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.
NASA’s telescope is now studying the 168,000-light-year-distant Supernova 1987A, which was discovered almost 40 years ago and has been observed ever since. NASA’s blog says training the James Webb Space Telescope on it has already borne fruit.
The Crew-7 mission successfully docked with the ISS this morning at 9:16AM PT, bringing four new crew members to the station.
Video from the docking procedure shows the capsule approaching the station while in Earth orbit, then footage from the capsule as it made its final approach. It’s perfect Sunday viewing.
There are plenty of pollution blind spots that ground monitors miss. So NASA launched a powerful new instrument in April to track air pollution from space. The new tool, called TEMPO, monitors three smog-forming pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and ground-level ozone. NASA released the first data maps from TEMPO today. They show pollution building up over major cities in North America, including Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC.
NASA’s Voyager 2 probe is showing signs of a “heartbeat,” according to a tweet from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab. The interstellar probe had inadvertently lost contact with Earth last week after a series of planned commands were transmitted to it on July 21st — shifting the Voyager 2’s antenna two degrees away from Earth.
Voyager 2 is expected to reorient and resume communications in October.
The 45-year-old interstellar probe lost contact after a “routine sequence of commands,” according to Gizmodo. Its antenna currently isn’t facing Earth, which makes it impossible to communicate across the approximately 12.4 billion miles between us. But fortunately, Voyager 2 is programmed to reorient itself toward Earth a few times a year, so we should presumably regain contact in October.
That’s a few months from now, and if NASA regains contact it won’t be the longest we’ve gone without communicating with the probe. That record was established back in 2020 when Voyager 2 went over 8 months without contact during a necessary communications update.
Stay safe out there, little buddy.
Lockheed Martin has been awarded a contract from DARPA to “develop and demonstrate a nuclear-powered spacecraft” for the joint DARPA and NASA DRACO project. The first demonstration will “take place no later than 2027.”
What is nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP)?
[NTP] uses a nuclear reactor to quickly heat hydrogen propellant to very high temperatures... then funnels that gas through the engine nozzle to create powerful thrust... The reactor will not be turned on until the spacecraft has reached a nuclear safe orbit, making the NTP system very safe.
That last bit is important — see the 1978 Kosmos 954 accident that spread radioactive debris all over the Canadian wilderness.
We’ve been following the story of NASA’s next-gen James Webb Space Telescope for years, but now it’s been in operation for an entire year.
You can watch Loren Grush talk through those first images, check out the first Earth-sized exoplanet it discovered, or check out our breakdown of major highlights from its first year.
Data from NASA’s Cassini probe shows signatures of phosphorous in a subsurface ocean on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. According to planetary scientist Frank Postberg of Freie Universität Berlin, “It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth.”
Six years after its mission ended with a dive into Saturn’s atmosphere, the list of Cassini discoveries keeps growing. You can read the scientist’s paper here or check out this video from a few years ago explaining how Cassini collected those particles.
The Washington Post points out this 25-page document (PDF) released Tuesday by the State Department. The Post reports this signals further involvement of the diplomatic corps in a realm that until now, has been largely managed by NASA and the Pentagon.
This first Strategic Framework for Space Diplomacy outlines how State Department diplomacy will advance continued U.S. space leadership and will expand international cooperation on mutually beneficial space activities, while promoting responsible behavior from all space actors, strengthening the understanding of, and support for, U.S. national space policies and programs, and promoting international use of U.S. space capabilities, systems, and services.
[Washington Post]
NASA’s 530km-high TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system reached a staggering 200Gbps downlink to a receiver on the ground, IEEE Spectrum reports. This doubles last June’s 100Gbps throughput, which “was 100 times faster than the quickest internet speeds in most cities.”
Less than ten years ago, NASA was celebrating just over 600Mbps, but it now thinks the tech could eventually enable up to 5Gbps throughput from the moon:
Moreover, Mitchell says, they are looking at ways to push TBIRD’s capabilities as far away as the moon, in order to support future missions there. The rates under consideration are in the 1 to 5 gigabit per second range, which “may not seem like much of an improvement, but remember the moon is roughly 400,000 km away from Earth, which is quite a long distance to cover,” Mitchell says.
[IEEE Spectrum]
While ever-so-optimistically noting this is a preview of the Earth’s fate (in another 5 billion years or so), scientists at MIT, Harvard, and Caltech say that for the first time, they were able to see a star expand and engulf a nearby planet.
This horror show was captured within our own galaxy and included the use of NASA’s asteroid-hunting Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) to capture infrared light indicating dust released from the disintegrating planet.
Whether you put this up on the big screen now or bookmark it for a later session, NASA’s put together nearly an hour of 4K footage of the Earth with some relaxing music for your screensaving needs.
The videos were captured over the last year from the International Space Station during Expeditions 67 and 68.
In a very Apple event-esque livestream, NASA announced the crew of the Artemis II mission, which will ride the costly and enormous SLS rocket to the Moon and back in 2024. Notably this is the first lunar mission to include a woman, a Black man, and a Canadian. The crew is Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Pilot Victor Glover, and Commander Reid Wiseman.
The recent discovery of volcanic activity on the planet should have been a cause of celebration. But instead, the scientific community is in shock after NASA delayed funding for a key mission to Venus.
