High above Earth, thin veils of metallic haze drift through the edge of space. Known as sporadic E layers, these high-altitude “clouds” form from the vaporized dust of burnt-up meteors, earning their name from the unpredictable way they emerge and then dissipate. Now, new results from a NASA sounding rocket — a suborbital research rocket
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Recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope images show the gas giant Saturn and its southern pole, where astronomers have discovered a 10-sided atmospheric wave. Observations show the decagon extends through multiple layers of Saturn’s atmosphere. Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Agustin Sánchez-Lavega (UPV), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan Recent observations with
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This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sprawling cosmic vista in the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, the largest of the small galaxies that orbit our Milky Way galaxy. At just 160,000 light-years away, the LMC offers a close look at highly active star birth sites like the one in this image. This photogenic
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NASA awarded Blue Origin a contract Tuesday to develop the agency’s Mars Telecommunications Network, a next-generation communications system that will enable reliable, high-bandwidth communications and navigation services for current and future Mars missions. The firm-fixed-price contract has a maximum potential value of approximately $700 million to deliver a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter to NASA no
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Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Roman pairs a large field of
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Pandora, NASA’s newest exoplanet mission and the first satellite to launch through the agency’s Astrophysics Pioneers program, is now making unique observations of worlds beyond our solar system and the stars they orbit. The mission will determine the atmospheric make-up of at least 20 exoplanets, including the presence of hazes, clouds, and water. “Pandora’s data
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