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Wiggle in the Gravel This set of images shows the movement of the rear right wheel of NASA’s Curiosity as rover drivers turned the wheels in place at the landing site on Mars. Image credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech PASADENA, Calif. Â – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has been investigating the Martian weather around it and the soil beneath it, as its controllers prepare for the car-size vehicle’s first drive o... More »
Traces of Landing This mosaic image shows part of the left side of NASA’s Curiosity rover and two blast marks from the descent stage’s rocket engines. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity will spend its first weekend on Mars transitioning to software better suited for tasks ahead, such as driving and using its strong robotic arm. The rover’s “brain transplant,” which will occ... More »
This graphic shows the locations of the cameras on NASA’s Curiosity rover. The rover’s mast features seven cameras: the Remote Micro Imager, part of the Chemistry and Camera suite; four black-and-white Navigation Cameras (two on the left and two on the right) and two color Mast Cameras (Mastcams). The left Mastcam has a 34-millimeter lens and the right Mastcam has a 100-millimeter lens. Image cred... More »
Communicating with Curiosity This artist’s still shows how NASA’s Curiosity rover will communicate with Earth during landing. As the rover descends to the surface of Mars, it will send out two different types of data: basic radio-frequency tones that go directly to Earth (pink dashes) and more complex UHF radio data (blue circles) that require relaying by orbiters. NASA’s Odyssey orbiter will pick... More »
The new amplifier consists of a superconducting material (niobium titanium nitride) coiled into a double spiral 16 millimeters in diameter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, have developed a new type of amplifier for boosting electrical signals. The device can be used for everything from stud... More »
This full-circle scene combines 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ. From fresh rover tracks to an impact crater blasted billions of years ago, a ne... More »
The Flame Nebula sits on the eastern hip of Orion the Hunter, a constellation most easily visible in the northern hemisphere during winter evenings. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech A new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows the candle-like Flame nebula lighting up a cavern of dust. The Flame nebula is part of the Orion complex, a turbulent star-forming area located ... More »
The Curiosity rover and its sky crane separate from the back which helped protect both during entry in the Martian atmosphere. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech One month and a day after celebrating its independence with fireworks exhibitions throughout the country, America will carry its penchant for awe-inspiring aerial pyrotechnic displays to the skies of another world. Some pyrotechnics will be a... More »
A particularly strong jet stream churns through Saturn’s northern hemisphere in this false-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI Turbulent jet streams, regions where winds blow faster than in other places, churn east and west across Saturn. Scientists have been trying to understand for years the mechanism that drives these wavy structures in Saturn’s atmosph... More »
New Interactive Takes You ‘Under the Hood’ of NASA’s Salt-seeking Aquarius Mission Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Aquarius, NASA’s pioneering instrument to measure ocean surface salinity from orbit, launched a year ago (on June 10, 2011) aboard the Argentine Space Agency’s Satélite de Aplicaciones CientÃficas (SAC-D) observatory. Designed to advance our understanding of what changes in the salti... More »
