NASA's Odyssey Spacecraft Sets Exploration Record on Mars

NASA's Mars Odyssey, which launched in 2001, begins its 3,340th day in Martian orbit at 8:55 p.m. EST Wednesday, becoming the longest-serving spacecraft at the Red Planet...

How Hard Are We Pushing The Land?

We may be becoming an ever more technologically advanced society, but we remain as dependent as ever on the natural world that surrounds us...

Hot Plasma Explosions Inflate Saturn's Magnetic Field

New Cassini findings show enormous clouds of hot plasma periodically bloom around Saturn and move like an unbalanced load of laundry on spin cycle...

Cassini Spots Potential Ice Volcano on Saturn Moon

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn's moon Titan that are similar in shape to those on Earth that spew molten rock...

Satellites Pinpoint Drivers of Urban Heat Islands in the Northea

Summer land surface temperature of cities in the Northeast were warmer than surrounding rural areas due to the urban heat island effect...

NASA Probe Sees Solar Wind Decline

 

Hurtling toward interstellar space some 10.8 billion miles from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero...

NASA Names Waleed Abdalati As Agency's New Chief Scientist

Waleed Abdalati becomes the agency's chief scientist, effective Jan. 3. He'll serve as the principal adviser to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on agency science programs, strategic planning and the evaluation of related investments...

Global Eruption Rocks the Sun

 

A global eruption on the sun has shattered old ideas about solar activity. Researchers presented their surprising findings at a press conference today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco...

The Day the Algae Died

 

The P-T mass extinction may have been instigated by populations of algae dying. According to one group of scientists, this die-off of large numbers of relatively simple life forms caused a crash in the ocean's entire food web...

An Answer to Green Energy Could Be in the Air

 

NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore is part of the first federally-funded research effort to evaluate airborne wind capturing platforms...

NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

Researchers working in the harsh environment of Mono Lake, Calif. have discovered microorganisms able to thrive and reproduce using arsenic, changing the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth...

Cassini Returns Images of Bright Jets at Enceladus

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully dipped near the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Nov. 30.

Pits, Flows, Other Scenes in New Set of Mars Images

Newly released images from 340 recent observations of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show details of a wide assortment of Martian environments...

NASA Aids in Characterizing Super-Earth Atmosphere

Using a ground-based telescope, astronomers, including two NASA Sagan Fellows, made the first characterizations of a super-Earth's atmosphere. A super-Earth is a planet up to three times the size of Earth and up to 10 times the weight...

NASA-German SOFIA Observatory Completes First Science Flight

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, completed the first of three science flights Wednesday morning, Dec. 1, to demonstrate the aircraft's potential to make discoveries about the infrared universe...