Science News
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Old Missions, New Discoveries: NASA’s Data Archives Accelerate Science
2025.04.01
Every NASA mission represents a leap into the unknown, collecting data that pushes the boundaries of human understanding. But the story doesn’t end when the mission concludes. The data carefully preserved in NASA’s archives often finds new purpose decades later, unlocking discoveries that continue to benefit science, technology, and society.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Team Wins 2024 Collier Trophy
2025.03.25
The innovative team of engineers and scientists from NASA, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and more than 40 other partner organizations across the country that created the Parker Solar Probe mission has been awarded the 2024 Robert J. Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA).
NASA’s PUNCH Mission to Revolutionize Our View of Solar Wind
2025.02.21
Earth is immersed in material streaming from the Sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure. NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission will be the first to image the Sun’s corona, or outer […]
NASA Rockets to Fly Through Flickering, Vanishing Auroras
2025.01.21
UPDATE: The first rocket of the GIRAFF mission launched on Saturday, Feb. 1, at 10:07 p.m. Alaska Standard Time, through pulsating aurora spotted over Venetie, Alaska. Principal investigator Robert Michell reports that all instruments performed as expected and the team is reviewing the data. The second GIRAFF rocket and the Black and Diffuse Aurora Science Surveyor rocket mission (led by […]
NASA Solar Observatory Sees Coronal Loops Flicker Before Big Flares
2025.01.15
For decades, scientists have tried in vain to accurately predict solar flares — intense bursts of light on the Sun that can send a flurry of charged particles into the solar system. Now, using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, one team has identified flickering loops in the solar atmosphere, or corona, that seem to signal when […]
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Makes History With Closest Pass to Sun
2024.12.27
Operations teams have confirmed NASA’s mission to “touch” the Sun survived its record-breaking closest approach to the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024. Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at a blazing 430,000 miles per hour […]
Annual Science Conference to Highlight NASA Research
2024.12.06
NASA researchers will present findings on Earth science, planetary science, and heliophysics at the upcoming American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2024 annual meeting in Washington, DC, beginning on Monday, Dec. 9.
5 Surprising NASA Heliophysics Discoveries Not Related to the Sun
2024.11.20
With NASA’s fleet of heliophysics spacecraft, scientists monitor our Sun and investigate its influences throughout the solar system. However, the fleet’s constant watch and often-unique perspectives sometimes create opportunities to make discoveries that no one expected, helping us to solve mysteries about of the solar system and beyond. Here are five examples of breakthroughs made […]
NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth
2024.09.03
A rocket team reports the first successful detection of Earth’s ambipolar electric field: a weak, planet-wide electric field as fundamental as Earth’s gravity and magnetic fields. First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the “polar wind,” a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs.
NASA, ESA Missions Help Scientists Uncover How Solar Wind Gets Energy
2024.08.30
Since the 1960s, astronomers have wondered how the Sun’s supersonic “solar wind,” a stream of energetic particles that flows out into the solar system, continues to receive energy once it leaves the Sun. Now, thanks to a lucky lineup of a NASA and an ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA spacecraft both currently studying the Sun, they […]
NASA Discovers a Long-Sought Global Electric Field on Earth
2024.08.28
An international team of scientists has successfully measured a planet-wide electric field thought to be as fundamental to Earth as its gravity and magnetic fields. Known as the ambipolar electric field, scientists first hypothesized over 60 years ago that it drove atmospheric escape above Earth’s North and South Poles. Measurements from a suborbital rocket have confirmed the existence of the ambipolar field and quantified its strength, revealing its role in driving atmospheric escape and shaping our ionosphere — a layer of the upper atmosphere — more broadly. The paper was published today in the journal Nature.
NASA, LASP Sign Agreement To Advance Space Weather Research, Modeling
2024.08.05
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder enacted a collaborative Space Act Agreement Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, to advance research and modeling in the critical field of space weather. NASA and LASP are longtime space science and exploration […]
NASA’s ICON Mission Ends with Several Ionospheric Breakthroughs
2024.07.24
NASA’s ICON mission studied the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere. It provided critical insights into interplay between space weather and Earth’s weather. The mission gathered unprecedented detail of airglow, showed a relationship between the atmosphere’s ions and Earth’s magnetic field lines, and found many firsts
NASA Rocket Discovers New Energization Process in Upper Atmosphere
2024.07.22
When it comes to discoveries about our upper atmosphere, it pays to know your surroundings.
Alphabet Soup: NASA’s GOLD Finds Surprising C, X Shapes in Atmosphere
2024.06.27
Who knew Earth’s upper atmosphere was like alphabet soup? NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission has revealed unexpected C- and X-shaped formations in an electrified layer of gas high above our heads called the ionosphere. While these alphabetical shapes have been observed before, GOLD sees them more clearly than other instruments […]
NASA, SpaceX Launch NOAA’s Latest Weather Satellite
2024.06.25
NASA successfully launched the fourth and final satellite in a series of advanced weather satellites for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) at 5:26 p.m. EDT Tuesday.
NASA Sets Launch Coverage for NOAA Weather Satellite
2024.06.18
NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) mission. The two-hour launch window opens at 5:16 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25, for the satellite’s launch.
NASA Interns Blast Off for Their First Week at Goddard
2024.06.17
Several hundred new faces walked through the gates of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the first time on June 3. Who is this small army of motivated space-enthusiasts? It’s Goddard’s 2024 summer intern cohort. Across Goddard’s campuses, more than 300 on-site and virtual interns spend the 10-week program contributing across all […]
NASA Interns Blast Off for Their First Week at Goddard
2024.06.17
Across Goddard’s campuses, more than 300 on-site and virtual interns spend the 10-week program contributing across all manners of disciplines, science, engineering, finance, communications, and many more.
NASA Watches Mars Light Up During Epic Solar Storm
2024.06.10
In addition to producing auroras, a recent extreme storm provided more detail on how much radiation future astronauts could encounter on the Red Planet. Mars scientists have been anticipating epic solar storms ever since the Sun entered a period of peak activity earlier this year called solar maximum. Over the past month, NASA’s Mars rovers […]
Historic Geomagnetic Storm Dazzles
2024.05.16
Space scientists and sky-watchers were treated to a stunning display of the northern lights in May 2024.
How NASA Tracked the Most Intense Solar Storm in Decades
2024.05.16
May 2024 has already proven to be a particularly stormy month for our Sun. During the first full week of May, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields toward Earth, creating the strongest solar storm to reach Earth in two decades — and […]
2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Prediction vs. Reality
2024.05.02
Before a total solar eclipse crossed North America on April 8, 2024, scientists at Predictive Science Inc. of San Diego aimed to foresee what the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, would look like during totality. The predictions help researchers understand the accuracy of their models of the Sun’s corona, which extends along its magnetic field. […]
NASA Scientists Gear Up for Solar Storms at Mars
2024.04.29
The Sun will be at peak activity this year, providing a rare opportunity to study how solar storms and radiation could affect future astronauts on the Red Planet. In the months ahead, two of NASA’s Mars spacecraft will have an unprecedented opportunity to study how solar flares — giant explosions on the Sun’s surface — […]
Showing 1 to 24 of 982.