NASA Skywatching Highlights for March 2022: Don’t Miss Easy To Find Exoplanets
What’s Up for March? Meet the morning planets, the nearest star cluster, and some do-it-yourself exoplanets. Saturn joins Venus and Mars this month in the…
JPL
NASA’s NuSTAR Space Observatory Makes Illuminating Cosmic Discoveries With “Nuisance” Light
A design quirk in the X-ray observatory has made it possible for astronomers to use previously unwanted light to study even more cosmic objects than…
California Fire Led To Spike in Fecal Bacteria in Coastal Waters
Scientists analyzed coastal water quality in the months following a major Southern California wildfire. Their results were eye-opening. The November 2018 Woolsey Fire in Southern…
Why and How NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover Abrades Rocks
When the Perseverance rover finishes a drive and is exploring a new location, you may see it create a round, shallow hole in a nearby…
First Multiple-Sol Drive on Mars for NASA’s Perseverance Rover
Perseverance capped its first year on Mars by speeding back around Séítah toward what is expected to be the final sampling location in its crater…
NASA Selects Advanced Futuristic Space Technology Concepts for Early Study
The selected concepts include three from JPL. The projects are still in the early stages of development and are not considered official NASA missions. An…
Astronomers Find Two Supermassive Black Holes Spiraling Toward a Cataclysmic Collision
A supermassive black hole 9 billion light-years away appears to have a companion black hole orbiting around it. As the orbit shrinks, the pair gets…
U.S. Government Report: Sea Level To Rise Up to a Foot by 2050
NASA, NOAA, USGS, and other U.S. government agencies project that the rise in ocean height in the next 30 years could equal the total rise…
NASA Ingenuity Mar Helicopter: After Dusty Flight 19, Team Prepares for Flight 20
The Ingenuity team is beginning preparations for Flight 20! Flight 19 was successfully completed on February 7, 2022, at 20:21 PST (Sol 345 of the…
NASA Mars Perseverance: A Sol in the Life of a Rover
What does Percy do all day? A Martian day- or Sol- is 24 hours and 37 minutes long, and while every Sol is different, each…
Innovative New Space-Based Weather Instruments Start Gathering Data
Innovative mini instruments on the International Space Station have produced their first maps of global humidity and ocean winds. After being installed on the International…
Day of Discovery: Close-Knit Family of 7 Earth-Size Planets
Five years ago, astronomers revealed a spectacular collection of other worlds: the TRAPPIST-1 system. Newspapers around the world printed the discovery on their front pages:…
Students With “Perseverance” Receive Personalized Messages From Mars – Courtesy of NASA
The first set of middle-schoolers in the agency’s “You’ve Got Perseverance!” campaign was honored with a message from the Red Planet and a chat with…
Racking Up Accomplishments: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Celebrates First Year on Mars by Learning To Run
The rover has racked up a series of accomplishments, including new distance records, as it reaches the end of the first of several planned science…
Testing Terrestrial Rocks To Help NASA’s Perseverance Rover Work on Mars
Using carefully selected terrestrial rocks, engineers try to figure out how to work with crumbly rocks like the one the rover encountered on its first…
NASA Perseverance Mars Rover: Speeding Back to Octavia E. Butler Landing
Three abrasions and four sample cores later, the rover has finally departed the Séítah area and is embarking on the return leg of the crater…
NASA’s NuSTAR Spots Highest-Energy Light Ever Detected From Jupiter – And Solves a Decades-Old Mystery
The planet’s auroras are known to produce low-energy X-ray light. A new study finally reveals higher-frequency X-rays and explains why they eluded another mission 30…
NASA Perseverance Mars Rover: Nobody Tell Elmo About Issole
America’s favorite red monster may not be interested in rocks, but Perseverance can’t wait to keep exploring the rocks on Mars! How does the rover…
