NASA has awarded five-year grants totaling almost $40 million to five research teams to study the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. The newly selected teams are from the University of Washington; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and University of Southern California. Average funding…

NASA is expanding its offer to museums and schools of space shuttle heat shield tiles and food packaged for spaceflight. Beginning Sept. 4, museums across the United States will be eligible to receive these pieces of space history, in addition to the schools and universities that have received them since the end of the Space…

Students worldwide have an opportunity to name an asteroid from which an upcoming NASA mission will return the first samples to Earth. Scheduled to launch in 2016, the mission is called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx). Samples returned from the primitive surface of the near-Earth asteroid currently called (101955) 1999 RQ36 could hold clues…

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant destinations to help scientists answer questions about the formation of our solar system. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta Sept. 5 to start its 2 1/2-year journey to the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn began…

NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes, the first twin-spacecraft mission designed to explore our planet’s radiation belts, launched into the predawn skies at 4:05a.m., EDT, Aug. 30 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. “Scientists will learn in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles, what causes them to change and how…

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has set off from its landing vicinity on a trek to a science destination about a quarter-mile (400 meters) away, where it may begin using its drill. The rover drove eastward about 52 feet (16 meters) Aug. 28, its 22nd Martian day after landing. This third drive was longer than Curiosity’s…

NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes, the first twin-spacecraft mission designed to explore our planet’s radiation belts, launched into the predawn skies at 4:05a.m., EDT, Aug. 30 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. “Scientists will learn in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles, what causes them to change and how…

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. – The spacecraft that will carry NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to its orbit nearly a million miles from Earth has completed a Critical Design Review for the structure that supports Webb’s data link to NASA’s ground station. Northrop Grumman is under contract to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.,…