Posts Tagged: "U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration"

We’re now just a little bit closer towards putting a human being on the surface of Mars thanks to the completion of a series of developmental tests on an RS-25 engine that will power NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in the future. The tests, which took place at the agency’s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, MI, were…

The scientific instruments installed upon New Horizons were dormant for the vast majority of the trip so as to make sure that they were all in good working condition when the craft reached its target. However, those instruments were woken up during the Jupiter flyby and were able to capture some incredible sights. For instance, a time lapse of images taken by New Horizon’s camera recorded a volcanic explosion happening on the Jupiter moon of Io, marking the first volcanic explosion observed outside of Earth.

Those who remember the earliest days of the Hubble mission will recall the tension surrounding a mechanical problem afflicting the Hubble. Even though the first images returned by Hubble were better than anything captured by telescopes here on Earth, NASA scientists quickly realized that the images weren’t as sharp as they should have been. Instead of letting the ill-formed telescope languish in space, incapable of fully realizing its mission, NASA embarked on a project that would eventually restore the Hubble Space Telescope to its intended clarity of vision.

Images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope also helped the global science community learn more about the formation of planets and galaxies. In 1995, Hubble captured images in the Orion Nebula of intense radiation jets reaching trillions of miles long as well as the gaseous protoplanetary disks which serve as raw material for the stars and planets of a forming solar system. Other planetary discoveries pioneered by Hubble researchers include the first visible-light image ever captured of a planet outside of our solar system, Fomalhaut b, located 25 light years from earth in the Piscis Australis constellation.

Flash forward to the present and it’s easy to see that NASA is experiencing a lot of activity in some very interesting areas. Mars has been the subject of fascination for scientists over the course of centuries, inspiring many people other than David Bowie to question whether there is life on it. Just last week NASA released a report indicating that there are atmospheric conditions that would allow liquid brine to form on the surface of the Gale Crater; the data came from one years’ worth of temperature and humidity measurements collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Detecting the presence of water in any formulation on the surface of Mars is a giant leap for mankind, and it’s not the only development that NASA is currently pursuing.