Eating the right diet and exercising hard in space helps protect International Space Station astronauts’ bones, a finding that may help solve one of the key problems facing future explorers heading beyond low Earth orbit. A new study, published this month in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, evaluated the mineral density of specific…

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Aug. 23 announced new milestones in the nation’s commercial space initiatives from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The latest advances made by NASA’s commercial space partners pave the way for the first contracted flight of cargo to the International Space Station this fall and mark progress toward a launch…

NASA has selected Barrios Technology Ltd. of Houston to provide mission and program integration services for the International Space Station Program at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The two-year base contract is a small business set aside. It begins Oct. 1 and extends through Sept. 30, 2014. There are three potential two-year options…

University students will put their academic skills to the test when atmospheric and technology experiments they developed fly on a NASA suborbital sounding rocket. The launch will take place between 6:30 and 10 a.m., Aug. 23, from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va. Four university experiments will be flown as part of…

NASA’s Space Technology Program has selected five technologies that could revolutionize America’s space capabilities. In March, NASA issued a call for proposal focused on sudden and unexpected innovations that hold a potential for providing a “game-changing” impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency’s space capabilities. NASA has selected the following proposals for funding:…

NASA’s new virtual mentoring program is helping girls get excited about careers in science and technology by working one-on-one with agency professionals. Twenty-one girls in grades 5-8, representing 12 states from New York to Hawaii, have completed a pilot mentoring program called NASA Giving Initiative and Relevance to Learning Science. NASA GIRLS is the first…

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.,…

Scientists using the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project spectrometer aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have made the first spectroscopic observations of the noble gas helium in the tenuous atmosphere surrounding the Moon. These remote-sensing observations complement in situ measurements taken in 1972 by the Lunar Atmosphere Composition Experiment (LACE) deployed by Apollo 17. Although designed to…