After its successful OSIRIS-REx mission to set an unmanned craft down on and retrieve a sample from the Bennu asteroid, two stubborn screws kept NASA’s scientists out of the canister. Now the screws are out, and there’s video to prove it.
The US space agency says it will release a catalog of the sample to scientists this spring.
Its maker, Astrobotic, said in an update today that it’s lost too much propellant to make it to the Moon because of a malfunction with its propulsion system that occurred after it separated from its launch vehicle.
The company says it can still operate the craft and will gather data for its next attempt with its Griffin lander.
[Astrobotic]
Today’s successful launch of the NASA-funded Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander might have made it the US’ first lunar touchdown since 1972. But an “anomaly” kept Peregrine from properly orienting after separating from the launcher, reported The New York Times.
Icons from the original series are “boldly going” into deep space for a permanent space burial — including show creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel (Christine Chapel), Nichelle Nichols (Nyota Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), and James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scot).
Their remains are aboard the ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket that successfully launched at 2:18AM ET last night.
It’s no MCU flick, but it runs down more than 15 missions, experiments, and big events to keep an eye out for next year. From Artemis, to Quesst, to a total eclipse in North America on April 8th, here’s your preview (also available as 1080p download).
Behold the glory of Taters, who stars in an ultra-high definition video that was beamed to Earth from 19 million miles away. Oh, and the video was streamed via laser. Awesome.
The James Webb Space Telescope grabbed this infrared photo of Uranus’ north polar cap, nine of its moons, and its rings, including “the extremely faint and diffuse” Zeta ring.
NASA said in a post today that the picture is a combination of long and short exposures to correct for the gas giant’s fast rotation.
That’s according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which said pilots reported radio interference across the United States between noon and 2PM ET on December 14th.
The current solar cycle is stronger than expected, making disruptions like this more likely, but the NOAA forecasts an October 2024 peak, a year earlier than originally predicted.
Anyway, here’s a NASA GIF of the eruption.
It’s down to just three of the six gyroscopes NASA upgraded it with in 2009 — and one of those is flaking out. According to Ars Technica, the agency’s engineers figured out a way to keep the Hubble going on a single gyro.
In this one-gyro mode, Hubble’s control system would receive inputs from the single gyroscope in combination with magnetometers, Sun sensors, and star trackers.
Unfortunately, it’s also got issues with one of its guidance sensors, and its orbit is decaying, putting it a little over a decade from falling out of the sky. NASA and SpaceX have studied whether they can push it farther out again.
The Psyche spacecraft that’s heading to study a metal asteroid has successfully test-fired a communications laser back at the Earth from nearly 10 million miles away — a first for NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system.
NASA said in its announcement that the DSOC test is “one of many critical DSOC milestones” that will make higher throughput communication possible ahead of an eventual manned Mars mission.
NASA has stopped talking to the Mars robots for two weeks. Engadget pointed to NASA’s blog about solar conjunction, a biennial occurrence where the Sun sits between Mars and Earth.
NASA says coronal gasses can corrupt signals NASA sends to its automated explorers, so the agency is playing it safe. In the meantime, the two rovers and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will continue collecting data while parked on the surface.
NASA’s free, ad-free, and subscription-free streaming service has officially launched. I’m personally a fan of the “Space Out” series tagged under “NASA & Chill,” which are 30-minute shows featuring incredible shots of planets and space stuff all backed by chill music.
If you’re eager for NASA-produced documentaries and original series or even some good old-fashioned live launch coverage, NASA Plus, which was announced in July, goes live tomorrow, as Space reminds us.
Since it’s NASA, it’s like free ad-supported TV, aka FAST TV, but instead of ads, it’s paid for by your taxes.
...FTST TV? Anyway, here’s a trailer.
NASA is streaming it live on YouTube. It started at around 8AM ET today and was scheduled to last “about six-and-a-half hours,” so it should have about an hour or so left.
This spacewalk is a first for Astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, who are removing a box from a communications antenna and repairing one of the solar arrays.
NASA has a bunch of pictures, going back to 2007, to answer just that. Here’s a gallery of my favorites.
If you’re lucky enough to have clear skies in parts of the American Southwest or Pacific Northwest, you get a total eclipse at about 12:18PM ET today. Otherwise, check NASA’s interactive map to see how much eclipse you’re getting where you live. The US space agency is also streaming the eclipse live today.
And don’t look right at the eclipse! Check out our handy guide for getting the most out of the spectacle without wrecking your retinas.
Yes, NASA just revealed preliminary results from the OSIRIS-REx mission that snagged material from the asteroid Bennu, but this morning, it successfully launched Psyche, an orbiter that will attempt to visit an asteroid of that name, which was the 16th one discovered, on March 17th, 1852.
During a press conference on October 11th, NASA administrators and scientists showed off the initial results from their analysis of the sample capsule returned from the OSIRIS-REx mission that grabbed bits of the asteroid Bennu and brought them back to Earth last month.
While the larger rocks in the craft’s Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) have yet to be evaluated, here are a few images from the livestream showing what they’ve found in the canister lid and base around the TAGSAM.
After a period of beta testing, NASA rolled out an updated eighth revision of its website last week. The modernized image layouts and text look fine, even if I’m a little nostalgic for the seemingly-ancient previous version that was last updated in the mid 2010s. (The Internet Archive shows even earlier revisions, like 2007’s v5.0 update.)
This new version of NASA.gov is also launching ahead of a full NASA App revamp and NASA Plus video on-demand streaming launch later this year, promising an “ad-free, no cost, and family-friendly streaming service,” with live coverage plus collections of original video series and a few new series.
The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched in 2016, has collected as much as several hundred grams of asteroid material, which could help scientists understand the earliest stages of the Solar System.
NASA reports that the OSIRIS-REx capsule “has been bagged” and is flying suspended from a helicopter to the space agency’s clean lab to recover samples gathered from the Bennu asteroid in 2020.
When it gets to NASA’s on-site clean room, scientists will remove the canister containing the sample to be opened at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Tuesday.
Check out this gallery of screenshots from NASA’s live coverage. NASA had a photographer on site, so we’ll probably get some much nicer shots of the process soon.
A team is preparing to take the OSIRIS-REx capsule back to NASA’s portable clean lab to collect the Bennu asteroid sample it gathered three years ago, according to NASA’s live coverage.
Team members have also placed flags in the area to note potentially interesting environmental samples to collect in the area around the capsule for later examination.
Lockheed Martin crew checked it for dangerous heat, off-gassing, and unexploded ordinance at the site of the capsule to make sure it poses no danger to the team recovering the OSIRIS-REx samples.
They’ve now declared it safe to approach, so NASA will now prepare to pick it up.
The OSIRIS-REx helicopter team has confirmed the location of the capsule containing the Bennu asteroid sample. The capsule touched down at about 10:52AM ET.
The first helicopter has landed and the team is beginning recovery of the capsule as soon as they can verify there is no danger of injury from unexploded ordinance.
The “time capsule to our ancient solar system” from the OSIRIS-REx mission has officially touched down in the Utah desert.
NASA’s live coverage notes it landed about three minutes sooner than expected. The team is now heading to it with helicopters to begin the process of gathering the samples.
From the NASA TV live coverage, OSIRIS-REx has deployed its parachute about 5,000 feet above the Utah testing training range.
The capsule is now falling slowly to the earth with samples from the Bennu asteroid. It should land in just a few minutes.
After the Bennu sample capsule’s release, NASA renamed the OSIRIS-REx mission. Now called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft will meet up with a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid called Apophis.
Apophis will miss the Earth by about 20,000 miles in 2029 — that’s closer than our own Moon.
OSIRIS-APEX will study the gravitational effects of the close pass on “the asteroid’s orbit, spin rate, and surface.”
NASA put together a rendered preview to show what’s happening during today’s return of a sample scooped up from the asteroid Bennu, showing what the delivery and release of the OSIRIS-REx capsule looks like.
We’re a couple of days away from the OSIRIS-REx mission dropping off a capsule containing pieces of the asteroid Bennu that it snatched in 2021.
Right now, a NASA press conference is letting the media ask questions of the project’s leaders about what to expect this weekend.
According to NASA: “Coronal mass ejections are immense eruptions of plasma and energy from the Sun’s corona that drive space weather.” You can find out more about the probe’s mission and see the uncompressed, unedited version on NASA’s website.
NASA launched the probe to learn more about the Sun in August 2018, and it’s already taken an incredible photo of Venus. You can also find out more about how it deals with being hit by all that solar dust and where it got its name.
In the 1980s, NASA wanted space to become a booming business — and the first six women astronauts were meant to help get it off the ground.
The agency’s space-based Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of a new crater in the region Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, estimates is where its Luna 25 lander crashed, according to a NASA blog post on Thursday.
Luna 25 was lost last month, just days before India’s own Moon lander successfully touched down and began sending back images.
