Aerospace

Chromosphere: IRIS Spots Its Largest Solar Flare Yet

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrometer (IRIS) mission studies the chromosphere, that layer of the sun's atmosphere that is key to regulating the flow of energy and material as they travel from the sun's surface out into space. Along the way, ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 23 2014 - 12:29pm

Cosmic Collision Creates Mini-Saturn 2 Billion Kilometers Away

Until now, rings of material in a disc have been associated with giant planets like Saturn. Chariklo, located two billion kilometers away, between Saturn and Uranus,  is the first miniature planet with two rings of ice and pebbles. Chariklo was located in ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 26 2014 - 4:20pm

Sentinel-1 Liftoff: Environmental Data Will Be Free To Everyone Worldwide

Sentinel-1A lifted off on a Soyuz launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guyana at 9:02 PM GMT today. Sentinel-1A has been at the launch site since the end of February and has been through numerous tests to make sure that everything is in perfect condi ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2014 - 4:39pm

Jimmy Duncan- A Prescient Politician

Jimmy Duncan- A Prescient Politician John James "Jimmy" Duncan is a former Chairman of the United States House Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation. ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Apr 8 2014 - 8:48pm

How To Build Star Wars-Style Deflector Shields Right Now

Star Wars Day is May 4th so you are probably wondering how you would build deflector shields in case the US government is worried about turtles on its former nuclear testing grounds and thinks your cows will harm the ecosystem and sends a Death Star after ...

Article - News Staff - May 1 2014 - 3:01am

Illustris Duplicates 13 Billion Years Of Cosmic Evolution In 3 Months

 A computer simulation called "Illustris" has created the first realistic virtual universe- it can recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube 350 million light-years on a side with unprecedented resolution. ...

Article - News Staff - May 7 2014 - 1:22pm

Between Two Glaciers, The 1947 Wreck Of The Kee Bird B-29 Superfortress

The Digital Mapping System (DMS) instrument attached to NASA’s P-3 Orion airplane for the Operation IceBridge campaign has captured an interesting image during its latest annual Operation IceBridge campaign to the Arctic and Antarctic to monitor glaciers, ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 7 2014 - 5:30am

Hubble Does Reconnaissance As New Horizons Prepares To Cross The Kuiper Belt

As you read this, NASA's New Horizons is heading to Pluto. After the marathon probe zooms past Pluto in July of next year, it will travel across the Kuiper Belt, that vast rim of primitive ice bodies left over from the birth of our solar system 4.6 bi ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 1 2014 - 3:37pm

NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory Wants To Settle The Global Warming Issue

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was a NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Project (ESSP) mission designed to make precise, time-dependent global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from an Earth orbiting satellite. But on February 24, 2 ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 3 2014 - 11:30pm

4 Billion Miles In 10 Years: Are We There Yet, Rosetta?

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft is on the last leg of its epic voyage to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the first rendezvous with a comet. Every kid has asked 'Are we there yet?' in the car.  It's hard to imagine how many times that question woul ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2014 - 10:19am