Category: Space

NASA in Silicon Valley Live is a talk show that features conversations with scientists, researchers, engineers and all-around cool people who work at NASA to push the boundaries of innovation. In this episode streamed on Dec. 6, 2018, we talk about SOFIA, the world’s largest flying telescope, and the history of airborne astronomy. Video with captions: Source link

How do we know if a rock came from the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid? Planetary scientist Neyda Abreu has looked inside all kinds of meteorites to understand where they came from and what’s inside them. She also traveled to Antarctica to hunt for space rock treasure. Since she was a child in Venezuela, she has been curious about the life cycles of stars and planets. Learn about her work with meteorites and her journey to become a scientist. Jim Green:Small pieces of the earliest rock fall on the Earth every day. How do we find them? And what…

Suscríbete vía Google Podcasts Teresa Nieves Chinchilla:  Como humanidad, pensamos en el Sol como fuente de vida. Sabemos que cualquier planta o animal depende del Sol y que la vida en el planeta depende del Sol. Pero sin embargo, como especie humana, a medida que nos estamos desarrollando, estamos muchísimo más conectados con el Sol. Estamos conectados electromagnéticamente. Y nuestro afán exploratorio, más que nunca, depende del Sol y, por lo tanto, más que nunca nosotros dependemos de nuestra estrella.     Yaireska Collado Vega:  Nosotros no podemos enviar astronautas al espacio sin asegurarnos de que todo esté bien y…

Transcript (music) Narrator: In the early 2000s, NASA was planning to send two rovers to Mars, and many teams were busy building all the different rover parts. Honeybee Robotics, based in New York City, was making a Rock Abrasion Tool, called the RAT. Wielded by a rover, the RAT would chew away at the surface of rocks so scientists could see how different a Martian rock’s pristine inside was from its weathered outside. [0:33](sound of grinding tool on rocks) Narrator: The Honeybee Robotics team was heading into work one morning in September when they heard a sound that sent…

Episode description: The James Webb Space Telescope is doing something astronomers dreamed about for decades: peering into our universe’s early past, a period known as cosmic dawn. A new NASA+ documentary—also called Cosmic Dawn—chronicles the inside story of Webb’s design, construction, and launch. John Mather, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics, proposed the telescope and led its science team for decades. In this interview, Mather talks about his life, his research, and the pre-dawn phone call telling him he had won the Nobel Prize. Find more information about the documentary Cosmic Dawn at nasa.gov/cosmicdawn. [Music: Curiosity by…

From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible. On episode 394, NASA’s Artemis II Flight Director Jeff Radigan shares what it takes to lead the first human mission of the Artemis program around the Moon. This episode was recorded June 6, 2025. Transcript Dane Turner (Host) Houston, We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode…

A team at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland streamed 4K video footage from an aircraft to the International Space Station and back for the first time using optical, or laser, communications. The feat was part of a series of tests on new technology that could provide live video coverage of astronauts on the Moon during the Artemis missions. Historically, NASA has relied on radio waves to send information to and from space. Laser communications use infrared light to transmit 10 to 100 times more data faster than radio frequency systems. Working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and…

NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has returned to Wānaka, New Zealand, for two scheduled flights to test and qualify the agency’s super pressure balloon technology. These stadium-sized, heavy-lift balloons will travel the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes for planned missions of 100 days or more.  Launch operations are scheduled to begin in late March from Wānaka Airport, NASA’s dedicated launch site for mid-latitude, ultra long-duration balloon missions.   “We are very excited to return to New Zealand for this campaign to officially flight qualify the balloon vehicle for future science investigations,” said Gabriel Garde, chief of NASA’s Balloon Program Office at the agency’s…

FAIRMONT – NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Program’s Education Resource Center hosted a successful Digital Day in the Park STEM event for the second year in a row this week. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this STEM learning event took place in-person at the Robert H. Mollohan Research Center. While organizers and students do miss that level of presenter engagement, the socially distanced virtual format has come with several benefits. “The virtual format enabled easy access for presenters and student groups that otherwise may not have been able to travel to the I-79 tech park,” Josh Revels, the…

May 2024 was the warmest May on the books, marking a full year of record-high monthly temperatures, NASA scientists found. Average global temperatures for the past 12 months hit record highs for each respective month – an unprecedented streak – according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. “It’s clear we are facing a climate crisis,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Communities across America—like Arizona, California, Nevada—and communities across the globe are feeling first-hand extreme heat in unprecedented numbers. NASA and the Biden-Harris Administration recognize the urgency of protecting our home planet. We…

NASA attorney Jeff Renshaw’s work has primarily revolved around two things: serving others and solving problems. The New Orleans native retired as an U.S. Air Force judge advocate following more than two decades of service. Renshaw now has worked for more than eight years as an attorney advisor at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. As the nation’s largest multiuser propulsion test site, NASA Stennis supports and helps power both national and commercial space efforts and missions. Any activity at NASA Stennis is authorized by some form of written agreement. The Office of General Counsel, which…

Derrol Nail: Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will make history when they break the bond from Earth in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that’s never been flown by humans before. But find out how the strong bond of friendship they share gives them the edge in space. Next on the Rocket Ranch. Launch Countdown Sequence: EGS Program Chief Engineer, verify no constraints to launch… 3, 2, 1, and lift off. Welcome to space. Derrol Nail: Along with launch crews from NASA and SpaceX, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have been very busy preparing for space flight. They will…

NARRATOR On Tuesday, December 7, 2021, NASA launched the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, or LCRD, NASA’s latest demonstration of high data rate optical communications technologies. LCRD is demonstrating NASA’s first two-way laser relay communications system, sending and receiving data using invisible infrared lasers. Over five episodes of this podcast, we encountered the dream, design, and future of LCRD and laser communications at NASA. If you haven’t yet given them a listen, they’re episodes 18 through 22. During the season, we solicited your questions about the mission with the hashtag #AskSCaN on social media. We really appreciate all the great…

A conversation with Jennifer Dungan, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and project manager for the big-data Earth science initiative, the NASA Earth Exchange. Transcript Abby Tabor:Hey, everybody! You’re listening to a bonus episode of the NASA in Silicon Valley podcast. A little while back, we got to sit down with Jennifer Dungan. She’s a scientist here at NASA Ames who helps researchers study the Earth from above using satellites. Jennifer is the project manager for the NASA Earth Exchange, a big data initiative that uses NASA’s supercomputers here at Ames. The NASA Earth Exchange makes it…

On a quest to find out if we are not alone in the universe, Ravi Kopparapu at NASA Goddard studies how we could use telescopes to detect signs of life beyond our solar system. These include both signs of biology and technology, since there are certain kinds of signals and chemicals that do not occur naturally. Learn about the planets that are most exciting to Ravi and how science fiction inspired his journey to become a scientist. Jim Green: Is there intelligent life beyond our solar system? And how are we ever going to find it? Ravi:No one signal…

Suscríbete vía Google Podcasts [Música Dawn to Dusk, por Groupe]    ROSER JUANOLA-PARRAMON: Esta es la pregunta del millón, si estamos solos o no. ¿Lo sabemos ahora mismo? No. Estamos trabajando para poder tener los instrumentos y los telescopios necesarios para poder responder a esta pregunta de una manera científica y experta.    **    [Música Violetta, por Bennett]    HOST NOELIA GONZÁLEZ: Bienvenidos a Universo curioso de la NASA, en donde te invitamos a explorar el cosmos en tu idioma. Soy Noelia González y, en este pódcast, ¡la NASA es tu guía turística a las estrellas!    HOST…

Transcript (music) Narrator: From Earth, the planet Mars looks like a red star in the night sky, a beacon that signals one of the most accessible alien worlds. Not only is Mars relatively close to us in the solar system, but it has a landscape where we can find a footing. Mars seems almost benign compared to the metal-melting heat of Venus, or gas giant planets like Jupiter that vaporize any craft that dares enter its intense atmosphere. And yet, Mars is known as “the death planet” because so many missions attempting to reach it have failed. When NASA…

Episode description:  In space, microgravity changes the body. Body fluids shift from the legs toward the head, the back of our eyes flatten, we lose muscle strength, our bones lose some of their density, and even the amount of blood pumped by the heart with each beat drops. To learn more about how microgravity affects the human body and develop new ways to help astronauts stay healthy, scientists are asking dozens of volunteers to spend 60 days in bed with their heads tilted down at a specific angle. This research approach tricks the body into reacting very similarly to…

From Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA each week on the official podcast of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible. On episode 395, USACE Chief Historian John Lonnquest shares the legacy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their role in building NASA’s spaceflight infrastructure. This episode was recorded July 10, 2025. Transcript Dane Turner Houston, We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. Episode 395: Constructing…

Ruidoso, New Mexico lay in an unusual hush on June 20, 2024. During any normal summer day, the village in the southern part of the state lives up to the Spanish translation of its name — noisy.  But the bustle of this vacation hotspot, which attracts nearly 2 million visitors each year, was stifled by a mandatory evacuation order issued as wildfires raged unchecked across Lincoln County and the Mescalero Apache Reservation.  After four days of fires, news of the disaster began spreading to surrounding communities. At NASA’s White Sands Test Facility (WSTF), Fire Department Deputy Chief James Herrera and…

UPDATE March 31, 2025: The third and final rocket of the AWESOME mission launched on Saturday, March 29 at 1:30 a.m. AKDT. The payload systems functioned properly with a yet-to-be-determined issue with TMA release resulting in a single persistent upleg trail instead of modulated upleg and downleg trails. The vapor trail was still usable and will likely still meet mission success criteria. This concludes the AWESOME mission campaign. UPDATE March 26, 2025: Two of the three AWESOME mission rockets launched on Tuesday, March 25 at 3:52 a.m. AKDT and 4:30 a.m. AKDT. The PI reports that both rockets launched into good science conditions and…

To mark progress toward the first crewed flight test around the Moon in more than 50 years for the benefit of humanity, NASA will welcome media Wednesday, Aug. 21, to see a key adapter for the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket at its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The cone-shaped launch vehicle stage adapter connects the rocket’s core stage to the upper stage and helps protect the upper stage’s engine that will help propel the Artemis II mission around the Moon. The event includes seeing the adapter on the move as it prepares for shipment to…

FAIRMONT – In a matter of days, students all across the state will have the opportunity to select Robotics as a recognized co-curricular activity by the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission.  Starting Nov. 1, students in high schools involved in the WVSSAC will be able to participate in robotics as part of a sanctioned activity.  This new classification enables recognition and parity for robotics programs to thousands of students. Official rules will be presented for adoption by secondary principals at the annual Board of Control meeting in March of 2022, subject to final approval by the West Virginia…

July 22, 2024, was the hottest day on record, according to a NASA analysis of global daily temperature data. July 21 and 23 of this year also exceeded the previous daily record, set in July 2023. These record-breaking temperatures are part of a long-term warming trend driven by human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases. As part of its mission to expand our understanding of Earth, NASA collects critical long-term observations of our changing planet.  “In a year that has been the hottest on record to date, these past two weeks have been particularly brutal,” said NASA Administrator…