Tag Archives: NASA

MNA Science & Technology Desk: The US space agency NASA unveiled on Tuesday the next-generation spacesuits to be used in its Artemis programme that will send the first woman and next man to the Lunar South Pole by 2024. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine showcased the ground prototypes of two spacesuits designed for lunar exploration: one for exploring the Moon’s surface, known as the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), and one for launch and re-entry aboard the agency’s mew Orion spacecraft, known as the Orion Crew Survival System. he xEMU, a red, white and blue suit, is composed of the pressure ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: The demonstration of a new US system to get astronauts into orbit is under way. The SpaceX company has launched a capsule from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida designed to carry people. The mission is uncrewed for this flight, but if it goes well the American space agency is likely to approve the system for regular astronaut use from later this year. Not since the retirement of the shuttles in 2011 has the US been able to put humans in orbit. It’s had to pay to use Russian Soyuz vehicles instead. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover that went into hibernation last June after a massive dust storm blocked sunlight from reaching its solar panels to generate power, might have “died”, fear scientists. Opportunity’s last communication with Earth was received 10 June, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover’s location on the western rim of Perseverance Valley, eventually blocking out so much sunlight that the rover could no longer charge its batteries. Although the storm eventually abated and the skies over Perseverance cleared, the 15-year-old rover has not communicated with Earth since then. “I haven’t ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA rang in the New Year on Tuesday with a historic flyby of the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever explored by humankind — a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule — in the hopes of learning more about how planets took shape. “Go New Horizons!” said lead scientist Alan Stern as a crowd including kids dressed in space costumes blew party horns and cheered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland to mark the moment at 12:33 am (0533 GMT) when the New Horizons spacecraft aimed its cameras at ...

MNA Tech Desk: NASA’s InSight spacecraft, the first robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, touched down safely on the surface of Mars on Monday with instruments to detect planetary seismic rumblings never measured anywhere but Earth. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles burst into cheers, applause and hugs as they received signals confirming InSight’s arrival on Martian soil – a vast, barren plain near the planet’s equator – shortly before 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) Minutes later, JPL controllers received a fuzzy “selfie” photograph of the probe’s new surroundings on ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: NASA is considering selling seats on the spacecraft that will ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station, offering rides to the public while opening another line of revenue as the agency attempts to broaden its appeal. On several occasions, Russia has flown wealthy individuals who paid millions for the ride to space. And a trio of private companies backed by billionaires, is also looking to fly tourists out of the atmosphere. But except for a couple of rare exceptions, such as Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who was killed when the space Shuttle Challenger exploded ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the youngest member of the “Great Observatory” programme, has completed 15 years in space. The Great Observatories are four big-ticket space telescopes — Spitzer, Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO), and the Chandra X-ray Observatory — designed to view the universe in different and complementary wavelengths of light. Launched into solar orbit on 25 August 2003, Spitzer was initially scheduled for a minimum 2.5-year primary mission. But the space telescope has lasted far beyond its expected lifetime, the US space agency said in a statement. Celebrating Spitzer’s incredible ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: Tech magnate Elon Musk’s SpaceX vowed Monday to send its first astronauts into orbit on schedule next year—part of a drive to restore America’s dominance of the space race, reported news agency. Gwynne Shotwell, the aerospace manufacturer’s president, told journalists in Los Angeles an unmanned flight to the International Space Station in November would pave the way for a manned mission in April 2019. NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 as part of its commercial crew programme, aimed at helping private industry build spaceships to reach low-Earth orbit. On 3 August the ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA on Saturday launched its latest Mars lander, called InSight, designed to perch on the surface and listen for “Marsquakes” ahead of eventual human missions to explore the Red Planet. “Three, two, one, liftoff!” said a NASA commentator as the spacecraft blasted off on a dark, foggy morning atop an Atlas V rocket at 4:05 am Pacific time (1105 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, marking NASA’s first interplanetary launch from the US west coast. The $993 million project aims to expand our knowledge of interior conditions on Mars, inform efforts to send ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA blasted off its newest planet hunting spacecraft, TESS, a $337 million satellite that aims to scan 85 percent of the skies for cosmic bodies where life may exist. “Three, two, one and liftoff!” said NASA commentator Mike Curie as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) soared into the cloudless, blue sky atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 6:51 pm (2251 GMT). The washing machine-sized spacecraft is built to search outside the solar system, scanning the nearest, brightest stars for signs of periodic dimming. These so-called “transits” may mean that ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: The company that takes credit for the shine in the coveted Oscar trophy is using a gold coating technology that NASA has helped it improve, the US space agency has said. “Our telescopes and the #Oscars trophies are both plated with the same gold!” NASA said in a tweet. Brooklyn-based Epner Technology has been using the improved technique for its varied commercial clients, NASA said in a statement released over the weekend. In 2016, Epner’s reputation for durable and brilliant gold coatings, built in part through its many years working for NASA, brought a new ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA has announced that it would launch two missions to explore a little-understood area 96 kilometres above Earth’s surface. The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission will be launched aboard a commercial communications satellite in January 2018, and the designed spacecraft Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) will be launched later this year, the US space agency said. GOLD and ICON will team up to explore the ionosphere, a boundary area between Earth and the space where particles have been cooked into a sea of electrically-charged electrons and ions by the Sun’s radiation, reports ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: A record-tying eighth planet has been found in a faraway solar system, matching our own in number. Even more amazing, machines and not humans made the discovery. NASA joined with Google on Thursday to announce the finding, reports news agency. This eighth planet orbits the star known as Kepler-90. Like Earth, this new planet, Kepler-90i, is the third rock from its sun. But it’s much closer to its sun — orbiting in just 14 days — and therefore a scorching 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 Celsius) at the surface. In fact, all eight planets are scrunched ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA on Saturday launched a next-generation weather satellite into space designed to monitor weather around the world and help improve forecasts. The satellite, called the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 (JPSS-1), is a joint venture between the US space agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides weather reports and forecasts. The satellite was launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket as scheduled at 1:47am (0947 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will orbit the Earth 14 times each day from one pole to the other at 512 ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: Uber unveiled a partnership with NASA that will see it develop flying taxis priced competitively with standard Uber journeys. It also announced Los Angeles will join two other previously revealed “UberAIR” pilot schemes in Dallas Fort-Worth, Texas, and Dubai. California and Texas are the US states with the largest number of cars. Uber wants to “explore other collaboration opportunities with NASA” with a view to open “a new market of urban air mobility,” said a statement. The first demonstration flights are expected in 2020, moving into commercial operations by 2023 — in plenty of time ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA said its Mars 2020 mission will have more “eyes” than any rover before it – a grand total of 23, to create sweeping panoramas, reveal obstacles, study the atmosphere and assist science instruments. They will provide dramatic views during the rover’s descent to Mars and be the first to capture images of a parachute as it opens on another planet. There will even be a camera inside the rover’s body, which will study samples as they are stored and left on the surface for collection by a future mission, NASA said on Tuesday. When ...

MNA Feature Desk: Neil Armstrong, an American astronaut and engineer was the first person to walk on the moon. Before becoming an astronaut, Neil was in the US Navy. He was a naval aviator and a test pilot. He later joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962 where he made his first space flight command pilot of Gemini 8 in 1966, officially becoming the first civilian astronaut to fly in space. Three years later in 1969, Neil flew into space for the second and last time as a commander of Apollo 11. Along with pilot Buzz Aldrin, the two men ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA is set to open discussions about a study that has proposed a system capable of landing on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in search for life beyond Earth, reported news agency. The study that NASA commissioned last year to assess the science value and engineering design of a future lander mission submitted its report this week. The report listed three science goals for the mission – the primary being search for evidence of life on Europa, the US space agency said. The other goals are to assess the habitability of Europa by directly analyzing material ...

MNA Science & Tech Desk: NASA scientists in an unprecedented study have found that space travel may alter gene expression. The study involved astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space and his identical twin Mark who stayed on Earth. From the lengths of the twins’ chromosomes to the microbiomes in their guts, “almost everyone is reporting that we see differences”, Christopher Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, was quoted as saying to scientificamerican.com. The changes that are likely attributable to Scott’s time in orbit include alterations to gene expression, DNA methylation — ...

MNA Science & Technology Desk: Astronomers have discovered a cosmic one-two punch unlike any ever seen before. Two of the most powerful phenomena in the universe, a supermassive black hole and the collision of giant galaxy clusters, have combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator. By combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India, the NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and other telescopes, researchers have found out what happens when matter ejected by a giant black hole is swept up in the merger of two enormous galaxy clusters. “We have ...

MNA Technology Desk: A strangely large and bright Moon will adorn the night sky next Monday, the closest “super moon” to earth in 68 years and a chance for dramatic photos and spectacular surf. Weather permitting, the phenomenon should appear at its most impressive at 1352 GMT (0722 IST), when it will be at its fullest just as night falls over Asia, astronomers said. Provided there are no clouds and not too much light pollution, people should be able to see Earth’s satellite loom unusually large over the horizon shortly after sunset, irrespective of where in the world they are. ...

MNA Technology Desk: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a US space agency, has picked up six US companies to develop ground prototypes and ideas for deep space habitats for Mars. Habitation structures deliver a safe place for humans to live as scientists move beyond Earth on the journey to Mars. NASA and industry associates will enlarge commercial development of space in low-Earth orbit while also improving deep space survey competences to support more extensive human spaceflight missions through the public-private partnerships enabled by the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships-2 (NextSTEP-2). “NASA is on an ambitious expansion of ...

MNA Technology Desk: NASA on Saturday successfully expanded and pressurized as they inflates an add-on spare room at the International Space Station two days after aborting the first attempt when it ran into problems. The flexible habitat, known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), completed slowly extending 67 inches (170 centimeters) at 4:10 pm (2010 GMT) following more than seven hours during which astronaut Jeff Williams released short blasts of air into the pod’s walls from the orbiting lab using a manual valve. After the expansion was completed, he opened eight air tanks inside BEAM, pressurizing the pod to ...

MNA Editorial Desk: The universe is yet to be explored; truly as reports say, NASA discovers 1,200 new planets and the universe just got bigger. NASA has announced an astonishing discovery of more than 1,200 new planets, several of which orbit in their sun’s habitable zone. The discovery more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler, giving scientists hope that they may eventually discover another Earth-like planet that could harbor life. The Kepler spacecraft has been looking for Earth-like planets since May 2009 and before the recent findings had discovered thousands of candidate planets, including 12 in the ...