Sep 1, 2011 | Ask the Expert, Blog, Education Station, Exploration, Kids Space, Mars, NASA, Space and Science
NASA’s Opportunity robot on the red planet has been busy inspecting an intriguing feature – Tisdale-2 – at the rim of the huge Endeavor crater. While analysis of the flat-topped rock is still underway, scientists note that it is different from the rocks that make up...
Aug 31, 2011 | Asteroid Exploration, Benefits of Space Exploration, Exploration, International Cooperation, International Space Station, Mars, NASA, Our Solar System, Space and Science, The Moon
Senior officials from NASA and the space agencies of nine other nations gathered in Kyoto, Japan on Tuesday to shape a coordinated multinational strategy for space exploration called the Global Exploration Roadmap. The planning, under way for a year, identifies...
Aug 29, 2011 | Ask the Expert, Blog, Education Station, Exploration, Hubble Space Telescope, International Space Station, Space Shuttle, NASA, Kids Space, Mars, Space Research
Stuffing the food pantry for the first voyagers to strike out for Mars is no easy task. That’s the word from Maya Cooper, a senior research scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in the Space Food Systems Laboratory in Houston, Texas. Maya has reported that...
Aug 23, 2011 | Asteroid Exploration, Benefits of Space Exploration, Comets, Commercial Space, Exploration, Mars, NASA, Our Solar System, Planet Earth, Space Research, The Moon, The Sun
NASA will invest $175 million in a trio of new technology demonstration flights that promise to hasten much more capable missions of deep space exploration by humans as well as robots. The demo flights, which the space agency intends to undertake in 2015 and 2016,...
Aug 22, 2011 | Blog, Education Station, Exploration, Kids Space, Mars, NASA
NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover is inspecting an interesting feature – a flat-topped rock. It was chosen by the rover team as a stop for inspecting with tools on Opportunity’s robotic arm, just a few days after the rover arrived at the western rim of...
Aug 22, 2011 | Asteroid Exploration, Exploration, International Cooperation, International Space Station, Space Shuttle, NASA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Mars, Space Research, The Moon
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station powered up Robonaut 2 for the first time on Monday, though the legless humanoid was not permitted to move head and arms during the two hour exercise. “First motion” is likely several weeks...
Aug 21, 2011 | Ask the Expert, Blog, Book Reviews, Education Station, Exploration, Kids Space, Mars, NASA
The Case for Mars – The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must by Robert Zubrin with Richard Wagner; Free Press – an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, New York; $16.99 (paperback); 2011. This is a revised and updated issue of the seminal...
Aug 15, 2011 | Asteroid Exploration, Blog, Education Station, Exploration, Kids Space, Mars, NASA, Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
Work on the Orion MPCV, or Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, has reached a new milestone. Last week at Lockheed Martin facilities near Denver, the Orion MPCV was crowned with a Launch Abort System. In that fully-stacked condition, the combined length of the coupled gear...
Aug 14, 2011 | Blog, Education Station, Exploration, Kids Space, Mars, NASA, Space and Science
New imagery from NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover has revealed more details from the rim of Endeavour crater. The Mars robot has rolled itself to the large impact crater that measures about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. In pulling up to the crater, Opportunity’s...
Aug 12, 2011 | Commercial Space, Exploration, International Space Station, Space Shuttle, NASA, Mars
NASA on Friday created the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, a single Washington-led organization that combines the agency’s former exploration and space operations directorates. The space agency previously announced its intention to merge the...