Tag Archives: nasa

It's been nine and a half long years since the original launch of the New Horizons, nearly fifteen years since its conception and almost 100 years since we originally discovered its target (dwarf) planet, Pluto. But finally, after so long in the murky depths of our imaginations, we're finally getting …

Poor Pluto. Once part of the collective of nine planets that make up our solar system, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2005, after the discovery of the larger Eris – a trans-Neptunian object – forced scientists to consider the formal definition of “planet;” unfortunately for Pluto it …

Despite having a hiccup when it temporarily switched to its backup computer just before the weekend, NASA has confirmed that the New Horizons space probe is said to be in good shape for its flyby of far-flung dwarf planet, Pluto over the next few days. Launched in 2006 and given …

Everyone excited to see what images the New Horizons probe is set to send back of Pluto, our erstwhile 8th planetary friend, can breathe a sigh of relief, as NASA scientists have managed to bring it back to life after a computer malfunction, just over a week out from its …

The HoloLens is some pretty impressive and exciting tech. While Microsoft first showed off its augmented reality headset publicly back in January, what we didn't know is that NASA already had access to the devices and has been actively using the headsets as a communication tool for remote teams on …

Driverless car technologies are coming on leaps and bounds at the moments, with the world's first motorway-only automated features set to hit commercial cars as soon as 2017. However, whether our automated future will look like the cars of old, or something more akin to Google's Pod Car design remains to …

Researchers working for the NASA space agency have announced that they've found evidence on Mars for an ocean that covered almost 20 per cent of the planet's surface, which formed shortly after Mars itself 4.3 billion years ago. At its peak, it would have covered much of the northern hemisphere and …

Although one of the common ways sci-fi writers like to make their planets more exciting is adding a second sun to the mix, it's not something we're ever likely to experience here on Earth. However our ancestors might have, as 70,000 years ago, another star did a fly-by of our …

Considering how relatively close – in space terms – the Moon is, you would think that getting a look at the back of it wouldn't be that complicated – especially since it spends all of its time rotating around us. However due to tidal-locking, looking up into the night's sky …

Space is becoming a far more commercial venture these days, with the likes of SpaceX, Boeing and Virgin Galactic all developing new, more efficient and cheaper ways to take people and cargo into orbit. However it's also been more commercial for NASA over the past few years, as since the …

On Monday in a joint press conference with NASA, SpaceX and Boeing announced their plans for flight tests of their Commercial Crew Programs, that will eventually lead to commercial manned missions to the ISS. With both companies launching manned test flights in 2017, we are still in for quite a wait. …

The New Horizon's probe has been sailing through the murky black of space for almost a decade, with little to report but some atmospheric and magnetosphere tests when receiving a gravity assist from Jupiter. That was all part of the plan though, to bring the space-craft into a nearby encounter …

If consoles don't work out then I suppose Sony could always get in to the Space exploration business as the CPU from the original PlayStation is currently powering a probe to Pluto. The old MIPS R3000 CPU was repurposed by NASA back in 2006 to monitor sensors, power thrusters and …

Commercial space organisation, Space X, attempted a frequently delayed unmanned mission to the International Space Station on Saturday, delivering supplies and important cargo to the orbiting station for the first time in months. While the launch itself went off without a hitch, the big scientific experiment with it was to see …

Anyone who has used a digital camera and some editing software, will have tried to create a panorama by combining two or more photos together. It's a technique that can be easily accomplished – with a product like Photoshop – for half a dozen photos or so. The folks at …

Even though the private industry looks set to overtake NASA in the race to dominate the endless blackness outside of our own little world, here's hoping that the space agency and its international counterparts continue to push the boundaries of what's possible, rather than resorting to more commercial ventures. Still, …

Chances are we're going to colonise inhospitable environments in our own solar system long before we look to do so anywhere else, but that doesn't mean we can't dream of landing craft on worlds where much more acceptable gravity and temperatures won't make it such a pain to get up …

In a paper released in the Science academic journal a few days ago, a group of NASA scientists has confirmed the existence of methane gas on Mars. This is a good indicator of life, as 95% of methane here on Earth is generated by Microbes. While this is in itself impressive, some of the other …

The Orion capsule that could one day carry humans to the surface of Mars, is set to be tested today by NASA and its developers, Lockheed Martin, sending it almost 6,000KM (3,700 miles) from Earth, to make sure critical components work when confronted with heavy radiation and high re-entry temperatures. …

An unmanned rocket that was on its way to the International space station to drop off several thousand kilos worth of supplies to the waiting astronauts, has exploded shortly after leaving the launchpad. Nobody was hurt in the incident, but it's expected to delay any future launches at the Wallops …

Hey Mars, guess who's coming to dinner? No not one of those rude rover types that trundles all over your beautiful face. It's MAVEN? She just wants to hang out in orbit and analyse your atmosphere, you're cool with that right? Great, she should be arriving on the 21st September, this Sunday. …

The Curiosity rover is a marvel of modern engineering. After spending eight months in the cold black of space, it descended through Mars' carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and landed in the Gale Crater in August 2012. From there it conducted a few simple scientific experiments, but spent the majority of …

Since the official NASA update to Kerbal Space Program, many people around the world have gotten their taste for how difficult it can be to land on anything smaller than a planet in the game, making it even more impressive that we're looking to do the same thing in real …

Our solar system is a vast tract of space, but compared to our entire galaxy, or the universe as a whole, it's less than a single grain of sand compared to all the beaches in the world. That's why finding out what it's actually like outside our little plot of …

The Mars Curiosity rover is a not-so-little badass, having taken astounding pictures of the surface of the red planet, zapped rocks with lasers to find out their chemical components and given us hope that we might one day find life on the seemingly dead world. It's older cousin, Opportunity, is …

Space exploration costs billions and billions of dollars, which is why it's serious business. NASA is firmly of that mind set and doesn't go about validating bogus theories willy nilly, but this week it's – seemingly begrudgingly – lent credence to the practical application of a microwave space drive that …

Curiosity might be the current darling of the science world, having only landed on Mars in 2012, but its older brother Opportunity is making headlines today, because it just became the most travelled Rover in the history of space exploration, beating out the Soviet Union Lunokhod 2, which landed on …

In just three days time, NASA is set to send a handful of Android smartphones into orbit, with plans to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and deliver supplies. However those smartphones will do more than just let the astronauts get a quick game of Angry Birds in before …

Who'd have thought that an organisation like NASA, with its tens of billions of dollars of annual budget, would look to what has become a toy industry, for its latest ideas? In a new plan to explore Titan, Saturn's largest moon, NASA has begun discussions of using a small quadcopter, …

Despite President Obama ending both the Shuttle program and Constellation (return to the moon by 2020) programs at NASA over the past few years, the organisation hasn't been resting on its laurels. One of its biggest developments has been designing and prototyping the successor to the iconic Shuttle, known as …