Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
Three months after lifting off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Europa Clipper spacecraft still has 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) ahead before it settles into Jupiter's orbit in 2030. On arrival, it will capture detailed views of Europa's icy terrain. In the meantime, a pair of specialized cameras called star trackers is busy photographing deep space to confirm the c

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
Hall thrusters, an essential propulsion technology for space missions such as NASA's Psyche asteroid mission and SpaceX's Starlink satellites, operate using plasma to achieve efficient thrust. The research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Hall thruster for CubeSats. This thruster will be integrated into t

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 04, 2025
By leveraging artificial intelligence, researchers have identified a newly formed crater on Mars, revealing that the impact event propelled vibrations deep into the planet's mantle. Recent findings show that meteoroid impacts on Mars generate seismic waves that penetrate farther into the planet's interior than once believed. Two new studies illustrate this by matching quake data from NASA'

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
China's Chang'e 7 mission is on track for a 2026 launch, with its sights set on the moon's southern polar region. The goal, China Media Group reported Monday, is to identify water ice deposits and trial breakthrough technologies crucial for extended human operations on the lunar surface. According to the report, the probe features a new hopper module equipped with a water molecule analyzer

Bethesda, MD (SPX) Feb 04, 2025
Cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon, has emerged as a focal point for both commercial and military interests. Its strategic importance is underscored by the growing investments in space exploration, resource utilization, and defense capabilities. There are several potential commercial uses of cislunar space. One of the most promising of these is resource mining. The Moon is tho

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has secured an agreement with the Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc. (iQPS), a Japanese Earth observation company specializing in high-resolution imagery, to deliver four separate missions aboard the Electron launch vehicle. Under the terms finalized in July 2024, the first three dedicated flights are set for 2025 from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealan

Houston TX (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
The old saying - "Practice makes perfect!" - applies to the Moon too. On Tuesday, NASA gave 17 technologies, instruments, and experiments the chance to practice being on the Moon... without actually going there. Instead, it was a flight test aboard a vehicle adapted to simulate lunar gravity for approximately two minutes. The test began on February 4, 2025, with the 10:00 a.m. CST launch o

Tucson AZ (SPX) Feb 04, 2025
Nature had the conditions to "cook up" the chemical precursor ingredients for life before Earth formed, according to two studies published by the sample analysis team of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which is led by Dante Lauretta at the University of Arizona. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned a sample from asteroid Bennu in 2023, and following a year of in-depth analyses in labs across the

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 05, 2025
The Expedition 72 crew dedicated Tuesday to advancing free-flying robotics research while performing crucial scientific tasks aboard the International Space Station. Their schedule also included evaluating the outpost's air and water quality, plus prepping a student-controlled camera for Earth observation. NASA specialists are harnessing microgravity to refine robotic techniques that can c

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Back in 2023, we reported on Solar Orbiter’s discovery of tiny jets near the Sun’s south pole that could be powering the solar wind. The team behind this research has now used even more data from the European Space Agency’s prolific solar mission to confirm that these jets exist all over dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere, and that they really are a source of not only fast but also slow solar wind.

The newfound jets can be seen in this sped-up video as hair-like wisps that flash very briefly, for example within the circled regions of the