Generations of exploration have seen spacecraft bearing both the American flag and the NASA logo ranging throughout the solar system. The diagram, color-coded by decade, tracks most of those journeys. It is an illustration of ambition, of innovation, even of... Continue Reading →
Why are these people shooting a powerful laser into the center of our Galaxy? Fortunately, this is not meant to be the first step in a Galactic war. Rather, astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) site in Chile are trying to measure the distortions... Continue Reading →
On January 3, the Chinese Chang'e-4 spacecraft made the first successful landing on the Moon's farside. Taken by a camera on board the lander, this image is from the landing site inside Von Karman crater. It shows the desksized, six-wheeled Yutu 2 (Jade Rabbit 2)... Continue Reading →
The space shuttle Endeavour, mission STS-88, launched Dec. 6, 1998, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center carrying the U.S.-built Unity connecting module and two pressurized mating adapters. Unity was the first piece of the International Space Station provided by the United... Continue Reading →
On January 1 New Horizons encountered the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule. Some 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, Ultima Thule is the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft from Earth. This historic image, the highest resolution image released so far, was... Continue Reading →
The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands of infrared light with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory,... Continue Reading →
It is the largest and most sophisticated object ever built off the Earth. It has taken numerous spaceflights and over a decade to construct. The International Space Station (ISS) is currently the premiere habitat for humans in Earth orbit, and an amalgamation of sophisticated orbiting... Continue Reading →
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble .... maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. A frighteningly shaped reflection nebula, this cosmic crone is about 800 light-years away though. Its malevolent visage seems to glare toward nearby... Continue Reading →
Nancy Grace Roman, a renowned astronomer who led the drive to launch the Hubble Space Telescope, died on Dec. 25 at the age of 93, according to the Associated Press. Roman was nicknamed "the mother of Hubble" for her work on... Continue Reading →
Scents of Science 