Tag: NASA
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NASA’s Juno probe goes into orbit at Jupiter after nail-biting maneuver
Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io show up in the last image taken by the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft before all the instruments were powered down in preparation for orbital insertion. The June 29 picture was taken from a distance of 3.3 million miles from Jupiter. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI /…
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NASA’s Juno probe goes into orbit at Jupiter after nail-biting maneuver
Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io show up in the last image taken by the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft before all the instruments were powered down in preparation for orbital insertion. The June 29 picture was taken from a distance of 3.3 million miles from Jupiter. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI /…
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NASA-funded UW researchers develop kidney-stone zapping technology
Michael Bailey, the principal investigator of the research team, with the ultrasound system that will be sent to the International Space Station. Bailey’s team is incorporating technology that breaks up kidney stones into the machine. (Photo from HSNewsBeat) Imagine you are an astronaut, chosen for the first manned mission to Mars. After years of preparation,…
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Video: When Juno launched to begin 5-year trek to Jupiter
Juno left the Earth atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket on Aug. 5, 2011, beginning its journey to Jupiter atop the most powerful Atlas variant with five side-mounted boosters. Liftoff occurred at 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT) from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. After traveling more than 1.7 billion miles, Juno arrives…
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NASA extends New Horizons mission to Kuiper Belt, tells Dawn to stay at Ceres
Artwork shows the New Horizons probe flying by a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69. (Credit: NASA) Almost a year after New Horizons’ unprecedented flyby of Pluto, NASA has given the official go-ahead for the probe to fly past another icy object in the Kuiper Belt in 2019. At the same time, the space agency…
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Juno meets Jupiter: NASA’s giant mission to the giant planet hits its climax on video
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. (Credit: NASA / SwRI) Everything about NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is big: the destination (giant planet, duh!), the cost ($1.1 billion), the travel time (five years to cruise 1.8 million miles), even the solar panels (totaling 635 square feet in area, about the size…
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It’s a blast! NASA’s booster for heavy-lift SLS rocket gets final pre-launch test firing
Orbital ATK’s solid-rocket booster is in the midst of a test firing in Utah. (Credit: NASA) The solid-rocket booster that’s destined to help send future NASA missions into deep space has blasted through its last full-scale test firing in advance of 2018’s maiden launch of the heavy-lift SLS rocket. Today’s two-minute, six-second firing at Orbital ATK’s test…
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NASA considers turning Curiosity rover into a scout for water on Mars mountain
This selfie of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at a drilled sample site called “Okoruso,” on the Naukluft Plateau of lower Mount Sharp. The scene combines several images taken with the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager on May 11. NASA says one of the Curiosity rover’s future tasks could be to check out sites…
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NASA picks Firmamentum to build a 3-D printer/recycler for use in space
TUI/Firmamentum’s Positrusion device turns 3-D-printed items back into plastic filament. The recycler would be paired with a 3-D printer in Firmamentum’s Refabricator. (Credit: Tethers Unlimited) Firmamentum, a division of Tethers Unlimited Inc. in Bothell, Wash., says it has won $750,000 in NASA funding to build a combination 3-D printer and plastic recycler for the International…
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Former NASA space station manager makes plans for commercial outpost
An artist’s conception shows the potential configuration for a commercial space station. (Credit: Axiom Space via YouTube) Former space station manager Mike Suffredini says he’s working on a plan to send up a commercial space module that could be attached to the International Space Station – and then disattached to become the foundation for a private-sector outpost…