PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars. The fresh hole, […]
Science
NASA Telescopes Discover Strobe-Like Flashes In A Suspected Binary Protostar
WASHINGTON — Two of NASA’s great observatories, the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, have teamed up to uncover a mysterious infant star that behaves like a strobe light. Every 25.34 days, the object, designated LRLL 54361, unleashes a burst of light. Although a similar phenomenon has been observed in two other young stellar objects, this is the most powerful […]
NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station
WASHINGTON — In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA’s QuikScat satellite, the agency will launch the ISS-RapidScat instrument to the International Space Station in 2014 to measure ocean-surface wind speed and direction. The ISS-RapidScat instrument will help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring, and understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions […]
NASA Observes Day of Remembrance Feb. 1
WASHINGTON — NASA will pay will tribute to the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, as well as other NASA colleagues, during the agency’s Day of Remembrance on Friday, Feb. 1, the 10th anniversary of the Columbia accident. NASA’s Day of Remembrance honors members of the NASA family who lost their […]
NASA Telescope Observes How Sun Stores and Releases Energy
WASHINGTON — A NASA suborbital telescope has given scientists the first clear evidence of energy transfer from the sun’s magnetic field to the solar atmosphere or corona. This process, known as solar braiding, has been theorized by researchers, but remained unobserved until now. Researchers were able to witness this phenomenon in the highest resolution images […]
