Images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst and spraying the cosmos with dust. The findings offer a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life. The star,…

Observations of wind patterns and natural radiation patterns on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover are helping scientists better understand the environment on the Red Planet’s surface. Researchers using the car-sized mobile laboratory have identified transient whirlwinds, mapped winds in relation to slopes, tracked daily and seasonal changes in air pressure, and linked rhythmic changes in…

Continued analysis of the payload fairing failure to split and detach from the Orbital Taurus XL launch vehicle has fingered the possible cause. The heat-treated frangible rail designed to fracture when a pyrotechnic charge is detonated post-launch to shed the rocketís payload-fairing shroud has problems. There are potentially some extrusion problems with the way that…

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a “super-Earth” planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets. “Spitzer has amazed us yet again,” said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist…

NASA has awarded three contracts totaling $137.3 million to improve the affordability, reliability and performance of an advanced booster for the Space Launch System. The awardees will develop engineering demonstrations and risk reduction concepts for a future version of the SLS, a heavy-lift rocket that will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond…

Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., has completed its first major, comprehensive safety review of its Dream Chaser Space System. This is the company’s latest paid-for-performance milestone with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which is working with commercial space partners to develop capabilities to launch U.S. astronauts from American soil in the next few…

NASA April 17 successfully conducted a drop test of the Orion crew vehicle’s entry, descent and landing parachutes high above the Arizona desert in preparation for the vehicle’s orbital flight test, Exploration Flight Test -1, in 2014. Orion will carry astronauts deeper into space than ever before, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during…

A NASA sounding rocket flight in 2012 captured five minutes of the highest-resolution images ever taken of the Sun’s million-degree outer atmosphere, the corona. The new images have provided tantalizing hints of another mechanism that likely contributes to the heating of the solar corona. In a paper published today in the journal Nature, researchers from…

NASA’s call to scientists and engineers to help plan a new strategy to explore Mars has resulted in almost double the amount of expected submissions with unique and bold ideas. About 400 concepts or abstracts were submitted to the Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration Workshop in Houston, which was organized to gather input for…