phenolic shields to protect its onboard payload from the intense heat. Since that mission, NASA has not... Read More
Earth
Nov 18, 2016
Technology Development: The Multi-Slit Optimized Spectrometer (MOS) prototype instrument is an airborne sensor designed to demonstrate and validate the multislit concept for hyperspectral ocean color retrievals with real-world scenes. The instrument design represents a new option for hyperspectral... Read More
Sun
Nov 9, 2016
Technology Development: Remote sensing of magnetic fields requires both precision spectroscopy and precision polarimetry (spectro-polarimetry). NASA led an international team that developed the Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectropolarimeter (CLASP)—the first instrument to achieve the spectro-... Read More
Universe
Nov 9, 2016
Technology Development: The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is the highest-ranked recommendation for a large space mission in the NRC 2010 decadal survey, New Worlds, New Horizons (NWNH) in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The WFIRST coronagraph instrument (CGI) will be the first high-... Read More
Earth’s Space Environment
Aug 25, 2016
Image of magnetic loops (flux ropes) on the sun, captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
Exoplanets
Aug 25, 2016
Technology Development: Currently, astronomers can investigate Earth-sized exoplanets using only indirect methods such as detecting the changes in starlight as a planet passes in front of its star. The starshade (also known as an external occulter) is a spacecraft that will enable telescopes in... Read More
Ice
Aug 24, 2016
Technology Development: The Wideband (8-40 GHz) Instrument for Snow Measurement (WISM) is designed to accurately measure snowpack on the ground from an airborne platform. WISM is comprised of a dual-frequency (X- and Ku-bands) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a dual-frequency (K- and Ka-bands)... Read More