Asteroid Ryugu from Hayabusa2
22.08.2018

This big space diamond has an estimated value of over 80 billion dollars. It's only diamond in shape, though -- asteroid 162173 Ryugu is thought to be composed of mostly nickel and iron. Asteroids...

Rockets and Robert Goddard
16.03.2001

Robert H. Goddard, one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry, was born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1882. As a 16 year old, Goddard read H.G. Wells' science fiction classic "War Of The Worlds" and dreamed of space flight. By 1926 he had designed, built, and flown the world's first liquid fuel rocket.

Total Eclipse of the Active Sun
20.06.2001

A total eclipse of the Sun is that special geocentric celestial event where the Moon passes exactly in front of the solar disk. During a fleeting few minutes of totality, fortunate earthdwellers located within...

Flying Over the Columbia Hills of Mars
19.05.2008

What it would be like to fly over Mars? Combining terrain data from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft (now dormant) with information about the robotic Spirit rover currently rolling across Mars has resulted in a digital movie that shows what a flight over the Columbia Hills might look like.

STS 1: First Shuttle Launch
12.04.2001

On April 12, 1981, twenty years ago today, the Space Shuttle Columbia became the first shuttle to orbit the Earth. In this gorgeous time exposure, flood lights play on the Columbia and service structures (left) as it rests atop Complex 39's Pad A at Kennedy Space Center in preparation for first launch.

Found on the Moon: Candidate for Oldest Known Earth Rock
3.02.2021

Was the oldest known rock on Earth found on the Moon? Quite possibly. The story opens with the Apollo 14 lunar mission. Lunar sample 14321, a large rock found in Cone crater by astronaut...

Compton Reentry
3.06.2000

Nine years ago the massive Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the second of NASA's space-based great observatories, was deployed in low earth orbit. Lofted above the protective atmosphere, Compton's instruments could explore the extreme high-energy Universe in gamma rays -- photons with 100,000 times or more the energy of visible light.

Lunokhod: Reflections on a Moon Robot
6.06.2010

It may look like some sort of cute alien robot, but it was created here on Earth, launched to the Moon in 1970, and now reflects laser light in a scientifically useful way. On November 17, 1970 the Soviet Luna 17 spacecraft landed the first roving remote-controlled robot on the Moon.

Early Microscopic Life on Mars?
7.08.1996

Today a team of NASA and Stanford scientists announced the discovery of strong circumstantial evidence that microscopic life once existed on Mars. Dr. David McKay, Dr. Everett Gibson, and Kathie Thomas-Keprta of Lockheed-Martin, all from (NASA /JSC), and Dr.

Perseverance 360: Unusual Rocks and the Search for Life on Mars
9.03.2021

Is that a fossil?б Looking through recent images of Mars taken by the new Perseverance rover may seem a bit like treasure hunting, with the possibility of fame coming to the first person...