A system that would use magnetic fields to ease a spacecraft into orbit after an interplanetary journey has won a $ 500,000 grant...
Tag Archives: NASA’s
Looks aside, NASA’s Orion is “lightyears ahead of what they had in Apollo”
(video link)
MICHOUD, La.—Look at NASA's high-profile Orion spacecraft, and you may get a funny feeling of familiarity. While the modern crew vehicle recently made its big screen debut in the Oscar-nominated The Martian, any lingering deja vu more likely comes from a different place. With the Orion module, there's more than a passing resemblance to its predecessor—the one from the Apollo program.
"To the untrained eye, it looks very much the same," says...
Ars tests NASA’s first Vive VR experiments: ISS, lunar rover simulators
AUSTIN, Texas—South By Southwest Interactive is currently in full swing, and in addition to hundreds of panel conversations, the festival also includes a giant trade-show floor full of attention-hungry startups. The floor is covered in a mélange of start-up-styled nonsense, and it ranged from intriguing (custom-molded earbuds) to awkward (a 3D food printer that was down due to Windows PC crashes) to creepy (an app-controlled plastic mask meant...
NASA’s backing fuels more interest in Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane
NASA’s decision to use Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station marks the most positive development to date for a space program that’s been a decade in the...
Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle will join NASA’s space cargo fleet
NASA says it will add Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Dream Chaser space glider to its cargo-carrying lineup of robotic spaceships as early as 2019. It’s likely to be the first winged vehicle to fly in orbit since the space shuttle fleet’s retirement in...
NASA’s newest women astronauts get the Glamour treatment: Want to join them?
That’s one small step for NASA’s women astronauts, one giant leap for Glamour magazine. Women have had a hard time getting their just deserts when it comes to human spaceflight: The “Mercury 13” were passed over in the early 1960s, and that was just...
Get a 360-degree view of that monster dune on Mars from NASA’s Curiosity rover
The 16-foot-high sand dune that NASA’s Curiosity rover has been skirting around on Mars looks even more imposing in a 360-degree panoramic view you can explore on the Internet. NASA passed along the spherical panorama, as well as a red-blue version...
Ceres as you’ve never seen it before: NASA’s Dawn orbiter delivers closest close-ups of dwarf planet
Earlier this month we started seeing some of the closest views yet of Pluto, and now it’s time for close-ups from a closer dwarf planet: Ceres. NASA’s Dawn orbiter has begun delivering pictures of the solar system’s biggest asteroid and smallest known dwarf planet as seen...
NASA’s New Horizons mission colorizes Pluto’s close-up – and zooms in on its pits
The Pluto pictures from NASA’s New Horizons probe just keep getting better and better: Feast your eyes on this colorized view of the border...
NASA’s New Horizons probe sends its closest close-up of Pluto
If you heart Pluto, you’ll love the sharpest, closest close-up of the dwarf planet, just sent back by NASA’s New Horizons probe. The images, captured from a distance of 10,000 miles during the July 14 flyby, include a heart-shaped block of nitrogen-rich ice right on the edge of the big heart-shaped region known informally as Tombaugh Regio. You can...