NASA moon mission shares insights into giant impacts

Oct 28, 2016, at 11:38 pm

Washington, Oct 28 (IBNS): New results from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission are providing insights into the huge impacts that dominated the early history of Earth’s moon and other solid worlds, like Earth, Mars, and the satellites of the outer solar system.

NASA missions harvest a passel of ‘Pumpkin’ stars

Oct 28, 2016, at 11:30 pm

Washington, Oct 28 (IBNS): Astronomers using observations from NASA's Kepler and Swift missions have discovered a batch of rapidly spinning stars that produce X-rays at more than 100 times the peak levels ever seen from the sun.

NASA's Juno Mission exits safe mode, performs trim maneuver

Oct 27, 2016, at 03:04 pm

Washington, Oct 27 (IBNS): NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter has left safe mode and has successfully completed a minor burn of its thruster engines in preparation for its next close flyby of Jupiter.

Study: Planet orbiting nearest star could be habitable

Oct 26, 2016, at 03:22 pm

Washington, Oct 26 (IBNS): A rocky extrasolar planet with a mass similar to Earth’s was recently detected around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun.

Changing colors in Saturn's north

Oct 22, 2016, at 02:06 pm

Washington, Oct 22 (IBNS): These two natural color images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the changing appearance of Saturn's north polar region between 2012 and 2016.

Uranus may have two undiscovered moons

Oct 22, 2016, at 01:51 pm

Washington, Oct 22 (IBNS): NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus 30 years ago, but researchers are still making discoveries from the data it gathered then.

Cassini sees dramatic seasonal changes on Titan

Oct 21, 2016, at 02:11 pm

Washington, Oct 21 (IBNS): (As southern winter solstice approaches in the Saturn system, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been revealing dramatic seasonal changes in the atmospheric temperature and composition of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

NASA, Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum host discussion on solar hazards in exploration

Oct 20, 2016, at 02:57 pm

Washington, Oct 20 (IBNS): Understanding the hazards of space weather on crewed and robotic missions is vital to informing plans for NASA’s Journey to Mars and other missions into our solar system, and beyond.

New Horizons: Possible clouds on Pluto, next target is Reddish

Oct 19, 2016, at 09:44 pm

Washington, Oct 19 (IBNS): Hubble Space Telescope data suggests that 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) about a billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, is as red, if not redder, than Pluto. This is the first hint at the surface properties of the far flung object that New Horizons will survey on Jan 1, 2019.

Historical records may underestimate sea level rise

Oct 19, 2016, at 09:39 pm

Washington, Oct 19 (IBNS): A new NASA and university study using NASA satellite data finds that tide gauges -- the longest and highest-quality records of historical ocean water levels -- may have underestimated the amount of global average sea level rise that occurred during the 20th century.

Cloudy nights, sunny days on distant hot Jupiters

Oct 19, 2016, at 09:25 pm

Washington, Oct 19 (IBNS): The weather forecast for faraway, blistering planets called "hot Jupiters" might go something like this: Cloudy nights and sunny days, with a high of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,300 degrees Celsius, or 1,600 Kelvin).

Earth's Moon hit by surprising number of Meteoroids: NASA

Oct 14, 2016, at 03:19 pm

Washington, Oct 14 (IBNS): The moon experiences a heavier bombardment by small meteoroids than models had predicted, according to new observations from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft.

Atlantic storm system delays NASA resupply launch to Space Station

Oct 13, 2016, at 03:58 pm

Washington, Oct 13 (IBNS): NASA and its partner Orbital ATK have postponed the launch of the company’s next commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station to no earlier than Sunday, Oct. 16, as the agency prepares for Tropical Storm Nicole at its tracking site in Bermuda.

NASA's hubble spots possible water plumes erupting on Jupiter's Moon Europa

Sep 27, 2016, at 03:04 pm

Washington Sept 27 (IBNS): Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.

NASA's IceBridge observes effects of summer melt on Greenland Ice Sheet

Sep 17, 2016, at 04:27 am

California, Sept 16 (IBNS): NASA's IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, flew over the Helheim/Kangerdlugssuaq region of Greenland on Sept. 11, 2016.

NASA's Juno successfully completes Jupiter flyby

Aug 28, 2016, at 02:22 pm

California, Aug 28 (IBNS): NASA's Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter on Saturday.

NASA's Juno to soar closest to Jupiter this Saturday

Aug 27, 2016, at 01:41 pm

Washington, Aug 27 (IBNS): This Saturday at 5:51 a.m. PDT, (8:51 a.m. EDT, 12:51 UTC) NASA's Juno spacecraft will get closer to the cloud tops of Jupiter than at any other time during its prime mission.

NASA establishes contact with STEREO Mission

Aug 24, 2016, at 03:30 am

California, Aug 23 (IBNS): On Aug. 21, 2016, contact was reestablished with one of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, known as the STEREO-B spacecraft, after communications were lost on Oct. 1, 2014.

Full-Circle Vista from NASA Mars Rover Curiosity shows 'Murray Buttes'

Aug 20, 2016, at 09:58 pm

California, Aug 20 (IBNS): Eroded mesas and buttes reminiscent of the U.S. Southwest shape part of the horizon in the latest 360-degree color panorama from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

Supernova ejected from the pages of history

Aug 18, 2016, at 04:51 pm

California, Aug 18 (IBNS): A new look at the debris from an exploded star in our galaxy has astronomers re-examining when the supernova actually happened.

NASA successfully launches student experiments from Wallops

Aug 18, 2016, at 02:59 am

California, Aug 17 (IBNS): NASA on Wednesday said it successfully launched the RockSat-X education payload on a Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket at 7:33:30 a.m. EDT Aug. 17 from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

NASA analysis finds July 2016 is warmest on record

Aug 18, 2016, at 02:14 am

California, Aug 17 (IBNS): July 2016 was the warmest July in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

NASA Space Robotics Challenge prepares robots for journey to Mars

Aug 18, 2016, at 02:09 am

California, Aug 17 (IBNS): NASA, in partnership with Space Center Houston, the Official Visitor Center of NASA Johnson Space Center, and NineSigma, a global innovation consultant organization, has opened registration for a new competition -- the Space Robotics Challenge.

Astronomers gain new insight into magnetic field of Sun and its kin

Jul 28, 2016, at 09:19 pm

California, July 28 (IBNS): Astronomers have used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a discovery that may have profound implications for understanding how the magnetic field in the Sun and stars like it are generated.

Jupiter’s great red spot likely a massive heat source

Jul 28, 2016, at 02:51 pm

California, July 28 (IBNS) New NASA-funded research suggests that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot may be the mysterious heat source behind Jupiter’s surprisingly high upper atmospheric temperatures.

The case of the missing ceres craters

Jul 27, 2016, at 02:36 pm

Washington, July 27 (IBNS): Ceres is covered in countless small, young craters, but none are larger than 175 miles (280 kilometers) in diameter. To scientists, this is a huge mystery, given that the dwarf planet must have been hit by numerous large asteroids during its 4.5 billion-year lifetime. Where did all the large craters go?

NASA to map the surface of an Asteroid

Jul 26, 2016, at 04:11 am

Washington, July 25 (IBNS): OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch September 2016 and travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu to harvest a sample of surface maNASA to Map the Surface of an Asteroid

Historical Records Miss a Fifth of Global Warming: NASA

Jul 22, 2016, at 03:14 pm

California, July 22 (IBNS): A new NASA-led study finds that almost one-fifth of the global warming that has occurred in the past 150 years has been missed by historical records due to quirks in how global temperatures were recorded.

Sunset at the Viking Lander 1 Site

Jul 21, 2016, at 09:52 pm

California, July 21 (IBNS) On July 20, 1976, at 8:12 a.m. EDT, NASA received the signal that the Viking Lander 1 successfully reached the Martian surface.

NASA’s Hubble Telescope makes first atmospheric study of Earth-sized exoplanets

Jul 21, 2016, at 03:31 pm

California, July 21 (IBNS): Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have conducted the first search for atmospheres around temperate, Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system and found indications that increase the chances of habitability on two exoplanets.