Latest Jet Propulsion Lab Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Everyone is on pins and needles waiting for the Mars Space Laboratory Mission's Curiosity Rover to touch down later tonight, but the stars are already out. NASA hosted a social at Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL) that has been ongoing since Friday. Scientists, space experts, astronauts, 25 specially selected social media fans and some very well known celebrities have all attended. Tonight, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, joined by...
A giant telescope, galaxy maps, and laser beacons on Mars are only a few of the ideas that teams selected by NASA will study for the next generation of astronomy and astrophysics missions. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will help usher in this new era by playing an active role in 15 of the 19 science teams chosen to look at new concepts for future missions. The 15 teams will explore concepts for missions to hunt for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets) and to answer...
They are the celestial equivalent of sonograms. But their hazy outlines and ghostly features do not document the in-vivo development of a future taxpayer. Instead, they chronicle the exo-planetary comings-and-goings of some of Earth's least known, most nomadic, and at times most impactful neighbors.They are radar echoes that are bounced off of asteroids. Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and around the world rely on their ethereal images to tell some out-of-this-world tales of...
JPL -- Like people gazing skyward to watch Independence Day fireworks, an international array of telescopes will train expert eyes on a dramatic encounter between NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft and a passing comet. The explosive event will happen 133.6 million kilometers (83 million miles) from Earth in the early hours of July 4 Eastern Daylight Time (late July 3 Pacific Daylight Time). Telescopes on the ground and others orbiting in space will document the mission's crucial moments using...
JPL -- It was a day like any other for a nearby star named GJ 3685A until it suddenly exploded with light. At 2 p.m. Pacific time, April 24, 2004, the detectors on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer ultraviolet space telescope nearly overloaded when the star abruptly brightened by a factor of at least 10,000. After the excitement was over, astronomers realized that they had just recorded a giant star eruption, or flare, about one million times more energetic than those from our Sun. This...
JPL -- Photographs from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft released today are the first pictures ever taken of a spacecraft orbiting a foreign planet by another spacecraft orbiting that planet. Mars Global Surveyor has been orbiting Mars since 1997, Mars Odyssey since 2001. Both are managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Mars Express has been in orbit since late 2003. Mars Express was passing about 155...
JPL -- NASA salutes Space Day, observed this year on May 5, with a new dramatic image of the Sombrero galaxy. Space Day, held the first Thursday each May, is designed to inspire the next generation of explorers. The galaxy, called Messier 104, is commonly known as the Sombrero galaxy because in visible light it resembles a broad-brimmed Mexican hat called a sombrero. The new Sombrero picture combines a recent infrared observation from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope with a well-known visible...
JPL -- A giant impact crater the size of Iowa was spotted on Saturn's moon Titan by NASA's Cassini radar instrument during Tuesday's Titan flyby. Cassini flew within 1,577 kilometers (980 miles) of Titan's surface and its radar instrument took detailed images of the surface. This is the third close Titan flyby of the mission, which began in July 2004, and only the second time the radar instrument has examined Titan. Scientists see some things that look familiar, along with scenes that are...
JPL -- It was music to the ears of physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, when they forced liquid helium-4 through thousands of tiny holes and heard a whistling sound. Why the big fuss about an odd sound? It seems this breakthrough might eventually lead to enhanced earthquake studies and more accurate navigation systems, including the Global Positioning System (GPS). It all starts with one slippery liquid helium-4. Ultra-cold helium-4 becomes a superfluid, meaning it flows...
JPLÂ -- Stealing is a crime on Earth, but at Saturn, apparently it is routine. The Cassini spacecraft has witnessed Saturn's moon Prometheus snatching particles from one of Saturn's rings. This potato-shaped moon is also believed to be responsible for kinks within Saturn's thin F ring, a contorted, narrow ring flanked by two small moons, Prometheus and Pandora. The thievery and the detailed behavior of kinks were observed for the first time ever in images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. In...
