Planet similar to Earth discovered: NASA

This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's "habitable zone" -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. NASA announced the discovery of another planet close enough to the sun it orbits to potentially support life. Called Kepler-22b, about 2.4 times the radius of Earth...

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NASA launches Mars-bound spacecraft/CBC NEWS

In this 2011 artist's rendering provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of its arm. The car-sized, nuclear-powered mobile laboratory will examine Martian soil and rocks. (JPL-Caltech/NASA/Associated Press) NASA's Mars-bound spacecraft lifted off Saturday morning, carrying a six-wheeled rover that will explore the Red Planet. The unmanned Atlas 5 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida around 10...

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NASA launches trailblazing weather/climate satellite

First probe built to track fast weather systems and long-term climate change Bill Ingalls  /  NASA via Getty Images A Delta 2 rocket lifts off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base before dawn Friday, lofting NASA's NPP weather and climate satellite into space. After a five-year delay, NASA launched an Earth-observing satellite on Friday to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change. The $1.5 billion mission comes amid a year...

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Telescopes solve 2,000-year-old stellar mystery

NASA - This undated handout image provide by NASA, combines data from four different space telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of all that remains of the oldest documented example of a supernova, called RCW 86. NASA announced the findings Monday, Oct. 24, 2011, and said the exploded star was observed by the ancient Chinese in the year 185, and visible for eight months. It was later found to be a bigger-than-expected supernova remnant, 8,000 light years away. (AP Photo/NASA) CAPE CANAVERAL,...

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NASA's Spitzer Detects Comet Storm in Nearby Solar System

This artist's conception illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years...

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Best-Ever Topographic Map of Earth Released

The most complete digital topographic ever made of the Earth was released by NASA today (Oct. 17). The map, known as a global digital elevation model, was created from images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite. At 14,505 feet (4,421 meters) in elevation, California's Mt. Whitney, located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the west side of Owens Valley, is the highest point in the contiguous...

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The First Humanoid Robot Astronaut Powers Up Aboard the ISS

This Space Station's Not Big Enough for the Two of Us NASA Our favorite Twitter ‘bot--no, like an actual robot that tweets--is out of the box and live-tweeting its new life on the International Space Station. Robonaut 2 was actually unboxed several months ago (it was delivered by the final Discovery mission in February) but has been sitting idly, waiting for the crew to get around to firing it up. Now R2 is plugged in, and man is it ever chatty.“Those electrons feel GOOD!,” R2 tweeted yesterday...

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Electric Plane Wins $1.35 Million in NASA Challenge

NASA has doled out the largest prize in aviation history, in an effort to help make future aircraft cleaner and greener. A team called Pipistrel-USA.com, of State College, Pa., has taken home the $1.35 million top prize, NASA officials announced Monday (Oct. 3). The space agency helped organize a competition called the CAFE Green Flight Challenge, which tasked teams to design, build and demonstrate super-efficient aircraft. Team eGenius, of Ramona, Calif., came in second and scored $120,000....

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NASA to admit Students for Astronaut School

In early November, NASA will seek applicants for its next class of astronaut candidates, hoping to bolster its reserves of brave spacemen -- in the face of a National Research Council report that warned the corps was getting too small. "For scientists, engineers and other professionals who have always dreamed of experiencing spaceflight, this is an exciting time to join the astronaut corps," said Janet Kavandi, director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. And rocket...

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NASA announces world’s biggest-ever rocket to take man to Mars and beyond

With the curtain coming down on the Space Shuttle Program, NASA has set its sights on the future with the announcement of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that is designed to take man beyond the moon to explore near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons, and beyond. Dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS) its configuration harks back to the Saturn V rocket-based systems employed to propel Apollo astronauts to the moon but also incorporates technology developed in the Shuttle Program.The SLS will use a...

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SpaceX Dragon to be first private spacecraft to dock at ISS

When SpaceX's Dragon capsule docks at the International Space Station in November, it will mark the first time that a private spacecraft has visited the facility Although we will never see another space shuttle docking at the International Space Station, that doesn't mean that there are no plans for other American spacecraft to be visiting the facility. In fact, one should be up there on or around December 9th. That's when SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to arrive, following a November...

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Scientists Release Most Accurate Simulation of the Universe to Date

The Bolshoi simulation reveals a cosmic web of dark matter that underlies the large-scale structure of the universe and, through its gravitational effects on ordinary matter, drives the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters. The image is a slice of the entire simulation, 1 billion light-years across and about 30 million light-years thick. (Credit: Stefan Gottlober (AIP)) The Bolshoi supercomputer simulation, the most accurate and detailed large cosmological simulation run to date, gives...

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NASA to demonstrate laser beam communications system

Conceptual image of the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration that is designed to increase the data rate of space communications (Image: NASA) Since the dawn of the space age, NASA has been relying on radio communications technology to send and receive data to and from spacecraft. Although it has developed higher data-rate radio frequency systems, data-compression, and other techniques to boost the amount of data that its current RF systems can handle, they can't keep pace with the projected...

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NASA's GRAIL mission will map the Moon's gravity

After its planned launch this morning was canceled due to upper wind levels, a Delta II rocket carrying NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) has been rescheduled to tomorrow morning. The GRAIL mission will incorporate two unmanned spacecraft - GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B - which will fly in formation over the Moon's surface, measuring variations in its gravity. Using this data, scientists hope to learn more about the Moon's thermal history, and how other rocky planets within the...

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