Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 24, 2025
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Narrow Field Imager (NFI) has officially commenced operations in orbit after being launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission on March 11. The NFI payload successfully deployed from the launch vehicle on March 12 and is now gathering data from low Earth orbit. PUNCH co

Washington DC (UPI) Mar 21, 2025
SpaceX has set a rocket re-use record for launch-turnaround by sending a Falcon 9 up twice within nine days early Friday morning. The previous record was 14 days. The rocket launched at 2:49 a.m. EDT Friday form Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission was for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. The NROL-57 mission came nine days after the rocket was used to ta

Oslo (AFP) Mar 24, 2025
A German start-up hopes to conduct Monday a test flight of its Spectrum rocket from Norway's Andoya Spaceport, a first for Europe which is keen to maintain its access to space. Scheduled to take place sometime between 12:30 pm and 3:30 pm (1130 and 1430 GMT), the launch from the Arctic space centre will be the first flight of an orbital launch vehicle from the European continent, excluding R

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 24, 2025
NASA has confirmed that all three satellites of the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission are functioning well and communicating with mission control as anticipated. The trio of spacecraft was deployed into orbit via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on March 15 EDT (March 14 PDT). Following this successful launch, engineers and mission s

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 24, 2025
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is currently engaged in its 23rd solar science campaign, heading toward a Sun encounter on Saturday, March 22, that will once again bring it within a mere 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the solar surface. This approach matches the spacecraft's previous record for the closest distance to the Sun, achieved during its December 24 flyby. During this lat

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 24, 2025
NASA's SPHEREx mission, newly launched into low Earth orbit on March 11, has taken a major step toward beginning its cosmic survey by discarding its dust cover. On March 18, mission controllers successfully directed the observatory to jettison the shield that safeguarded the telescope's aperture from particles and moisture. This crucial component, which measured roughly 25 inches by 16 inc

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 24, 2025
Following recent confirmation from NASA and NOAA that Solar Cycle 25 has reached its apex, attention has turned to mitigating the risks posed by heightened solar activity. The increased sunspot count, a hallmark of solar maximum, has already led to notable geomagnetic disturbances, including the significant Mother's Day Storm in May 2024 and another major storm five months later. These powerful

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 21, 2025
Chinese scientists have precisely dated the moon's oldest and largest impact feature, the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, to 4.25 billion years ago using lunar samples returned by the Chang'e-6 mission. This result offers critical insights into the moon's formative history and the early development of the solar system. A research team led by Chen Yi from the Institute of Geology and Geophys

Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 24, 2025
Last week the Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres... and the team are now working hard to understand their origin. It has now been two weeks since Perseverance arrived at Broom Point, situated at the lower slopes of the Witch Hazel Hill area, on the Jezero crater rim. Here, a series of light- and dark- toned bands were vi

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a beautiful juxtaposition of the nearby protostellar outflow known as Herbig-Haro 49/50 with a perfectly positioned, more distant spiral galaxy. Due to the close proximity of this Herbig-Haro object to Earth, this new composite infrared image of the outflow from a young star allows researchers to examine details on small spatial scales like never before. With Webb, we can better understand how the jet activity associated with the formation of young stars can affect the environment surrounding them.