Opposite World: Pluto’s Ice Caps Made of Methane, Turns Earth’s Process Upside Down
The mountains discovered on Pluto during the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of the dwarf planet in 2015 are covered by a blanket of methane ice,…
Ames Research Center
Astrobotic Selected by NASA to Fly VIPER Rover to the Moon [Video]
NASA has awarded Astrobotic of Pittsburgh $199.5 million to deliver NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s South Pole in late 2023….
Self-Replicating, Self-Repairing Homes on the Moon and Mars Made of Fungi
Science fiction often imagines our future on Mars and other planets as run by machines, with metallic cities and flying cars rising above dunes of…
SOFIA’s Infrared View of the Skies Uncovers Massive Newborn Stars and Celestial Magnetic Fields
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, studies the universe with infrared light. That’s a range of wavelengths on the infrared spectrum, from those measuring…
Uncovering the Secrets of the Swan Nebula From a Telescope Flying on a Boeing 747
One of the brightest and most massive star-forming regions in our galaxy, the Omega, or Swan, Nebula, came to resemble the shape resembling a swan’s…
Telescope on Airplane Captures Never Seen Before Details of Our Milky Way Galaxy
SOFIA Reveals New View of Milky Way’s Center NASA has captured an extremely crisp infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Spanning…
Evidence of Significant Hydration Near the Martian Equator
New research on older data from NASA’s Mars Orbiter reveals evidence of significant hydration near the Martian equator — a mysterious signature in a region…
Astronomers Solve the Mystery of Pluto’s Giant Blades of Ice
New research reveals that the strange formations on Pluto’s surface are made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a specific kind of…
How Light Looks Different on the Moon and What NASA Is Doing About It
A team at NASA’s Ames Research Center has created a simulated lunar environment to study lighting conditions experienced at the unexplored poles of the Moon….
NASA Researchers Simulate Life-Threatening Asteroid Impacts
Using the Pleiades supercomputer, NASA scientists are simulating asteroid impacts to help identify possible life-threatening events. When an asteroid struck the Russian city of Chelyabinsk…
Astronomers Identify a Regular Pattern in the Orbits TRAPPIST-1 Planets
Using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has identified a regular pattern in the orbits of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. This…
New SOFIA Observations Show Ceres’ True Composition
New SOFIA observations show the true composition of Ceres, revealing that it does not appear to have the carbon-rich surface composition that telescopes previously indicated….
Speckle Imaging Helps Provide the Highest-Resolution Images Available of TRAPPIST-1
Using the Gemini-South telescope and a speckle imaging camera, a team of astronomers have obtained the highest-resolution images available of TRAPPIST-1. When it comes to…
New Research Shows Giant Tsunamis Once Battered the Coastlines of Mars
New research from NASA indicates that giant tsunamis played a fundamental role in forming Martian coastal terrain, removing much of the controversy that for decades…
Kepler Discovers a Planetary Object Being Vaporized by a White Dwarf
Using the repurposed Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered evidence of a tiny, rocky object being torn apart as it spirals around a white dwarf…
NASA Engineers Successfully Test Heat Shield for Future Mars Exploration Vehicles
NASA engineers have successfully completed heat shield testing of an Adaptive Deployable Entry and Placement Technology (ADEPT) model under conditions akin to entering the Martian…
Scientists Reproduce the Building Blocks of Life
Scientists from NASA’s Ames Research Center have demonstrated for the first time that they can make uracil, cytosine, and thymine, all three components of RNA…
Microgravity Mimics Aging in Immune Cells
Changes in T-cell behavior quickly occur in space, allowing researchers to more effectively study genetic and molecular changes associated with aging-related immune suppression. Telling someone…