Press Releases & Feature Stories Archive - Geodesy and Geophysics Laboratory

10 Cool Things LRO is Teaching Us About the Moon

06.24.2019

In honor of LRO’s 10th birthday, we reflect on 10 of the many things the intrepid, orbiting explorer has taught us about the Moon.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission Breaks Another Orbit Record

06.13.2019

On June 12, OSIRIS-REx broke its own world record for the closest orbit of a planetary body by a spacecraft.

NASA Invites Public to Help Asteroid Mission Choose Sample Site

05.21.2019

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu would like extra pairs of eyes to help choose its sample collection site on the asteroid – and to look for anything else that might be scientifically interesting.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Celebrates 60 Years

04.29.2019

On May 1, 1959, the Beltsville Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was renamed NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in honor of Robert H. Goddard, widely considered the father of modern rocketry. Thus began a 60-year boom in science and technological innovation.

NASA Celebrates Earth Day with Social Media, Public Events

04.18.2019

This Earth Day, April 22, NASA invites you to celebrate our beautiful home planet by participating in a global social media event and local events around the country.

Return of GEDI’s First Data Reveals the Third Dimension of Forests

04.15.2019

NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission launched in December 2018. From its perch aboard the International Space Station, it uses lasers to create detailed 3D maps of Earth’s forests and topography.

Picture Earth for Earth Day 2019

04.12.2019

For Earth Day 2019, NASA invites you to celebrate the planet we call home with our #PictureEarth social media event.

NASA Mission Reveals Asteroid Has Big Surprises

03.19.2019

A NASA spacecraft that will return a sample of a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu to Earth in 2023 made the first-ever close-up observations of particle plumes erupting from an asteroid’s surface.

NASA Invites Media to 57th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium

03.15.2019

Media are invited to the 57th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium on March 20-21.

A Region of Bennu’s Northern Hemisphere Close Up

03.14.2019

These images were taken on February 25 while the spacecraft was in orbit around Bennu, approximately 1.1 miles (1.8 km) from the asteroid’s northern hemisphere.

NASA to Host Media Teleconference on Asteroid Sample Return Mission

03.14.2019

NASA is hosting a media teleconference at 1:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday, March 19, to announce new science from the agency’s first mission to return to Earth an asteroid sample that may contain unaltered material from the very beginning of our solar system.

New NASA Book Shares Beauty of Earth from Space

02.20.2019

NASA’s new 168-page book “Earth,” a collection of dramatic images captured by Earth-observing satellites, is available now in hardcover and ebook, and online with interactive features.

Innovative GEDI Instrument Now Gathering Forest Data

02.01.2019

The Global Ecosystems Dynamics Investigation, or GEDI — is now collecting data as a payload attached to the Japanese Experiment Module, the largest science facility on the International Space Station.

ICESat-2 Reveals Profile of Ice Sheets, Sea Ice, Forests

12.11.2018

A detailed profile of Earth's ice and forests – newly formed sea ice, rugged glaciers of Antarctica, trees towering over a hillside - is revealed in the first results from NASA's ICESat-2.

NASA’s Newly Arrived OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Already Discovers Water on Asteroid

12.10.2018

Recently analyzed data from NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has revealed water locked inside the clays that make up its scientific target, the asteroid Bennu.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Arrives at Asteroid Bennu

12.03.2018

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft completed its 1.2 billion-mile (2 billion-kilometer) journey to arrive at the asteroid Bennu Monday.

GEDI Scientists Share Space Laser Excitement

11.30.2018

Scientists are eagerly anticipating data on Earth's forests that GEDI — launching Dec. 4 — will gather.

TAGSAM Testing Complete: OSIRIS-REx Prepared to TAG an Asteroid

11.16.2018

On Nov. 14, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft stretched out its robotic sampling arm for the first time in space.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Executes Fourth Asteroid Approach Maneuver

11.13.2018

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft executed its fourth Asteroid Approach Maneuver Nov. 12.

A New Hope: GEDI to Yield 3D Forest Carbon Map

11.07.2018

A new NASA laser instrument set to launch to the International Space Station in December will help scientists create the first three-dimensional map of the world’s temperate and tropical forests.

NASA Brings its Science and Supercomputing Advances to SC18

11.05.2018

From designing rocket launch pad components and safer rotorcraft to improving flood and drought forecasts to modeling the formation of planetary disks, NASA will highlight supercomputing advances at SC18, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, Nov. 12 to 15 in Dallas.

ICESat-2 Laser Fires for 1st Time, Measures Antarctic Height

10.03.2018

With each of its 10,000 pulses per second, the laser instrument aboard NASA's ICESat-2 is sending 300 trillion green photons of light to the ground and detecting the few that return: the method it uses to measure Earth’s changing ice. By the morning of Oct. 3, ICESat-2 returned its first height measurements across the Antarctic ice sheet.