Tag Archives: nasa

Help Name the Mars 2020 Rover!

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Alex R. Howe

If you remember the summer of 2012, you might recall the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars. (As a hint, it was right at the end of the London Olympics.) It was a pretty big deal because this was … Continue reading →

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The Moon Landing at 50

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Unless you’ve been living under a Moon rock, you’re probably aware of how significant today and this week are. July 20, 2019: the fiftieth anniversary of the first Moon landing. What can I say about this event that won’t have … Continue reading →

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New Horizons and Ultima Thule: Where to Watch

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Alex R. Howe

Update: it turns out that the coverage of the Ultima Thule flyby is “forward funded”, so it will proceed on NASA TV as normal. New Horizons, the spacecraft that famously imaged Pluto three years ago, will be making history again … Continue reading →

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TESS Lifts Off

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Alex R. Howe

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) lifted off on a SpaceX rocket last night. TESS is a follow-up to the wildly successful Kepler mission that will hunt for transiting planets—that is, planets that pass in front of their stars, blocking … Continue reading →

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LIGO Discovers Colliding Neutron Stars and Cosmic Gold

Posted on October 16, 2017 by Alex R. Howe

(Virgo doesn’t, but that’s still a good thing.) The two LIGO observatories and Virgo are the world’s three operational gravitational wave observatories. These observatories use incredibly precise lasers to detect the ripples in spacetime caused by colliding massive objects like … Continue reading →

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The End of the Cassini Mission

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Alex R. Howe

Yesterday morning, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at Saturn was deorbited into the planet’s atmosphere in the Grand Finale of an epic 20-year mission. Cassini observed Venus, Earth, and Jupiter while it was in transit and has spent the past 13 years … Continue reading →

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NASA Discovers the First “Earth-Like” Planet for the Third Time

Posted on July 25, 2015 by Alex R. Howe

There’s been buzz in the news about the latest planet discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, Kepler-452b. It’s being hailed as a major discovery. It’s the first ever Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of a…boy, this sounds familiar, … Continue reading →

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NASA finds an ice-cold planet right next door

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Alex R. Howe

You may have heard about the recent discovery of an ice cold “brown dwarf” or “star” right next door in our Solar Neighborhood. The object, which goes by the telephone number* WISE J085510.83-071442.5, is only 7.2 light-years from our Solar … Continue reading →

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Planets abound!

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Alex R. Howe

It’s always fun when a government agency uses the word “bonanza” in a press release. NASA’s Kepler space telescope spent mission spent three and a half years observing distant stars in our galaxy looking for planets crossing in front of … Continue reading →

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Watch Comet ISON skim the Sun tomorrow

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Alex R. Howe

On Thanksgiving Day, the much-anticipated perihelion passage of Comet ISON will occur, and astronomers around the world will be watching. NASA is turning its fleet of Sun-observing spacecraft to watch as ISON plunges toward a fiery date with death or … Continue reading →

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