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NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is scheduled to launch on July 22, 2021. It's a demonstration mission to study the use of kinetic impact to deflect an asteroid. It'll head for the tiny binary asteroid system called Didymos, (or 65803 Didymos.) This double asteroid system poses no threat to Earth. The larger of the pair, named Didymos A, is about 780 meters (2560 ft.) in diameter, while the smaller one, Didymos B, is only about 160 meters (535 ft.) DART will crash itself into the Didymos B. It's close to the typical size of an asteroid that threatens...

Some people have noticed an odd shape, sort of a cross inside a circle, entering the field-of-view of the HI2 telescope on STEREO Ahead around February 20,2020. Eventually there is a cone shape that appears next to it. You can see the feature in question in this movie moving from right-to-left, just below the trapezoidal occulter on the right side of the image. The answer lies on the exact opposite side of the image. At the same time as this strange-looking feature starts being visible, the very bright planet Venus enters the HI2-A field-of-view from the left. Notice that Venus...

KEY POINTS NASA detected four asteroids approaching Earth The biggest asteroid in the group measures 180 feet wide All four asteroids will approach Earth this weekend NASA’s automated asteroid tracking system has detected four near-Earth objects that are expected to approach the planet this weekend. According to the agency, the biggest asteroid in the group is about as big as the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. The first asteroid that will approach Earth this weekend has been identified by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) as 2020 FK. As indicated in CNEOS’ database, this asteroid has an estimated...

Signals from existing global navigation satellites near the Earth could be used to guide astronauts in lunar orbit, 385,000 km away. Cheung and Lee plotted the orbits of navigation satellites from the United States’s Global Positioning System and two of its counterparts, Europe’s Galileo and Russia’s GLONASS system—81 satellites in all. Most of them have directional antennas transmitting toward Earth’s surface, but their signals also radiate into space. Those signals, say the researchers, are strong enough to be read by spacecraft with fairly compact receivers near the moon. Cheung, Lee and their team calculated that a spacecraft in lunar orbit...

The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the passing of Apollo 15 astronaut Alfred "Al" Worden: “NASA sends its condolences to the family and loved ones of Apollo astronaut Al Worden, an astronaut whose achievements in space and on Earth will not be forgotten. “A Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Worden was a test pilot and instructor before joining NASA as an astronaut in 1966. He flew to the Moon as command module pilot aboard Apollo 15. During this time he earned a world record as “most isolated human being" while his crew mates roamed...

NASA’s Juno mission captured this look at the southern hemisphere of Jupiter on Feb. 17, 2020, during the spacecraft’s most recent close approach to the giant planet. Not only is Jupiter the largest planet orbiting the Sun, it contains more than twice the amount of material of all other objects in the solar system combined — including all the planets, moons, asteroids and comets. In composition, Jupiter resembles a star, and scientists estimate that if it had been at least 80 times more massive at its formation, it could have become a type of star called a red dwarf rather...

SNIP Stunning aerial images of Earth show a drastic decrease in pollution levels over northern China in the past month, as entire towns the size of New York City have been shut down amid the deadly outbreak. The images, produced by NASA and the European Space Agency, compare air quality between Jan. 1 and Jan. 20 with pollution levels between Feb. 10 and 25 — and the difference in nitrogen dioxide concentration is stunning. SNIP

Scientists want to visit the unique metal asteroid, because they believe that it could actually be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet that broke apart due to violent collisions. The mission's findings could shed light on the formation of our solar system ... NASA says launching the Psyche spacecraft will cost it approximately $117 million, and according to SpaceNews, it's the agency's first mission that will fly on top of a Falcon Heavy as its primary payload.

Anming Hu, a  an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) was arrested today on a federal indictment and charged with three counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements.“Hu allegedly committed fraud by hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving funding from NASA,� said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers.   “This is just the latest case involving professors or researchers concealing their affiliations with China from their American employers and the U.S. government.   We will not tolerate it.�“The United...

Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions and was later portrayed in the 2016 hit film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died. She was 101. Johnson died Monday of natural causes at a retirement community in Newport News, Virginia, family attorney Donyale Y. H. Reavis told The Associated Press. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement that Johnson “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color.” Johnson was one of...

Pioneering NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose calculations played a major role in the development of the Space Shuttle program, died Monday at the age of 101, NASA confirmed. Johnson was part of NASA’s “Computer Pool” team in the 1960s, which was largely composed of black women who processed data by hand. They provided the calculations for several of the first successful manned space missions, including Alan Shepard’s in 1961 and John Glenn’s in 1962, when he became the first American to orbit the earth. Johnson also became the first woman to write a technical report in NASA’s flight research division...

NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia 12:43 P.M. EST THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all for that very warm welcome. To Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Secretary Betsy DeVos, to Congresswoman Elaine Luria, and most especially to Director Clayton Turner and all of the incredible men and women who have been making great ideas take flight for 100 years: It is an honor to be here at Langley Research Center. (Applause.) And Director Turner and I have been walking through wind tunnels and talking about flights to the Moon and to Mars, and seeing the new technology coming together. And I...

The UK's Astronomer Royal, Professor Lord Rees, is the chair of the organisation's international advisory group. He told the BBC that, given that the multi-billion pound Large Hadron Collider had not yet achieved its aim of finding sub-atomic particles beyond the current theory of physics, governments should consider modest funding of a few million pounds for Seti. "I'd feel far more confident arguing the case for Seti than for a particle accelerator," he said. "Seti searches are surely worthwhile, despite the heavy odds against success, because the stakes are so high". Nasa once funded the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence to...

After saying for weeks the spacecraft and systems performed “as designed” after recovering from a Mission Elapsed Timer issue just 31 minutes after launch and point-blank saying that no other anomalies occurred on the mission, Boeing and NASA have now admitted that two more serious issues — one of which could have led to the Loss Of Vehicle — occurred during Starliner’s first mission.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch the Solar Orbiter spacecraft for NASA and the European Space Agency tonight. It will lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during a 2-hour launch window that opens at 11:03 p.m. EST (0403 GMT on Feb. 10).

Expedition 61 Flight Engineer Christina Koch of NASA returned home to Ellington Field in Houston, Texas Feb. 7 aboard a NASA plane some 24 hours after a parachute-assisted landing in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan. Koch set a record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman – 328 days – in a mission on the orbiting laboratory that spanned 5248 orbits of the Earth and 139 million miles, roughly the equivalent of 291 round trips to the Moon. Koch performed six spacewalks during her mission and saw the arrival of a dozen visiting vehicles and the departure of...

The Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan on 6 February 2020, at 09:12 UTC (15:12 local time), with NASA astronaut Christina Koch, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov of Roscosmos. Christina Koch’s 328-day-long mission is the longest single spaceflight in history by a woman and the second-longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut Credit: NASA/Roscosmos

The new software issue was discovered during the Starliner's flight, according to panel member Paul Hill. A software fix was made just hours before the capsule returned. "While this anomaly was corrected in flight, if it had gone uncorrected, it would have led to erroneous thruster firings and uncontrolled motion during [service module] separation for deorbit, with the potential for a catastrophic spacecraft failure," he said, according to Space News. In a blog post Friday, NASA said its investigation with Boeing has found 11 "top-priority corrective actions" so far with more to be identified. "There were numerous instances where the...

In November 2018, as seen from Earth and certain spacecraft, the sun seemed to be calm. But it wasn't: The sun was experiencing what scientists call a "stealth" coronal mass ejection. And conveniently, NASA's Parker Solar Probe was completing its first close pass behind the sun, putting its instruments in a perfect position to see what was happening on Nov. 11 and 12 during this usually cryptic event. "If you've ever seen a coronal mass ejection image, you normally see a lot of activity in these images," Kelly Korreck, a solar physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said during a...

Sunspot activity on the surface of the Sun follows a well-known but little understood 11 year cycle. Activity rises and falls creating the so-called solar maximum and then solar minimum. During a solar maximum, the Sun is more powerful and is littered with sunspots. Conversely when the Sun enters a solar minimum – which it did about two years ago - energy from our host star begins to lessen. However, one expert has warned that the Sun will enter a period of “hibernation” this year, in what as known as a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM). **SNIP** “The reduction in temperature...